Decided to mess around with some overclocking.

[NightShade]

@Cowcatcher Fps is frames per second. It's how fast video can be displayed on a screen from a graphics card. Handbrake is a program to process video files to a different format and quality.

But hey if you guys want to learn a little bit I can show you a few things. It's not that hard really.

 

[BReeves]

For years we were all happy with a 640 X 480 image displayed at 30FPS.

 

[NightShade]

I was pushing to get away from that really early on, it was not long before I was pushing 800X600.

I would actually say that for years we were struggling with 640X480 at 30FPS. I actually have one of the old 3D only cards that had an in cable that came from the onboard graphics.

 

[Snattlerake]

Ya'all lost me when my 386 was squashed by a 486 then a Pentium squashed that.

 

[NightShade]

LOL, first IBM based computer was a 496 DX2 66Mhz with a whopping 8MB of ram and a 500MB HDD. It wasn't long before I was upgrading to 16MB of ram and buying an overdrive cpu that was running 100 Mhz.

When I started building my own stuff I built a Super Socket 7 that was an AMD based system. Ended up moving and some stuff happened in the move. A "friend" picked things up for me and stored it for a few weeks till I could get back. One of their kids stole stuff out of my system, threw in a crappy cpu and took half the ram.

For a long while I was basically getting used computers and fixing them to have something. I finally built something out in 2004 or 2005 from a new to me board and cpu. Guy had flashed the bios and killed it so I bought it for a song. Contacted the OEM and for 5 bucks they sent me a replacement BIOS chip and with some Ram I had it up and running. Pissed him off something fierce and I have no clue why. Had bought two boards from him and he said I should ignore the one that had the cpu. Later on bought a processor for the other board and started using it. Till around 2007 I had never bought a brand new MoBo, I always picked up used stuff. I still have the board and cpu as well. Abit AN78HD and a Phenom 9500 cpu. Thing still runs and later on I picked up a GTX550TI when I helped a friend pick out a GPU for her system. I actually often work for parts when doing upgrades.

When I head to Tuscon I will probably take my FX 8350 along and end up selling it to my father. He will have a huge upgrade from his Core2 Quad 9550 with onbaord graphics.

 

[O4L]

Heck I don't even have the nerve to try and jailbreak a phone so I sure don't know anything about hot rodding a computer.

I've added RAM and changed out a hard drive or two but that is about it.

Have you thought about building a bitcoin mining setup?

 

[Tanis143]

Heck I don't even have the nerve to try and jailbreak a phone so I sure don't know anything about hot rodding a computer.

I've added RAM and changed out a hard drive or two but that is about it.

Have you thought about building a bitcoin mining setup?

If you have done that much building a pc from the ground up isn't any harder. And to get a decent bitcoin setup you need at least 12 machines running 24/7 with a high end graphics card to get maybe a coin every few months. We're talking several dedicated power outlets, racks, networking, etc.

 

[SPDguns]

The clock on my VCR keeps flashing "12:00". Can you help me?

 

[NightShade]

I was crypto mining for a little while. Right now there is no money in it unless you have some dedicated stuff and a lot of money to risk. I looked and I still have about 300 bucks in crypto but I will probably end up spending that before too long. I do have 3 GTX 1080's that I basically bought for about 25.00 each when you figure my electric cost at the time and I will run them during the winter months since my place is all electric anyway and heat is heat. But unless you have a bunch to invest it's really hard to get in to right now and keeping things cool is the worst part of it all. If I had a house and a bunch of solar panels and some wind generators it would be a different story though.

But I agree, building a computer is honestly pretty easy. Installing the OS takes a little bit and if you work with something like my server it's a lot harder but there is no reason to buy a computer if you can work on a car or a firearm. With a little help and guidance the first build can be pretty easy. After that it's a walk in the park. Where most people need help is setting up the network and deciding what parts to get. Then when it comes time to have a place to store all the important stuff you really should have some help. Anyone can put it together but it takes some knowledge to make it work well. But once they are up and running it's not hard to keep it going and most of the time require minimal intervention anyway.

I was actually talking with someone else recently about building a computer vs buying an Alienware. When Dell bought Alienware out they became another OEM box which honestly means they are crippled. OEM's will not let you upgrade things to the max because there is no money in it so the best that is available then is all you can get. Later on when the next gen stuff comes out they are not going to release an update that will allow you to upgrade the CPU. My board supports up to 128GB of ram and even though it is a last gen board it will support this years brand new CPU and very likely next years. An OEM will often limit you to a certain maximum speed of RAM and not only that I have had boards reject ram that isn't the exact speed they support even though it can be ran at the slower speed. HP is so bad that I have a laptop that I can't upgrade the wifi card in even though it is a HP card because it wasn't on the BIOS whitelist. It's just like the post a few weeks ago about tractors that can't be worked on because the OEM doesn't release the tools or software. The parts themselves might cost a little more to build it yourself but honestly what you get when you are all done building your own computer is much better than what most OEM's can do. And you can do it over time. One of the things I always say is buy the best motherboard you can afford, two sticks of ram and a decent CPU. Later on double the ram and upgrade the CPU then buy a cheap board and some ram and drop the old cpu in there and give it to someone else. My wife's mother has an AMD Phenom X4 965 and the motherboard, case, ram, and power supply I bought for it cost me about 150.00 Her computer is still better than what a lot of people buy at Walmart.

The clock on my VCR keeps flashing "12:00". Can you help me?

Sure can, it's called a piece of electrical tape or better yet some spray paint. Permanent fix right there. But yeah I was the one who fixed that for a lot of people too. I am sure I could set it to the correct time.

 

[SPDguns]

Lemme help you guys:

Alienware= Area 51
Dell= Where the farmer lives
HP= high performance
Ram= highly sought after Colorado game animal.
Motherboard= what hits your a$$ when you act up as a kid. Also known as "Fatherboard" when he gets home from work
Power supply= Chevy small block
CPU= Chevy pick up
OEM= Only eat meat
OS= oh shi++!