2011 — 6 December: Tuesday
The only present hint of sunshine on my horizon1 is the walk I've got lined up after my next batch of sleep. What with ill mothers and dead PCs I can do with a change of scene and some fresh air.
Even if it is horribly cold.
Change of plan
The walk is delayed until tomorrow in pursuit of that elusive butterfly of better weather. And I shall whizz down to Novatech in pursuit of that elusive butterfly of a working PC. Busy day upcoming. Time for an early breakfast. It's a mere 07:22 and I can hear windscreen-scraping sounds from the early shift outside. Brrr.
[Quite long pause]
I've jumped ship...
... from a six-core AMD back into the arms (not ARM) of a 4-core Intel i7 with hyperthreading. And, more crucially, I had those nice chaps at Novatech fit the new motherboard, processor, and fancy Zalman CPU cooler for me into the existing BlackBeast case. Into which I now need to refit the graphics card, sound card, and three 1TB drives. They also completely re-installed a copy of 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate on that speedy Velociraptor drive so — assuming I can reactivate the licence with my precious product key — all that will then be left to do is find and put back on all my applications. How tedious this all is.
Mind you, having belatedly realised the likeliest explanation for the difficulty I'm currently having in refitting the three drives2 may well hinge on the low blood sugar levels hereabouts (leading to a certain shakiness in the clumsy things on the end of my arms) I've forced myself to break off (as it were) and pause for a tasty bit of venison stew with apricots and juniper. Yum. And a nectarine for 'pud' — delicious.
Back to work. It's 14:17, but at least I've just reconfirmed tomorrow's walk.
I've maligned...
... the new motherboard. According to a line buried on page 1-2 of the last bit of bumph I've been perusing — the User's Manual for this Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3P device — the integrated onboard graphics will indeed drive a maximum resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 though its hdmi socket. So I may yet be able to discard the Radeon graphics card (which should do further wonders for the temperature inside the case). I'm now engaged on that occasional pursuit of "hunt the application" (or, more often, "where the hell did I write down the licence key for this application?") mixed with the eternal resolution that this time I really will only re-load applications I actually use. Pah!
Right. Web browsing is restored, bringing webmail with it. Web server access is restored to my internal and external web sites. My preferred file editor is restored. And I've just used Piriform's "Speccy" to take a quick peek at internal temperatures. The CPU is ticking along at 26C, the motherboard at 28C (where the Foxconn ran at 40C) and the graphics card is at 28C. None of the hard drives is above 27C. Plus the Beast is quiet, thank goodness, with perfect optical digital audio output from the motherboard's HD audio, so I won't be in any hurry to put back the Creative X-Fi sound card (which also seemed to run quite hot) back in.
I also rechecked the so-called "Windows Experience" index, and will reload a graphics tool or two to show the results here. I think I've earned my evening meal first, though.
It certainly feels like a nippy machine though, of course, I've yet to clog it up with 'stuff'. Again. The average cpu 'load' amuses me, too:
Here's the new motherboard, though I got a much prettier CPU cooler fitted to mine. It's interesting to see how hi-def digital TV and desktop PC screens have converged. As I said, there's only an hdmi socket on this, no trace of VGA or DVI socketry. Though the basic video signal is the same, of course.
