There’s an old expression I like: “Different isn’t better, it’s just different.”

When it comes to SSDs based around a SATA or SAS format — that’s pretty much the case in my view. Yes there are exceptional products suited for enterprise like Pliant and STEC. And, yes — there are more conventional items for consumers like Intel and OCZ (and about 20 others).  And yes, the standard pacakge 3.5″ form factor for these devices make them suitable for shared storage as well as for integration into hetreogenous and homogenous storage environments like you might find in a typical data center.  Embracing these SSDs you will find the usual manufacturers like EMC, NetApp, SUN, and others.  Their use of SSD is evolutionary, easy to digest.

PCIe-based SSDs are very different.  For one thing, they sit on the server system bus right next to the CPU.  This is a direct attached (DAS) model that has numerous advantages for certain types of processing.  We agree that not all PCIe-based SSDs are suitable for all applications — but in terms of applications that can take advantage of bandwidth, throughput, and latency enhancements, these devices are indeed a superior architecture.

There are some challenges:

1)  Not all servers are created equal.  PCIe-based devices require strict adherance to the PCIe specifications at the server level.  Ping if you want to learn more about why this is critical.

2)  Many servers do not have enough PCIe slots configure appropriately for PCIe devices.  This is especially true when creating HIGH AVAILABILITY (or HA) environments.

3)  Only a very few servers have enough of the right type of slots to be meaningful from a value perspective.  It makes no sense to refresh a server for a PCIe-based SSD if you have to spend 2x or 3x to get the right slots, power, etc.

4)  Applications may not be optimized for SSD DAS.  No kidding.  OLTP or DBMS applications that can take the most advantage of SSD DAS are optimized for high latency disk access over networks such as NAS.  These applications are totally comfortable sending out 1000s or 10s of 1000s of transaction requests to build up a queue depth for the CPUs.  The net result of this is that the CPUs appear very busy but in fact aren’t doing very much.  These limitations are known and well defined.  Over time, application vendors such as SUN, Oracle, and Microsoft will implement fixes to optimize PCIe-based storage.

Aside from these items, there is a discussion regarding suitability of NAND flash devices in the data center as well as the MLC/SLC issue.  I’ll tackle those in another post.  In my veiw, MySpace and Wine.com are leading the way — and there are many others who have not come forward publicly preferring to keep the ROI and GREEN advantages all to themselves.

The latest announcements from Fusion-io, Texas Memory Systems, Micron and others point out these differences.  FULL DISCLOSURE:  I am a former employe of Fusion-io.

I’ll add my comments later — here is the link:
http://hothardware.com/Articles/Fusionio-ioXtreme-PCI-Express-SSD-Review/?page=1

Well, OCZ Behemoth Laser mouse didn’t really live up to my expectation or the flattering reviews I had read.

A few issues:

1. First thing I noticed. The side buttons (back /forward) were too stiff. Not a good thing as I use that button to knife people in CoD 4.
2. Way too sensitive. The cursor would move when I type due to the vibration. It’s very sensitive to vibrations for some reason at any DPI setting.
3. Moved on its own sometimes. Maybe it didn’t like my mouse pad.
4. When I press down on the mouse (i.e. simply putting my hand on top of it) would move the cursor. I use a cloth mouse pad.
5. When you hit CAPS LOCK twice fast, it will change the profile and/or make the mouse unresponsive. Most of the time, you hit CAPS twice again, it will cycle through the 4 profiles and get back to normal. It’s a nuisance sometimes.

After a few months, it completely stopped working, so I posted in the OCZ forum and requested an RMA.

I got the new mouse yesterday. It’s still very sensitive overall, but I guess I have to live with that.

One thing to note though is the fact that OCZ always makes RMA process easy. I received the replacement a day after they received it — though I do live quite close to the OCZ office.

I still like OCZ, but just not sure if I’ll buy another mouse from them.

Группа OCZ представила Zее USB 2,0 флэш-накопитель, созданный для пользователей, стремящихся к простому и дешевому способу переноса мультимедийных файлов и документов.

«Предназначенный для путешественников, компактный Zее является экономичным USB накопителем, который облегчает передачу изображений, мультимедиа и важных данных между несколькими компьютерами,» прокомментировал Алекс Мэй, член технологической группы OCZ. «Zее призван быть доступными для широкого круга потребителей и выпускается объемом до 16 ГБ, отличается компактностью и простотой».

Линейка Zее позволяет OCZ предложить несколько недорогих вариантов в объемах до 16 ГБ, поэтому вы получаете больше места для хранения за меньшие деньги. Ультра-тонкий дизайн предназначен для пользователей, которые предпочитают простоту и элегантность. Zee использует интерфейс USB 2,0 и является устройством plug-and-play, которое позволяет получить мгновенный доступ на ваш ноутбук или ПК без необходимости установки дополнительного программного обеспечения.
 
Флэш-накопитель USB 2.0 Zее выпускается в объемах в 2 ГБ, 4 ГБ, 8 ГБ и 16 ГБ и вы можете выбрать нужный объем в зависимости от ваших личных требований, поставляется с 2-летней гарантией.

Информация с сайта http://www.ocztechnology.com/
Страница Zee на официальном сайте: http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_zee_usb_2_0_flash_drive
Больше информации о новинках и производителях — на форуме сайта http://myusb.su/ по адресу: http://myusb.su/forum/

Eine wirklich tolle Tastatur ist die Sabre OLED von OCz. Nach der Optimum Maximun nun eine erschwingliche Tastatur mit Led-Beleuchtung

Мина доста , доста време от както сме виждали Crucial SSD дискове , но ще трябва да кажем , че Lexar Media не можеха да намерят и по-подходящо време да запълнят пропуска. M225 solid state drive фамилията е най-бързата , най-голяма Crucial SSD линия до ден днешен , и докато те все още са зад новите Vertex Turbo на OCZ , не са назад с много. 2.5 инчовите SATA бройки могат да ударят скорости на четене до 250MBps и писане до 200MBps , а и имат екстри като MLC NAND флаш памет и SATA 2.0 (3Gbps) интерфейса. В големина от 64GB , 128GB и 256GB модели , триото е напълно функционално с външната кутия Crucial SK01 на компанията , и не като много други конкуренти , Lexar решиха да действат направо и да обявят цени за наличните модели: $169.99, $329.99 и $599.99 под ред на номерацията. Не са никак кофти , не мислите ли ?

via: Engadget

Psu – XfX 850w mod http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817207001   209.99

MotherBoard – EVGA 4x sli (pre-order only)  449.99

Cpu – Intel i7920 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202  279.99

Cpu Cooler – V-10 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103056   125.99

Case- CoolerMaster Stacker http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119146 219.99

Hard Drives – 2x 1.5TB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337 240.98

Solid State – 1x 150gig http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136296 179.99

GPU – GTX275 SC http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130503 329.99 (x2 658)

RAM – 6Gig http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226030 154.99 (x2 309)

$2192 (with out the optional upgrades in my price)
————————————————————————————————–

This is the Equivelent to a system as seen on here. Alienware.com

The alienware x58 desktop offers this setup (which is close) for 2,049.00

The alienware does not offer the GTX275 card, so its hard to get a good price range so i chose the 4870×2 option, due to it being the same price on newegg as the gtx275’s.  I also did not put in a cd/dvd drive due to it being like 25$ for one, so i left it out of the price war.  U can buy an Alienware chasis with a 750w psu with the glow for 199$ off their site, so oviously their not selling very many of these systems anymore.

Also alienware uses very very low quality products in their machines, and if its a name brand product they make you pay full retail for it even tho its just an upgrade.  like going from a 500gig hd to the velociraptor SSD which i have in my list above, added an extra 300$ whereas u can seee the VR SSD is only 179.99…

Sure you get a warranty with it, but if you go to your localy Owned PC repair shop, alot of times if you have them order the parts and have them build it, they will warranty it for you.  Of course they will charge you 50-80$ an hour to build your machine, but it shouldnt take more then 1-2 hours for them to do so.  Also Alot of products I’ve listed have lifetime Waraanties, so your covered by all angles.

Also if you notice, all the products above are the highest end of the series you can get. I did this to prove a point to people reading this.  You can save 10-20% off that final price of mine if you just get the same product but a lower model.

Example, the GTX275 i posted costs 329.99  you can get a lower end GTX275 from here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187073&cm_re=gtx275-_-14-187-073-_-Product  For 219.99 which would cut off 110$ right there.

The RAM is also high end you could go with something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148247 which is 50$ less

so u can save 160$ by just getting 2 of the same item, just different brands. Same goes for the hard-drives, you can lower it down to a single 1tb drive that costs 89.99 and save 330$

The mother board is overkill to the max as well for the everday gamer. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188046&cm_re=evga_x58-_-13-188-046-_-Product  Thats 258$ which is 200$ cheaper then the 4 way sli board

so in theory right there u can get RAM that is pretty decent, and a decent GPU and a single 1tb drive  instead of what i suggested and a mobo that supports 3 way sli  and save yourself 690$  which bring the price down to $1,502.

You can EASILY overclock that i7 920 to 3.5-4.0ghz with that coolermaster v-10 i suggested as well. http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/477151-how-overclock-i7-920-a.html  gives instructions.

I hope this was very informative about how YOU can save money by buying your own Hardware for your next gaming rig purchase!

—-Sltrhouse—-

I wrote this as i was helping my friend compare price-quality ratio

Im running currently a machine that costed me about 2400$ all together so far.

1tb hdd      http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148373               99.99$

intel i7 940 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115201              559.99$

Vista Home Premium 64 bit http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116488         99.99$

LG 22x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136152                        24.99$

EVGA 3way sli  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188039               299.99$

ASUS GTX295 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121296                 509.99$

CoolMax 950watt psu http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817159072       119.99$

Arctic Silver 5  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835100007      6.99$

OCZ gold 6gb http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227365              130.99$

Order Total $1,891.59    (i only paid 15.69 for 3 day shipping i found alot of free shipping deals)     Thats just for that stuff lol

I got my coolermaster HAF932 case from liquidcpu.com for 150$  and i got my coolermaster hyper CPU cooler from them for i believe 59.99$   so thats another 220$ or so with shipping.

then heres my little mod stuff…

120mm red led fan x7 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811998123     45.43

12 inch Red cold cathode  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16800888027    4.99

so the total was 74.02  (shipping was 20 :/  )

my headset was 99.99$ keyboard was 109.99$ and my mouse was 59.99 so thats another 270$ or so…

so close to 2,500$  with the wireless card and whatnot as well….

ANWAYS  I believe this guide will really help people understand how much money is really invested into gaming machines, and to understand that its a big choice to lay down a few thousand bucks on something that MIGHT NOT work…   I’ve had zero problems so far with my pc so imo it was 2500 well spent, and i used my tax refund for it so its a win win.

I would always suggest to get the mid range of hardware, due to it being the most reliable, and also go talk with your local geek squad, or just go to a forum online and im sure you’ll find help.

If you have any questions about anything in this blog post feel free to e-mail me at sltrhouseking@gmail.com

Ok,  when coming to SSDs technology we are still very far from the real truth.  The knowledge on SSDs has  kept growing but still needs  more.

If you want to buy an SSD and don´t know which one to buy let me tell you which one you should.

1.- First of all, the  cache memory is very important. Don´t go  on any disc that has less than 32 or 64 megabytes on cache. This will free them from stuttering which  all the first SSDs (except Intel based ones) did.

2.- Don´t go crazy,  if  you use 20GBs on your OS normally go for the 32 GB model. If you use between 40-50 GBs on your OS drive go for the 64GB model. If using more than 80GB you should consider the 128GB model. There is no reason to pay for 256GB or more at this time unless youre rich and want to use it as backup instead of OS drive.

3.- Avoid Micron controllers at the time! Don´t get any JMicron  based SSD at the moment, not even the ones which include 2×16kb on cache mode in RAID. They simply don´t  work well. They have lots of stuterring and even  being on  chat and writing a doc on excel is enough for them to stutter. You won´t forgive that never.

4.- There are  many  memory manufacturesrs right now. Samsung, Micron, Indilinx, Intel etc.  Intel is the fastest with the best  SSDs  right now, but also has the bigger prices, so,  buy it only if you really need it or have  a lot of money.

5.- The  Indilinx based SSDs are the best bang for the buck. Buy one of this and you won´t regret any cent you payed. Indilinx is practically a new brand based in South Corea,  but it  really rocks and the SSDs drives based on Indilinx have between 64 and 128mbs on cache. That compared to  only 32kb, it´s super fast and no stuttering.

6.- If you want a good Indilinx based drive you have small options. Either you go Corsair or you go OCZ Technology. Corsair has very good  SSDs on the Extreme series, so check the X64 model. I still recommend going on OCZ. OCZ has the Vertex series which are super fast as the Corsair series  but a little bit more expensive. OCZ has also the Agility series which are much less expensive than the Vertex and Corsair Extreme but still the performance is around 5% less ONLY.

7.- EXTRA: OCZ has the best firmwares right now. They even  include in some revs the hability to  renew your SSD by erasing fully the parts not being used. This  will prevent your SSD to  become slow with time.

Conclusion: Go get the Agility vertex while you can. You can grab the 64GB model at 180USD or you can pay 210 USD and up for the Vertex and Corsair Extreme SSDs. Here an image of the favorite and you can check the whole specs @ OCZ page here.

A OCZ já é bastante conhecida pelas suas grandes aventuras no modding, e na performance exemplar dos seus componetes, vocacionado essencialmente para os Jogadores.

Desta vez, foram um pouco mais longe, e pegaram num “disco rigido” SSD, e colocaram-no sob uma PCI-Express 4X. O resultado originou um componente capaz de ler a velocidades superiores a 700Mb/s, e a escrever acima dos 600Mb/s.
A Z-Drive tem 3 versões, 250GB, 500GB e 1TB.
As versões de 250GB e de 500GB, já estão á venda na Amazon, e o preço é de 1561,30$(1 091,13 Euros) e 2450,50$ (1 712,56 Euros) respectivamente.

I haven’t written here in about a couple of weeks and I think my little blog of mine should deserve some attention, especially when something big in the TF2 community happened about a week ago. It was made official on August 11, 2009 that Team Complexity’s world renowned Team Fortress 2 squad had decided to disband.

An excerpt from the article on Team Complexity’s website:

Today, the Syndicate regrettably announces the disbandment of Complexity.TF2. We have had the game for two seasons now and have gone through more roster changes than is common with our teams. At the end of last season, three out of the six players decided they wanted to go inactive in order to focus on responsibilities in their personal lives. This left us with the prospect of yet again rebuilding, or stepping away from the game for a while. While the TF2 community has a large player base, the talent pool at the premiere level is shallow at best. We made the decision to step away from the game, rather than build a new squad that does not represent the level of excellence our fans have come to expect.

We would like to thank our former players and wish them the best of luck. To our TF2 fan base, we may be seeing you again in the future.


col.tf2 is one of the most well known and respected professional TF2 teams in North America. From their rise to dominance as The Experiment to the devastation they wreaked upon their oponents as Team Pandemic with an almost perfect record. the team consisted of past and present comp TF2 players including the infamous Adam Reptile Dopko. From the beginning, playing in CEVO, the team consisted of key members that have lead the team to multiple victories; members like Dummy and oPlaiD. They have been very lucky to pick up Reptile from Mortal Wounds and consequently Hubris and Dion. The team has played in many professional leagues and competitions like: CEVO, ESEA, TGL, Nvidia LanVision, Pwnage.tv’s Shotgun Shootout, and even ESL where they placed second with pings of up to 200 ms.

Their best roster (in my opnion), which has dominated almost every single match they have played in was consisted of:
Adam Reptile Dopko
Samuel oPlaiD Lingle
Tim Dummy Olson
Nick TheFragile Leon
Alex REP Nunez
Ryan SycknesS Mitchell

This team was an unstoppable force lead by Reptile who’s frag vid has made him very popular in the TF2 community and one of the best medic’s ever in TF2, TheFragile. They were an unstoppable force as they played for Team Pandemic. Even though, their creator and former captain Perfekt decided to retire from active gameplay, the team carried on and didn’t skip a heartbeat. These pros with backgrounds in Quake and Team Fortress Classic quickly became the team to beat in 2008. Over the team’s span of three years of existence (or is it two?), they have been lucky enough to have great pro players play with them. Players like:

Paul Newby Turner
Alex Alexwut Casper
Daniel Carnage Sturdivant
Ryan Paladin Foley
JeffreyJmitchell Mitchell
Mike Dion Powell
Eric Hubris Dean
Daniel Destro Schwartz
AndrewHell Tran
Brad pyyyour Ross

Unfortunately, after a disagreement with their former syndicate, Team Pandemic, the team joined up with probably the most famous professional North American syndicate ever known, Team Complexity. It is also known as one of the Championship Gaming Series’ most valued teams and for their very enthusiastic manager, Jason Lake. Unfortunately after their switch from Pandemic to Complexity, the team has never been the same. Even though they haven’t won a tournament or championship match since joining Complexity, the team was still very formidable, being able to make it to the CEVO S3 finals and ESEA-I finals but unfortunately losing toTeam Loaded, the team that was chosen to represent Team Pandemic after our superstars left for Complexity. The very questionable roster changes of letting SycknesS go and TheFragile leaving which lead to the additions of pyyyour and Hell did not really help the team as they still could not make those clutch plays that made them successfull in the past. The switch from soldier to demoman by Reptile did not do the team much good. Even though Mr. Dopko plays well as the demoman, he should have stuck with soldier.

A couple of days after Team Loaded took the OCZ pot of $2500 by beating Evil Geniuses, rumors began to swirl around the TF2 community that col.TF2 was no more. Reptile was going inactive for a while because apparently he found a job. REP and Hell were also the two other members that went inactive. People were in disbelief and did not know what to think. Then finally, news broke out that members of col.tf2 were added to new teams. oPlaiD and Dummy were added to 20ID’s. Paladin switched to Hostile Factionand Reptile moved closer to his home, Team EG (Evil Geniuses) as a backup. It will be sad knowing that the most successful TF2 team in North America and most likely the world will not be playing together anymore. They have all moved on to their new teams the best of luck to them.

Here is a list of their accomplishments
1st Place CEVOp Season 1
1st Place Pwnage.TV Shotgun Shootout
2nd Place ESL Major Series II
1st Place Xfire Countdown to Nvision 2008
1st Place Nvision 2008 Geforce LAN
1st Place CEVO Sennheiser Open
1st Place CGS ProAm
1st Place CEVOp Season 2
1st Place Gotfrag Invitational
2nd Place CEVOp Season 3
2nd Place ESEA Season 1

Yesterday, I ordered Vendetta 2 Heatsink from OCZ. I was waiting for one of the CPU coolers to go on sale. Either this or Cooler Master 212 Plus.

Well, got an email promo from NCIX yesterday. It was on sale for $24.99 before rebate and shipping promo for $6.99. Had to take it. I kind of made a haste decision, which I normally never do. I didn’t even check to see if it would fit in my case, CM Elite 330.

It seems it will barely fit. I’ll find out once I receive it likely on Monday or Tuesday – unless it’s coming from BC and not ON, in which case, I probably need to wait longer.

I will write about it once I receive it, install it and test it. Hopefully things go smooth.

Have a nice day!

I finally have a solid state disk in my unibody Macbook Pro.  I can, without a doubt, say this is the single best upgrade I have ever done on any personal computer… ever.  Forget RAM… get an SSD.  I used to have to wait ~30 seconds for my Mac to boot completely, login and all.  Granted, I have quite a few things that get started up at login.  Now, it’s maybe 10 seconds if that.  Apps launch instantaneously.  Decompressing large files is much quicker.  Everything is just faster… much faster.

Where I work, we are constantly dealing with large medical imaging datasets (such as MRI), which contain tens of thousands of smaller individual files.  So, as you can imagine, disk I/O is very important when cycling through these files for analysis.  At the rate SSD seems to be evolving, it won’t be long before our data processing workstations will all have one.  So, I needed one to test.  :)

I chose an OCZ Vertex 250G Mac Edition.  I did extensive research on which drive would be the best candidate to test, and OCZ seems to come out on top quite a bit.  Anandtech’s frequent reviews helped a lot.  The new Indilinx controller has been getting rave reviews, so my decision was easy.  If Intel had a 250G option, it would have made my decision much more difficult.

I’ve been using MacAuthority to source all of my Apple parts lately, and I’ve been extremely happy with their service.  I would even go as far to say it’s the best customer service I’ve ever received.  Next time you need something, give them a ring.  You won’t be disappointed.  So, I let them know what I wanted.  They didn’t carry that specific drive, but it seems all I had to do was let them know I was interested, and they got it for me.  I like that.  :)

So, the drive came in, and I wasted no time swapping it with my old 5400RPM disk.  I hooked the old drive up to a SATA to USB controller, booted from it, and proceeded to use Carbon Copy Cloner to image it onto the SSD.  Unfortunately, halfway through, the SSD disappeared and the clone failed.  ”Don’t do this to me… not with my new toy.”  So, I opened Disk Utility.. no SSD.  I rebooted, tried Disk Utility again… no SSD.  Tried ioreg -l -w 0 | grep OCZ, nothing.  Checked OCZ’s forums, and found another guy was having a similar problem and they recommended to remove the drive for 30 mins.  So I did, reinstalled it, it showed up!  The forum post recommended doing a firmware upgrade.  Downloaded the ISO, burned it, and rebooted.  It didn’t recognize the disk.  ”I can’t believe this”.  So, I contacted MacAuthority to let them know what happened.  ”OK, we’re sending you another one right away.”  Wow, am I a VIP or something?  :)  So, the new one comes in 2 days later.  I immediately check to see if it has the latest firmware, and it does.  I try the clone again, and it works fine this time.  Looking good!

Then I rebooted.  Wow.  I mean Wow.  I know I said it above, but wow.  I’m hardly ever wowed, but this time I was.  WOW.

I did before and after benchmarks using XBench.  If you search the Xbench submitted results for “SSD Upgrade“, you’ll see mine.  I titled both sumbissions the same, but I misidentified the Macbook Pro the second time so rest assured, they’re both me.  :)

Pretty definitive results:

• Pre-SSD – 37.02
• Post-SSD – 225.84

So, get one if you haven’t already (from MacAuthority!).  Sell a kidney if you have to.

I’m also looking forward to the next firmware upgrade, which is supposed to configure the drive to self-optimize with a garbage collection function and support for TRIM.  A beta version is on the forums as of this posting, but it seems that Mac owners are having problems with their Macs not sleeping properly, so I’ll wait.  :)

Tels étaient les objectifs pour l’achat de mon nouvel ordinateur.

Mais en quoi cela me concerne me direz-vous (et vous avez bien raison) !

Et bien dans la suite de ce billet je vais vous exposer les différents problèmes et solutions trouvées  pour arriver à une configuration qui répondent à ces critères. De plus ce sera l’occasion de vous parler des bons sites d’informations et d’actualités dans le domaine du hardware (matériel informatique), et notamment quelques guides qu’il faut absolument lire.

Adaptation forcée du challenge à la réalité du marché de la technologie informatique

“C’est pas possible, ça aurait dû évoluer pourtant !” me suis-je entendu dire ! Et oui je me suis rendu compte que, même de nos jours, aucun laptop (PC portable) n’offre la possibilité de jouer aux derniers jeux 3D sans débourser l’équivalent du prix d’une voiture (d’occasion) ! D’autant plus qu’ils sont généralement de taille très imposante et difficilement transportables. Pour preuve le très bon site NotebookCheck.com spécialisé dans l’analyse des performances graphiques des ordinateurs portables et des cartes graphiques. Gros souci donc

Devant l’impossibilité de trouver une solution tout-en-un qui convienne (si vous avez un conseil n’hésitez surtout pas!), je décide de séparer la configuration en 2 :

• d’une part un desktop (PC fixe de bureau) puissant avec de bonnes capacités graphiques, silencieux, qui ne soit pas trop encombrant, et surtout économiquement raisonnable (moins de 1000€)
• et d’autre part un netbook (petit PC portable) d’appoint peu puissant mais très mobile et avec une grande autonomie de batterie afin de pouvoir travailler longtemps en déplacement (qui, a bien y regarder, ne sont pas si fréquents de ça) et pas trop cher (moins de 400€)

Les enjeux sont donc plus simples à atteindre de cette manière, et je dirais même que je pourrais en tirer avantage en ayant 2 solutions mieux adaptées chacune à leur usage.

Part. 1 – desktop – puissance économiquement abordable

Les choix techniques concernant le PC de bureau sont beaucoup plus nombreux et complexes que ceux pour le netbook alors nous allons nous concentrer sur celui-ci.

Tout d’abord un petit rappel des objectifs pour cette partie de la solution :

• PC de bureau de petite taille : en anglais “Small Form Factor”
• Refroidissement silencieux ! Je ne supporte plus le bruit des ventilateurs qui tournent à plein régime
• HD et Blueray pour les films : pour ne pas avoir à changer de matériel dans 1 an
• Puissant pour les jeux 3D : donc processeur et carte graphique musclés, en anglais “Gamer”
• Rapport qualité/prix intéressant

Voilà pour le pseudo cahier des charges.

Passons maintenant au détail des choix effectués.

	Le processeur : un core i7 920 pour ses performances, sa nouvelle architecture et son évolutivité J’hésitais entre un Core 2 Duo 8600 , un Core 2 Quad Q9550 et le i7 920. Finalement décider de prendre un tel processeur n’a pas été chose aisée mais au fil de mes recherches il s’est tout de même imposé de manière logique. En effet les Core i7 sont les nouveaux (depuis un an) processeurs à 4 cœurs haut de gamme du géant Intel contrairement aux Core 2 qui sont déjà plus anciens. Ces 3 processeurs sont assez proches en terme de coût, et ce qui les différencie sont d’une part leurs performances et d’autre part le chipset qui leur sont associés. Or le Core i7 est plus puissant que ses 2 concurrents et il est surtout tourné vers l’avenir avec son chipset X58.  Effectivement de nombreux aspects ont été revus et corrigés pour améliorer leurs performances et cela impacte également les autres composants présents sur la carte mère, notamment le type de RAM qui passe en DDR3 plus efficace que la DDR2. Il en a été de même pour leur consommation électrique mais malgré tout ils sont parmi les processeurs les plus consommateurs. Par exemple pour le plus petit processeurs de la gamme, son TDP de base est d’environ 130W ! Ce dégagement de chaleur est important mais vous allez voir par la suite qu’il est possible d’avoir un système silencieux, même avec des températures comme celles là, grâce à du bon matériel d’AirCooling. Donc en regardant la puissance pure, le Core i7 est gagnant et surtout le matériel qui lui est associé est évolutif car il est tout récent et promis à un bel avenir. Pour ceux que ça intéresse, le Core i7 920 révision D0 est particulièrement adapté à l’overcloking mais attention la chaleur ! Enfin si vous souhaitez voir les chiffres clés des performances pour les processeurs en 2009 rdv sur le très intéressant TomsHardware.com rubrique charts CPU 2009. Et pour tout savoir sur les Core i7, un dossier complet réalisé par Presence-Pc.com.
	Le refroidissement : AirCooling à base de Noctua NH-U12P pour sa simplicité de mise en œuvre et son coût En me basant sur l’étude que j’avais précédemment réalisée sur la comparaison entre l’AirCooling (refroidissement par air) et le WaterCooling (par eau) j’ai choisi une solution à base d’AirCooling qui s’appuie sur 2 ventilateurs Notcua S12 – 800RPM pour le boîtier et un Noctua NH-U1P SE1336 spécialement étudié pour le socket du processeur choisi. Pour info : Noctua est un leader sur le marché haut de gamme des solutions de refroidissement par air silencieuses.
	La carte mère : une Asus Rampage II Gene mATX pour chipset x58, sa DDR3 et ses options Le choix de la carte mère a été assez aisé. En effet il me fallait une carte mère qui soit adapté au processeur choisi muni obligatoirement d’au moins un port PCI Express 16x 2.0 pour la carte graphique. J’ai également retenu les points suivants : un dispositif silencieux de refroidissement de ses chipsets et de bonnes options comme une bonne carte son intégrée des ports variés (IDE, SATA II, eSATA, etc.). Je n’avais aucun besoin de RAID ou de SLI/CrossFire. Le site JMax-Hardware.com a publié un comparatif de qualité sur pas moins de 48 cartes mères au chipset x58. Cette carte mère m’a définitivement conquis car en plus de satisfaire à 100% mes besoins elle dispose de la technologie Triple Channel ce qui améliore les performances de la RAM ainsi que d’un encombrement minimal puisqu’elle est au format mATX. ET cerise sur le gâteau, elle coûte (210€) moins cher que la plupart de ses concurrentes mATx mais aussi ATX. Et le petit plus inutile mais avec lequel on peut frimer, au démarrage on a droit à un beau logo “Republic of Gamers” car cette carte entre dans une gamme spéciale d’ASUSTEK dédiée aux joueurs.
	La RAM : 3×1Go Gold XTC par OCZ Tech. pour ses performances CAS 7 et sa fréquence 1600Mhz Là aussi la décision s’est faite toute seule. La marque OCZ Technology produit des mémoires avec les meilleurs temps de cycles CAS 7. D’autre part la fréquence de 1600Mhz est celle maximum conseillée pour la carte mère choisie, donc sur ce point aussi c’est parfait. Toujours en se basant sur la carte mère, elle possède la technologie Triple Channel donc autant en profiter, d’où l’achat de 3 barettes. Pour finir sachez que posséder plus de 4Go sur un système Windows 32 ou 64 bits n’a, actuellement, aucun intérêt (ou presque) comme le montre ce test chez Puissance-PC.net.
	La carte graphique : une ATI Radeon HD4850 1Go passive de chez Gigabyte pour son rapport performance / bruit Là il n’y a pas grand chose à dire à part que c’est la carte graphique à refroidissement passif la plus puissante à l’heure actuelle bien qu’elle pourrait être largement dépassée si les constructeurs s’en donnaient la peine (son chip a plus d’un an). Elle est suffisamment performante pour faire tourner les derniers jeux en détails moyen ce qui me suffit largement. Si besoin je la remplacerai dans le futur par une carte plus musclée en changeant son système de refroidissement propriétaire par un ventirad Scythe Musashi, un des meilleurs dans son domaine et silencieux.
	L’alimentation : Enermax Modu82+ 525W pour son silence et son rendement A propos de l’alimentation, heureusement que je suis tombé sur ce topic du forum de CanardPC.com qui centralise un peu tous les problèmes que les possesseurs de Core i7 rencontrent. Mais on s’aperçoit que c’est surtout des problèmes d’alimentations qui grésillent (les Core i7 ont besoin de beaucoup de puissance). J’ai donc choisi une Enermax car les utilisateurs en possédant étaient parmi les seuls à n’avoir aucun problème. Par ailleurs cette carte est en soi un très bon choix au regard de ses spécifications techniques, notamment de son très bon rendement certifié à 82+.
	Le disque dur : récupération de l’existant un Samsung 500Go IDE Ici je me conterai de vous indiquer le choix que j’aurais probablement fait si je n’avais pas garder mon disque dur actuel. Il s’agit du Velociraptor 150Go de Western Digital. Il se rapproche de très prés des performances des SSD sans les soucis qu’ils connaissent encore aujourd’hui et surtout 2 fois moins cher (~150€). Cependant il fait plus de bruit.
	Le boîtier : construction sur mesure en bois / aluminium / pexiglass En fait j’aurais très bien pu faire comme tout le monde et prendre un boîtier mATX adapté mais je ne suis pas tout le monde, je suis Cantona ! Plus sérieusement, n’utilisant qu’un petit lecteur DVD slim et un petit disque dur je ne voulais pas d’un espace entier avec je ne sais combien de baie 5,25″ ou 3,5″ inutiles. Et puis j’aime bien les challenges alors je me suis dis “pourquoi ne pas faire moi-même mon boîtier ?”. Et puis je suis tombé directement sur un tutoriel très bien fait (un site dangereux d’après Google!) et qui donne envie. Alors j’en suis uniquement à l’étape de dessins des plans mais j’ai confiance 2 choses à retenir si vous souhaitez aussi sauter le pas : Un boîtier entièrement en plexiglass ne bénéficie pas de l’effet de cage de faraday qui protège les composants des chocs électromagnétiques. C’est pourquoi je vous recommande de faire la structure en métal (par ex. récupéré d’un vieux boîtier existant). Pour que cela marche il faut que cette structure touche le capot de l’alimentation qui est relié à la masse de l’alimentation. Dans le cas où vous n’en teniez pas compte sachez qu’en dehors du fait que vous risquez de vous électrocuter bêtement vos composants peuvent être perturbés (je ne suis pas électricien, je me content de faire suivre les infos ici). Il est important pendant la conception du design du boîtier de prévoir une bonne circulation de l’air et donc l’emplacement des ventilateurs boîtier ainsi que celui de l’alimentation

Configuration complète avec les prix et les liens

Le Desktop : 1041€ (sans boîtier)

• Processeur : Intel Core i7 920 – LDLC.fr à 249,95€
• Carte mère : Asustek Rampage II Gene – LDLC.fr à 249,95€
• RAM : OCZ Gold XTC TripleChannel 3 x 1Go DDR3 – LDLC.fr à 78,55
• Carte graphique : Gigabyte HD9450 1Go passive – LDLC.fr à 134,99€
• Alimentation : Enermax Modu82+ 525W – RueDuCommerce.fr à 107,80€
• Refroidissement AirCooling composé de :
  • Ventirad CPU : Noctua NH-U12P SE1336 – LDLC.fr à 59,98€
  • Ventilateur boîtier : 2 x Noctua S12 – 800RPM – LDLC.fr à 17,90€ pièce
  • Filtres à air : 3 x filtre aluminium 120mm Rue Du Commerce – dispo chez eux à 3,50€ pièce
  • Grille de protection : 3 x Textorm 12cm – LDLC.fr à 1,90€ pièce
  • Rhéobus : Akasa AK-FC-03 – RueDuCommerce.fr à 37,5€
• Set d’insonorisation : produit par Rue Du Commerce dispo chez eux à 19,95
• Boîtier sur mesure en plaques de plexiglass découpées (dimensions LxPxH : 28cm x 28cm x 20cm)

Je vous ferai un retour dès que je m’en serai servi un peu plus.

Stay tuned

Part. 2 – laptop – mobilité et autonomie avant tout

Rappel des objectifs :

• Mobile : petit et léger
• Autonomie : au moins 3h en utilisation maximum
• Communicant : une connectivité complète, c’est à dire : Ethernet, Wifi-G, 3G+/ Edge, BlueTooth, USB
• Confortable un minimum : donc pas de diagonale d’écran en dessous de 9″
• Pas cher : moins de 400€
• Système d’exploitation Linux : donc se faire rembourser Windows si besoin

J’attends déjà de recevoir et monter mon Desktop avant de m’attaquer au PC portable … comptez quelques semaines. Je publierais un nouvel article en faisant référence à celui-ci.

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I recently got this gaming mouse from OCZ called, “Behemoth” seen here. It was to replace Logitech MX600 (MX3200 combo version) as it was double-clicking a lot (left and right buttons) in CoD 4.

The reason I was looking at OCZ mice was due to their price. Behemoth can be had for under $30CAD, and it was the best in their lineup. I read several reviews and decided to go for it. It was either this or the Eclipse, the other OCZ mouse.

Here’s the spec:

	2-Way Scroll wheel
	Buttons: Std. 5 + 1 dpi Toggle Switch
	Hot Key: 1 Mode Switch
	Dimensions: (L)118mm x (W)71mm x (H)44mm
	Weight: up to 159g (adjustable)
	DPI: 800-1600-2400-3200
	4-way changing LED display
	Tracking speed: 60IPS
	Acceleration: 50G
	MCU: On board Memory
	Programmable Functions for Keyboard Command saving
	18g Customizable weights
	Interface: USB 2.0 / Full speed
	Includes Customization Software
	2-year warranty* Special Features:
	Programmable buttons
	LED display for dpi change
	Unique large ergonomic form factor for ultimate comfort
	Adjustable cable positioning for ultimate gaming flexibility
	5 Customizable weights (23g)
	Mode change button to maximze macro configurations
	Black rubberized surface for a no-slip grip

It’s got more DPI than the Eclipse and some reviews said that it was more comfortable once you get used to grabbing it right.

I ordered from NCIX.ca (comparable to Newegg in US). Price-matched it with the price from DirectCanada. (I also ordered a router, ASUS WL-520gU at the same time) Shopping process was all good. Arrived from BC to ON in two business day. I opened the package and tested it.

What I noticed (likes and dislikes):

• It was bigger than any other mice I’ve owned and a little awkward at first to grab. I am now used to it and all is good.
• The braided cable can be routed in six different paths, which is great for my setup. Routing the cable to the left side-top works perfect for me.
• LEDs are too bright, but no biggie.
• Included software is nice and simple.
• The main three button have a nice feel to them. The tactile feedback is nice.
• This may be due to my cheap mouse pad, but sometimes (rarely), the cursor moves on its own and/or jerky, especially at high DPI. If/when I get a decent mouse pad, I’ll update this issue.
• The number one problem I have is with the left side ‘back-forward’ buttons. They are hard to press as the buttons are nowhere near smooth as my previous mouse Logitech MX600. I got used to the stiffness somewhat by now, but still would’ve preferred it to be smooth.

Those were my main observations. It is a good mouse overall, especially for the price. The value is undeniably good.