This was a wonderful weekend at home. I worked on some fun projects and did some “business” work. Samantha played with some new toys (stroller, etc.) and cooked some delicious delights. Also, before the weekend got here, we had a lot of fun going out to eat with my mom and dad to celebrate my dad’s birthday! Even before that, we had a great Valentine’s day (which I still need to post an entry about…) But now back to the
Some people enjoy building hot rods, or building model airplanes. I enjoy building computers. The first PC I built was in 1997, I was a sophomore in HS. I can still remember researching all the parts, using a computer in the HS science classroom (I didn’t have internet at home at that time). Tom’s Hardware and Anandtech were my primary sources of motherboard and CPU reviews. Those two sites helped me immensely in choosing the best components for my “first
The need for cheap speed! Yesterday I read a nice little article over at Anandtech about unlocking the extra two cores in AMD Phenom II X2 555 CPUs. This lets you take a dual core CPU and turn it into a quad core CPU*. *The extra two cores aren’t guaranteed to unlock and be 100% reliable, but it’s easy to stress test and see if your particular CPU can handle it. Reading other people’s experiences it looks like the success
Two links to Ken Rockwell’s site, both of these articles resonant with me. Regarding the first article, as a somewhat gadget obsessed dude that also like photography I can empathize. I know that some of my best photographs were with relatively ancient cameras; and some of my worst photos have been with the “latest and greatest”. The second article is similar to the first one, except going into a bit more of what really makes for good photography. Article #1
Type QTY Price Total Item Comments CPU 2 $835 $1,670 Xeon Clovertown Quad Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz 19.2 GHz Motherboard 1 $499 $499 TYAN S5380G2NR Dual Socket 771 Intel 5000P SSI 6 high speed USB ports on back of the computer, 2 more in the front of the case. Let me know if you want more. Memory 4 $180 $720 1GB FBDIMM ECC memory chips 4GB RAM Primary Hard Drive 1 $225 $225 Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM