Monday, July 18, 2005
Honda 1992 CBR1000F. A great sports touring bike. Powerful, dependable and one of the few bikes of it's time that didn't have neon colored splashes all over the bodywork. Copyright Hayashi Photography 2003.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
I'm building a new game PC. My old one was fine but my son needed it for his gaming
The components I picked are:
* AMD 64 3500+, TigerDirect.com, $269.99
* Nvidia 6600GT AGP, from old computer, $200.00 (current street price)
* Asus A8V deluxe motherboard, Newegg.com, $113.00
* Corsair value select PC3200 DDRAM, Newegg.com, $79.99
* Antec SLK 2650 "quiet" case, CompUSA, $69.99 (39.99 after rebate)
* Western Digital 160GB SATA HD, Fry's, $119.99 (69.99 after rebates)
Newegg.com had the consistently best prices on many parts and reasonable shipping. It took about three days for the order to arrive.
I bought the CPU from TigerDirect.com because they had the lowest price, no sales tax in California and free shipping. Sales tax and shipping should always be considered when making any price comparisons.
Fry's wasn't too bad when I went to pick up the hard disk. Not too crowded on a Saturday morning and several disks on the shelf.
I bought the case from CompUSA because they had a rebate. Unfortunately there is reason they have such a bad reputation. I checked inventory online and went to buy the case at my closest store. While I found a helpful salesperson after a short wait he couldn't find the case that even his computer showed as in stock. I went back home and ordered the case online for pick-up at another store. When I went there they hadn't pulled the case from the warehouse yet and I had to wait about 15 minutes because the storeroom was locked up. It was like going to McDonald's. One supervisor who knew what she was doing and a bunch of sullen teenagers hanging around looking like they were doing community service hours.
Well, I've been hacking away at the build for a few days now and have a few observations.
The Asus motherboard has some flaws that make it difficult to put everything together. I found that if I have a PATA (IDE) drive plugged into the primary IDE connector and a SATA drive plugged into the primary SATA connector the PATA drive will not boot up. It is recognized by the BIOS but when the SATA BIOS kicks in later and recognizes the SATA drive the PATA drive gets knocked out and the BIOS complains that the boot drive is missing. I really find the AMI BIOS frustrating. It requires you to go through several pages every time you change a boot drive location. Plus it has some built in pauses that lengthen the boot time. I had a heck of a time installing the SATA drivers. The Asus CD did not install the necessary drivers for Windows XP to recognize the SATA drive. I thought it had and spent a lot of time chasing other possible solutions before I downloaded SATA drivers from the Asus web site. It seems like a very common complaint about this motherboard and SATA in general.
I had some problems with my PATA drives getting reported by the motherboard as failing the SMART test during the boot up process. After much testing and swapping I found that if I changed the jumpers to cable select everything worked. This is contradicted by the manual that calls for master/slave jumpers.
The Antec SLK 2650 "quiet" case is not that quiet. They put a vent with a megaphone shaped air guide on the side of the case for the processor. This shoots the sound of the processor fan out the side of the case. The power supply and the 120mm case fan are quiet though. The case has poorly lain out with only two 3.5” internal bays. They are opposite the AGP slot and my nVidia 6600GT card's power connector overlaps the IDE cable on the second hard disk. I have an Antec SLK3700 case that is much better laid out with 4 internal 3.5” bays. I guess there is a reason why this model has a $30 rebate.
The computer is finally running smoothly. It is overkill for playing Enemy Territory but sooner or later I'll need it for a demanding game. One benchmark I tested was the comparison of the SATA drive vs. the PATA drive. The SATA was twice as fast as my old Maxtor 80GB ATA/100 drive.
The components I picked are:
* AMD 64 3500+, TigerDirect.com, $269.99
* Nvidia 6600GT AGP, from old computer, $200.00 (current street price)
* Asus A8V deluxe motherboard, Newegg.com, $113.00
* Corsair value select PC3200 DDRAM, Newegg.com, $79.99
* Antec SLK 2650 "quiet" case, CompUSA, $69.99 (39.99 after rebate)
* Western Digital 160GB SATA HD, Fry's, $119.99 (69.99 after rebates)
Newegg.com had the consistently best prices on many parts and reasonable shipping. It took about three days for the order to arrive.
I bought the CPU from TigerDirect.com because they had the lowest price, no sales tax in California and free shipping. Sales tax and shipping should always be considered when making any price comparisons.
Fry's wasn't too bad when I went to pick up the hard disk. Not too crowded on a Saturday morning and several disks on the shelf.
I bought the case from CompUSA because they had a rebate. Unfortunately there is reason they have such a bad reputation. I checked inventory online and went to buy the case at my closest store. While I found a helpful salesperson after a short wait he couldn't find the case that even his computer showed as in stock. I went back home and ordered the case online for pick-up at another store. When I went there they hadn't pulled the case from the warehouse yet and I had to wait about 15 minutes because the storeroom was locked up. It was like going to McDonald's. One supervisor who knew what she was doing and a bunch of sullen teenagers hanging around looking like they were doing community service hours.
Well, I've been hacking away at the build for a few days now and have a few observations.
The Asus motherboard has some flaws that make it difficult to put everything together. I found that if I have a PATA (IDE) drive plugged into the primary IDE connector and a SATA drive plugged into the primary SATA connector the PATA drive will not boot up. It is recognized by the BIOS but when the SATA BIOS kicks in later and recognizes the SATA drive the PATA drive gets knocked out and the BIOS complains that the boot drive is missing. I really find the AMI BIOS frustrating. It requires you to go through several pages every time you change a boot drive location. Plus it has some built in pauses that lengthen the boot time. I had a heck of a time installing the SATA drivers. The Asus CD did not install the necessary drivers for Windows XP to recognize the SATA drive. I thought it had and spent a lot of time chasing other possible solutions before I downloaded SATA drivers from the Asus web site. It seems like a very common complaint about this motherboard and SATA in general.
I had some problems with my PATA drives getting reported by the motherboard as failing the SMART test during the boot up process. After much testing and swapping I found that if I changed the jumpers to cable select everything worked. This is contradicted by the manual that calls for master/slave jumpers.
The Antec SLK 2650 "quiet" case is not that quiet. They put a vent with a megaphone shaped air guide on the side of the case for the processor. This shoots the sound of the processor fan out the side of the case. The power supply and the 120mm case fan are quiet though. The case has poorly lain out with only two 3.5” internal bays. They are opposite the AGP slot and my nVidia 6600GT card's power connector overlaps the IDE cable on the second hard disk. I have an Antec SLK3700 case that is much better laid out with 4 internal 3.5” bays. I guess there is a reason why this model has a $30 rebate.
The computer is finally running smoothly. It is overkill for playing Enemy Territory but sooner or later I'll need it for a demanding game. One benchmark I tested was the comparison of the SATA drive vs. the PATA drive. The SATA was twice as fast as my old Maxtor 80GB ATA/100 drive.
