Guide to building a complete system: (specs will vary) First off, System Specs: Intel E8400 3GHz (with Thermalright extreme 120 black heatsink) ASUS Maximus 2 P45 motherboard G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK PC Power and Cooling 750 quad XFX 8800GT (with Accelero S1 Rev2 cooling) 2×2 Western [...]

So after an hour long battle with the image uploader, I think I can declare victory. Relation between memory timings and frequency You may have wondered which kit of RAM is better, the DDR 1066MHz at 5-5-5-15 or DDR 2133MHZ at 10-10-10-30. Some people will say the DDR 1066MHz at 5-5-5-15 is better because of [...]

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, [...]

Individual components of a PC have the shortest lifespan and quickly crash the price: performance wave. Upgrading to early will cost more, upgrading too late can do the same.

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 [...]

Piecemeal upgrades, supercomputer performance on an OEM budget.

Ever wondered why you can’t get past 3.6GHz on that new Phenom II? Some may claim it is a bad chip, but I for one, can guarantee you that is almost always not the case. I have been overclocking this chip for weeks and studying how it acts while doing so. I may not be [...]