hardware

Hiring a Good Computer Technician 101

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Hiring a Good Computer Technician 101 Computers, just like cars, need regular servicing. You can either decide to give them regular maintenance or risk a breakdown at a time when you need them the most. Computers are complex electrical machines that should only be left in the hands of a professional. There are many computer … Read more

Gaming PC: Proposed Upgrades

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Before we get started, I’ve signed my blog up with Bloglovin, so please check out Tech Leopard there and follow me!

Now, to business! With the release of Guild Wars 2 this week, and World of Warcraft’s Mists of Pandaria expansion next month, I’m feeling the urge to upgrade my gaming PC a little. Nothing major since my Hackintosh project is far more pressing at the moment and alas my budget won’t stretch to building a completely new gaming PC – much as I’d love to! Currently, my gaming rig is as follows:

Starfury Gaming PC
My Gaming PC, Starfury 🙂

Antec 1200 Case
MSI P7N SLI Platinum motherboard
2.4GHz Intel Quad Core Q6600
4GB Corsair XMS3 DDR2 RAM
500GB Seagate Barracuda HDD
2x 512MB GDDR3 9600GT Nvidia SLI
Windows 7 64bit

Firstly I may start tinkering with the overclock on my CPU again to try and get my 3.0GHz back again. Everything was just that little bit more smooth when sporting 4 x 3.0GHz. I originally was running at 3.0GHz, but when I upgraded my RAM from 2GB to 4GB in Feb this year, I suffered a lot of stability issues. I’d upgraded to 4GB RAM, but since my motherboard’s older now, still DDR2, alas RAM is very expensive so I doubt I’ll be upping this to 8GB anytime soon! It cost £49 just to pick up the cheapest DDR2 2x2GB kit I could find, a price to cringe at considering the same 4GB kit as DDR3 only costs £30 and 8GB barely £35-45. So until my next proper gaming build, the motherboard (an MSI P7N SLI Platinum), CPU and RAM will remain as they are.

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Server Build: Final

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Firstly, apologies for the long break in posting. I actually built the server on the last week of May, but haven’t had the time to sit down & sift through all the pics I’d taken during the build to prepare this post properly. There weren’t many changes to the components list I’d posted previously by the end, but thanks to another ‘too good to pass up’ deal from Ebuyer I was able to add a superb Crucial M4 64GB solid state drive into the mix. The 64GB is MORE than enough to cope with Windows Home Server & even with a few programs installed already, it still has over 40GB left available.

Anyway, enough rambling! On with the home server build itself!

Components

Okay, lets refresh our memory with the list of components used in the initial build.

Server Components
Server Components Pre-Build

BitFenix Shinobi Case – Black, non-windowed version.
Gigabyte H61MA-DV3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Intel Celeron G530 2.4GHz Socket LGA 1155 Processor
Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 ’80 Plus’ Power Supply
Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel RAM
Crucial 64GB M4 SSD – 2.5″ SATA-III
Seagate 2TB BARRACUDA – 3.5″ SATA-III Hard Drive – 7200RPM 64MB Cache
LG DVD 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter
BitFenix Spectre Plain Black 120mm Fan
BitFenix Alchemy PreBraided Molex to 3pin x3 Fan adapter
BitFenix Alchemy PreBraided SATA 6GB/s cable
Windows Home Server 2011 – OEM
(Everything here came from Overclockers with the exception of the hard drive from Ebuyer.)

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