Beyond

Before we go into the fairly easy process of fitting a graphics card; Let’s look at why you’d want to do so in the first place:

Most if not all motherboards are equipped with onboard graphics: The Northbridge of the chipset gives them a limited graphics capability.

"Limited" is the operative word here; especially on lower-end motherboards: The low-end AMD motherboards that I tend to use more-than-not, (Customers who request a cheap computer for no more than office-type work get what they ask for. In fact; despite the motherboards in question being allegedly "low-end", they’re fairly versatile.) usually have a paltry 64MB of graphics capability; in addition to which they ’steal’ the 64MB of memory for their operation from system RAM. - Yes they eat into the memory-sticks that you fit into the RAM - slots and gain priority to their full potential, whether or not they’re using it. Most other motherboards operate on a similar principle, to a varying extent. The top-end motherboards tend to be suitable for use with less attachments; However these motherboards are commonly used by gamer/overclocker-types; who add the latest of everything at the cutting-edge of technology anyway. - Just so that they can be proud geeks, until the following week when technological advancement moves on another notch.

How much difference, exactly, does this RAM-robbing by the onboard-graphics actually make? : In reality not one heck of a lot; especially if you fit a minimum of 2GB RAM to every computer like I do. RAM’s now fairly inexpensive; particularly if you’re using DDR2, which is dirt-cheap these days. Why the big fuss then? Well it’s not just the fact that the onboard graphics make 2GB - Nice round figure. - RAM, look like 1.94GB; it’s also that the graphics are really lousy with that tiny amount of memory. As we’ll go on to discuss; 64MB graphics blows at the best of times:

Any figure below 128MB of graphics RAM, (That is RAM or memory allocated exclusively for use with the graphics module.) will cause your graphics to suck big-time on a decent modern desktop or laptop. Oh you’ll without doubt get a great picture; a great still-picture that is. Anything moving at speed = fail. Try scrolling up or down fast: It’ll take the raster a fraction of a second to catch up with itself.

(It reminds me of those Looney Tunes cartoons; where characters run off at speed and their front-half almost disappears before their back-half starts moving. Imagine the inverse of that happening on your screen when you stop scrolling and you’ll have some idea of what I’m on about.)

…And if you mean to play any games…Well the Microsoft free games which have shipped with every M$ operating system since or before NT will probably run OK; but 2fps, if you’re lucky, won’t get you very far with Crysis or Doom. (Maybe a blue-screen?)

- So unless you’re intent on using Office and IM only; it’s always a good idea to upgrade the graphics capability with a graphics-card.

Most decent usable graphics-cards can cost anything from around £17 / $24 upwards. Unless you’re gaming with the latest games; a little above this price-range should suffice for low to middle-end systems. The exact card you choose will depend upon the operating system you’re running. - For instance, XP can’t run anything in Direct X 10; so it’s pointless having a Direct X 10-capable graphics card on an XP system: Unless you intend to upgrade to Vista or Windows 7 that is. (Check for hardware compatibility first.)

Most graphics-cards these days are PCIe cards.  (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express.); which is an active connection method that channels multiple serial-data-streams from the motherboard to the graphics-card; as opposed to its earlier counterparts, PCI, PCI-X, and AGP, which stream data in a parallel format as a single-channel.

There are all different types and sizes: Big ones, small ones, some as big as your…I’m not going into the particular types and sizes here as that is, really, beyond the scope of this article: For the purpose of which we’ll just keep it nice and simple; without referring to SLI…Oops!

I’m not going to write about VGA, DVI, RGB, etc, plugs/sockets either. Google is your friend; as are the links.

Screw that.

That’s the complicated part out of the way; in as simple terms as I am able to muster. Now the easy bit; fitting it: -

Everything you need to know is covered in the following article at this link.

Yes I am cheating. Yes it’s out of character for me. Yes I am behind schedule and almost out of time. It’s a good site anyway: It saves me taking pics or finding and snagging pics. It saves me writing loads more… OK I admit it’s probably better than I’m able to produce in the remaining time that I have scheduled. So go there to find out how to fit one. It’s certainly not rocket-science:

You’ll need a screwdriver, a screw that can be screwed in by the screwdriver and that fits the corresponding hole, (There’s my female technical terminology making its appearance again.) a PCIe graphics card, a computer with a PCIe x 16 socket to fit the card in, and about 5 minutes.

Go read it; and comment on this one before you do so. (Comment box is below.) (Why don’t they put a down-arrow key on keyboards? - Perhaps they could also put a f…  - File it! key on them also.)

Can you tell things aren’t quite going to plan?

Today, multi-core processors are quite the norm. In fact you’ll not see any new desktop computers, and very few laptops, on sale that have only single-core processors any longer. Why? Well multi-cored processors have just so many performance advantages over their single-cored counterparts that it would take far too much space to list them all here.

There are still quite a few computers out there, however, that are still running a single-core processor. If you own one of them you may have considered upgrading; but are a little unsure or hesitant about it.

Unless you’re fairly experienced and know what’s what you’re right to be such. In most cases there’ll be more work involved than simply removing the old processor and fitting a new one.

I’m not intending to do a "where is the processor located" paragraph. If you don’t know where your processor is located then I advise you to allow someone who knows what they’re doing to do the upgrade for you. I won’t be held responsible for someone pretending to know what they’re doing messing it up either: Get someone that you know is experienced with computer construction to help. Joe Bloggs from down the road may say they’re experienced with computers simply because they talk to their friends on Instant Messenger; but in reality they don’t have any more idea of what they’re doing than a seamstress has of rocket science. I’ll include some of the basics as a reminder, though.

There are a number of things you’ll need to do in preparation. The main thing is to find out all about your existing hardware first. The reason for that will become clear further on.

If you have an older computer with a single-core processor then you’ll probably need to upgrade the motherboard as well as the CPU to go multi-core. If it’s a particularly old computer then I’d suggest simply buying a new one with a multi-cored processor fitted from the word go.

What about upgrading your existing processor on your existing motherboard? It’s a possibility; but you’d have to take into account things such as motherboard’s capability, as well as its processor socket:

For instance; an AMD socket AM2 CPU will fit into a socket AM2+ motherboard; but not vice-versa: Therefore if your existing processor is, for example, a socket AM2 Athlon 64 single-cored device, which you want to upgrade; then, providing that your motherboard is capable of running a dual-cored CPU, (CPU=processor.) you’ll have no problems in replacing your existing CPU with a socket AM2 Athlon 64×2 dual-cored processor, providing that the motherboard’s chipset is capable of supporting the operating frequency of the new component. You’ll probably need to run a maintenance-reinstall of your operating system though; as a system configured for a single-cored processor probably won’t instantly recognize that the new processor has 2 cores, and will only run 1 of the cores unless it’s reconfigured.

Further to the above; if you want to upgrade from a single-core Athlon 64 to a quad-core Phenom, which is socket AM2+, you’ll need to upgrade the motherboard as well as the CPU, as a socket AM2+ CPU simply won’t fit into an AM2 socket. Also the motherboard with an AM2 socket probably won’t be capable of supporting more than a dual-core CPU.

That’s just one example. There will be many more similar situations cropping up, not only with AMD processors, where you’ll need to do some planning and forward thinking before even embarking upon your project.

Like I said; there’s a lot to consider; in addition to simply swapping the processor. If in doubt I suggest a motherboard and processor upgrade would be the best option, and do remember that certain motherboards go with certain processors: You can’t run an Intel socket 774 CPU on an AMD socket AM2 motherboard, for instance. (Also, don’t forget to install, and upgrade after getting the thing running, if possible, the new motherboard’s drivers.)

In my opinion, the best thing to do would be a total-rebuild (Strip everything out of the case and renew it with new and compatible parts, or ditch your old machine and build a new one.); after which you can install any really important files that you want to keep to your new hard-drive from a backup you took of your old system.

I can’t tell you exactly how to do it in every situation without writing a large and detailed e-book on the subject: That’s not something I intend doing at this moment in time. This guide simply informs you of some of the pitfalls and of some of the things you should consider first, before embarking on the project.

For your further convenience I’ll make a checklist of a number of the things you should take into account before attempting to upgrade a processor on an existing motherboard:

———————————————————————————————

CHECKLIST

Should you Upgrade the Processor on your Existing Motherboard?

If your motherboard is 5 years old or more then no.

If your motherboard was manufactured in the last 3 years than maybe; depending upon the following:

Is your motherboard’s processor socket the same as the socket designation of the processor that you want to replace your existing one with?

OR, in some rare circumstances:

Will the new part fit into and be fully accommodated by the existing motherboard’s processor socket?

If NO to both of the above you’ll need to replace the motherboard.

IF YES to either of the above:

Is your existing motherboard capable of running a multi-cored processor with the number of cores which the intended replacement has?

If NO to the above you’ll need to replace the motherboard.

If YES:

Is your existing motherboard capable of handling any increased power consumption due to the upgrade?

If NO to the above you’ll need to replace the motherboard.

If YES:

Are you aware that you’ll probably need to run a maintenance reinstall of the operating system? Are you able and clued up with doing this? Do you realise that there may be further problems associated with this operation that require a detailed knowledge of computer hardware, operation, and techniques?

If NO; I suggest seeking further expert advice before anything else.

IF YES, and you are satisfied that you’d be able to handle any ensuing situation, or are willing to take that risk, then proceed.

End of Checklist.

———————————————————————————————

*If you’re a geek then rebuilding a computer, even if it’s your first time, will be a great learning curve for you. Try not to mess it up. (I have ruined a computer before whilst learning, years ago,; so it does happen.)

If you do upgrade your processor from a single to a multi-core component, if it’s possible, you’ll notice a marked performance improvement. I suggest adding some more memory at the same time to make that improvement even greater.

Maybe you’ve already upgraded your processor from a single-core to a multi-cored component? What’s your experience of this? Don’t be afraid to comment. I know comments appear to be a bit sparse at present; but it would be good to break the mould.

Not long ago, processor speeds just seemed to get faster and faster. In the last 10 years we’ve seen CPU speeds go up from around 233MHz to over 2.3 GHz: A tenfold increase in just ten years. - But suddenly they stopped getting faster. Why?

There are two combined main reasons: The first being market-forces.

Everybody continually demands more processing power from their processor; therefore chips became faster, as processors that were able to operate at greater speeds were developed; able to process the same amount of data more quickly. Due to a combination of the limited speed of the frequency of operation of the motherboard, plus design constraints that we will look at shortly, there was only so far that this could go. Secondly two brains are better than one. When you’ve gone as high as it’s realistically possible to go; they way to further increase capacity is to build outwards, or duplicate the structure as an annexe of the original.

That’s what chipmakers did: Around 2005; AMD, having developed a commercially-available 64-bit processor, then fabricated it as 2 of those processors on a single die. The Athlon 64 x 2 was born. (The computer I’m writing this article on now has one of these processors.) Intel stapled 2 dual-core dies together in a single package and produced a quad-core processor. At the time of writing 6 and 8-core processors are looming on the horizon.

But they’re still no longer getting any faster. Why?

CPU speed of operation is limited by frequency. Also, when you get up to a certain frequency,  greater heat is produced; regardless of the size of individual transistors: Heat that is generated by the frequency of operation itself to a certain extent. 

Go above a certain amount of gigahertz and you’re getting too close to microwave frequencies. At these extremely high frequencies a combination of things start to happen:

The frequency that individual components, such as the processor and the chipset, communicate with each other at, is around 200MHz: That’s the case with all computers. You may have a 3.2 GHz processor in circuit; but 3.2 GHz is the frequency within the processor itself only. If the processor were to try to communicate with other components at that frequency; the signal would never make it to the other components:

The higher the frequency the smaller the antenna needed to radiate that frequency. That’s the reason why the highest frequencies outside of any chip on the motherboard are limited: If they were any higher, the connective tracks on or between the layers of the motherboard would radiate the power away as radio-waves before it ever reached the next component. If the in-chip frequencies became too high then even the connections inside the chip would act as antennae and the chip itself would cease to function, regardless of the design of the transistors themselves.

Secondly; what happens when you put a dinner into a microwave oven? It cooks, yes?: What’s happening is that the high-frequency microwaves of several gigahertz are bombarding the food and exciting the (water) molecules to vibrate sympathetically, causing them to heat up. (I think the frequency used is around 5 point something gigahertz.)

When you’re talking gigahertz; the higher the frequency (The more gigahertz.) the greater the heat generated. Also the higher the frequency the smaller the components necessary to run at that frequency. Small things tend to burn up quicker than larger things. Go figure. The cost of fabricating a chip small enough to function at higher energy microwave frequencies, as well as the cooling system it would require, doesn’t even bear thinking about: It’s just totally impractical.

So once you’re getting above around 4+GHz frequency you’re starting to fight a losing battle. Logically if you can’t go upwards you go outwards. Think outside the box like AMD did: Add another core operating at an identical frequency on the same die and you theoretically and loosely have twice the frequency without having to have twice the frequency, if you catch my drift?

(In actual fact it’s not quite that simple: The overall performance gain works out at somewhere just above 1.7 times rather than double; but I’m not going to type a load of complex calculus-laden quantum-linear algorithms here to prove a point, even if I could remember them.)

So what of the future? 48-core processors? I think, making a logical guess, that that’s about the theoretical upper-limit using today’s technology: But things can only get better. All of this is talking from the viewpoint of today’s technologies of course: If it were possible to isolate the transmission of gigahertz-frequency waves and amplify and send them by means of a chain of nano-electronic relays over greater distances on an active-conductor, then basically the sky’s the limit as far as the number of processors in a package is concerned; once one accounts for the excessive cooling required for such a device… The mind boggles.

Someone leave a comment on their theoretical predictions based upon factual or theoretically-possible engineering concepts. I’d be fascinated to delve further into the realms of possibility, even from the mind of someone better-informed than myself. I’d love to hear your ideas.

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I wouldn’t describe building a PC as "easy"; but it’s not as difficult as one might imagine. Unlike constructing an electronic circuit, such as an amplifier, for example; there’s nothing extremely fiddly, such as soldering or quality engineering to worry about: That’s all been taken care of already by the component manufacturers.

It’s like putting a jigsaw together: Every piece fits in a certain configuration as a part of the whole. The pieces are already made, so you don’t have to make them yourself: you only need to fit them together in the correct fashion.

*At this point I’ll state that this article isn’t a comprehensive how-to: It’s just some notes from my recent rebuild experience.*

You may have heard that I recently had a computer die on me. I’d built it from scrap parts as a replacement for another one that went funny earlier. I have no idea exactly what caused the fault that killed it. It blue-screened and then just died a second later. Following on from that when I tried to restart it the BIOS couldn’t find the processor; so I assumed that the chipset had fried: ‘New motherboard required if this was the case.

There’s the old construction on the left. (Excuse the picture quality.) I’d already started taking it apart at that point, so it does look rather untidy. I’ve just rebuilt this machine; and I’m actually writing this article on it.

I stripped it down and started again; therefore I in essence built the machine from scratch. While doing so I took pics of a number of stages and of some of the parts, with a view to blogging the event. This blog has suffered from a lack of posts due to this project and other work, so I  thought it a good idea to use this project as subject matter.

First things first; a motherboard:

I purchased a fairly cheap Gigabyte motherboard for this project: It cost me about £38 at the time. I’d decided to use a socket AM2 AMD Athlon 64 x 2, 2.2GHz processor, as in my other working machine, for this one.

Some people have a low-opinion of AMD chips. Myself, I’ve always found them to be reliable and sturdy. Also they’re cheaper and the motherboards that run them cost less too. Since this was a rebuild that I didn’t want to spend too much on I was quite happy with my choice.

Of course I’d need a CPU cooler too, which consists of a heatsink and fan in order to prevent the processor from overheating. I had this one in stock and was going to use it. However I found that the original cooler was a better one, and surprisingly that it fitted onto a socket AM2 fitting perfectly; therefore having cleaned it up I used it instead.

I also invested in a new hard-drive. I could have used the old one; there was nothing wrong with it. - But I added the old one to my other machine and started this build with a brand new disk.

All-in-all the motherboard, processor, and hard-drive, cost me £108 Inc. VAT at 15%.

So to construction; and the pic on the right shows the case with the new motherboard fitted.

Always remember before starting out; earth thyself: Static electricity builds up in your body and on your clothes, and it kills computer components. personally I always wear an earthed wrist-strap when building computers, just to take any static safely to earth rather than letting it flow through the components I’m using and killing them.

After this point I got a buzz,  and I just ploughed on ahead with construction while not bothering to take any more pics of it.

In short, though, it was just a matter from here of fitting the PSU, connecting the appropriate power leads to the motherboard, inserting the processor into the socket on the motherboard, pulling the little lever while pressing down on it to seal it in the socket, smearing some heat-conducting grease on the top of it, fitting and aligning the cooler, and pulling down the lever on it to tighten it to the surface after clipping the clips onto the processor surround.

Installing the RAM: I inserted 2 x 1GB 667MHz DDR2 sticks into the memory slots and pushed down until they clicked into place.

Following that I connected up the front panel to the appropriate pins. I had problems with the sound jacks on the front as the connections didn’t match with the new motherboard at all. In the end I left the two front sound jacks unconnected, and only connected the 2 front USB ports, the HD activity LED, and the power-indicator LED, to the appropriate pins.

I popped the new HDD into a drive-bay, screwed it in, and connected it up to a SATA power lead from the PSU and to the motherboard’s SATA controller via a SATA connector lead. The same with the DVD-RW drive. (I used the existing DVD-RW as there was no point getting a new one. - Same with the existing floppy-drive.

"Floppy-drive! Why bother with a floppy?" You ask.

I like floppy-drives. I find them useful. I also still like CRT monitors and Outlook Express too. That’s just me: I don’t expect anyone to do similar if they don’t want to.)

So having put the thing together it was time for the initial power-up: Fingers crossed. Bingo: POST. I did take a pic of it, but it was so crappy I deleted it.

After a few minor adjustments to the BIOS, it’s time to install Windows XP:

Pop the XP pro CD into the DVD-RW drive… Let’s get the HDD formatted: NTFS - A decent file-system.

Install Windows…

- Et voila mes amis.

That wasn’t exactly the hardest thing on earth to do; although the construction is the easy, quick, and interesting part for me: It’s the 12 or so hours afterwards installing, optimising, and configuring, all the software that really gets my goat: That’s one reason I don’t do upgrades as a rule for customers: Even after spending 12 hours on it; they still moan about something: That’s why I just build the comp and install and optimise Windows and the motherboard drivers after a new build only, professionally. People can add their own software afterwards and screw up the operating system any way they like once the comp is delivered and paid for.

So that’s the rebuild; and it is a rather excellent job although I do say so myself.

This year, Microsoft forced major retailers to stop supplying XP. In January 2009 even small system builders such as myself will be stopped from supplying XP. Will that be a death knell for XP?

Not immediately, no; but if the pre-beta code reports are anything to go by, then Windows Seven may well be the start of the end for this almost seven-year-old operating system.

Some reports I’ve heard indicate that Microsoft will be launching Seven in October 2009. According to PCWorld.com:

"The word on the blogosphere is that Windows 7 should be released to manufacturing in October 2009 with general availability by November".

Microsoft haven’t yet released anything concrete yet as far as I know - Other than declaring that the new OS will be launched in the latter half of 2009, however some bloggers may be privy to insider information that I have not yet received.

Windows Vista; the disaster of an operating system in many ways, and the major trigger of the minor popularity-loss for the Softies, which did more good for its predecessor XP and the Apple Mac with its osX Unix operating system than anything else, has kept most of those users who continue to use Microsoft’s operating systems (Including myself.) with XP for the time being. In fact this blog’s visitor count indicates that almost 5 times more visitors use XP than use Vista, with a third as many people as those using Vista on a Mac using osX.

Seven is coming; and in my opinion we’ll probably be seeing most of those who upgraded from XP to Vista upgrading to Seven in 2009; as well as probably at least two-thirds of the XP users. That will be probably just as much a death knell for Vista as it will be for XP, if not even more so.

Seven will work on the same hardware as Vista; so there’s really no reason for Vista users not to upgrade. XP users boxes will be starting to clap out in a lot of cases, so those affected will no doubt upgrade equipment and operating system too.

If you have a perfectly good computer that’s still running XP, and either you can’t afford to, don’t want to, or simply can’t move to Seven because of the hardware requirements, then don’t worry:

Currently, as stated in the Microsoft XP Product Support Lifecycle page, partially shown above; they will continue mainstream support for XP until April 2009 - As they are currently doing that is - after which they’ll only be continuing support regarding security issues from that date until the currently scheduled day in April 2014 when XP becomes obsolete.

Then XP will go the way of 9x and ME. By then, however, Seven’s successor will probably have been long released, Vista will have been condemned, and maybe even a successor to Seven’s successor will be in beta?

One of my computers that I recently built from scrap components probably isn’t capable of running anything greater than Vista Home Basic. It has a 64-bit capable motherboard running a 32-bit AMD Sempron 1800MHz processor in a socket configuration that’s already almost obsolete; AMD socket 754. I don’t think they made any dual-core processors in that socket, and even if I could upgrade to a single-core Athlon 64 by buying second-hand, I wouldn’t bother upgrading to Vista. - So that’s one computer which’ll be running XP to 2014; if it lasts that long, that is.

Feel free to comment generally on anything you like in this article: There is a comment box below for that purpose. Have a good day/evening/night/morning, wherever you are on the planet.

When AMD have setbacks then it’s usually not a good sign for the chipmaker that’s currently struggling to stay anywhere near Intel and not lose any more ground to them. The news today is that AMD appear to have a setback, in that they’ve shelved development of the 45nm-based Fusion processor, putting its release date back to 2011, if they actually do develop it at all, from the original release schedule of 2010.

There are several ways of looking at this: The main one being ‘better late and working than early and a fiasco’, a fiasco as occurred with the initial release of the Phenom, which subsequently allowed Intel to surge ahead and lengthen their lead.

Right now, AMD are seemingly the underdogs by a huge margin: Intel are rolling in money and surging ahead, while AMD are in debt and still playing catchup after their Phenom farce: A development marketed with best intentions using a new core architecture technology that emptied their coffers whilst on development and when the release date came there was just that one bug that needed to be ironed out. Naturally, when Intel replied by stapling 2 dual-core dies together, upping the architecture, and selling it at an increased price compared to AMD’s offering, everybody bought Intel’s product without any bugs in it. AMD were left behind to pick up the pieces and try to fathom out what went wrong while Intel; loaded with the proceeds from their victory, developed better, faster, offerings.

AMD’s senior vice president Randy Allen said at today’s launch of AMD’s 45nm Shanghai-cored Opteron processor that it was "the best server processor on the planet". - A side swipe at Intel who had said that their new Core i7 is the ‘fastest processor on the planet’.

Fusion was originally scheduled for 2009, but now appears to have effectively been cancelled according to some commentators. If that is the case than that is a setback; because if Intel produce 32nm processors in 2009 then AMD have their work cut out for them and won’t be able to catch up until at least 2011 by all analyses.

AMD aren’t finished yet though; so don’t go writing them off just yet as they live to fight another day. Do you agree?

During 2007, Computer Shopper magazine tested a number of free and paid-for antivirus solutions. NOD 32 came second to Kaspersky. By the time I tried Kaspersky for myself they’d released a new version which was so bloated I thought of Norton. I’d tried NOD 32 previous to this on a single-cored Pentium 4-driven system, however, and was quite impressed by its functionality, ease of use, and small footprint.

During this month; November 2008, I got the chance to try out the full version of Smart Security from ESET, the makers of NOD 32. As a rule I always try out anything new on my second machine, which happens to be currently fitted with a 2.2GHz single-cored Athlon 64 processor.

I installed the product: Installation was quick and painless and I soon had it up and running properly after it had updated itself with all the latest files.

The firewall isn’t intrusive. It keeps track of what’s going in and out; but unlike some it doesn’t continually ask you whether you’d prefer to allow or deny every single connection. It accepts everything acceptable that’s flowing from trusted software which is already installed and does its job silently.

The antivirus scan is well hot: It even informs you if files are corrupted, incomplete, or don’t have a valid checksum, in addition to telling you if any files are infected with spyware or a virus.

The anti-spam I didn’t really try out so I won’t present any data on that.

My overall verdict is that it’s a very good security suite; but the problem is that it has a large footprint: If it almost occupies an entire core; even on a single-cored 64-bit processor, then it’s too big for my liking. On a quad or six-core processor-driven machine things might not be so bad; but certainly I’d say it used far too much CPU for a single or dual-cored machine.

A strange twist to this article occurred whilst I was writing it: I heard a loud click from my second machine, which was right next to me, and a metallic noise. Then nothing appeared to happen out of the ordinary for about a minute, when suddenly that machine stopped, switched off without shutting down.

I hoped that the fault wasn’t as I expected; but on opening the machine my worst fears were confirmed:

The Shuttle motherboard used in its construction, like most other socket AM2 motherboards, keeps the cooler attached to the socket AM2 CPU by means of a fixing where a metal loop attached to a lever is hooked over one of two lugs on the enclosure around processor socket. This lever appears on the other side of the cooler with a similar metal loop attached to it. This other loop is hooked over the other lug and tension is applied to it by means of another lever; therefore the processor and cooler stay in close contact while the cooler is tensioned downwards onto the face of the processor so that heat transfer is maximised with the help of some heat-conductive grease.

The model of Shuttle motherboard used (Now discontinued.) uses a rather brittle material to make the CPU surroundings including these lugs that the cooler depends on to stay in contact with the processor: Not a noticeably brittle material, but nevertheless to brittle for the purpose. I’ve had one or two of these machines returned under warranty with the lugs snapping off after a number of months, rendering the entire motherboard worthless and inoperative. That’s exactly what had happened to my machine (Kustom Komputa Exel model A101-s) which was one of the original machines built by Kustom Komputa in the days when a single-core Athlon was incorporated in them rather than a dual-core. This syndrome I’ve affectionately christened "lug-rot".

So what to do? Suddenly I was reduced to a single machine. Of course I can get by quite easily with only one computer; but it’s always better to have two: I use both at once occasionally, and I always have a spare if one breaks down, as had happened recently when the hard disk died on the other one.

I was planning to publish the article about ESET SS that day; but needs must, I had no backup, and if the other machine went down, as Sod’s law would make sure that it did if I had no backup, then I’d be totally stuffed.

I checked the junk cupboard: I had an old wrecked machine from about 4 years ago which the PSU had burnt out on. It had been checked since and the motherboard was still working. It was an Asrock board, still in a case, and the processor and cooler were still attached. I’d removed and dumped the burnt-out PSU, also I’d used the DDR RAM sticks and the hard drive from it. - Otherwise it was complete except for DDR RAM, PSU, and SATA leads: There was even a SATA DVD-RAM drive fitted but unconnected.

The processor was a 1.8GB AMD Sempron, which was a bit weak for my liking, as well as being only 32-bit, despite the motherboard being 64-bit capable. Seeing I didn’t have any socket 754 single-cored Athlon 64s in stock, which was the only other processor the board would take, the existing 32-bit Sempron would have to do. I had a brand new 300 Watt PSU and a 250 MB stick of DDR2 in stock. That would at least work; although rather weakly. I could use the hard drive from the failed computer…In fact I might be able to simply pop it in and boot up just as before without any problems.

I’m trying to keep this from taking on the proportions of a novel; in other words keep it short: So to cut a long story short I built it as planned and powered up: Rattle rattle rattle. - The hard-drive was having a fit. When it eventually booted it was unbelievably slow and the hard-drive was still thrashing. I had a driver CD for the board, which I managed to install eventually, but the performance didn’t improve to a level which I was anywhere near happy with.

I ended up taking note of everything that I had installed on the system partition C: on that disk and reformatting the partition, reinstalling, optimising, finalising… And now I have a second machine again that works well. I found another 250MB stick of DDR which I installed, and that made the performance so much better. Surprisingly, after reinstalling the Windows XP Home OS and activating it with just the 250MB RAM installed, it told me that I needed to activate it again after installing another 250MB stick!: A notice appeared at boot saying that the hardware specs had changed significantly and that I must reactivate this copy of Windows. - That’s the first time I’ve ever had to reactivate after installing just another single stick of RAM!

So usual scenario: A few hours building it (2 in fact.) and a whole day plus some installing, verifying, optimising the software. It was fun, but it delayed my posting to my blog.

Have you ever built a computer? What was your experience?

Have you ever tried ESET Smart Security? Do you agree with my findings?

Leave a comment below why not? Come on, don’t be shy, don’t leave it to the spammers to make the only comments. - Which I delete if the Akismet anti-spam software doesn’t get there first. Your comment probably won’t be deleted, even if it’s a negative comment. I have a good comment system set up: Use it why not?

Chipmaker, Advanced Micro Devices, has launched its first 45nm ‘Shanghai’ Opteron chips for servers and workstations.

It also has a forthcoming range of desktop processors built on 45nm technology codenamed "Deneb". Both of these ranges are constructed using a process called "immersion lithography". AMD claim that this fabrication technique will lead to ‘dramatic performance and performance-per-watt gains.’

The new Opterons will have an increased clock speed due to this fabrication process; rising from 2.3 GHz with the current Barcelona-cored Opterons, to 2.7 GHz with the Shanghai-cored chips. The current Phenom range, which run at up to 2.6GHz, may also benefit from this upward-clocking in their next incarnation.

The new Shanghai-cores also benefit from increased cache-size, as well as from HyperTransport 3.0, which increases bandwidth considerably. Let’s hope they vastly outperform the Intel competition as well as the previous/current Phenom CPUs, or AMD is going to have a hard time on its hands and will probably end up cutting retail prices to offer a cheaper though lesser alternative to the Intel  developments.

AMD also plan to introduce a new six-cored range of chips called "Istanbul" sometime next year (2009). As for Deneb; AMD will probably be launching them before the end of 2008.

The Question is can AMD ever get ahead of Intel again? Can they even catch up; and if so is this their chance? What’s your opinion?

A few of the cards on sale have only 560 stream processors enabled, rather than the full 640. AMD say that they were part of a limited number of pre-production demo cards with a dodgy pre-production BIOS, designed solely to impress the media, that somehow were released to retailers due to a mix-up somewhere along the line. All these affected cards were made by HiS, and AMD claims that less than 400 of the dodgy cards were released to the retail market.

The HiS cards are quite a bargain at only £89.98UKP inc VAT from MicroDirect. In the unlikely event that you should happen to get a problem card then a BIOS update will fix the issue: All you need to do is to run GPU-Z. If the number in the shaders box is less than 640, then download a BIOS update from this page. (I suggest that you ignore the adverts for spyware-laden Zwinkys etc from Tribalfusion that are scattered around the page.)

Can this mistake be put down to experience and forgotten; or should those people who bought a dodgy card that needs a BIOS fix be compensated? What’s your opinion?

On October 8th of this year, 2008, I wrote an article on why Microsoft must launch Windows 7 in 2009 with that very title; giving reasons why Microsoft won’t want to wait until 2010 to launch their new operating system.

AMD showed some presentation slides at CEATEC (Cutting Edge IT & Electronics Comprehensive Exhibition) which may show that the softies actually do have plans for a 2009 launch date.

AMD’s presentation suggested that the chipmaker has plans to introduce 40nm chips next year, along with DirectX 11-capable GPUs. PC Watch took a few snaps of AMD’s presentation; which allegedly included a slide titled ‘What to expect in 2009’, which says that we can expect a move to 40nm chips, as well as the arrival of Windows 7 and DirectX 11, in 2009.

Microsoft themselves haven’t yet publicly confirmed or denied this; although taking into account the words of Bill Gates in April 2008 that "sometime in the next year or so that we’ll have a new version[of Windows]." I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it for sale on the shelves at Christmas 2009 or before. What do you think? Leave a comment.

Chipmaking giant Intel isn’t happy about AMD’s recent decision to spin off its fabrication business as a separate company. Initially the move by AMD seemed to be a rather good decision in terms of finance and growth; but now Intel are kicking up and saying that they have "serious" questions regarding AMD’s strategy.

The problems centre around a licence agreement that AMD has with Intel in which AMD pays Intel royalties for something called a "patent cross-licensing agreement"> This agreement allows AMD to produce x86 chips, which Intel holds the patent for. AMD intends to open up its fabrication plant to other companies beside itself - Therefore Intel claims that AMD is violating this agreement. Intel is nevertheless intent on protecting its intellectual property rights.

Intel have asked AMD to make details of the agreement public; something that AMD haven’t done: Therefore Intel’s representatives aren’t yet fully able to discuss the