Saturday, April 21, 2007

Introducing PeeCee!

Well what started out as a simple PC upgrade turned into a whole lot more. Originally I was going to replace the motherboard, CPU, and memory and call it good, but one thing lead to another and before I knew it I had all kinds of new parts. The only things that remain of my old PC are the case, keyboard, mouse, and monitor... the guts are all new. :)

I finally got the last pieces I needed for the major overhaul last Wednesday, a couple snags here and there and it was Thursday night before I got to fire it up. The good news is it booted up the first time, albeit making weird noises. I finally tracked the noise down to the new power supply unit, and while it works so far for the brief time I've used it, I'm getting an RMA# to send it back.

On the bright side I got Vista installed, a meager overclock going, and so far pleased overall. The Vista install had to be the smoothest (clean) OS install I've ever done, clocking in at maybe ~30 minutes. My older PC is now a part heap waiting for a spare case to be rebuilt in, so I don't currently have access to some of the stuff I need off the HD. :( I thought I had burned most of it to a CD-R but as normal I forgot some things here and there. So right now my Vista is running pretty bare bones without most of my utilities, and none of my games yet, but Internet is working so all isn't lost.

My other bright spot is Vista gives you a 'Windows Experience Score' which is supposed to help you pick software titles (once they start putting them on the package) by just looking at a number. Example Game A has a experience score of 3.5, as long as me computer scores 3.5 or above it should play perfectly. Your system is 'graded' on 5 areas (CPU, RAM, graphics, gaming graphics, and hard drive) then your overall score is the lowest area (your only as strong as your weakest link type thing). Supposedly the best score available right now is 5.9 based on the current technology, I'm happy to say that my system scores 5.3 with my weakest link being the hard drive (should have dropped the extra couple bucks for the 10,000RPM drive...) the next lowest is the CPU at 5.5 and with a little more overclock I should be able to nudge it up a bit. The final 3 RAM, and both graphics categories already hit 5.9 (Yay!)

The only drawback I've encountered thus far (other than the power supply clanking) is my Zune realized it was just visiting the new PC, and if I want to make it a permanent resident it clears the library (wiped/formatted/music go bye bye) to sync it with the library of the new machine (which of course is empty right now). I of course declined this offer, and just let it visit to grab my weekend podcast.

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