GA-X48-DS4<\/a> which is a Gigabyte-brand motherboard with the X45 chipset and Intel RAID support. <\/p>\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had no problems with the motherboard, but don’t install the power-saver application. Apart from it breaking every GUI standard in the name of funkiness, I blame it for freezing the Vista Explorer on start-up.<\/p>\n
There was support for a serial port on the motherboard, but there was no outlet for it. That surprised me, but I had a spare faceplate with a serial port plug on it, so I fitted it, just in case I ever need it.<\/p>\n
RAM<\/h5>\n
I went with 4GB of Geil DDR2-1066 RAM, in 4 sticks of 1 GB each. <\/p>\n
I did my research, and for one hour I think I understood what 5-5-5-15 meant. I came up with my own metric that transmogrified the various numbers into a Oddthinking rating of 0.116, which was very good for the price. I then promptly forgot everything I learnt. I hope I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to learn it all again for a long time.<\/p>\n
I’m getting a Windows Experience Memory rating of 5.9, up from 3.7, so I must have done good!<\/p>\n
Processor<\/h5>\n
Intel E8500 (Dual Core, 3.16 GHz) <\/p>\n
I am getting a Windows Experience Processor Rating of 5.0 (up from 3.0) which makes the processor the bottleneck for the overall rating. <\/p>\n
It surprised me that the CPU was the bottleneck. Maybe I should have spent more money here? Then I realised that whichever component had been the lowest, I would have had a similar expression of surprise. I shouldn’t be surprised that I am surprised!<\/p>\n
I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say I like the design of the fan mountings; they are very finicky. <\/p>\n
Graphics<\/h5>\n
I chose a Gigabyte-branded ATI Radeon HD 4650. <\/p>\n
The Windows Experience rating for Graphics and Gaming graphics are both 5.3, up from 2.9 and 3.5 respectively.<\/p>\n
I went with the 1GB RAM option. I wonder if that was worth it. I also have the option of adding another Radeon card and getting the Crossfire action happening, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think I will bother.<\/p>\n
Don’t install the ATI Control Center, unless you want to have them rub your nose in it by adding an option to the top of practically every context menu in the Explorer. Why does every developer assume that their software is the most important application on the computer? <\/p>\n
Hard-drive<\/h5>\n
As I have mentioned in blog comments before, I am trying a new experiment.<\/p>\n
I have a RAID1 array for my important documents and photos. I bought three new drives for this: two as active drives, and one as off-site backup. Every month I plan to swap out one drive for the backup. That guarantees me a perfect copy (no locked files, no missing directories) in return for a couple of minutes of downtime. It took a couple of goes to get the right drivers installed, but passed a swap test perfectly.<\/p>\n
Each drive is what disk drive manufacturers get away with called 1 TB (1012<\/sup> bytes, not 240<\/sup> bytes), meaning I have about 931 GB available (up from 189 GB). Each drive has 32 MB of cache. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get a Windows Experience rating for this RAID set, but using other tools, I am getting an average throughput of about 7 times faster than my old machine. <\/p>\nThese drives are higher-spec than I planned (I was aiming for 750 GB) but the price was right.<\/p>\n
Once the RAID1 was in place on the new machine, and my important files were copied across and verified, I stole the two RAID1 drives from my old machine. I made them a RAID0 set for the OS and other unimportant files. (Total size: 380 GB) RAID0 upped the Windows Experience rating from 5.3 to 5.9. (My old machine’s OS drive was also 5.3.) <\/p>\n
I was pleasantly surprised that I could create a RAID0 set of my boot drive without deleting everything and reinstalling the OS. It just ran for a couple of hours synching them in the background and then required a reboot for the extra space to become available. After that I needed to extend the partition, and voila. Virtually no outage. I had planned for a whole extra O\/S install, so it was great not to need it.<\/p>\n
OS<\/h5>\n
I am running Vista x64 (up from 32-bit Vista). No insurmountable driver issues to date. There was one application that wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t install, but it can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have been important, because I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even remember what it was (drive metrics?)<\/p>\n
I am considering upgrading the old machine from Vista to Linux, or perhaps dual boot. Anyone want to recommend a Linux for beginners?<\/div>\n
Removeable Media<\/h5>\n
Between two machines, I have one DVD burner and two CD burners, which should be enough\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 except the DVD-burner didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like being moved. Now it only ejects a disk sometimes. The rest of the time, it strains but can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get the tray to move. I can pry it open with force, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be keeping an eye out for DVD-burner bargains when it gets too annoying.<\/p>\n
I believe I have some spare floppy drives in the cupboard, but I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bothered installing one on my new machine.<\/p>\n
Monitor<\/h5>\n
Aye, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the rub. My 21\u00e2\u20ac\u009d CRT died on New Year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Day. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bring myself to buy a cheap LCD screen with poor colours, and I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bring myself to pay for an expensive LCD screen with good colours. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m paralysed. In the meantime, I am running three 19\u00e2\u20ac\u009d CRTs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c two on the old machine, one on the new one. <\/p>\n
Yes, my desk can handle that many monitors \u00e2\u20ac\u201c hell, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why I chose this desk. However, the limited screen real-estate is very noticeable. (I guess I chose a bad day to migrate to Eclipse!)<\/p>\n
Overall<\/h5>\n
A successful, but slow, migration with only a constipated DVD tray as a casualty. <\/p>\n
I decided to trust Microsoft with their recommended Windows Experience metric, and the overall rating jumped from 2.9 to 5.0. It would take a new CPU and another graphics card to get it up to 5.9, so I’m happy where I am.<\/p>\n
Of course, a faster machine just makes me more frustrated when it stalls for no reason<\/a>.<\/p>\nWith three monitors and two computers in an upstairs office when it is over 30°C outside, this room is damn hot! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After talking about it for a long time, I upgraded my computer in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,31],"tags":[226],"class_list":["post-934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-oddthinking","category-geek","tag-computer-parts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=934"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1108,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions\/1108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}