I’ve been running an “iBuyPower” machine here for the last couple of years. It’s not a bad machine at all – with a couple of issues. This particular machine was probably only $500 and was designated as an entry level gaming machine when I bought it. Of course what *I* use it for is a bit different – coding, web dev, Photoshop, email, search engine results tracking – usually a crap load of apps will be open at any time. It also drives 3 monitors – now THIS whole setup IS nothing but pure, unadulterated GEEK-SAUCE 🙂
This box is based on an ASRock N68-VS3 UCC mobo. Originally equipped with a dual core proc (don’t remember the speed) but boosted it to a 6-core AMD Phenom II X6 1045T around Christmas time 2012. Also went from 4GB of RAM to 8 GB RAM at the same time. And that was nice… but…
Getting a little slow and..
The box keeps popping USB connectors like nobody’s business. The ASRock N68 has lost the front USB connectors, the audio in the front no longer works. I’ve had to resort to a USB adapter box to get enough USB ports to run all my attachments – and I’m NOT crazy with them. A couple printers, iPhone, keyboard and mouse. One more dead USB and I’m dead in the water. Say nothing about my little Lenovo tablet PC and occasional other connections. And seeing some drag when changing apps, virtual desktops and all that. Since I just finished a 100 page site for a company – ka-ching!!!! – it was time to look at upgrading to something a little stronger.
As well, I use a small battery of machines behind me to run general SEO programs. Checking rankings, boosting rankings, hunting proxies so “my buddy” Google doesn’t kill my IP off while CHECKING all these client website positions. I guess they probably do need to draw the line somewhere or there would be nothing but seo people tying up their search engine servers, but truthfully, doing it as they do and slapping up reCaptchas… Honestly, all it takes are a few proxies to check those serps. They’re still getting the same requests and having to cough up the same results, just takes a little more effort on MY part and some additional software. Probably just about the same thing as locking your front door. “Huh, window. Rock. I’m in” Just makes it a little less inviting to have to get your SERPs that way LOL and probably stops a lot of people from actually checking to see what Google has in their servers. God forbid.
Current Crop of Computer Processor Cores.
Here’s what’s actually running here (at least the “work” side of it):
- AMD Sempron 3100+ 1.8 GHz – 429 CPUmarks
- AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+ – 992 CPUmarks
- AMD Phenom II x6 1045T – 4927 CPUmarks
- *Intel i7 3770 3.4Ghz – 9449 CPUmarks
Oh yeah. Retiring #1, demoting #2 to the slower processes, pushing #3 into main position and running several virtuals most likely and stepping up to the i7 as the main box. No more drag-assing remote windows, 3 second delays on mouse clicks… About to be a very happy geek sauce boy.
So, I see a hard drive coming out of my current machine, Win 7 Pro, going into the new machine to replace that awful Win 8 OS that the new box is shipping with, repurposing the current machine to SEO row behind me and ditching, believe it or not, an 11 year old machine with a <cough> 1.8GHz AMD Sempron 3100 proc and 1.5 GB of RAM. Getting JUST a little long in the tooth. We’ll keep the dual core Ath 64 3800 back there (running Linux host OS, and XP virtuals in VirtualBox). THEN we’ll be kicking up the love that IS an i7 proc with 16 GB of DDR3 RAM running a lean and mean Win7. Not sure if I’m going to run the newly repurposed box directly or set it up with Linux and run VirtualBox XP with it. Would actually prefer to go that way, but we’ll see. I’d actually like to do a nice fresh install of Win 7 on the new machine, but that takes SOOOOOO long to do and I sort of need to keep working.
I’m drooling at just the specs on this thing – fingers crossed that it kicks as hard as what I’m expecting! Find out more here at NewEgg.com
