Showing posts with label upgrade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label upgrade. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Intel to AMD Transition

As per my previous entry where I talked about by rig burnt because of lightning surge, but now I just gotten a new rig(with help of sponsor of course:D).

It took me a week to figure out what kind of component to choose because it must fits my requirement which is:
-Cheap
-Preferably with integrated stuff
-got PCIe and PCI(for graphic card and wireless pci)

and at the end, I end up bought
-AMD Phenom II X4 840
-Asus M4A88T M-LE click here to see more info about this motherboard
-4GB DDR3
-Cooler Master 550W PSU (for RM150) -> bought this from Lowyat.net forumer..very cheap..contact me if you want to buy one :D
since my HDD and graphic card is still functioning, so I just use it back..

At first, I'm thinking to build Intel i3 rig but because AMD rig can offer better performance(hopefully) for a lesser buck and I would like to try AMD(i've never have AMD rig before), so I straightaway chose AMD rig like above.

Picture below taken during assembly progress

                                                                                                                Motherboard box and the contents inside

full view of mobo

back panel of the mobo


AMD Phenom II X4 840 3.2GHz


everything is on its place and ready to fire up

My Verdict
-This is mini ATX motherboard..so, if I'm adding another RAM stick, I'll be hitting the wall already. Nothing much to upgrade with this mobo really
-I'm not fanboy ok. Since I've tried both AMD and Intel, this is what I came up with
   +Intel - Quite pricey, so many socket type, smoother
   +AMD - Cheap, socket is backward compatible, but not so smooth
-Many people says that AMD processor is running hotter that Intel bla3 but what I found is it's quite cooler than my previous processor(or perhaps it's not in the same league)

So, that is my entry for this time. The Asus serve me well till this time and most importantly it's bang for bucks.
But, if your have a bigger budget, consider choosing proper ATX motherboard for long term run.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

SSD vs HDD?

Haawww. So tired lah dis week. Been busy with Modul Pembangunan dan Kepimpinan Pelajar(LPPKP) at my uni and at the same time arrange/allocate time to upgradee my desktop :D The LPPKP is a mandatory program and all students need to attend if you want to know...

So, I decided to upgrade my PC and straight away I browse through Lowyat.net forum to find PC hardware that suits my limited budget. So, I end up bought the Gigabyte GA EP45-UD3R motherboard (and sell my EP41-UD3L ), adding another 2GB RAM, bought Zalman CPU cooler and adding another 500GB of space. CODed with other forumer at various places(very far from my hometown weh) including ampang, pj, puchong..T_T..The reason why I want to upgrade is because want to try overclock my E7400. The G41 chipset cannot overclock much; even +5 increase in FSB will make system restart and load default BIOS value.lousy..

My journey in rather small upgrade.

The box and contents inside

Zalman CNPS9500 LED CPU cooler



The board..beautiful indeed





The 'heart' of a computer on my old mobo





Installing retention bracket and the cooler


But..i feel kinda not complete.
My wishlist now is a new graphic card and most importantly a SSD..wuuhuu. That’s what I want to write in this entry actually (kinda long intro huh?..huhuh). So, what the heck is solid state disk(SSD) and why is it better than hard disk drive(HDD)? This kind of question once strike through my berain and after some googling(simple ya), I started to understand and put SSD into my wishlist.


SSD or Solid State Disk basically is a disk that has NO moving parts. It contains several memory chip on a board to store data.


Lets differentiate it shall we?

Price
SSD: Expensive
HDD: Cheap

How it works?
SSD: Use non-volatile flash memory
HDD: Magnetizing ferromagnetic material

Reliability
SSD: Can sustain 100K write cycles per cell
HDD: Has a lifespan

Speed
SSD: 170 MBps typically
Access time between 35-100 ms
HDD: 80 MBps typically
Access time between 5000-10000ms

Noise
SSD: Quiet because no mechanical parts
HDD: Clicks and crunching noise

Vibration
SSD: Can sustain up to 1500G’s
HDD: 350G’s to 800G’s only

Power consumption
SSD: Low
HDD: High

Heat Dissipation
SSD: Less heat produced
HDD: Has moving parts thus more heat

Cost
SSD: $3 per gigabyte
HDD: 20-30 cents per gigabyte

Below is demo video..