[Review] Crucial Ballistix DDR3-2133 (3×2GB) – DDR3 with Thermal Monitoring3 Comments By miahallencloseAuthor: miahallenName: Jeremiah Allen Email: miahallen.ironmods@gmail.com Site:http://www.ironmods.com About: Well, I was playing with computers ever since my Dad got a Commodore 64 when I was 6 years old (1986), when I was 10 (1990) he bought a custom build 486DX33, and I was in love. Mostly back then I was just a kid playing games, but my fascination with computers had a start. Because I had no money of my own, I was stuck playing with my Dad's computers, and really couldn't "play" too much. So in 1998, the year I graduated, I spent some of my college savings to by a "computer for school", haha. It had two Voodoo2 12MB 3D accelerators in it, so you can imagine how much school work was done on it ;-) It had an AMD K6-233 that I had a really mild OC on, but my custom computer builder friend Aaron had done all the work. So I can't really take the credit there. My fascination with graphics just kept growing and growing over the years, and I was constantly in a struggle to keep my games looking as sharp and smooth as possible. OCing played a big role.
My whole world was rocked in 2004 when I was deployed to Iraq as a US Army soldier. The whole year I was there I had a cheap IBM Thinkpad R40 with a 2GHz Celeron, 1GB DDR-333 RAM, a 60GB 4200RPM HDD, and ATI Radeon Mobility graphics (same technology as a 7000 series with only 16MB of memory). It started out rough as I was really into Command and Conquer Generals at the time, and the machine would only play the C&C slide show LOL. So, I downloaded PowerStrip, and OC'ed the GPU by 40%...amazingly, the game was playable!
Things changed dramatically in 2007 when I met a guy named Matt while I was stationed in Japan. He introduced me to www.ocforums.com, and the "Benchmarking Team" there. I had not had much interest in benchmarking previously, I always though of myself as more practical. But, I thought I'd play along and I joined the team. My first introduction to an actual competition was was is "The Raptor Pit", "Forum Warz 2008" in the spring of 2008. I was running a Q6600 and an 8800GTX. With air cooling I was able to bench my Q6600 at over 4GHz, and tore up the competition in my class. Overall OCF won the Forum War in 2007, Winter and Summer of 2008, and 2009...that means five in a row. I was not part of the first one in 2007, but the four since then, I have participated in. After winning the 2008 Winter and Summer Warz, Tom's Hardware Guide announced they were looking for nominations for individuals to compete in their first ever international overclocking competition, called "Overdrive". I was nominated, and chosen to compete in the North American semi-finals in Los Angeles in November 2008. I was placed on "Team IRONMODS" as they only had two guys, yet three man teams were allowed. We won the semi-finals in LA, and our prize was a trip to Paris the following month, to compete with the best in the world.
The following month, Ton, Jake, and myself flew to Paris as "Team USA" to face off against the best from Taiwan, France, Germany, and Italy. It was a very intense competition, but after two heated days of battle (16 hours of benching), we emerged the victors. Amidst our celebration, Ton and Jake officially invited me to join "Team IRONMODS" on a permanent basis, and I graciously accepted. Ton, aka "TiTON", is a world renown case moder, and is also very well known for some of the AMD overclocking he has done. Jake, aka "CPT.Planet", is a genius overclocker, and a really fun guy. The team has a great synergy when working together, we really have complementary styles.
After winning the world championship in December 2008 things were a bit quite for a couple months, then in the spring of 2009 I received an invitation to the 2nd annual Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship "GOOC". I would compete in the North American semi-final in LA, where the winner would win a ticket to the world championship in Taipei Taiwan during CES in June 2009. The competition was tough with 14 of the best from North America gathering for a 1 on 1 competition of OCing. But once again, I completed the competition well, and rose above the others. I won 1st place and the trip to the world finals in Taipei.
My luck ran dry in Taipei where I started off with a bad motherboard, and went through 5 more during the course of the competition due to various reasons. Despite the poor finish in Taipei, I have high hopes to redeem myself next year.See Authors Posts (24) on April 26, 2011
Introduction:
The performance memory market has continued to push the performance envelope over the last few generations of hardware, each new development ushering in more speed and better performance. But beyond speed, memory has not yielded much material to the marketing departments. We all know that the marketing departments are tasked with getting products on the market and into your hands. But other than performance, the only marketable aspects in the segment are fancy heat spreaders, ...
[Driver Comparison] Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 – 266.58, 263.09, 262.99 Compared10 Comments By The DukecloseAuthor: The DukeName: Drew Briggs Email: drew@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About: Just keeping it real for the average joe overclocker and computer user.See Authors Posts (168) on February 7, 2011
Today we are going to take a look at the “top dog” in the marketplace, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 580, along with the three latest drivers, the 266.58 WHQL, 263.09 WHQL, and 262.99 WHQL. Our goal is to see what performance difference and improvements are available in each driver set, if any. We hope that by the end of this we will have provided you with enough information to choose the best driver available. We will be testing the majority of games/programs listed in the 266.58 release n...
Tenma 72-7712 dual channel temp probe, what happens with temperatures inside a PC.7 Comments By ArchercloseAuthor: ArcherName: Kevin Marlin Email: kevinsmarlin@embarqmail.com Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (18) on June 1, 2010
The 72-7712 Digital Thermometer from Tenma Test Equipment is a dual thermocouple meter with internal logging capability, USB output for saving logged data and software up-link. This unit can become an integral part of a PC testing arsenal by allowing for isolation of case hot spots, heat sink testing and LN2/Dry Ice work. The limitations start to change and the performance bar can be raised when you know where it is hot and where it is not.
Compatible with K-, J-, T- and E- thermocouples (oth...
[Guide] Converting your VHS collection to digital and a little more!0 Comments By ArchercloseAuthor: ArcherName: Kevin Marlin Email: kevinsmarlin@embarqmail.com Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (18) on May 26, 2010
A lot of people have an old VHS collection gathering dust, or content that was purchased on their gaming device that must be kept on that device. What does it really take to get this content on to a DVD? Not much.
Using a hardware video trans-coder, such as the ADS DVD-ExpressDX2 (does not work with Vista or later without software issues), a DVD+/-RW Drive and an external HDD for portability, converting a video collection as fast as you can play them (even direct to DivX) is pretty simple.
So wh...
[Blog] Mac Steam: Really still a beta0 Comments By _vicloseAuthor: _viName: Echo Jay Johnson Email: shadow_faith13@live.com.au Site: About:See Authors Posts (1) on May 24, 2010
Steam; it was always the one thing that made me stick to my Windows computer. The online service effectively tied me down to the Windows platform. Before you had to either attempt to run Steam via WINE if Linux or use a virtual machine or proprietary WINE-based Macintosh Windows library programs in order to get your dose of Steam, even then the operation of it was often flawed. Earlier this month we all saw the release of Steam for the Macintosh earlier last week coinciding with the conclusion o...
[Blog] Stress-testing the abilities of your mice and rhythm: Osu! Style0 Comments By KrabcloseAuthor: KrabName: Larry Ngo Email: graveflame@gmail.com Site: About:See Authors Posts (9) on May 18, 2010
When we decide on what kind of gaming mouse to get, we look at a couple of factors. Namely, design, comfort, and price. Oftentimes, the price and comfort are the only key points of the deciding factor of the chosen mouse, as this is a peripheral you’re going to be using for quite some time. Any ordinary mouse can seem comfortable, but after gripping it for a while, will you feel the same way? Not only can awkward mice handling lead to sore wrists, ailments such as carpal tunnel can develop...
[Blog] A Casual Gamer’s 15 Minutes…0 Comments By grajasekarcloseAuthor: grajasekarName: Gaurav R Email: grajasekar@gmail.com Site:http://averageindianguy.blogspot.com About:See Authors Posts (1) on May 16, 2010
The title points to an existence of a rare species. Yes, we still exist. In this day and age of gaming being a pro sport, where DPI is of more importance to gaming mice than printers, where stats play a big role in one’s e-peen, there are those remnants who play games for what they were meant to offer – fun. Playing online versus a ton of folks has always been more fun than pitting your wits against a witless AI opponent. Though the novelty of being ‘head shot central’ (and I mean I...
[Blog] Nokia 5800 XM Firmware v50.0.0050 Comments By KrabcloseAuthor: KrabName: Larry Ngo Email: graveflame@gmail.com Site: About:See Authors Posts (9) on May 12, 2010
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a touchscreen phone that is still receiving regular updates despite being two years old. It’s being touted as a music player alternative, and with easy drag-and-drop clicking, along with 8GB internal memory, it serves quite well as a basic MP3 player. Unfortunately, for some people who aren’t blessed with non-branded phones, updates aren’t available with certain RM type models. This is up to the operator who decides to release the update for the sp...
[Blog] Android 2.1 update on the Moto Droid2 Comments By BurncloseAuthor: BurnName: Brett Konold Email: brettkonold@cox.net Site: About: High School studentSee Authors Posts (1) on April 4, 2010
Well as some might already know, Verizon and Motorola have been talking about an Android 2.1 update for the droid for weeks now, and it’s finally here. Verizon began pushing out the update on March 30th, and I was able to get a hold of the update file and install it on my phone manually. My first impression wasn’t all that great; it didn’t include the fancy launcher that the Nexus One has, it didn’t include the cool 2.1 clock app the Nexus One also has, and some other lit...
[Blog] Anti-Virus for Your PC at No Cost6 Comments By cralorcloseAuthor: cralorName: Chris Email: cralor@gmail.com Site: About:See Authors Posts (2) on March 5, 2010
Hello. This is my first Blog post! I hope to continue to write once in a while.
NOTE: This is just Anti-Virus software. If you are looking for Anti-Spyware and Anti-Malware, two free solutions I recommend are SUPERAntiSpyware and MalwareBytes. Check them out!
Today I will be looking at ways to help protect your computer without spending money for all different types of software. Currently, there are many free alternative software choices that do almost as good (in some cases as good) as ones t...
Epson Workforce 5000 Comments By ArchercloseAuthor: ArcherName: Kevin Marlin Email: kevinsmarlin@embarqmail.com Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (18) on February 5, 2010
While visiting the Target closeout section, to look for electronics deals, I came across a good one. The Epson Workforce 500, though not top of the line in any one thing it does a good job at everything, best of all it was only $41.99 + tax! What you get is a small office level multifunction printer (document feed, copy, scan, fax and print).
Scan and print quality: With everything at default and 2400DPI scan you can’t tell much difference, until you get up close and personal.
Scan, prin...
Piecemeal Upgrades Pt 4 Data Protection0 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) 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 30 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) 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 – Components0 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) 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 – Peripherals0 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) 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 pt20 Comments By NeuromancercloseAuthor: NeuromancerName: Rich Smith Email: rsmith@nettronic.net Site: About:See Authors Posts (27) 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...
The Antivirus Hysteria4 Comments By OPFORcloseAuthor: OPFORName: Jon Kean Email: jgkean@gmail.com Site:http://www.techreaction.net About:See Authors Posts (1) on May 8, 2009
I’m not going to tell you not to use antivirus (Though I don’t use any myself). I’m not going to present some kind of conspiracy theory about how the antivirus companies partner with the virus makers to create demand for their products (Though I’m nearly cynical enough to believe it). Ever heard of the” Conficker” virus? If you read the news, you have. And what does it do? How do you get it? Has that been clearly published in the news? Nope. Wh...
Introduction:
The performance memory market has continued to push the performance envelope over the last few generations of hardware, each new development ushering in more speed and better performance. But beyond speed, memory has not yielded much material to the marketing departments. We all know that the marketing departments are tasked with getting products on the market and into your hands. But other than performance, the only marketable aspects in the segment are fancy heat spreaders, ... 
Today we are going to take a look at the “top dog” in the marketplace, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 580, along with the three latest drivers, the 266.58 WHQL, 263.09 WHQL, and 262.99 WHQL. Our goal is to see what performance difference and improvements are available in each driver set, if any. We hope that by the end of this we will have provided you with enough information to choose the best driver available. We will be testing the majority of games/programs listed in the 266.58 release n... 
The 72-7712 Digital Thermometer from Tenma Test Equipment is a dual thermocouple meter with internal logging capability, USB output for saving logged data and software up-link. This unit can become an integral part of a PC testing arsenal by allowing for isolation of case hot spots, heat sink testing and LN2/Dry Ice work. The limitations start to change and the performance bar can be raised when you know where it is hot and where it is not.
Compatible with K-, J-, T- and E- thermocouples (oth... 
A lot of people have an old VHS collection gathering dust, or content that was purchased on their gaming device that must be kept on that device. What does it really take to get this content on to a DVD? Not much.
Using a hardware video trans-coder, such as the ADS DVD-ExpressDX2 (does not work with Vista or later without software issues), a DVD+/-RW Drive and an external HDD for portability, converting a video collection as fast as you can play them (even direct to DivX) is pretty simple.
So wh... 
Steam; it was always the one thing that made me stick to my Windows computer. The online service effectively tied me down to the Windows platform. Before you had to either attempt to run Steam via WINE if Linux or use a virtual machine or proprietary WINE-based Macintosh Windows library programs in order to get your dose of Steam, even then the operation of it was often flawed. Earlier this month we all saw the release of Steam for the Macintosh earlier last week coinciding with the conclusion o... 
When we decide on what kind of gaming mouse to get, we look at a couple of factors. Namely, design, comfort, and price. Oftentimes, the price and comfort are the only key points of the deciding factor of the chosen mouse, as this is a peripheral you’re going to be using for quite some time. Any ordinary mouse can seem comfortable, but after gripping it for a while, will you feel the same way? Not only can awkward mice handling lead to sore wrists, ailments such as carpal tunnel can develop... 
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a touchscreen phone that is still receiving regular updates despite being two years old. It’s being touted as a music player alternative, and with easy drag-and-drop clicking, along with 8GB internal memory, it serves quite well as a basic MP3 player. Unfortunately, for some people who aren’t blessed with non-branded phones, updates aren’t available with certain RM type models. This is up to the operator who decides to release the update for the sp... 
Well as some might already know, Verizon and Motorola have been talking about an Android 2.1 update for the droid for weeks now, and it’s finally here. Verizon began pushing out the update on March 30th, and I was able to get a hold of the update file and install it on my phone manually. My first impression wasn’t all that great; it didn’t include the fancy launcher that the Nexus One has, it didn’t include the cool 2.1 clock app the Nexus One also has, and some other lit... 
Hello. This is my first Blog post! I hope to continue to write once in a while.
NOTE: This is just Anti-Virus software. If you are looking for Anti-Spyware and Anti-Malware, two free solutions I recommend are SUPERAntiSpyware and MalwareBytes. Check them out!
Today I will be looking at ways to help protect your computer without spending money for all different types of software. Currently, there are many free alternative software choices that do almost as good (in some cases as good) as ones t... 
While visiting the Target closeout section, to look for electronics deals, I came across a good one. The Epson Workforce 500, though not top of the line in any one thing it does a good job at everything, best of all it was only $41.99 + tax! What you get is a small office level multifunction printer (document feed, copy, scan, fax and print).
Scan and print quality: With everything at default and 2400DPI scan you can’t tell much difference, until you get up close and personal.
Scan, prin... 
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
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... 
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... 
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 ... 
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... 
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