.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

So I got my new setup finally and working, the files haven't been completely transferred yet....not time lately. And it's bloody slow as the PCI LAN card got fried on my old setup so I have to use Wireless...so copying large chunks of data takes hours - literally.

Anyway here's the core of my setup..

2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe Chip & Asus P5K-V motherboard.

This is the actual chip itself - as you can see Made in Malaysia!

This is the very decent standard Heatsink/Fan combo that comes boxed with the CPU.

Gone are the days when they didn't give you one, or they gave you some puny thing you straight away chucked in the bin and bought a decent one - especially when you've been using AMD chips like me which you can fry an egg on.

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Ok so I went and bought the stuff yesterday, they didn't have the motherboard so I got a slightly more expensive one - still Asus though.

The Asus P5K-V!

I had some problems with it....it kept freaking out when I plugged the CD-ROM or the HDD's in, the BIOS kept breaking up and showing weird patterns on the screen. I thought my power supply might have been lacking juice, but it turns out I just needed to let it run for a while.

Plus the BIOS on the motherboard didn't fully understand the chip I was using as the E6750 Core 2 Duo is a very new CPU. After letting it run for a while and updating the BIOS to the latest version - no more problems!

Corsair RAM was out of stock too, so Kingston it was. I got everything else I wanted though, but the speakers were on back-order too.

I went off to Digital Mall and managed to find a set though (Logitech Z-2300) for RM565. Heavy monsters they are.

They are apparently the best 2.1 speakers you can get (THX certified).

My old 5.1 set weren't really giving me the sound I wanted, they served me well when I used them for watching DVDs though.

I've lost my fascination with 5.1 speakers and having to tweak them to get the sound right, they just don't have the kick of a nice 2.1 set either.

I briefly tested the speakers and they are LOUD and crisp, I haven't given them a full run though. I'll update more soon with pictures.

I managed to install the OS on SATA drives without any problems too which was a nice surprise as last time I tried it totally failed and I had to fall back to the OS on a PATA drive.

Other than that it looks ready to go, I can't wait to get some stuff installed and test the speed of processing some big fat RAW files.

I've got a lot of pics to process but I just couldnt be bothered to do a lot of them as it was too slow, let's hope that changes now!

As for the sausages part, I went to the new Bavarian Beerhaus in The Curve and had the sausage platter, man that was a killer, I haven't eaten so much for ages, my body complained like hell..I got home and passed out straight after work.

And woke up at 1am, now my body clock is completely screwed, oh well at least it's the weekend.

Time to go home and sort out my new PC!

Definitely time to build a new computer, now I process a lot of NEF/RAW files from my camera...I spend half of my time waiting for loading and filters to run.

It's a reasonable length I've been using this setup too, I find 18 months to be a regular upgrade cycle for the core components of my setup (cpu/mobo/ram/gpu).

So this is what I'm going for this time:

Intel C2D 2.66G (6750) = RM669
Asus P5B-E = RM558
Corsair 667 DDR2 x3 (148) = RM444
Seagate 320GB x 2 = (270) = RM540
Asus 256MB EN8600GT = RM488
Logitech - Z-2300 - RM599

Total = RM3298

Seems decent enough to me, at least I might be able to process my RAW files in comfort

What do you think?

This computer is having some problems too, USB is decidedly dodgy...it can't detect external HDD's any more, only thumbdrives. It has problems with my phone too.

The onboard LAN card is dead too after a lightning strike that fried my modem...

Ah well, I'll negate the risk of that happening in the future by using USB wireless now, suck that Mr. Lightning!

Good news recently about my Nikon D70s that got stolen too, Nikon found it, a dealer sent it in for service and I'd black-listed the serial number...so they called me. I went to the Sergeant that I made the original report with and he confiscated the camera and is making a follow-up investigation now. Will keep you all updated.

And we won the war on Utopia...yeah I just started playing, more about that later too