Okay, so there has been a little bit of a fiasco with my computer (as I described briefly in my previous post about WordPress 2.7) that actually turned out to be not what I expected. My motherboard that I was using had issues… it had issues from the day I bought it, only noticed like 90 days afterwards when I went to start overclocking. I never got very far with overclocking because my stock CPU voltage that should of been running at 1.250 volts was running at 1.1 volts, and it took everything the motherboard had to just get it up to 1.2 so needless to say there never was much to be done on the overclocking front with that POS motherboard. I always left it at stock speed so that it could last until I could replace the mobo… that day never came. Last week I ran into a problem though, after taking my computer apart and cleaning everything I started getting BSODs every time I turned the computer on!
Finally after three days of this I got a hint into what was causing it (I was testing different things for a while, Windows had updated, and thought it might of been a software issue, but wasn’t able to get the computer to stay on long enough to test that theory out). I started getting messages on the USB bus running at the wrong voltage… so instantly I thought it had to be the motherboard. In the process of ordering a new motherboard, I figured a small upgrade couldn’t hurt so I also got an AMD Phenom 9850 since they’re close to $150 now, combined with an AMD 790GX motherboard I figured I’d have a pretty rock solid system… except since they new 9850 runs at 1066 RAM speeds I figured I’d upgrade that too so I got 8 gigs of 1066 RAM… to find out that with four sticks installed it runs at 800 speeds anyways.
Anyways, after I installed everything the extra power consumption was causing BSODs sooner… So the next place I thought might be the problem was my PSU. Kind of a long shot since PC Power and Cooling makes good products… but I do have one of the first generation 1KW PSUs that had the single 12v rail so maybe there was an issue with that. After visiting Best Buy to grab a 700w power supply (hoping it was enough power for my energy sucking computer) it STILL had BSODs ass soon as Windows started up… I pulled my computer apart again and just started looking everything over… I mean the only thing left is the hard drives… I considered pulling my main drive and reinstalling windows on another one… kept messing with things until I finally realized that my pump wasn’t running. Saddened and disheartened that I would have to use stock cooling for a while and figure something out how to hide my water cooling system I kept messing with things until I found that one of the pins on the molex connector for my pump had pulled out. So I pushed it back in, and taped it in place.
I still made out ahead in the deal. I’ve now got 8 gigs of RAM, a sweet motherboard, and a quad core processor that pwns everything! Yeah, I know there’s stuff faster on the market but for a $400 upgrade… I must say this is a HUGE performance upgrade for me… now when I get the money I just need to move to RAID 5EE and I’ll be sitting pretty for the next few years.
