Cheap computer upgrading

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

I recently mentioned getting an SSD from santa but I've also been trying to speedy things up without too much outlay because there is a lot of good older kit out there and my board/chip was falling behind

I use my computer as a workhorse and even when I'm messing on the netty I like to have it doing work, mainly OCR work for old PDFs which is very processor intensive

I tend to go for the "previous generation" of kit because just like cars, the bugs are all ironed out and you tend to get a reliable and cost effective deal

I like intel stuff, it tends to be more reliable for me, I do push things sometimes and I got less crashing if I didn't mix my bits up

Well after much research I have settled on a DG35EC board(4gig RAM) and an E8500 intel chip. 40 quid and 10 quid respectively

This gives you around 50-60% of single core performance of the newer high end i3 i5 i7 kit which costs hundreds

For those who like to overclock I have it running at 3.8ghz which gives me around 70% of the single core performance of an i7 unit, which for a tenner can't be sneezed at

The overclocking software is setfsb.exe and you use the setting for the CY28551LFXC timing chip from the drop down menu, increasing your FSB from 333 to 399 Mhz

To keep an eye on my cores I dloaded realtemp.exe to keep an eye on things and my temperature range is 30-50 degrees with a vapochill cooler.

The stock cooler did 35 to 60 degrees and the voltage is around 0.9V and everything seems to run nice and stable

I opted for the dual core stuff over quad core stuff and xeon bits because the dual core only draws 65 watts, higher end processors can draw a lot of watts when they get pushed and I don't like hot setups, some of my work has the pooter running flat out for weeks at a time

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

[Tim StevensParticipant @timstevens64731]

So, Ady, are you simply telling us, or was there a question?

Cheers, Tim

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

As it's a telling post I may as well tell another.

I used to go to a lot of trouble building real work stations. Over the years it's become harder to find true work station mother boards and costs have escalated.

So next time an upgrade was due I noticed that there are ex demo HP workstations about at seriously reduced prices so I bought one and fitted and SSD myself and raid discs. It's Xeon based and still had 30 months of it's on site warranty. Extra memory prices from Mr Memory didn't work out that badly and I added memory cooling duct as well. That was cheap but clearing ordered by the supplier once I had paid for it.

It's interesting to compare prices with building. It came with a good very solid quiet case and even a blow through rather than blow on cpu cooler, something I usually have to buy and decent cases are expensive as well. Then power supplies etc. It all stacks up.

It came with a very green disc which wouldn't be very good for raiding so I just use that for back up when I upgrade the OS. SSD's fail if they are written to a lot so I just use mine for the OS and actual application software storage. Data is kept on disk.

John

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[clivelParticipant @clivel]

The cheapest i.e free, and most effective upgrade I have made to my now 5 year old laptop was a dual boot Install of Linux Mint alongside Windows.
It was a complete revelation at how much faster everything was when running Mint. Applications that previously took forever to open now snap open almost instantly.

As almost all the applications I run are cross platform; FireFox and Chrome web browsers, Thunderbird email client, LibreOffice for word processing & spreadsheets, the Gimp for image editing, and Eagle Cad for schematics and PCBs, with the faster speed and nicer user interface, I soon found that I rarely have any need to run Windows at all. The last time I booted into Windows was about 3 months ago, specifically to run my old Cannon scanner which has no Linux support.

Many people are a bit intimidated when they hear Linux, but installation is actually really very simple. Using Windows download the appropriate 32 or 64 bit "Linux Mint Cinnamon" from the download page and then use the Universal USB Installer to install it on a USB flash drive. Reboot and just follow the prompts.

Clive

 

Edited By clivel on 28/12/2015 17:23:19

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Just realised I'm on my 5th company laptop in the last 12 years. Meanwhile my Boxford is 60 years old and doesn't have to have a faster motor to do the same job it did 10 years ago…………….

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

My HP workstation came with windows 7 pro 64 and 32 bit cd's and the 64 bit pre installed. First thing I did was to get rid of it and install linux. I use opensuse. It's easy to install too or it can be configured as needed. Application installation is easy on it. No aptget etc they have a search engine and one click install. I seldom use the console and usually have to google to find terminology if do. They also have a build service that offers more recent application versions than the standard distro – once found that is one click install as well. Then there is the unofficial repository but that can cause some grief after many applications are installed from it. I usually have to visit their forum and ask for help if that happens. I did once in over 15 years of use.

I use GIMP for image editing and also Rawtherapee which has some very advanced features especially for noise removal but doesn't currently do local work. That one may be available for windows and mac. Also a program called Fotoxx. Linux only and a very useful photo editor, The interface looks a bit naff but it's very capable especially for local work. Then there is Hugin for perspective correction if it's extreme and a few other things. A couple of different apps for HDR work and last but not least, sorry about the name dispcalgui for monitor calibration. Odd name as it's an aid for using another application that is a little too complex for some. It will work with the vast majority of calibrators and offers a lot more facilities than what comes with all but extremely expensive spectrometers

Who needs photoshop ! Have to admit that I often use several packages on a shot if they need it. I usually find I can polish up jpg's and generally only use raw via rawtherapee when it's needed. Most of the time I use that and Fotoxx on jpg's.

I trialed Coral Aftersgot Pro once – that's not too bad either and can do a number of things once people realise that it can handle layers which isn't exactly obvious. I haven't bought it but it's cheap.

John

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Edited By John W1 on 28/12/2015 18:15:06

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