It's hard to watch any NFL game these days without being blasted with talk about Fantasy Football. I tried very hard to avoid the whole notion but knew it was only a matter of time before I caved in and finally played. This year just happened to be that year. And here I thought Facebook was a time sucker! Nearly every day I find myself scouring the pages of my Fantasy Football provider lookng for stories, leads, advice and maybe a player or two that could help me. What's worse is my team allegiance has been comprimised! Had I been told last year that I would actually be rooting for Matt Schaub, a favorite sack target for my beloved Indy D, to actually throw touchdowns I would said "you're crazy!" Yet as Schaub is my premiere QB, and racking the points up nearly every game, I find myself rooting for the Houston Texans every week; well at least their offense. :P So for all you die hard football fans out there that have played with the idea of taking up Fantasy Football I offer two warnings for you: 1. Be ready to give up most of your internet/free time to it and 2. don't be surprise if you find yourself rooting for once hated teams and players. :lol: I'm not sure if I could ever quite bring myself to support Tom Brady or Brett Favre, but in the world of Fantasy Football I suppose even the most dedicated fans could find themselves picking up their most hated adversaries. ;)

I've been researching the field of overclocking Intel CPUs for several months now and specifically read up on how the TPower I45 works with the E8400 chip. All I was waiting for was some cooler outside temperatures to help keep the family room, where the desktop is located, from becoming an oven due all the increased heat coming out of the case. Cooking my family in the house was not one of my projected benefits from overclocking. :shock: I'll be posting some pictures in my E8400/TPower Overclocking album to show the progress over time. While I'm not aiming for any extreme overclocks, I do hope to get a decent performance increase in the end that doesn't present any threat to the system components. More to come when I've managed to hit some stable settings and can post the pictures to prove them. ;)

8/22/09 Edit: Outside temperatures bottomed out to the low 50s so there's no reason to fear cooking the family this morning with all my stress tests. :lol: Amazingly I never hit any FSB walls, had no Windows boot errors, and every benchmark/component test I've run has passed with no errors. I did run into some heat issues which was expected as I'm aircooling with what is regarded to be a smaller heatsink, the Zalman CNPS9500AT. After one hour of the large FFT torture test on prime95, Core Temp 0.99.5 topped the cores out at 73 and 70, Real Temp 3.00 topped the cores out at 70 and 65 and the TPower onboard CPU temp monitor topped out at 62. While this is a wide range of temperatures all but the highest temp from Core Temp are below the Intel Thermal Specification of 72.4 for this chip. From my own Real Temp 3.0 calibration attempt I figure the real core temps lie closer to what it is reporting; though I'd still rather play it safe and not attempt a higher FSB or a much higher vCore with this cooling setup. Yes I could max the 9500AT PWM fan out on startup, I could max the coolerharbor fan to maximize the pull off the 9500 and I could wait until winter time and use the even colder ambient air to help gain a higher overclock. But the 400 FSB I have achieved for a 3600 MHz overclock is probably safer for my system and more than adequate for my PC's use. You only need so much processing power for word processing, internet surfing and casual gaming. Though the casual gaming can always use some help every now and then. ;) I also planned to call the overclocking quits at 3.6 GHz due to a powersupply restriction. Right now there is plenty of overhead in wattage, but with my recent looks into an ATI 4890 or nVidia GTX 275 GPU upgrade I was amazed at what the full load wattage requirements were. In many models the full load wattage readings topped out at 360w! And here I thought my 700w Thermaltake PSU would be good for several years of GPU revisions. :? So instead of risking the potential to overwork my PSU with a heavy power drawing GPU, I decided to keep my processor overclock to a reasonable level that would leave plenty of wattage overhead for the eventual upgrade. Now I just have to get the money for said upgrade... :oops: I'll post some screenshots of the overclocking process again today as they come in and hopefully some more benchmark results to show the total improvement to the system.

8/23/09 Edit: After 4 hours of torture tests, running several benchmarks and monitoring temperatures I've just about reached the limit as to what software checks I can run on this overclocked setup. Before calling this setup even remotely stable I've been monitoring errors from restarts, cold boots and program crashes. The Vista performance and reliability monitors and logs have been accessed more times in the past few days than during all of last year. :lol: So far 2 out of 6 restarts have produced a reboot error; each one different. Two programs have unexpectedly crashed during use as well. From what I've learned in the forums and TweakGuides is that any crashes, instability or boot problems on an overclocked system should always be attributed to the overclock itself. This is especially true when a non-overclocked system was proven to be stable over a long period of time. If problems persist I know I can make a few changes to the RAM timings and voltage as the current ones were experimental at best. From there reducing the FSB, and the core overclock, would be next on the list. Thankfully the Biostar TPower I45 comes with ten CMOS slots to save BIOS settings for easy saving and reloading of configurations. My settings from the 24/7 stable stock settings are stored and I will not hesitate to bring them back up just for peace of mind and a super stable system. ;) With a few more days of cold boots, restarts and program monitoring I should be able to report on just how stable this current overclock is. I did manage to validate this overclock with CPU-Z and will update it with any subsequent changes to the system.

Calibrating machines is not a new venue for me. In fact, it's a major part of my job and it's importance on any instrument is not lost on me. This is why I did some research on the Real Temp 3.0 program since even it appeared to need some calibrating in order to work right with some processors. Lucky me, my E8400 turned out to be one of those processors as it is known to get stuck at higher temperatures, in Real Temp, due to a problem in the chip's sensors. Or so it appeared to be stuck. Following the Real Temp Calibration procedure (scroll down to the Calibration section) I was able to correct for the slope error the sensors on my CPU were creating. I realize the reported temperatures (expecially at Idle) are probably still not completely accurate, but they are coinciding a lot better with the digital CPU temperature readouts my Biostar TPower I45 is reporting (which are probably not completely accurate either). I'll ikely run another calibration in the fall or winter when the ambient temperature drops considerably. The room the PC is in reached 80 F or 27.78 C today which likely didn't help my temperature readouts any. :P The Real Temp application has really impressed me and with some more work and practice with it I feel like I can really trust its read outs. I posted an image of my results for anyone else that is working on calibrating their CPUs or just wants to see how well I've been baking my E8400 during the summer. :shock:

With the replacement PSU arriving on Monday I've finally been able to test out all the new modifications to my PC. Here's to hoping I don't have to RMA anything for another year. :P Going down the list of upgrades, here is what I've noticed in terms of improvements.

Pulled the 1.5 GB/s limiting jumper off the Seagate 7200.10 HDD - I can chalk this one up to being a PC building newbie and not reading the directions completely. :oops: I noticed this jumper while cleaning off the 120mm fan that sits in front of the HDD, actually read the instructions regarding its use and promptly popped it off to allow for a proper 3.0 GB/s SATA connection. The Vista score for hard drives went from 5.6 to 5.7 so the connection appears to be running better now. Further speed tests to follow when time allows.

Installed a 5.25" fan bay with three 40mm fans - What seemed like a good idea to increase air flow over the RAM and CPU appears to have worked out well. There is now a nice constant air stream moving over these components. The only noticeable drawback I've found is that these fans are noisy! I'm not sure how well they would run off the fan controller, but if I get annoyed with the noise I may just have to try it out to ease my nerves.

Installed some DEMCiflex filters - I don't know if slapping on magnetized filters is considered a true installation, but they're on there now. :P As the manufacturer stated, I did have to raise my fan speeds from low to medium to get my desired airflow. The case temperatures also seemed to go up from 22 to 24 C (running in a summer ambient temperature of 24.4 C). The GPU temperature went from 46 to 50 C (running 300 MHz core at idle) which has me puzzled. This card has always run hot, and has a track record from other users of such, so I may just have to push more air from the side and core/tunnel fans onto it during the summer. My next GPU upgrade will definitely be a dual-slot card that vents the air out the back and offers a stock cooling solution proven to be reliable. Back to the filters, they do seem to be filtering out dust, but time will have to show me if the heat build up is worth the trade off.

Installed a Zalman CNPS 9500AT heatsink - Here is the shining star of all the upgrades. Check out the temperature comparisons: refer to previous section for case and ambient temperatures.

Stock Intel E8400 heatsink with Arctic Silver 5 applied (300 hour burn-in achieved) -

Idle: 29 to 31 C

Full Load: 45 to 53 C

Zalman CNPS 9500AT heatsink with Artic Silver 5 applied (300 hour burn-in not achieved) -

Idle: 27 to 29 C

Full Load: 36 to 43 C

In summary, a ten degree drop at full load in summer ambient temperature and 300 hour burn-in not achieved. I'd say this after market heatsink was well worth the investment. ;) While I'm curious to find out just how far I can overclock this E8400 chip with this heatsink, I'm determined to wait until winter when the ambient temperature drops to 20 C and the 300 hour burn-in may have been achieved. More to follow on that topic as I continue to learn on just how a Biostar TPower I45 reacts to various RAM, FSB and voltage changes.

Exactly how does one not blog since November of last year? Simple, throw a 3 year old and 1 year old into your house and see how much free time you find for it! :lol: In fact, I got so busy watching these two that I ended up ignoring any offers from online stores for PC parts, bought only 2 PC games and did very little research on how I could further improve the PC I had built. In the land of modding PCs such behavior would be deemed insanity. It's even worse when you have a MB like the Biostar TPower I45 which apparently has been breaking FSB overclocking records for months now. Don't believe me? Visit here for some intesting reading. Now don't get me wrong, I love my kids and spending time with them. But sometimes adults need something a little more stimulating to do than bury feet in sandboxes. And so with an unexpected breakdown in my PSU, or rather an annoying rattling fan in said unit that just couldn't be tolerated anymore, what started as a simple RMA process has now ballooned into a full blown PC modding adventure. I've started uploading a few pictures and will try to get more up as the project continues. To date I have RMA'd my PSU, installed a new Zalman CNPS 9500 AT heatsink, installed a 5.25" fan bay with three 40mm fans, connected the 120mm hard drive fan to a seperate manually controlled fan header, reorganize two SATA cables to prepare for an eventual second hard drive for RAID 0 setup, cleaned out the entire case of the horrid dust build up and purchased several DEMCiflex filters to prevent the dust invasion from happening again. After all this work I again realized exactly what I did last year after getting the custom build to a stable spot: this kind of work is too freakin' time consuming, tiring and brain draining when young kids are clamoring for your attention too. :lol: Hopefully I'll have the whole project wrapped up and the fixed PSU back before next month. I honestly don't know how much longer I can tolerate my hand me down 7 year old laptop as being the sole computer in the house for everyone to use. :shock: Until then, thanks for dropping by to my first blog in months and be sure to check out the pictures in my new Custom PC Modding album. I'll be sure to drop some pictures in there from time to time when I have the money and time for new upgrades. Hmm, maybe one day I'll even try out some overclocking on that Biostar MB like these guys have been doing. ;)

It may have been difficult to pick out the other campaign war waging on under all of those presidential and local political ads in the U.S TV network shows. It's a war that has been going on for several years but has just recently started gaining ferocious advertising attention. While I didn't publicly proclaim my political stance for this past election I will certainly stand up for this snowballing campaign blitz: I'm a PC!

Yes I'm referring to that age old battle of PCs vs. Macs. :P And whether you're running Vista, XP, 98 or NT be sure to share your love for your PC at Microsoft's Are you a PC?

As for my own account of working with Vista 64-bit, for nearly three months now, I have to say it really isn't bad at all. In fact, the worst performance I have had with it has only been with Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword. Despite all listed fixes and tweaks to Vista the game just crashes straight to the desktop for unknown reasons. CPU temp never rises above 45 C and case temps stay stable around 29 C so I know it's not a heat issue. No other program has given me trouble to date at least. My only other complaint is a considerable lack of support for 64-bit web browsers in the area of web tools. Do I recommend that every PC lover go upgrade to Vista right away? Heck no! Stick with the OS you're comfortable with and have had the most success with. Only upgrade when your PC has to have an OS upgrade in order to play those wonderful Games for Windows. Speaking of Games for Windows, I'd love to see an aggressive advertising blitz for PCs along the lines of "Hey Mac, can you play THIS?" :D

Nearly one full month from my last blog posting about building a new PC I can finally say the project is complete! It's not nearly the messy drooling mound of cuteness my son is but I still consider this a new "baby" to the family. :D For those who havn't trekked through the PC Project album here's some select pictures of the final result:

While the PC itself is complete there are a few additional items I plan to pick up soon. A new 19" widescreen LCD monitor is the first and foremost on my list. As soon as a great deal comes along and it arrives at the house I'll be sure to post it in the album as well. Finding a suitable black gaming mouse, preferably with a nice blue glowy LED, is a close second on the list but not a high priority. Some new speakers that sport optical S/PDIF connections for HD sound and match the black ensemble of the recently built parts will round out the external parts well but are not a high priority either. Long term planning has me doing research for a decent heatsink/fan to replace the stock Intel one. The stock fan is working fine with the stock CPU settings, but when overclocking desires start to surface it's just not going to cut it. Check out the picture of the heatsink/fan dilemma and feel free to leave me some suggestions if you have them. I might pick up a sound card well into the life of this PC if the onboard sound capabilities just don't seem to cut it anymore. Fortunately, I am very impressed with the onboard sound at this point as it even supports HD sound via an add-on S/PDIF bracket so no expensive sound card is needed right now. That's enough about what I don't have yet. For all you PC building lovers out there here's the current list of all hardware that went into this thing. Enjoy!

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz; it might not be quad core but combined with the motherboard I have it can overclock to some amazing speeds.

Motherboard: BIOSTAR TPower I45 LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX; Havn't heard of Biostar? Not many have until this board came out. Check out the following link to see proof of how this board can overclock an E8400 to a FSB of +600MHz! http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2295

RAM: OCZ Platinum 4GB DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500); What can I say? I'm a sucker for shiny stuff. Posts at listed speed and has every last byte functional in Vista 64-bit.

Powersupply: Thermaltake 700W; Plenty of overall power, great 12v rail specs, black mirror finish. No complaints from me so far.

Graphics Card: SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 3870 512MB 256-bit GDDR4; it might be considered "old" to some hardcore gamers, but it's a considerable upgrade to me and for under $150 it's hard to beat.

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive; I heard Barracuda drives were fast and it certainly is. The size may seem small to some but keep in mind I don't keep hundreds of gigs worth of music, pictures or movies on mine.

Media Drive: SAMSUNG SATA 22X DVD Burner; Nicely priced and fast too. Installed Vista in under half an hour!

Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic 64-bit; say what you want about Vista and I'll probably agree with you on it. But seeing 4GB of RAM post in the 64-bit environment is well worth all of the headaches.

Case: Antec Nine Hundred; The picture speaks loudly enough for this case: beautiful and moves air like nothing I've ever seen before.

Fans: 3 stock Antec Blue LED 120mm, 1 stock Antec 200mm, 2 Coolermaster Blue LED 120mm, 1 stock Biostar 80mm for a total of 7 fans.

Fan Controller: Sunbeam Rheobus-Extreme; it looks like something out of the original Star Trek series; anyone want to ask Scottie for some more power? :D

Printer: Canon PIXMA MX310 all-in-one; my wife likes it so I like it. ;)

Keyboard: Saitek Eclipse Blue backlit; gotta love that blue glowy stuff and is the first keyboard to not wobble on the "impossible to level" L- desk.

I'd love to say that with this building phase complete I am now enjoying hours of gaming. :lol: The truth is I still have loads of files to transfer, the old computer to clean up and prepare for the in-laws and barely an hour and a half each night to do all this. At least when I do get the free time to sit down and enjoy some dungeon delving in ES4: Oblivion or some satellite dropping in Sims 2 I know this new PC will be offering up some of the best performance I have ever seen. I better keep the babies' drool rags close by so as not to short out anything from uncontrollable slobbering. :shock:

Update 9/13/08: I added a comment about this but here it is in the blog too. Not more than 1 hour after I finished transferring all necessary files from the old HP did I encounter my very first PSU burn out. The 200w replacement PSU HP put into the old Pavilion, two years ago, went up in smoke. I'm having a professional check it out for any hidden damage as well; hopefully the motherboard and harddrive survived so my in-laws can still enjoy using this old PC for a few years. I swear my fingers are still tingling from that initial shock of being mere feet from a sparking smoking PSU!

I promised some more info on my Satellite Feed videos and finally here it is! As with any project of mine I had to plow through numerous distractions, family affairs and even another project and I still havn't even managed to shoot the pilot episode yet. :cry: So exactly when these videos crop up will be a mystery even to myself. Whenever a script is written, time is found and everything comes together I'll be sure to post them. So what is the Satellite Feed exactly? It serves as my most recent attempt to produce low quality Sims 2 videos with low quality humor all aimed to provide low quality entertainment to everyone bored enough to watch. :lol: I figure why bother with high quality when no one can ever agree to what it really is. The show aims to combine video blogging, game reviews and my odd sense of humor into one venue. Shows will likely run for a few minutes until I can find a way to compress data well enough for longer shows without sacrificing too much audio and video quality. The future of this show is somewhat questionable I will admit. Thanks to family life my video gaming time is being cut back and Sims 2 video production sadly cuts into that as well. Also with Sims 3 looming ever closer I can't say if the show could transition well, if at all, to the new release. Rest assured if the means are there the show will go on. And it's not like Sims 2 will ever leave my PC anyways; not with all it's satellite dropping goodness still intact. :D

One last factor in determining if the show can last into the next year is how my new project will assist with the production. Thanks to tclvis I have become obsessed with a project that normally does take hold of me every 4 to 5 years: upgrading to a new PC. And instead of buying into yet another questionably made PC with some big brand name attached to it, I'm taking the plunge into the world of custom PC building. :shock: It's definitely new territory for me as I have a limited hardware knowledge base as it is. But I've kept my current PC running in top shape for 4 years now so I'm hoping my years of PC meddling will combine well with the tips tclvis gives me, help from online tools and of course any professional advice I can dig up. I'll put together an album with pictures to update the process which will likely be slow going. As any family man usually is, I'm on a tight budget and have to carefully pick and choose all parts at the right times. I fully realize the difficulty of this project and how potentially nightmarish it could become. The tales of DOA parts, fried parts and other technical blunders that render dream machines inoperable will assuredly haunt me through the whole process and likely even past completion. Despite all this I feel it is well worth it as two store bought and one online custom built PCs have to let me down in the end. That and for once I can actually avoid all the bloatware manufacturers insist they cram onto our precious little harddrives. :lol: So long as I end up with a fully functioning, upgraded and budget built PC I figure it will have been well worth the experience. I hope... :?

So what exactly am I upgrading from? All PC enthusiasts crave this kind of info and I'm not one to deprive them the pleasure. I do place a severe warning to all PC fans who are drinking hot beverages now: put your cups down now before reading on! :lol: My current PC is laughable in comparison to modern days machines and I've had to neglect serious upgrades to it in favor of raising a child, paying for my house and buying a PS3. That latter point will earn me much smack talk from PC fans and by all means please do. Just know that I skipped the PS2 and the PS3 allows me to play videogames while exercising on the stationary bike. :D I stand by the purchase of the console. On to the stats of the PC I lovingly call "The old Dino"!

Built March 2004 by HP, HP Pavilion a450y, ASUS P4SD-LA MOBOS, Intel P4 3.0Ghz FSB 800Mhz, x2 512MB 400 RAM, 160GB IDE HDD, 16x DVD drive, Windows XP Service Pack 3, ATI Radeon 9600. :shock: I sure hope everyone put down their hot beverages after that GPU listing. :lol: Fun facts on this PC: still plays Sims 2 extremely well and can actually play ES4: Oblivion on low settings (no AA, no HDR, no grass, no shadows, pretty much nothing fancy). It still manages web surfing and streaming video extremely well. And it normally takes less than 2 minutes to fully boot up. Not bad for a 4 year old PC that only had a RAM upgrade and a few USB peripherals added to it over the years. And I plan to give it a good home too when the new one is complete. My in-laws are in dire need of a new PC themselves so hopefully a good deal can be made between us to fill their need and alleviate some of my money problems. ;)

Now what am I going to? Well, needless to say something more up to date with today's standards but I'm not going to list anything specific here. My list changes daily and when better deals come along I plan to take them so long as the product performs well in reviews. Check my PC Project Album to see what I've collected if interested. Feel free to leave comments too on good products to look into. Just remember that price is a factor for me on many items. On others I'm willing to spend more heavily but in the end this will be a mid-level budget gaming PC. I just can't afford to throw too much money into this and when you only game 2 hours a week like I do now it's probably best not to go top of the line on everything. ;)

Edit: 8/14/08 I managed to get some pictures up in the previously mentioned album with the link, but it seems to be having some trouble and is proving hard to put comments into. I am hosting the same picture over on my Facebook page and it's been tagged as open for all to see. Feel free to browse through it until I get some comments working here at GS that will have more detail into the project. At Facebook all my old friends already know what I nerd I am so I'm just letting know how I'm continuing the habit. :P It's best I not drown them out in over detailed matters. Fellow Facebook fans feel free to add me as a friend, though please send a message along with the request giving me your GS handle otherwise I may ingore the request completely. I've got parts on the way and I'll put pictures of them up when I get them and hopefully one of a ten year old MOBOS being powered by a 700w PSU. Hmm, better get the heavy industrial gloves for that experiment just in case...

A lot can be said about this video, but it's best to let it do all the talking. :D More info to come in the days ahead I promise! As always, feel free to leave your comments with the video or on this blog. To those leaving negative comments, refer to the film "Camelot" as to where you can stick your head. ;)

It's been a whole week since any of these events actually happened so let's just blame my PS3 for taking what little free time, I did find, away from actually posting this. :P So to those few fans of the Satellite Fields, if you havn't heard already: my second child was born on June 14, 2008 at 0446! Just as the ultrasound had predicted we did have a son and he weighed in at 6 lb 11 oz and was 19 1/2 in long. He was four weeks early just like his sister and never spent a second in the NICU. ;) Even the nursing staff was amazed at how healthy he was for being a whole month early. We're still dealing with a jaundice issue however. For non-medical minded people this means a high bilirubin level. And further simplified: bilirubin is a waste by-product produced by the body when it recycles red blood cells and can easily accumulate in the body when the liver cannot break it down or the kidneys/bowels cannot clear it fast enough. Jaundice has been linked to serious brain damage at severely high levels and when left untreated. :( Thankfully, the pediatricians caught the problem just as it was getting critical and the levels are just now starting to come down. In a few more days he's expected to be at normal levels for an infant. ;) With all the boring clinical explanations done, here is some fun stuff: A link to a baby picture of him at just a few hours old! For some reason the image could not be posted in this blog...crazy internet, I'm done fighting with it! :P

At a week old he's even back up to his birth weight only having lost barely a pound! The toddler is taking to the new addition fairly well. She doesn't show any signs of jealousy but tends to get very grabby and rough with her younger brother. I can already foresee the "rear seat" fights and "Stop touching me!" arguements brewing between these two. :shock: Thank God I can convince my wife to drive long distance trips and I sleep the whole way. :P Or at least, I used to until now. Since I seem to post new blogs maybe once a month I'll likely put any updates in the comment section for this posting. Between work, family life and, of course, the time munching PS3 I seem to be spending less time on the PC. I think my Sims are ready to revolt from the lack of satellite related chaos in their neighborhood. :D

As mentioned in the topic I was also fortunate to have yet another big prize come my way last week: a Second Place finish in DFAD6! While I was already content with the surprising placement in the Top Ten Finalists, to find myself actually winning a prize was quite shocking. For those who have been wondering just what I presented to the judges, here is the link to my game idea: Mutant League Football: MBP Edition. I cannot stress how much I owe to my "unnamed" friend who contributed to this project. While most of the base ideas came from me the vast majority of the proper writing structure and a good deal of humor came from them. As the special thanks line indicates, this project would have been doomed and certainly no prize won without their help. Thanks again for all your help! :D Be sure to check out the game ideas from the other nine competitors at the DFAD6 union! Not only will they give you good ideas on how to write your own game ideas, for future DFAD competitions and beyond, but also to see what other gamers are wanting in games as well. Hopefully some of these ideas will get noticed and may even end up in games one day. As more gamers begin to enter the video game workforce we can only hope their ideas start showing up in the form of some incredible games. As for my idea, I'm sure EA has toyed with the idea of taking Mutant League Football to the next level. Sadly, I imagine it just doesn't spark enough interest for those who pay the bills and they may even think the game is far too violent for mainstream gaming. :| Whatever the reasons, at least now gamers of all ages can dream with me, for a little while, as to what a revamped Mutant League Football game would be like. :D