Tag Archives: pc

Posted on
by

Over the past days I’ve been struggling with my PC to get it to work after it got unbearable slow. Re-installing Windows didn’t help and made things only worse. With the network throughput being suspect at some point I decided to poke a PCI card in there to “replace” the onboard network interface. After doing so I found out that the PCI slot didn’t work at all…

Fine! PC dead.

So I hopped over to my favorite PC store and bought everything new that was suspect. Including a new Mainboard, CPU and Harddisk.

Wanting to salvage some stuff. Such as the case (Cooler Master CMII Advanced) and almost new Graphics card (an Asus GTX670 DirectCU2) and some other items I took it upon myself to take apart the PC in preparation of the new stuff which should be arriving tomorrow-ish.

Posted on
by

Today I became hip and cool once again. Apparently with the new Video card I received yesterday my “old” CPU caused a bottleneck on performance. Or so I was told. After some discussion with a mate. I decided to try and overclock it. He kinda talked me in to it. And some fiddling later I settled on a speed of 4Ghz. Way up from the stock 2.8Ghz. My mainboard did most of the work as I left most stuff on auto or default. But this seems to work for now with little heat and noise increase. Thus a viable option. Now I just have to see how stable it works under load and in the long run. But I think I’ll be fine.

[Update] Turns out the 4Ghz wasn’t very stable. And mighty hot, too. After some further research into the insane and uncertain world of overclocking I found that my CPU is “safe” at 3617Mhz. Maxxing out at around 80c under 100% load for over 2 hours.

Posted on
by

Today i doubled the ram on my PC to 8GB and also doubled the ram in my server to 8GB.
Thorough investigation showed that the server kinda 24/7 was running with 3.5GB used… Not so much fun! DAMN YOU MINECRAFT!
And my PC… Well, it had 2 slots free on the main board. So there you go!

MOAR RAM FOR ALL!

Now the only computer i use with less than 8GB ram is my Laptop, which is still at 4GB. But no sense in upgrading that thing. It’s barely used.

Anyway, Minecraft server should now run a lot smoother. I’ve allocated a maximum of 3GB to the server now. Which is double than before.
And windows didn’t even complain about hardware changes and just went with it! yay!

Posted on
by

In my experience, a computer is as good as it is put together. In other words. A mishmash of parts put together to form a pc if done wrong is a horrible pc. Even if you got the best quality parts. If they don’t play nice with each other it’s just shit and misery.

A mate of me keeps telling me to get a pc. Even though he never even tried a mac, he seems fixated on the idea that PC’s are infinitely better because they’re “upgradeable” and are “not limited”. In his words:

Its an extremely limited and expensive pc!

Perhaps. There is not much to upgrade to the hardware. Where-as a PC you supposedly can upgrade all you want.

But then my point of view. By the time you *need* to upgrade something in your PC. All you can really do is expand the ram and perhaps add a new video card. If you want a new CPU, you’re often stuck on some outdated socket. Which is not desirable, if at all still available. So you need a new mainboard as wel. But then you probably run into a slot issue with your ram, so you need new ram, too. Making it a much more expensive upgrade. Not to mention lots of issues with your Windows license in terms of validating and re-activating. So really, is a PC a better upgradable computer? I think it’s not.

By the time your mac *really* needs upgrading it will probably either be 3 to 4 years old. And you will buy a new one. Migrate your software and done. Easy peasy. Whereas for a PC you need to check if your new parts are compatible, put it together, hope it works. It probably will. Then mess with more drivers and updates than you can shake a stick at. In that process it’s very likely that you run into issues with conflicting or crappy drivers for days before it works a 100%. Not to mention trying to keep windows alive during that mess.

And that’s just my experience with upgrading PC’s over the past 10 or so years. Every time i wanted something new i had to buy a new PC, except when it was just the videocard or harddisk. I’m sure with Windows 7 it got a lot easier. I use Windows 7 and can tell it made big advances in hardware management. Still, it remains windows… And comparing my windows ease of use on a mac compared to a PC. The mac side of the story is much prettier.

So, seriously, how upgradable and unlimited is a PC? And do you need it? Really?

Posted on
by

Why is a Mac better? Is it? Really…? In a way i think they’re better, but not better quality per se.
From a hardware point of view a Mac is just a computer. Like any PC.

The big difference here is how the parts are put together, where a PC follows a certain de-facto standard for parts. Most Macs do not. My type of videocard is readily available at most stores. It’s a mere ATI Radeon HD 4670. The Wifi network card in my laptop? Made by Broadcom, Broadcom is also big in PC’s. My Ram? Samsung and LifeTime. Also brands that work in a PC. The CPU? Intel. Sound, Cirrus Logic and Realtek. Harddisk, Fujitsu and Western Digital. Most, if not all, brands that Apple uses are also found in PC’s.

So you could say a Mac and PC are not all that different. There are some fundamental differences between them ofcourse. But the parts mostly come from the same or similar suppliers.

Often i come across people who firmly believe a Mac cannot and will not ever break. Imagine their surprise that a Mac repair shop is a booming business. Even more when they end up there for a repair.

How can my hard drive break? I never mistreated it…

Why is my video card broken? It’s 3 months old!

Heatsink needs replacing? How can that break…

Questions often heard. And easily answered: Every computer breaks. Simply because we use them and they’re just that, computers.

Hard disks spin around, they wear out. Get bumped around if in a laptop, and therefor eventually break.
Video cards can overheat. Sensors can fail. DVD drives won’t eject discs.
How does this happen? Sometimes it’s simply because of age. Other times misuse by the user. In a rare case a design flaw. This is not different with any computer.

So how is a Mac better than a PC?
I think the way a Mac is put together is much better. Not just because they look pretty… But the way it feels when you pick them up. Or how it looks when you open them up or just look at them.

Lift up any PC laptop and hear the plastic croak. Feel the bottom compartments slightly shift under its own weight. Then lift up a MacBook Pro or MacBook. It’s a solid thing, maybe it slightly bends but it makes no weird noises and feels sturdy.
Look at your PC, slots and doors everywhere. Silly ‘smart’ design on the front resembling a face or something futuristic by the way air vents and buttons are placed. And look at a Mac Pro, with it’s perforated front.

Where a PC Case seems built around its mainboard, which is always square with a Power supply above it, harddisk and DVD on the right. A mac’s Logicboard (mainboard) is fitted to the case. Ever seen one from an iMac? It has a crazy shape to fit in the case.

There certainly is a difference. But in the end Mac and PC are just computers that break sometimes.