Nothing really to brag about compared to some systems here but I've just upgraded both my machines to 8GB RAM from 4GB each. Only just booted them so haven't had time to see any difference, if I will see any difference. I noticed the SSD I put in my Win10 machine a couple of months ago straight away though.
SSD's are quite the upgrade! So I mentioned wanting a new monitor previously in this thread. Ended up going with the XB240H a few months ago and I'm so glad I did! 144Hz is AMAZING for CSGO and G-Sync is pure magic (no, I don't cap CSGO at 144fps)! I've also recently traded my Moto 360 I won for a 250Gb 850 evo. I currently have a RAID 0 array setup in my desktop with that and my 250Gb 840 evo. Despite seeing over 1GB/s read AND write in benchmarks, I don't notice any difference. So the 840 evo is going to go in my laptop once I feel like breaking the array in my desktop and clean installing that. Additionally, I've finally settled on all of my overclocks! CPU (4770k): 4.6GHz core, 4.3GHz cache. This is 24 hour Prime 95 stable! Recently I decided to see what I could get with that OCN encoding stress test and despite my temps being really good (I'm delidded), I couldn't hit 4.7 even at 1.4v so 4.6 it is. GPU (G1 970): 1544MHz core, 3856MHz memory, 1544MHz for XBAR, SYS, and L2C, bios modded to disabled thermal throttling (that 65C throttle point is annoying). This is at 1.268v. I previously had it at 1.312v from the bios mod but was only able to hit one extra multiplier (1559) and it just dumped a huge amount of heat into my room. Dialed back the core clock and was able to lower the voltage a pretty respectable amount and my 'secondary' clocks are stable at the matching core clock frequency whereas they were only stable at around 1329MHz previously, iirc. They don't really do much anyways but it's kinda neat. Oh and I have one of Vlad's green led PCB's in mine! RAM (16Gb Trident X 2400MHz kit): 2400MHz, 9-10-12-20 timings. Wasn't able to do too much with this but I did get it down to C9. My desktop is pretty much done as far as hardware goes. I was considering liquid cooling but I don't think I'd be able to hit any higher of an overclock on either my CPU or GPU so I've more or less decided against it (but it's soooo pretty...). I do want to do some sprucing up though. Something along the lines of sleeving my cables, painting my mobo heatsinks, and doing something with my fans. I have a few other ideas too but we'll see what happens. Other random desk related projects I've been working on have been improving my cable management and recabling my AD-700x's.
Hey! I have an MSI GT70 2PC! I just moved the 1TB 7200 RPM HDD to a USB3 enclosure and put in a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB--far faster and much more battery time.
Nice, wish I saved up for a larger SSD. How often do you use your optical drive? I replaced it cause I don't even use it once a month.
I just installed it a few months ago; it was under $100. Now I can stop trying to troubleshoot why such a nice machine was sooo ~ Snipped as per TOS ~ slow! I used it to install Windows a few times. I burned a disc on it once while my desktop was being shipped with my entire household. So, pretty much never. It'd be neat if we could replace it with another battery (some other laptops did that).
My second machine has now had a heart transplant [ new SSD] and a clean Win10 installation. Wow! What a difference. I can't believe it has taken me so long to move away from a HDD.
Not much to brag about but I just got another Dell Precision Mobile Workstation... an M6600 this time to contrast my M6800. On the latter you can't really find drivers to get XP to run on it period, let alone get the most out of your hardware. So I have Win7 Ultimate x86 as my primary setup on that machine. And a setup with Win7 Ultimate x64 on another mSATA card to slip in & out to take advantage of the 16 gigs of RAM (@1867) and graphics. But I can find plenty of XP drivers for the M6600 so I'll be able to run it on there. I'll feel I have much more privacy on this machine with XP with Debian as Guest than with a Win7 host. Or even XP within XP. It has a Core i7 2860QM CPU. It's only 2'nd gen though and my i5 (4'th gen) actually beats it soundly with only a 2.7 to 2.5 ghz advantage. I have 8 GB of RAM in it right now... the regular Kingston RAM I took out of my M6800 when I got it to add 16 GB of Kingston Hyper X. No use at this point of having more than 4 gigs as I'm running XPosReady Pro, but I went with a quad core CPU so I could use all 4 slots later on if I want to upgrade. Or if only just to make it more attractive to sell later on by filling all the slots and putting Win10 on it or something. Though I may do that with the 6800 now. I'm pondering it but right now I'm using both for different purposes. This mobile PC is very privacy oriented. I only put an Nvidia Quadro 2000M (2GB) on it as this won't be used for gaming. The 6800 will be, and I found that if I wanna upgrade that video card it's much cheaper to find it on EBay than to buy it with the box (I bought that one new from Dell). I would've cost over $1000 more for the Quadro K5100M, but I saw a new one on EBay for $450 bucks. I almost pulled the trigger. But I don't really do high end gaming. But if I'd have known them what I know now (that I'd get a M6600 too) I'd have gotten it to add value to sell it later on if for nothing else. These are nice machines, I really like them. I have a Samsung 850 EVO mSATA as the primary drive in this one too. Though in the BIOS it's actually like the 4'th drive, listed as "MiniCard". I have only drives 1 & 4 enabled (1 = DVD/RW drive). The cost of a Blu-Ray RW was absurd.
My hw swap regimen usually occurs every ~5 years. Last hw setup I had was an i3-530, 4gb memory and a HDD. Today I have an i5-4690k (@4.4 ghz) 8gb memory and an SSD. Quite snappy. (same computer case, the excellent Antec P182!)
My son has a 5 year old Dell laptop. 750 GB HD. Win10. We removed the HD and DVD drive, put the HD in a caddy and installed the caddy where the DVD used to be. Installed a 120 GB SSD where the HD used to be. The Win10 image was restored to the SSD and the Win10 partition was deleted from the HD. The HD will be used for large games/data/backups. He's happy with the performance gain.
I love the way you can boost the performance by several hundred % by simply replacing the HDD with an SSD. That's a good decision!
Got a cheap Macbook, and tried upgrading RAM from Chromebook. It was more difficult than I thought, but ended up with 6 GB on each. MacBook (13-inch, Late 2009) [13" 1280x800]: Intel Core 2 Duo P7550 @ Dual-core 2.26GHz 6 GB DDR3 1333 250 GB HDD NVIDIA GeForce 9400M @ 256 MB VRAM
Job pays well, tax-free savings for the year is pretty much set, so... Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge SM-G35W8 [5.5" 1440x2560] Quad-core 2.3 GHz Mongoose + quad-core 1.6 GHz Cortex-A53 4 GB RAM 32 GB Internal Storage + 64 GB UHS-1 U3 microSD Mali-T880 MP12 ASUS ZenWatch 2 WI501Q [1.63" 320x320] Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 512 MB RAM 4 GB Internal Storage Adreno 305
Again, no supercomputer, but I've just bought a cheap laptop and the third thing I did after trying Linux Mint, then activating Win10 on it was replace the HDD with a new SSD, then did a clean Win10 install. I've just put 8GB RAM in it and WOW!!! It only has a teeny Intel Celeron N2840 @ 2.16GHz but it is running pretty fast now.
Earlier in the summer I purchased a second 250Gb 850 Evo. I originally wanted to dual boot Kubuntu and Windows but I had so many problems getting Kubuntu to work that I just decided I'd run it in a VM for dev work. Ended up RAID-0'ing the SSDs. I'm considering getting a second kit of the RAM I have for 32Gb total but not sure I really need it and it could maybe make my CPU OC unstable due to more load on the IMC. Picked up a GS7 (non-edge) as well. It solves darn near every gripe I had with my GS4.
Just bought a NUC6i7KYK Skull Canyon mini computer. i7-6770HQ Iris Pro Graphics 580 Samsung 950 Pro 512GB PCIe Kingston HyperX DDR4 2133 2x8GB This runs very well. I was playing BF3 on high settings with no problems. I know that's not a high graphic intensity game, but still not bad. HDTach shows the ssd is pretty fast.
Based on time and money, I would love to start putting this together... MB: MSI Z170A Tomahawk AC Case: Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-02 Mid Tower with Two Corsair AF120 LED High Airflow fans (Red) PSU: Corsair RM850X (850W, Fully Modular, 80+ Gold Certified) OD: LG Internal Super Multi Drive GH24NSC0B CPU: Intel Core I7-6700K 4.00 GHz 8M Processor (LGA 1151) with a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO Cooler RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB DDR4 DRAM 2666MHz (PC4-21300) - CMK32GX4M4A2666C16 SSD: Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB SATA 3 2.5-Inch (Main) - SHSS37A/240G HDD: Seagate 500GB BarraCuda SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache 3.5-Inch (Secondary) - ST500DM009 GPU: MSI RX 480 DDR5 8GB CrossFire VR Ready FinFET DirectX 12 Graphics Card OS: Windows 10 Home 64bit
Solid build. A few things, though. You can get by with a much lower wattage psu if you want to save a bit. Something in the 500w range would suffice. Second, 3000MHz/C15 DDR4 seems to be the optimal speed (iirc) where after, there is very little/no change in most benchmarks (other than synthetic raw read/write speeds). Since you're already building a fairly high end system, I'd splurge on the faster ram. While it might only get you maybe 1 or 2 higher average fps, it can help increase your minimum fps and decrease frame time variation. Lastly, you can get 1Tb drives for the same price.
Thank you for all the recommendations, I'll take a look at other options for the RAM, PSU and Hard Drive. Much appreciated
One of my laptops recently died so I've replaced it with this: http://support.hp.com/au-en/document/c05298765 Intel Core i5-6400T 16GB DDR4-2133 AMD Radeon R5 330 - 2GB Etc
I have a little work station with specifications: i76700/MSI GTX960/16gb DDR4 @2400MHz...and an anemic 400 watt PSU. Lenovo can be evil when it comes to upgrading anything but the no-name PSU has GOT to go. The motherboard temperature is always 10 deg C hotter than CPU's and there was severe electronic hum from the HDD storage drive. So a serious PSU (bronze or silver 600 watt) and a non-99cent store surge protector. Currently, I have only a 110 gb SSD connected running W10 latest. Very nice.
Speccy tells me my new GPU is running at 511°C!! That was a bit scary. A quick Google search shows I'm not alone. AMD Radeon R5 330 - 2GB
