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[Review] OCZ Vertex 2 Series 60GB SSD 6 Comments By Neuromancer on July 6, 2010 Solid State Drives are quickly becoming an important upgrade in most consumer PCs. They offer increased performance with decreased power consumption and heat, and are smaller and lighter than standard mechanical drives. All solid state drives are not created the same however, and OCZ has proven that once again. Our review sample is a 60GB Vertex2 extended capacity SSD, part number OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G. It utilizes the Sandforce SF-1200 controller and it’s specifications can be found here. It i...
AMD Phenom II X2 555BE a first look 3 Comments By Neuromancer on March 29, 2010 With the 965BE C3 stepping making so much noise in the AMD overclocking community it was bound to happen, AMD would release a core reduced version for people that did not need or want a quad core processor. The 555, like its predecessor the 550, is a dual core AMD processor based on the Phenom II architecture. The original 550BE was released with a half step lower multiplier and was based on the C2 stepping, although a subsequent C3 stepping has recently appeared on Newegg as a tray processor ...
Piecemeal Upgrades Pt 4 Data Protection 0 Comments By Neuromancer on December 21, 2009 The Piecemeal Upgrade pt4 Data Protection: Redundancy, backups, offline and online storage. With limited funds in a single PC household it is important to have a PC that is never down for too long. One of the key problems associated with piecemeal upgrades however is the need to occasionally reinstall the operating system. This can be a nightmare trying to back up documents, photos, settings, applications as well as operating system tweaks one may prefer. Learning how to properly maintain y...
Piece Meal Upgrades pt 3 0 Comments By Neuromancer on October 4, 2009 Piece Meal Upgrades pt 3 As already discussed, a piece meal upgrade is performed when a jump to an entirely new platform is not financially possible. A ground up all new part design is best and will give the best price performance ratio if properly setup. For those that cannot afford a complete rebuild though, designing a system with affordable parts that also support upgrading over an extended period of time is the only option. While more money will be spent over the life of the upgrade, re...
Piecemeal Upgrades Pt 2.2 – Components 0 Comments By Neuromancer on September 21, 2009 Components The longevity of your computer components varies wildly, with the most expensive pieces often being a top performer for the shortest period of time. In order from longest lasting to shortest Hard Disk Drive/ Optical Disk Drive, Power Supply Unit, Video card, Memory, Motherboard, CPU. This breakdown is purely subjective, and while easily could instigate discussion on what pieces do have the longest longevity citing specific models of components, for brevity’s sake we will continu...
Piecemeal upgrades pt2.1 – Peripherals 0 Comments By Neuromancer on September 21, 2009 The Peripherals Monitors, come in 2 distinct flavors, CRT (not manufactured anymore) and LCD. The difference between CRT and LCD is dramatic, with vivid colors and crisp geometries on LCD, higher resolution and better contrast on CRT. LCD’s can be upgraded very cheaply now, CRT has no upgrade path, it is only mentioned if the upgrade inventory currently has a high resolution or widescreen CRT monitor, it may be reused rather effectively until the size and power requirements effect the end ...
Piecemeal upgrades pt2 0 Comments By Neuromancer on September 21, 2009 Identifying your needs, wants and haves. The first step of upgrading a PC is identifying the specific functions that a PC is going to need to handle at the final build. This may change depending on your build upgrade timeline, as newer architecture is being released, and unanticipated price drops occur. Spending a few minutes a day reading about upcoming hardware releases helps to predict price drops on components as well as identifying features that you may want to add. OEM PCs make their...
Piecemeal upgrades pt1 2 Comments By Neuromancer on September 19, 2009 The Piecemeal Upgrade part 1 One cannot help be impressed with the gaming power of a new socket AM3 system from AMD, or the sheer computational power of an Intel i7 and even i5 system. Comparing them to an OEM system build from just a couple of years ago can be embarrassing. Running software designed today, may not even be possible on an older system, and if it does run, could experience all sorts of performance problems: Stuttering video on HD playback, freezing, crashing or overheating o...

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