Tuesday, May 3, 2011

So my PC shortage is still going. At first I thought it was just the power supply (which was solid dead) so I replaced it. Things were still sticky, so returned the power supply I bought and got another one and same deal happened. Lots of BSODs and random crashes. Computer would randomly shut down on restarts. Which confirmed my suspicion that it was the motherboard (RAM checked out OK, replaced the CMOS battery, etc). So I figured I'd go ahead and upgrade, which wasn't that bad actually.

Going from an Intel Core Duo E8400 and 4GB DDR2 to an AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE with 8GB of DDR3 (motherboard, CPU, ram for <$370). Which is surprising since the E8400 stills retails for $169 and the Phenom retailed for $159. As I was looking I saw most Intel CPUs being extremely expensive. As I do mostly gaming/web browsing, this seemed like a no brainer. 400MHz extra with 4 cores instead of 2 for $10 less? Heck yes. I also checked benchmarks and the Phenom didn't particularly kill the E8400 but definitely outperformed it in all tests (both CPU intensive and GPU intensive environments). I mean most of the decent i7's and 2600ks from Intel are way over $200 with the i5s being in the actual $180 to >$200 mark. This comes a long way from Intel being the performance/price ratio king that I remember when the Core 2 Duo came out. Granted it's been awhile since I've done research but that's what I gather from the situation. And I'm sure the i7 series is an absolute monster when it comes to raw power and computing, but I'm pretty sure software/games are no where near caught up with hardware yet to take 100% advantage of these monster CPUs.

That and I'm a bit on the cheap side, don't hate.

But anyways, also a big shout out to Zalman, Inc. I was rocking a CNPS9500 LED Heatsink for my CPU and the version I had didn't come with an AM3 bracket. So I e-mailed them to see if they would send me the part because apparently no place in the US has it, and only e-retailers in Australia sold them and none wanted to ship internationally. They e-mailed me back saying it was on its way for free within 5-7 business days. How cool is that? I mean, better than paying $44 for the exact same fan and just needing the bracket.

Anywho, let me get off my nerdbox and got to sleep. Promise I'll review a movie soon.

2 comments:

  1. last time my power supply went out i was forced to best buy it up for double the price

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