Archive for the 'Nerd Stuff' Category

The UPDATED Ultimate $600 Gaming Machine

Published
by
mckirsch
on April 5, 2009
in Consulting, Gaming and Nerd Stuff
. 12 Comments

A little over a year ago I built a $600 gaming machine for my kids, and wrote a post about it.  It’s been one of my most popular posts ever, with over 1,000 views, many comments posted, and quite a few emails generated.

I was building a PC for a friend recently, and decided that the original PC needed to be updated. So I rolled up my sleeves and here is the result.  I have upgraded to a Quad Core Processor, a Phenom X4, and have added a Creative Labs X-Fi Sound Card, so the machine is better, faster, and has upgraded sound.   Here is a direct link to the newegg.com Wish List.

ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard  – $79 - Asus makes well received motherboards, and this has great specifications.  We saved $50 by choosing an ATX mini motherboard instead of a regular ATX motherboard.

CORSAIR 4GB DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - $59 – Corsair is a leader in gaming memory.  This 4 gigs kit comes in 2 sticks, which allows you to run the memory in Dual Channel Mode for improved performance.  The motherboard will support a total of 8 Gig of memory in four slots, so you can upgrade to the maximum of 8 gig by simply doubling this memory order.

AMD Phenom 9600 Agena 2.3GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Quad-Core Processor – $95 – QUAD CORE 2.3 gig processor.  This Black Edition runs at only 95 low low Watts for reduced heat, and improved performance.  The Phenom X4 series is a great series for gamers, as the newer Phenom II processors are three times the price and certainly not 3x the performance.

EVGA GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 Video Card – $120 – This is a great, low price point, 512 MB Nvidia 9800 series card. Ihave been eVGA customer for years.  Their products are warrantied for life, and the last time I returned a card that died, I received an upgraded card for free!

Here is the one notable upgrade to the $600 Gaming PC:  A SOUND CARD!

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card – $91 – This is a great sound card, runs Dolby Home Theater sound, has Toslink Digital SPDIF audio outs, and is the reason I shaved a few dollars in other areas.  But we now have awesome gaming sound and improved overall PC performance by taking the sound processing off of the main processor and moving it onto the powerful 24 bit Creative Labs X-Fi audio processor.

Rosewill RP550-2 ATX12V v2.01 550W Power Supply – $50 – This power supply delivers 550 watts, quietly and consistently, with a cool blue lighted fan.

Cooler Master case – $50 – This case has great ventilation, can be set up with almost no tools, and is pretty sharp. It is also roomy and will hold additional drives and equipment if you would like.

SAMSUNG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe – Black – $25 – I like LightScribe well enough, but the only reason it’s here is because its free.  This SATA drive is fast, quiet, and  mostly cheap.

Western Digital 650 Gig 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 gig HD – $7o . Fast, quiet, and nice amount of storage for just $70.

You can mix this up a bit by adding a better graphics card, bigger hard drive, or a snazzier case if you would like. Remember, the goal here was to build a great gaming machine for $600, and we did that.  A PC with an nVidia 9800 series video card, 4 gig of fast gaming tuned RAM, and a QUAD CORE Phenom X4 processor.  The total parts list on my newegg wish list was $639, with $40 in mail in rebates.  That drops the total price to just $599.  What a great deal for a high end gaming PC.

I have built this machine, and it runs every game well on high settings.  The parts are all warrantied through the manufacturers, and New Egg has great return and exchange policies.

Let me know what you think, and if you have any questions, or need any help feel free to drop me a line.

Good Luck.

Welcome to the-updated-inquisitivetechie!

Published
by
mckirsch
on February 21, 2008
in Consulting and Nerd Stuff
. 0 Comments

New and ImprovedI had to update the blog software when I rebuilt the server. The new theme is K2, by the same author as my last theme Contempt. I couldn’t upload my new theme, so I upgraded, and I am glad that I did. K2 has a lot of nice features and was easy to install. No bugs so far anyhow.

I particularly like the clean look, the new font, and how the comments button and the information bar are moved up under the title of the article. There are also nice behind the scenes updates to the K2 sidebar manager, which make site design easier to manage as well. All in a half an hour. Nice. You can download K2 here. Thanks guys!

Why can’t LINUX have a decent GUI? Really.

Published
by
mckirsch
on February 21, 2008
in Consulting and Nerd Stuff
. 1 Comment

I am learning Linux again.  I got sick of hiring Linux guys and decided it was time to (re)learn Fedora Core so I could do the work again myself.

I hate command line stuff these days.  Yes I know, before you uber-geeks get all jihad on me, stop.  I know, LINUX is better.  I just hate typing. (insert line about irony here as you read this on blog). I would rather use a GUI.

It’s just really about all the keyboard gyrations that command line Linux makes me do.  It’s not just letters, oh no…  LINUX adds | and ! and ^ and ><!@@##@%!#$%!11GRRWTF like typing into your daily vocabulary.  Too often.

Not to get get all whiny, but is this really necessary?   Can’t you have the worlds coolest operating system AND a decent GUI that I can use remotely?  If Windows can do it, why cant you guys figure this out?  Is this a counter culture statement of “we’re soooo not Windows dude“?

If you are a LINUX nerd reading this and you have an answer for me, I beg of you leave the answer to my mystery in the comments.  I am a lazy typer, beyond my prime keyboarding days of %@#$ and >><<^^abab start and such.  I like all the fun without all the crazy typing workouts.
On the other hand I have installed Apache, mysql, two databases, a mail server, a web server, a blog, anti spam, web mail, and  many other server level services TWICE over the past few weeks.

The second time was because I fat fingered a single file permission command, and wiped out the file permissions on my whole server. O RLY?

On a positive note, I restored the whole server in two and a half hours yesterday.

I love LINUX.

When did the comics get all serious?

Published
by
mckirsch
on February 14, 2008
in Gaming, Humor, Nerd Stuff, Politics and art
. 0 Comments

Penny Arcade 02-08-08

One of my favorite webcomics is Penny Arcade, written and illustrated by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. The content material focuses mainly on video games, the gaming industry, and the gamer sub-culture. However, over the past year or two some more serious topics have come up, as the characters have, gasp, grown up a bit…. Click the strip above for a larger, more legible version.

Funky Winkerbean Landmines

Some of my favorite “real” paper comics tackle serious issue too. Funky Winkerbean, a strip I have read for many years, recently “killed off” a character, and reset the entire clock on the comic. All of the characters have been fast-forwarded 15 years or so, and their lives moved further into adulthood accordingly. Throughout however, Batiuk has covered topics like teen pregnancy, adoption, and U.S. servicemen returning home from Afghanistan with devastating injuries.

Doonesbury - Uncle DukeDoonesbury is always high on my list, but we have always expected serious topics from Gary Trudeau. His own characters are now dealing with issues like the massive number of brain trauma injuries to soldiers serving in Iraq, the elections, and the current administration. Trudeau’s characters are iconic, maybe none more so than Uncle Duke, the character based in part on late “Gonzo” journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

Trudeau ’s cast has aged gracefully, at the same time introducing new cast members to introduce us all to the new issues of today. He even has a blog for U. S. Soldiers serving in the middle east called The Sandbox. Here’s a great Washington Post article on Trudeau. I am still mystified as to why his web site is still on Slate. It’s so…. 1999.

Jeremy - ZitsZits features Jeremy Duncan, a now 16 year old aspiring rock musician, and his parents, “who don’t understand anything“. The fanciful ways that the strip bends and distorts reality reminds me very much of Calvin and Hobbes. The character often morphs into younger, older, zanier versions of himself, much like Calvin. I cannot express, now that I have my own near-teenage son, how much I can relate to Jeremy’s gigantic feet. Have you priced sneakers lately?

A newer comic with great characters, including an always smoking version of the creator, is Stephan Pastis’ Pearls before Swine. The characters are flawed, but lovable, and if you look closely you will see a lot of subtle gems hidden amongst the simpler humor. Here is today’s strip, for Valentines Day: Pearls - 02-14-08

Charlie Brown - Schultz I have a very soft spot in my heart for Calvin and Hobbes, likely the best strip ever, and I also love Peanuts, but I have left them off of my list for one simple reason – they are not being drawn today. While both are incredible works, but the one thing I like most about the comics is tomorrow’s strip, the promise of a continued relationship. What is goingt to happen to our friends? Will it be a light day, or a grave day? We know these characters, check up on them every day.

Like real life, the comics tug at our heart strings, and invite us along on great and wonderful adventures.

But do they always have to be so darn serious?

Debunking the tin foil hat theorists…

Published
by
mckirsch
on February 11, 2008
in Humor, Nerd Stuff and Politics
. 0 Comments

There has been so much speculation for the past two weeks about the many fiber optic telecommunications cables being cut in the middle east, including here, that someone wrote a Wikipedia Article about the disruptions and the theories surrounding those breaks.

My own speculation led me to consider the soon to open Iranian Oil Bourse as a motive for these disruptions. In fairness though, I did also mention James Bond like spies, and The Incredible Mr. Limpet as possible suspects in the outage too. But if you must, go ahead and color me a tin foil hat weirdo. I am guilty, I guess.

As a techie, I still find it odd that so many cables in the area went down concurrently. Original reports had Iran 100% down, and that was incorrect. It certainly made me reconsider sources for future links.

I think that this has been an interesting experiment in media studies for me – seeing how much speculation and chaos could come from a bunch of nerds wondering why something broke. The bigger issue is that the speculation itself became a bigger story than the original outages. I am still getting several hundred hits a day on the postings from this story.

Because of all this, I learned a lot about the Iranian Oil Bourse, or commodities market. This is a very big story on it’s own, and is definitely worth learning something about. It of course has had very little mention in the U.S. media, despite how much it may change (or not) our economy, and the oil market globally.

Yours in the brotherhood of weirdness,

the (still) inquisitive techie

It's a Conspiracy!

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