Here’s a teaser shot of the hardware. I’m going to try to do a proper build log this weekend

I have to confess that doing a follow up to one of my most watched episodes ever was a bit of a daunting task. I’ve slaved away at this guide since I’ve had my hands on the appropriate hardware, and I think that it’s worlds better than the first one. We give some real settings that people can dial in and use as a starting point for their own overclocking efforts, and I think we’ve done a better job of keeping things accessible for people who are just starting out.

I really hope you enjoy the Core i5 P55 overclocking guide!

I know everyone and their dog has tried to search for “free image resizing application”, “free anti virus”, “free file recovery” etc and been subjected to the entire malware arsenal of the entire internet (just don’t search for free smileys whatever you do).

Well I thought I’d share an undelete software that seems to be fairly simple to use, works under vista 64-bit, and is completely free. Enjoy: http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/

I haven’t tested it extensively, but it helped me restore some videos that I accidently deleted from the SD card in my camera.

Well, I’ve been a die-hard wireless user for a lot of years now. It’s been a bit of a love-hate relationship. When I was going to UBC wireless was an essential part of my day and fairly reliable. They have an excellent network there and with a decent wireless card you can walk around campus with a laptop in front you and browse the net.

Not that I ever did that.

As many of the people who game with me on a regular basis know, I’ve been having a lot of trouble with wireless in my home. I’ve tried 3 different routers and about 1/2 a dozen different wireless adapters (USB, PCI, PCIe) over the last year or so and I just can’t find something that works consistently. Either my connection always sorta sucks, or it’s really good, then just totally craps out for 2-3 minutes at a time. It can be very disruptive if the tank shows up while I’m sitting there teleporting around because my ping is 900ms.

So I bought one of these (by the way there’s a smoking deal coming on these in the next sale or two).

The instructions are basically “plug them into the wall, then plug an ethernet cable into them, but make sure you don’t plug into a power bar or it might cause interference”. I was like “Okay. That’s pretty simple”. I unplugged the power bar for the family computer, threw the powerline unit into position on that side, ran over, plugged it into my switch and the wall on my side and…. nothing. No network connection. Turns out the power bar I unplugged on the family PC end also had the router plugged into it. I’ll be needing that. So after I corrected that mistake I could see all the computers on the other side of the powerline network, but still no internet access. A quick reboot resolved that and now I’m golden.

For a little over $50, it’s nothing short of a miracle.  Transfer speeds are absolutely dismal, but since I don’t need gigabit to that side of the network anyway, I don’t really care. The gigabit switch on my side (pictured below) connects me to my girlfriend’s computer and the Windows Home Server. On the other side is just the media PC and the family PC to which 2-3MB/s is fine.

This is one of those projects that clearly isn’t worth the time I’ve already invested, but it’s more of a “can it be done” adventure than a practical thing. I got my hands on an eVGA 790i board that was damaged in a shipping accident. There’s no insurance, there’s no warranty (eVGA won’t put on a new slot for me), so I’m left to my own devices here. I tested the motherboard and it works fine with a PCI video card, but not with a PCIe video card in either of the other slots. I get an error message telling me to move my video card to the top slot (I wish) for non-SLI operation.

Here’s my first attempt at removing a PCIe 16x slot from a 680i donor board. I figured if I torched it I might be able to remove it in one piece with all pins attached. Also I was hoping the pins would be relatively clean for re-insertion into the 790i board. It worked very well except for that fact that the slot bent from the heat while I was removing it.

Then I tried a more brute force approach and simply ripped off a PCIe slot. I’m currently in the process of re-pinning this one using pins from the other two that I tried to torch off.

As for the 790i board, well, I’m going to have to get pretty creative when it comes to removing the pin nubbs that are left over. If anyone’s got any ideas, I’m open to them. Right now it looks like what I’ll need is an incredibly fine soldering tip, and then something else to poke through and make a hole. Once I do every hole that way, I should be able to insert the new slot and solder it from the back. Wish me luck… I’m not exactly skilled with a soldering iron so the temptation is obviously also there to just run the board with PCIe video in some sort of “non-gaming” machine like the girlfriend’s sister’s media PC or something… It kinda kills me to use a 790i and DDR3 for something like that though………

This was the second most stressful tech tips I’ve ever filmed. The most stressful one was the first one where I had no idea what I was doing pretty much.

That should give you some idea what sort of things stress me out… Haha.

These CPUs are samples from AMD, so breaking them at least doesn’t cost the company money, but it’s a matter of personal pride that I’ve never damaged a CPU beyond usability, even though I did run one through the wash once, and I did drop this entire tray of OEM parts on the floor (that’s how the pin got bent in the first place). The 720 Black Edition is working awesome and I think you’ll find this short & unexpected edition of NCIX Tech Tips quite enjoyable.

This thing is really cool. I have so many random computer components lying around that I find it hard to imagine that I could *want* to use anything other than a computer for media, but I won’t be moving a media PC into the bedroom of my new place. This little DivX player uses smart server software from DivX that is really easy to configure, the GUI is fast, the streaming over wireless G for my moderate bitrate files is excellent, and the device is so small you can practically tuck it into a corner and forget about it.

It easily detects which outputs you’re using, and I’ve tried it with HDMI, component, and composite using an older Samsung 21″ widescreen LCD. I’ve got it playing (over wired, haven’t tested wireless yet) MKV files in both 720p and 1080p, although only lower bitrate 1080p files are supported by the device. There seems to be quite a community following for this thing and it took all of about 30 minutes of set up (physical + software) and googling around to get it working great. It’s a lot better than building a PC…

Tech Tips upcoming, but here’s how to get it working with MKV. I’m using the latest connector software (1.5) and the instructions work fine even though they’re written for 1.4.

It looks like they don’t have a “warranty void if removed sticker” on this drive, so one of the first things I did was open it up, but it’s taken me unti now to get around to posting it up.

As you can see it’s 100% Samsung inside. It seems like kind of a strange branding exercise that Corsair would call their own drive out as “Samsung”, since Samsung is not only a supplier, but also a competitor. I guess it’s not that different from Kingston calling out their drives as “Intel”. Speaking of Intel, we’ll be covering a couple of the Intel SSD drives in an upcoming Tech Tips, so stay tuned!!

Well the new NCIX Tech Tips is here. We didn’t have any samples to work with until only a few days before the retail launch, so we’ve spent a lot of time playing with these chips, researching online, and putting together this overclocking guide for the Core i7.

It’s not as in-depth as I would necessarily like, but at 8 minutes long it’s already a bit of a heavyweight. The white board I had in front of me looked like some of my calculus lectures!

….. With some modifications. Here is a picture of the RAM Freezer 4 on top of a Gigabyte EX58-EXTREME motherboard with all of the DIMM slots populated.

As you can see, if you are running 3 modules in tri-channel, the RAM Freezer 4 is just wide enough to be able to get RAM spreaders on both sides, but you will need to remove the material in the middle of the RAM Freezer 4 in order to get a RAM spreader on the middle module. Overall with a Dremel the mod should not be very complicated and should not affect the structural integrity of the RAM Freezer.