The Perpetual Upgrade Thread

[Matt555]

Got my new laptop through today - it's freakin' awesome :D

I was running various scans whilst also using Windows Live Messenger, Skype and Firefox earlier - it handled it with ease :)

I haven't tried gaming (It's got a ATI Mobility X1400) but might do that tomorrow.

I've only got basic apps installed at the minute, and very little music.

Laptop seems excellent (will be writing a review on it soon hopefully)

 

[Willz]

seems to be a right steal at was it 700 quid you payed for it? :good:

 

[Matt555]

£800 it cost me - that was a special online price, in-store it would be £1,000.

:D

 

[Willz]

: O a steal :good: :P

 

[Matt555]

Yeah it is, hopefully this week I should be getting a wireless router so I don't have to have my network cable plugged into this thing when I'm sitting here in bed. :)

 

[Willz]

nice, wireless routers seem crap :\

 

[Big B]

Oh, let's see here.

I bought a CD-ROM and a laptop hard drive recently. I also traded my Radeon 9600XT for an Abit BP6 and 2 Celeron 466's. I can't believe I still have SDRAM laying around (well, in me and my dad's community PC parts box). And the BP6 box also is getting a few fans. I just need to drill some holes for the fan mounting on the top of the case for exhaust.

 

[megamaced]

Well I've been upgrading my eMachines computer (don't ask, I was a computer n00b when I bought it :D ) gradually over the last few months. I've swapped the Celeron 2.8Ghz CPU for a Pentium 4 2.8Ghz, I bought an nVidia Geforce FX 5200 PCI to replace the onboard Intel graphics, and now i've just bought a 512MB DDR333 stick of memory to increase my RAM to 1024MB. Pending on my wages for next month I plan to replace my 80GB hard drive with a Western Digital 250GB drive.

As much as i'd love to replace the eMachines computer altogether, money is too tight right now :D

I've also decided to upgrade my second computer too. I've bought a used P3 motherboard with a 133MHz bus, to replace my old 100MHz board. I've also bought two used 256MB PC133 sticks to go with the system.

[ot] Shouldn't this thread be in the New Build forum? :P [/ot]

 

[Anti-Trend]

So I grabbed some cycled out hardware from work today...


They were throwing it out and made the mistake of informing the network engineers about it. :P Before long, a crowd of UNIX geeks were huddled around the massive pile of hardware like so many Mensa vultures ready to pick flesh from bone. Needless to say, I walked away with the pick of the litter: a dual-P3 Coppermine ~800MHz with a SCSI-3 array, 2 Seagate Cheetahs, and 512MB PC133. :cool: I dropped it in as a hot replacement on my poor web server, which previously had a paltry 500MHz K6-2 w/256mb. Major speed increase!

About This Server - anti-trend.homelinux.org

 

[Big B]

I swapped out my Abit BP6 and the dual 466 Celerons for an Asus A8V-MX and paired it with the Athlon64 3700+ and the two PC2700 sticks of generic RAM (Samsung chips, though). I put Kubuntu 6.06 on it, and that really seems to work well so far. Now, I just need to finish the mesh cover on the cover (it's a desktop ATX casemod I've had in various stages of progress over the past 2-3 years).

 

[Anti-Trend]

I swapped out my Abit BP6 and the dual 466 Celerons for an Asus A8V-MX and paired it with the Athlon64 3700+ and the two PC2700 sticks of generic RAM (Samsung chips, though). I put Kubuntu 6.06 on it, and that really seems to work well so far. Now, I just need to finish the mesh cover on the cover (it's a desktop ATX casemod I've had in various stages of progress over the past 2-3 years).

Wow, that's a pretty major upgrade from a dual celly! Any pics of the mod'ed chassis?

 

[Big B]

Yeah. Well, if I hadn't misdiagnosed my main box, I'd have kept the BP6 in there. I paid a lot for that Asus board because of a local purchase, but I'm really not in the mood to play catch the delivery driver. Linux seems to do well with VIA chipsets anyway. But, yeah, I'll have to pop up some pics here.

 

[Anti-Trend]

...Linux seems to do well with VIA chipsets anyway. But, yeah, I'll have to pop up some pics here.

Yeah, I've had nothing but good experience with VIA since switching to Linux, though I do remember some driver headaches in Windows. As for pics, here's one of that "new" SMP board I threw in my webserver. As you can see, it's a full-ATX server board from Intel, so it just barely fits in the mid-ATX server chassis I already had.

 

[Big B]

Yeah, VIA's drivers haven't been the best, but for all the gripes put out by people, I've had less trouble with the hardware itself than even Intel chipsets. There's definitely something drool-worthy about an SMP box. I think that's part of the reason I still drop by 2CPU.

 

[Big B]

Uhh, let's see...

I got:
-LG Flatron 19" Widescreen (L196WTQ)
-HP F4140 All-in-One Printer/Scanner/Copier
-Corsair HX520 modular PSU (on the way)

My scanner died, or rather would scan nothing when I tried scanning and scanners were at least $60-70, and all-in-one's were starting around that price point.
I must have a bum Toughpower. My system has a nasty tendency to shut down all of a sudden, which it did once with the Enermax, but that was when that unit released the magic smoke. I'm gonna RMA the Toughpower, but in the meantime, Newegg has the Corsair's with free UPS 3-day shipping and mail-in-rebates, so I dropped the cash for the HX520.

Hopefully, this will be the last upgrades I do for awhile. Well, at least until I get a better job. (Hello tax return!)

 

[Anti-Trend]

Did a round of upgrades over here too, especially justified since I build all the kernels for my work, and now HWF as well.

Crow.SOL.local
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3
Mobo: ASUS M4A79 Deluxe AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX
RAM: G.SKILL 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
Video: eVGA GeForce GTX 280 1GB 512-bit GDDR3
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s (x2 in Linux RAID-0)
OS: Debian "Lenny"

My wife got an upgrade as well:

Gypsy.SOL.local
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz Socket AM2
Mobo: ABIT AN52 AM2 NVIDIA nForce 520 MCP
RAM: G.SKILL 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
Video: eVGA GeForce 8800 GTX+ 512mb DDR3
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s (x2 in Linux RAID-0)
OS: Debian "Lenny"

The laptop:
[strike]
Pearl.SOL.local
Model: Sony VGN-N365E
Upgrades: 2GB Kingston PC6400
OS: Debian "Lenny"[/strike]
...got ripped off a while back. I hope the battery catches fire. :D

The webserver:

Forrester.DMZ.SOL.local
CPU: Pentium III (Coppermine) @ 800MHz (x2)
Mobo: Unknown Intel 440GX
RAM: 2GB Kingston ECC Registered PC133
Video: Cirrus Logic GD 5480 (integrated, unused)
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 Ultra ATA/100 160-GB (x2 in software RAID-1)
OS: CentOS 5.3 (no GUI installed)

The fileserver:

Tomservo.SOL.local
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) MP 2400+ (x2)
Mobo: Tyan Tiger MPX
RAM: 2GB Kingston ECC Registered PC2100
Video: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (integrated, unused)
HDD: Seagate ST3300822AS 300GB SATA 3.0Gb/s (x3 in Linux RAID-5)
OS: CentOS 5.3 (no GUI installed)