Comments for Computing Keith

Comment on New Core i7 PC: Selecting the Components by Louis E.

Louis E. — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 05:35:00 +0000

So much has changed since this dialogue began…many of your components have reached “end of life”,and sadly,last month my mother reached the end of hers after a brief but brutal battle with pneumonia and heart failure.

I still want to make a newbuild this year but I’ll never be able to show her the advances in the state of the art.

Comment on Choosing a new CPU: Intel Core i7-920/930 vs. i7-860/870 by Louis E.

Louis E. — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 02:05:25 +0000

Today it’s leaked that the Ivy Bridge Core i7-37xx will be 77 watts,pretty much kills any reason to use a 130-watt,if not 95-watt,CPU!(The Radeon HD 7670 will have 768 processing units at 60 watts compared to the 6670′s 480 at 66…lower power consumption seems a priority even as the kilowatt-plus PSUs are touted for the flaming-gaming rigs).My mother’s Pentium 4 had a scare lately but is back up for what I intend to be its final year before a 2012-2022 computer is procured.

Comment on New Core i7 PC: Selecting the Components by Louis E.

Louis E. — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 21:06:09 +0000

Just checking,when you say “2015-era SATA 6.0 SSD” do you mean a 6Gb/s SATA Revision 3.0 drive or a future version 6 of SATA (which is unlikely to happen by 2015)?…I know there’s supposed to be a 12 Gb/s version of SAS by then,but am thinking the state of the art upgrade (probably in 2016-7 since I’m figuring the newbuild would be in 2012) would be a PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD-card.

Checking other things,ALL your motherboard options now come back discontinued (as does your first link to the CPU).Newegg’s Radeon XFX 1GB graphics card prices now include a 4670 and a 6450 that rach rebate from $50 to $30,the latter with newer memory and PCIe specs,the former with free shipping,and a 6670 that rebates from $84 to $64 (the GDDR5 version however rebates from $100 to $80).

Comment on How to buy a good laptop by Wanda Brothers

Wanda Brothers — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 12:21:31 +0000

Hi Keith, great post. I am glad you added Apple in the list Love my mac. I look forward to seeing you soon.
Wanda

Comment on SSDs: are you experienced? by Louis E.

Louis E. — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 01:50:39 +0000

I try to keep readers current but the price cuts keep coming:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231456
(if the link works)

Comment on How to buy a good laptop by Marla Winters

Marla Winters — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:34:41 +0000

You are a terrific writer; very clear and informative; I wish this had been available before we purchased our laptop but alas from the assistance you provided to me, which was invaluable, I believe we made an informed decision and I think that Zach is happy with the choice he made. Again, thanks for all of your help.

Comment on SSDs: are you experienced? by Louis E.

Louis E. — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:19:40 +0000

(Presto chango,that 3TB Barracuda XT is now $170 [if you believe their hard drives sorted by price page] or $175[if you follow the link to its own page],rather than $200).Your i7-860 component pricing had 4GB of DDR3-1600 at $115 and now 16GB of it cost $125,but it weirds me out that they have separate color heat sinks for people who want to coordinate with their motherboards.Next month may see the AMD Bulldozer launch answered by Intel with an i7-2800K.

Comment on SSDs: are you experienced? by Louis E.

Louis E. — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 19:54:29 +0000

I do figure on going with a boot SSD and archive HDD.Right now a 240GB SSD costs $500 and a 3TB HDD costs $200 but things will be very different at mid-term refresh time (for a projected ten-year computer).PCIe SSDs can’t be boot drives but I figure the one installed then would assume archive responsibilities now unaffordable.I just need a motherboard with room for a discrete GPU (I doubt Ivy Bridge’s onboard graphics will match a $100 128-bit GDDR5 card) AND a PCIe 3 SSD…perhaps an ASUS P8Z77 Deluxe will be introduced.(At midterm time,the GPU will likewise be replaceable by better for less).

Still,I want to stay off the enthusiast-end deviation from the bang-per-buck curve..Newegg is currently selling 16GB of G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3-1866 SDRAM for $170(free shipping),but in DDR3-2200 (which isn’t even in the DDR3 spec range) it’s $600(and $6 shipping).Overclock modestly,stay away from the multi-slot monster GPUs and extra monitors,and you save a bundle without losing anything significant.And hex-core CPUs are not worth it now.

Comment on SSDs: are you experienced? by Keith

Keith — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 16:18:01 +0000

Well, it's always good to see caching technology, but the whole "Smart Response Technology" seems like it's aimed at the high-end or server market. After reading Anand's review of the Z68 platform (see page 2 for the SSD caching bit), I'd say it's not that applicable to me. It uses up to 64 GB of SSD as a cache for larger, presumably spinning drives; but who needs access to your larger, spinning drives to be so fast -- besides heavy-duty server applications managing a ton of data? If you want your box to be fast, use an SSD as a boot drive, and -- you're in pretty good shape. The Core i7-860 box I built in March 2010, which boots off of a Kingston V-Series 128 GB SSD, is still blazingly fast. What is interesting about the Z68 chipset is that it allows overclocking... now that's cool. Anyway, that's my $0.02.

Comment on SSDs: are you experienced? by Louis E.

Louis E. — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 21:27:11 +0000

What are your thoughts on the “smart cache” SSD use Intel has built into the Z68 chipset?…I’m a little hazy on how the SSD used would be installed.

I’ve pretty much talked myself into waiting another year to replace my mother’s Pentium 4 system because PCIe 3.0 won’t be supported until Ivy Bridge,and I need to wait for the second batch of IB products for the first batch to have a price cut…and I want the additional (non-boot) SSD I install in 2016 or 2017 to be on PCIe 3.0,much faster than SATA Revision 3.