PC PC GAMES

The video cards are fast the cpu can keep up all and all I am very pleased.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

Sandforce SSD Corsair Force GT in raid 0

Here is a short but sweet review of 2 Sandforce Corsair Force
GT 240Gb SSD hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration.

I moved from a single 256gb SSD drive to a raid 0 for a few
reasons.

256gb is still a bit on the small side and I wanted more
space.  The cost going from two 240gb
drives to a single 480MB drive  or 512gb
drive is about the same in cost. But the performance for two drives in raid 0
vs one drive is two times the performance. This is a lot of money to spend on
Drive space, so I figured if I was going to go big I should also keep performance
in mind This is why I went Raid 0.

This Gives a 2x performance gain for the same money as a
480GB Corsair Force GT.

I also thought of doing 4x120GB drives but My SATA3 6GB/s
controller only would raid 2 drives in 6GB/s.

My old SSD the Crucial C300 at the time was the best performer
coming in at 219MB per sec on the writes and 380MB on the read. At the time
this beat all other SSD’s in a 2.5” format by about 100MB per sec.

The Corsair Force GT 240GB comes in at 515MB/s on the write
and a blazing 555MB/s on the read. It uses the SF-2000 SSD Processor.

In RAID 0 the drives get
1030MB/s writes and 1100MB/s read.

See ATOT benchmark below.
When I say things open in a blink of an eye I really mean blink and
there the app is.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:37:04 — 71.9MB)

Good times, turn up the volume and wave at Kommie.

Howdy Folks – we haven’t decided yet if were going to keep bringing more out, but if we do it’ll be less frequently and they’ll be raw and uncut (so you may hear some language or Kommie’isms that you haven’t heard before.) But this was super fun and good times to be talking gaming again with the crowd from PCPC Games. We covered a ton of topics here and we bounced around quite a bit but in the end it all makes sense.

There were some feedback issues from a few folk, so you’ll probably here a few mic scratches here and there and some open mic feedback, but nothing too bad, just wanted to give you a heads-up.

Enjoy. -Fascinator

A year ago we talked about the cost of PC gaming in relation to console. I want to post on occasion what you could find or do. All our previous arguments are still true. Console games are more expensive, you might not be able to play your games in 2-3 years when the new console generation hits, consoles are for gaming only (Netflix excluded) while PC’s are a household must for pretty much anybody.

This weeks smoking deal:

XPS 8300 Desktop Computer Refurbished
Cost:  $479.99

• Intel® Core i5-2300 Processor
• Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
• 6GB DDR3-1333 SDRAM
• 1TB 7,200RPM Hard Drive
• 16x DVD±RW Drive
• 1501 Wireless-N Mini-Card

We talked about the Logitech headphones before. Most of us use them and love their sound. I mentioned before about the plastic breaking and a couple weeks ago taking them of my head one side just simply snapped off. I was very close of just replacing them but figured it wouldn’t hurt to just check with them since Tim (Filezz) had some good report about them replacing a keyboard of his.

Well, after some time on the phone and e-mailing them my receipt (having to send them a reminder) they send me a UPS label and my headphones that I used almost a year and a LOT of hours are supposed to be replaced by them. If you are wondering how bad they looked at the end… here is are some pics.

So after seeing Josh’s awesome alienware laptop with a 17inch 120Hz 3D screen, I have decided I need one as well. So I went to Fry’s yesterday and pick up my own 3D monitor.

It’s an Alienware AW2310 120Hz Nvidia 3D Ready.

It’s slick looking for sure, and 120Hz is definitely visible compare to my 60hz asus or samsung. It has 4 USB ports in the back as well. Slick touch sensitive power and control button on the side. One of the best thing besides look is that with this monitor, you can actually tilt, adjust height and pivot easily. So far it looks great in Counter Strike and League of Legends. Alienware definitely went all out with the design and the package. In the package, you actually get a Dual DVI (you need dual DVI to display 120hz/3D) cable as well as HDMI cable. I am not so sure there is another company out there actually pack a HDMI cable in the box….(even though you don’t use it, it’s still cool). Thumbs up from me for sure.

Here’s something for you Star Wars fans with lots of money.

SWTOR

I would for sure get one if it weren’t for the price.  It will sell for around $200.00.

I got the cards unpacked them and installed them one at a time and unlocked them to 6970 speed with the xfx 6970 firmware. After I flashed them all I installed them all together to do tri-crossfire. I must say even I was impress with the results, mostly I think from the extra 1gb of memory on the cards.

Now I have to decide if I want to water all the cards down.

Talk about a nice (and unexpected) surprise!

Tune in to the podcast for more

The Wanginator

The Wanginator!

It’s no secret, I am not a small guy. But over the last year things have gotten a little out of hand. This year needs to change and while I was in the middle of switching desktops I also switched out my desk. the work that I do requires a lot of sitting in the car, sitting at the customers house and when I would get home… sitting in front of my desk. What if I could change the time in front of my desk into work out time. Not hard core, but not sit like I do the rest of the day? Well, the result you can see here:

You had me till you said… ATOM… say what?! And why is Simon is this commercial?

Found by Wonko from forum

I mentioned on the podcast yesterday that I’d do a quick write on single rail power supplies, multiple rail power supplies and ratings to look out for.

I’ll use the situation that I personally experienced as a reference.

Some time ago, I bought a 750w Silverstone unit.  The Strider ST75F, I believe was the model number.  Got rave review, served me well for a year or two, until……   Upgrade time came around.  I had caught a sweet deal on a pair for Radeon HD4850′s at launch and was planning to run them in Crossfire.   At the time, I was using a P35 Asus board.  Well with the P35 chipset, crossfire support on the PCI-E lanes was off balance.  I was running one card at PCI-E x16 and the other at PCI-E x4.  After some testing, I found that I was not getting the performance that I should have expected because the second card was starved for bandwidth.  I needed to get a new motherboard.

So I did.  Settled on the Gigabyte X48-DS4 (first mistake).  Ordered it on newegg.  Got the board in a few days later.  Tore the rig apart, put it all back together.  Did a fresh windows install, got crossfire working as advertised. YES!  Now it’s time to overclock!

This is where things went downhill.  At the time, I was using a Q6600 as my CPU.  Since I was running it at 3.2Ghz on my poor old P35 board, I figured I could at least get that same speed out of this new highend X48 board.  Right?

Wrong….  I was never able to get the rig to run stable with both Radeons and the overclocked Q6600 at the same time.  I tried everything.  After a week or two of dealing with an unstable system, and I was becoming pretty desperate.  On a whim (and grasping at straws), I called Karsten and asked if I could borrow his PSU (a 750w PC Power and Cooling) for a few hours.  After a little explaining and agreeing to put his rig back together, he agreed.  Needless to say, I was at his door with my rig within 10 minutes.

So I swapped the PSUs out, fired up my rig and all was good.  Rebooted to try the overclock on the CPU again.  Low and behold, it was stable!  I even got a little greedy and bumped the speed up to 3.4Ghz.  Ran some tests, played some games for a bit.  OMG, this thing was stable!   So, what was the cause of my instabilities?   Both units were 750w.  There shouldn’t be much difference…  Boy was I wrong.

This is the sticker on the side of the Silverstone I had.  See in the center under output where it says +12V1, +12v2, +12v3 and +12v4.  That means this particular unit has 4 12v rails.  Not a big deal, right?  That’s what I thought too.  Well, if you look again, you can see that each rail can handle a max load of 18Amps.  That is were my problem was coming in.  After doing some research, I found that one of those rails were dedicated to powering just the CPU.  With my modest overclock, apparently 18Amps of current simply wasn’t enough!  WTF?!  I just bought this unit about a year ago!   A PSU has always lasted me at least 3 computer builds!

Now, compare that to the sticker of the unit I borrowed.  See that 1 +12v rail with a whopping 60Amps?  Sure, its less than the combined amperage of the Silverstone, but what good is that if you can’t get the power where it needs to be?   Even with this unit being 12A down from the other, it STILL ran the rig stable.  My guess is that the CPU needed 20-24Amps in order to maintain stability.  While it may not have needed that power at idle, it was definitely needed under load.  When it couldn’t get the power it needed, the PSU freaked out and tripped, causing the machine to reboot.

So, word to the wise.  When shopping for a PSU that you are expecting to last you a few builds, you can’t go wrong with a big ass single 12v rail.

Be Easy,

The Wanginator

What happened to BeerJedi?  It’s a question I got asked a few times recently as I’ve finally been online gaming again after a near month absence.  So what happened?  Two things happened.

First and foremost, BabyJedi 2 was born in the end of October.  My second daughter was born and she is healthy, at home and refuses to sleep at night.  For us older gamers with families, there is no better day in your life then the birth of a child.  Getting married is a close second.  Needless to say, I’ve been spending countless hours fragging dirty diapers, burping my tiny little girl and warming bottles (and getting zero sleep).

The other (not as important) more prevelant event to pcpcgames.com is I finally upgraded my aging system.  This was a big one for me as I changed a few of my habits when putting together a system.  In the past, I was a efficiency builder.  That’s the best way to describe it.  If you broke down my buying habbits and equipment habits by a MArketing life Cycle: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards, I would normally fall on the line between Early Adopters and Early Majority and then ride my equipment to the end of Late Majority.

Basically put, I’d find the most bang for my buck that was one step or two above mainstream.  I went a different route this time and built a system that for once can handle it’s own against some of main PCPC members.  I’m not the top, but I’m no longer the beggard.

My Original Box I built in the Spring of 2007 (This was a solid box for it’s time):

• E6600 Dual Core Intel Chip
• ASUS Pw5 Deluxe Board
• 8800 GTS Nvidia GPU
• Antec Case
• 2GB of KingstonX DDR2 RAM (later upgraded to 4GB)
• 700 Watt Generic Power Supply
• 250GB Drive (later upgraded to Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB)
• OEM DVD
• Windows XP (and yes, I was on  XP until literally September 2010)
• Copper Fin Bloom Air Based Heat Sync

I started this process focussing on building everything at once, but thanks to input from BlackThunder, I ended up completing the upgrades in 2 phases.  First phase replaced most of the innards.  The second phase replaced the GPU and the Power Supply.

The New BeerJedi Rig:

Phase 1 – The Heart of the System

Images of Phase 1

Phase II: GPU and Power Supply
During the building of the system I ran into a serious problem. It would not boot, after a series of trouble shooiting sessions, I took it over to Scooder’s house and we easily determined that my Powersupply was dead (though it will power my older system still). Thanks to BlackThunder, I returned the original Radeon 5850 GPU and waited till last week.

Once I was done, here is the innards of my new Rig: (and yes, I suck at Cable Management)

After a debating with myself, I decided to pull the trigger and upgrade the 1600×900 screen that came in the laptop to a 1920×1080 screen, the pics below are my adventure.
(continue reading…)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:48:09 — 55.9MB)

• Vindictus
• FF14… Mayor Rage Quit
• Fallout New Vegas
• Duke Nukem 3D Demo Access now for all Borderlands owners
• Steam News and what the Wallet is there for
• Metal of Honor
• Source Engine
• DODA2 by Valve
• The EA Louse
• Battlefield Vietnam DLC
• Starcraft 2 Patch Changes
• Logitech does something right
• Console News
• Steam Top 10
• Cities XL
• Reader Mail
• STEAM Hacked, what now?!

Added a few new toys, Corsair H70 cooler to replace my H50. C300 crucial ssd hard drive 256gb. Asus rampage Extreme III with sata 6gb and usb 3. On the 6gb sata controller I get 100mb per second faster then when on a 3gb sata controller.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:12:45 — 53.6MB)

So there we are recording and chatting about games and the Dead Rising 2 description hits us… Co-Op and Multi-player… before we made it to the end 3 people purchased the game. Now… as far as the review goes, you will have to wait one more week. And we also talked about:

• Games on our wish list
• What is the Killer Game this Christmas season
• The new improved MOH… now without Taliban
• Starcraft2 vs Friends
• Watch game replays… watching can be fun!
• Sword of the Stars and what 4x games means
• Some Minecraft talk
• FIFA Soccer 2010 and EA Digital Distribution
• BestBuy continues to rip customers off
• 3DS… is 3D worth $300?
• L4D2 New Episode this Tuesday
• Why you should backup your Game Saves!
• Blizzard Real ID now optional
• Bobby Kotick is making waves… yet again
• Team Fortress 2 gets a HUGE update… now you can buy stuff
• Tim has new hardware… New Headset
• Some new Duke questions
• Curlen made us buy a console game (Dead Rising 2)
• Gunnar Optic Glasses
• STEAM top 10
• Blizzard unpacks the BAN Hammer
• World of Darkness

You’ll never guess what I’m doing with it.