Tech Smartly

I stayed up until 2 am trying to get my computer to work 2 nights ago. and I thought I finally got it. I bought a P5E, and I had to transfer all of my stuff to another motherboard. Perhaps I should have heeded the words of warning among many reviews. I thought I had finally fixed the random BSOD’s I was getting, but after a day of usage, installing all my programs I needed, I got one. Then another. And another. So close! And it also turned out the front panel for my sound card had a slight problem.

As it turned out, the sound card drivers were causing problems, and trying to fix the issue then caused a insta BSOD on startup. I ended up having to get old drivers, and then update those. That seemed to work for now, but I don’t know if it’ll stop the other BSOD’s I’ve been getting, which I have been unable to pinpoint the cause.

Now, the problem with the front panel. When I hooked everything up, and started my computer with the motherboard for the first time, there was a small pop, and a strong smell of plastic. However, everything worked fine. Just a couple of hours ago, when I tried to plug in my headphones to the front panel, I noticed it didn’t work. The speakers worked, so what could be the problem? I pulled out the front panel, examined it, and I found the problem. The picture is a bit dark, and since it’s a fresh reinstall, I couldn’t brighten it up with photoshop.

This was very puzzling. It appeared to be burned off, since if it was broken off, it would have not actually been broken past the plastic. What was even more puzzling, was the connector.

The rightmost hole had a pin inside, which was taken out before the picture was taken. It must have melted off, since the connector melted slightly as well. But why would it have done that? And further more, why is it in the rightmost hole if the pin was not meant to go to the one next to it? I realized the mistake I had done. I accidentally shifted the connector by one, meaning it was only connected to three pins. The small pop and the burned plastic smell when I first turned on my computer was explained. It only made contact with the 2 ground pins, and the +5 voltage pin. I took out my trusty solder, and I managed to fix it using the broken off pin, which I extracted with tweezers. And now, the finished product:

So, now It’s fully functional, and I’m going to watch out more BSOD’s. If it’s stable, I’ll start configuring everything, and I will no longer have to use this horrible computer I’m using right now (seen on the edge of the picture of my monitor).

It seems I spoke too soon about being able to use and benchmark my computer. Doing stress tests from a program called very easily gives me a blue screen of death, just for a flash, and then reboots the computer. I’m going to get myself a new motherboard now, since it obviously is not working, and I’ve heard of several problems that people have with this motherboard.

Unfortunately, the benchmarks will have to wait until later, as I have to remove everything and put it back in with the new motherboard. To clarify, I bought the new CPU and motherboard a week ago, but was experiencing problems with constant blue screens of death. this meant that I had to blog from another worse computer I had, seen to the left of the picture of the monitor. I’m still using it now to write, and unfortunately it has a spanish keyboard.

Since the computer crashed all the time, I got myself a better fan, one that is much quiter, as well as RAM that is tested and certified to work on the motherboard. Nope, still didn’t work. Well, here I am, blogging on a spanish keyboard, on a computer that only has integrated and no speakers. Meanwhile, next to me I have a quad core CPU with an 8800GTX just sitting there.

When I get this working, I’m going to do several tests, including crysis and 3dmark06. Hopefully by the end of the week, but maybe later.

I Just bought a new cpu, along with faster ram, and a new motherboard. These are the Specifications.

• P5N32-E SLI Plus motherboard
• 8800GTX
• 1.7 terabytes total hard drive space
• 2x 1 gig of 800MHz ram
• Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Fatality Chamion Series
• Yesico FL-550ATX Fanless 550w PSU
• NH-U12F Cpu cooler

• QX9650

Yup, that’s right. I got myself an extremely power cpu, which hopefully I will overclock to something like 4 GHz.

To begin with, first let’s show my monitor. I’m linking to the pictures so as not to use up bandwidth.

Monitor

The Ipod is a reference.

Second of all, the case:

Case

Again, the Ipod is a reference.

First off, the CPU was already inside and ready, along with stock cooling. I was having problems with heating, so I bought some a good, high quality unit. This is the picture of my ccopmuter before operation.

Whole computer

A close up of the RAM I’m about to put it:

RAM

Now, the motherboard with stock cooling:

Motherboard and stock cooling

I’ve taken the cooling off, and there is some thermal grease still on it that I cleaned up.

CPU

Now, I put on a MONSTER of a cooling unit that almost barely fit in the case.

Cooling unit

A close up of the power supply:

Power supply

And here are my 1.7 terabytes of hard drive space. The one labelled H is my backup hard drive with 750 gigabytes of space

Hard drives

And lastly, my whole computer. Everything I mentioned is in there, and it’s all set to go. Unfortunately, I’m having problems most likely to do with the motherboard. I’ll see if I can fix it some time soon, and play Crysis and post the FPS.

Complete computer

Unfortunately, the motherboard suffers from problems voltage problems, and I’ve been tweaking it for a while. Hopefully it’s stable now, and I’m going to run 3dmark06, as well as other benchmarks. I’ll be posting the results soon.

This is a very fun game, with a steep learning curve. Essentially, it is 2 characters, facing each other, moving in a free form way trying to score the most points by doing damage. The selling point of this game is the fact that every major joint (e.g. not toes or fingers) can contract or extend. For example, you can raise your right arm, contract your right pec on the same turn, and lower your right arm to attack. The game is split into a certain amount of frames with the default being 10. What would have happened was in the first 10 frames, the right arm would have be raised while moving in front, and then, brought downwards like a karate chop. Not the most exciting thing, but this sort of free form movement allows you to create your own moves. Another example would be to contract the right and left knees, fall down, then extend both knees to kick off the floor, do a flip and… just kidding, when you start the game, you’ll most likely fall down and appear to have a seizure as you move around on the ground, wondering why it’s so hard to control yourself. Playing this game at first will mostly likely require that you look up how to do certain moves. Eventually, it will become easier to know how changing certain things will react in a certain way, although this will come with time, and until then, it’s an uphill battle in terms of controls. There is also online play, allowing you to test your skills on real people, rather than against a non-moving opponent. There isn’t much that can be done in terms of AI, since it is completely freeform, although there is a lua script that can sort of simulate AI, but all it does is do some preset movement, I imagine.

I started playing this game a year and a half ago. Eventually, it became shareware, a decision which I did not like at all, since I did not feel that this game was good enough to merit the $20 it was worth when I checked. It almost completely fell off my radar. Now, version 3 came out, which I thought was still shareware. Once I actually looked into it not so long ago, I realized that version 3 is completely free, and it has more than 300 mods you can choose, as well as servers that have those mods. It also got a facelift since last time I played it, since it now has shaders, giving everything a new look.

Online play has gotten way better since last time, especially with the inclusion of mods. There is a ranking system, where you can go up to black belt, and then further more, by obtaining a higher Dan grade. Several different main mods are being used in online play, with different rules. You have the classic style of gameplay, which is the default in the game. Then there is judo, where the players are slightly farther apart, with the length of the frames being 70, which means it’s more based on balancing yourself and disqualifying the other player, which can happen when anything other than the feet or hands touch the ground. There is also gripping, which means that if the hand touches anything that isn’t the ground, it will be permanently stuck to it, unless released. Of course, the hand could just be ripped off, leaving the player with a bloody stump. Some mods disable gripping, meaning different tactics have to be used, such as in the wushu servers.

Once you get really good at this game, you can do some really cool moves, as well as make awesome replays. That is another features in this game, you can have a fight and save the replay, which you can share with your friends and others online. Not only that, the replays can be edited, so you can stop at a specific point, and start controlling it from there. Editing replays is not done within 10 frames either. You can change what you’re doing 1 frame at a time, meaning you can make some spectacular videos. One of the most amazing videos I’ve watched so far is the video above, showcasing the new shaders, and also showing all the different moves that no beginner would ever be able to do, even through sheer luck. It is quite amazing, I just hope it doesn’t raise all of your hopes too high when you realize you can’t do this sort of stuff even after playing the game for a while.

Very fun game, I really do enjoy the mods as it gives so much more replay value.

Yes, that’s right, you can see high resolution videos! What is this trickery, you say? Yes, there are actually high res videos on youtube, although not every video has the option. There are only a few simple steps to do so.

1. Get the URL
2. Add &fmt=18 to the end of the url
3. Watch

Here is an example using the skating dog video.

Low Resolution

High Resolution

This video shows a big difference between the low and high resolution. Not every video is higher quality as well, but it can really make the videos look nice than the standard youtube quality. Also, embedding youtube videos changes the quality back to normal.

Note: Just recently, On certain videos, youtube has a link to the higher quality version.