Building the fastest possible computer on a budget is always a fun challenge (for me). I have to weigh performance vs. cost for each and every component. One benefit, it allows me to spread out the purchase over many weeks compared to buying a complete system in the store. I usually bundle all the components with shipping costs into one checkout to save on shipping, and then I can buy everything else with free shipping as funds become available. I recommend starting with the case, this way you can add components into it as they arrive and check that they fit. Much easier to send something back sooner than later, especially for components that have limited return periods. You may also run into a problem you didn’t anticipate that forces you to go a different direction. It’s best to discover that before ordering everything.
One of the factors that contributes greatly toward my purchase decision is the overclockability of a particular system. After doing a lot of reading, I learned that Intel’s Core i5-750 (LGA 1156) on many P55 motherboards has a sturdy overclocking range that can yield a good deal more performance at a lower price than Core i7 processors on Intel’s X58 platform. Tri-channel DDR3 memory needed on the X58 platform is also an expensive endeavor which swayed me further toward P55.
Sometimes you have to spend money to save money. I not only chose a case that is renowned for it’s ability to move a large volume of air quickly and quietly, I went all out on air cooling! I decided to go air over water for the CPU since the incremental benefit of the water cooling wasn’t high enough in my opinion to out way the cost of not having any cooling for surrounding motherboard components. Especially considering that the water cooling system is more expensive.
Having a system that can consistently provide more cooling capacity to keep the CPU temp down under full load, and also the surrounding motherboard components is a must if you want a stable overclocked system.
After some careful tuning of voltages and frequencies and lengthy torture testing that took many days, I was able to achieve a 50% overclock with an acceptable level of risk to the components. The torture tests simply tax the system to it’s fullest for many hours to determine if the overclocked components will produce any errors. If not, the system is deemed to be stable (enough).
Now that the system is stable, I can run benchmarks to measure what kind of performance has been achieved. This is the really fun part. If you’ve done a good job on the system build and overclocking, you get to see what it can do and compare it with other systems that likely cost much more!
If you know of any good free benchmarking tools and places to post scores, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!
Quantum physicist Vlatko Vedral explains the universe
Professor Vedral reveals the best explanation of the universe that I’ve ever seen! I’ve been thinking along these lines for some time now, but wasn’t able to put it into such easy to comprehend terms.
I think understanding what information is, what the universe is, points toward an answer to the question: “Why are we here?”. And at the heart of everything is probability. That is the concept of information.
Since the beginning, the universe has been moving in one direction, towards ever increasing complexity. It’s about energy density per unit time (energy per gram per second). Up until the first transistorized computer was demonstrated at the University of Manchester in 1953, we were the most energy dense per second thing the universe had created (assuming no aliens or alien tech). Per second, we’re even more energy dense than a star! Now computers are by far more energy dense per second than us.
What is the end product the universe is trying (probabilistically) to produce? Will technology continue to aid us on this journey as it does now or will it eventually replace us? I don’t know. In other words, is technology, or something greater than technology, the end goal or are we? One thing is for sure, we created technology. The universe could not create it without first creating us.
I like to think of it like an assembly line for a car. The production process has already started, but the assembly line itself has yet to be completed! It starts out with the basic parts and pieces (energy, matter, laws of physics) needed for assembly, and as the car progresses down the line it gets more and more complex. I think we are either a robot working to produce the car on that assembly line, or we are the car. Either way, I don’t think we’ll have to wait long to find out.
Infinitec’s Infinite USB Memory (IUM) streams to almost any device with a USB port
This device makes connection possible between devices that previously couldn’t talk to each! Anyone who’s been looking into how to get their computer to display on their big TV knows it ain’t easy or inexpensive. Hopefully, this device will change all that.
Click the via link at the bottom to go to Engadget’s post with the official press release and descriptions of some interesting use scenarios.
Okay, this has to be one of the coolest, most useful apps Google has made for Android phones! It’s very intuitive. After only a minute I was gesturing away and finding stuff on my phone. I think I’m going to be using this a lot.
Wow, I can’t wait to get one of these and turn my external hard drive into a cloud storage system. It’s cloud-like storage without the cloud storage costs and uploading of files hassle.
I love that the people you choose to share files with can access it like a local drive on their computer! Even computer geeks like easy.
I see this being very useful for graphic designers, photographers, or anyone that deals with sending large files to clients that are too large for email. Good riddance to mailing DVDs. :)
This is the old version 1 Pogoplug, so make sure to buy the new version 2 device since it’s much improved and comes with four USB ports:
