A Tale Of Two Logitechs

The "W" and "Left Shift" keys have stopped responding on the Logitech G15 (top pic) possibly from my Dead Island marathon over the weekend...

After mulling several alternatives, I finally settled on the Logitech New Touch (bottom pic)...

I know the replacement seems a little spartan in terms of it's feature set as compared to the G15 which still retails for 11 times more than the New Touch, but all I need know is a functioning WASD cluster and a "Left Shift" key...

Over the years that I had the G15 I probably used the LCD twice and the macro keys in no more than five occasions. Therefore, I will have no problems adjusting to a keyboard without those features...

Hahahahaha!!! PC Gaming Fail!!!

That’s a lot of JPY just for one game!!!

Pocket Goodness…

After a brief chat with tech-guru, Ian Ho of “Life is Good! : The chronicles of a gadget freak” fame, I decided to go out and get myself a new pocket toy!!!

 

Now all I have to do is order that extra battery and I can run a portable hotspot for 5 hours!!! More than enough for a trip to Penang!!!

Another Little Purchase…

I picked up a Steelseries headset with a 7.1 USB sound card yesterday afternoon as I was tired of shopping for a set of speakers that are small enough to be placed in the mini home office…

An interesting thing to note about the USB sound card is that although the box or the website does not say that it will work with Windows 7, it does work… There were no issues with the driver installation and I have not experienced any form of weirdness so far…

The 7.1 mode works well with games and seems to be easier to set up under Windows 7 compared to the 7.1 mode of the Asus Xonar D2X pci-e card… So far I’ve tested it with Resident Evil 5 and COD 5 and they both sound great… Movies seem to have benefited from my little purchase as well as they sound awesome (note: all except for the Dolby Digital Night Mode which sounds a little muddled even though it is supposed to make the speech more distinct)… Overall I highly recommended purchase if you are willing to drop RM 350.00 – RM 400.00!!! 

Nothingness…

Switched over to Windows 7 x64 and noticed that your Logitech G15 lcd panel and profile keys no longer work??? Frustrated that you can’t use the Vista x64 drivers even in compatibility mode???

Well fret no more as you can use the solution found here!!!

Parts Update (Part 5)…

Just a few days shy of a month from the previous parts update and I have added something new to my desktop…

What did I buy this time???

Well I got myself one of these!!!

What will I buy after this???

Multiple Offers…

OK… Its decided then, if I can get my hands on a Q9550 at the Digital Mall tomorrow, then I will sell my Q9400 to one of the individuals that made an offer for the same this afternoon…

Choices…

Would you consider the following pc for your day to day web surfing, instant messaging and an occasional game or two???

Part	Price (RM)
CORE 2 DUO E7400 2.80 1066 3MB	395
GIGABYTE EG41M-ES2L | G41 | D2-SVGL	200
LG SATA 22 x DVD-RW	75
2 x 2GB KINGSTON PC 800 DDR 2	200
WESTERN D. 320GB	155
SAPPHIRE HD4650 1GD2-128 650 800	210
TAGAN STONE ROCK 500W APFC 80+	289
ATX CASING	90
Total (RM)	1614

Or would it be a little excessive and would the following alternative be a better choice???

Part	Price (RM)
DUAL CORE E6300 2.80 800 2MB	285
GIGABYTE EG41M-ES2L | G41 | D2-SVGL	200
LG SATA 22 x DVD-RW	75
2 x 2GB KINGSTON PC 800 DDR 2	200
WESTERN D. 320GB	155
SAPPHIRE HD4650 1GD2-128 650 800	210
TAGAN STONE ROCK 500W APFC 80+	289
ATX CASING	90
Total (RM)	1504

Let me know what you think (I need to keep the budget below RM 1650)…

A Plausible Alternative…

In my previous post, I was contemplating giving my desktop some bells and whistles by adding a NZXT Sentry LX fan controller… The reason I even thought about it was something Calvinzzz said…

“If you gonna build something, might as well make it kurang ajar”

(Trust me, he not only preaches the above, but lives it as well… How many households do you know of that has a purpose built router costing RM 1k+???)

I was about to plonk down the RM 2++ for the fan controller when, Tech and Gadget Supremo, Ian Ho of Life is Good!: The Chronicles of a Gadget Freak, suggested that I look at the fan controllers that Zalman had to offer instead as they not only had better features (shows power consumption) but they just scream “sexy”!!!

And he was right!!!

After browsing the Zalman offerings, I now have my heart set on the fan controller shown above…  Now if only I can track down a unit by this weekend… Hmmm…

Should I???

Should I pimp my desktop with a NZXT Sentry LX fan controller??? Hmmm…

Desktop Specs…

After all the upgrades, here’s the specs of the desktop…

Q9400 @ 3.8 ghz

Gigabyte EP45-UD3R Motherboard

LG DVD R/RW Combo Drive

320 WD Blue hdd

HIS ATI Radeon 4890 GDDR5 1gb

Belkin Wireless G Desktop Card

KIngston Hyper X DDR2 8500 4gb (2x2gb kit)

Cooler Master Hyper N520 cpu cooler

Gigabyte Odin Pro 800w

Zalman 120mm 2000 rpm fan x 2

Coolermaster Elite 333 Casing

Vista Home Premium 32-bit

I wonder how long it will be before I amend the current setup again…

Parts Update (Part 4)…

As I was a little worried about the power requirements of the new add-on’s, I went shopping today and got a new psu… I did my homework beforehand and it was basically, I had to make a choice between a Gigabyte Odin Pro 800w (Modular), Xigmatek 750w (Modular) and OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w (Modular) psu… All of which are “80 plus certified” and have garnered sterling reviews from many enthusiasts websites…

In the end, I chose the Gigabyte Odin Pro 800w (Modular) psu over the two others based simply upon the fact that the price per watt was the cheapest…

Besides, I managed to get a discount on this one instead of the other two…

Here are some pics before the install…

 

Thanks to Calvinzzz, the new psu has been shoehorned into my desktop while the loaner unit has been returned to KevinMYUS…

Now that the psu has been upgraded, it should be enough to last me for a few more upgrades… I wonder what I will add on next??? Hmmm…

SF IV Benchmark…

Here’s a benchmark with SF IV…

Note: All settings are on max and the resolution is set to 1440 x 900. Please also note that v-sync is also off and that the benchmark was running in windowed mode.

Far Cry 2 Benchmarks – Repost…

It appears that when I first posted the benchmarks, the pictures became distorted after clicking on them… Therefore, here is a repost of the final results of the benchmarks…

Parts Update (Part 3)…

I totally forgot to check the power requirements when I got the 4890, it seems that 500w is the bare minimum and that became known to me when I started getting warning messages all over the place!!! Thankfully due to a swap with KevinMYUS, I’m back on track with a slightly more powerful psu…

So it is fair to say that the following benchmark was made possible by KevinMYUS heheheheh…

Parts Update (Part 2)…

As you know, I recently put together a desktop and its my first ever non-prebuilt system…

And not too long after, I updated the parts a bit, in the bid to get more enjoyment out of my little system… After that little update in May, I managed to keep my desktop related purchases to a minimum (gaming peripherals, mice and speakers don’t count ok) and that has garnered massive approval from the wife… Well after behaving for 2 months, I made another upgrade… What did I upgrade???

The graphics card!!! I swapped out the Sapphire HD4850 DDR3 512mb for a HIS Radeon 4890 DDR5 1024mb!!!

Here are some benchmarks with Far Cry 2…

In addition to the above, I’ll try to get my hands on the RE5 benchmark and post an update as soon as possible… Till then I guess I’ll ponder what I’ll update next…

Time For A Revo-lution???

Guess what I saw when I walked past All IT yesterday???

An Acer Aspire Revo (R3600-A23X)!!!

The Revo was previously reviewed on Gizmodo and it presents itself as an alternative to the Asus Eeebox… Both are at similar price points and would complement any home media setup nicely (up to 720p media of course)…

I guess you are probably wondering if I am itching to get one…

Well I have to admit that it is pretty nice, but I already have a refurbished desktop from the times of yore running as a media centre so, I guess I’ll skip the purchase…

I’ll just wait till the end of the year for a netbook with 7 on it before I make another computer related purchase…

System Instability…

Wasted the past 2 nights trying to fix the weird system crashes on the desktop caused by upgrading to the new catalyst drivers… First it made the Catalyst Control Centre (CCC) disappear, then I got weird status messages that said “the currently installed gpu is not supported by this driver version”, then it started crapping out when I did anything graphically intensive… The came the fun part, uninstalling the CCC!!!

Firstly, I couldn’t uninstall it because I didn’t have the so called “administrative” privileges to end the “MOM.exe” process… Because I needed to end the process so that the application was not in use… Then, when I ended the process, the ati-something dll file that was required for the un-installation was not found and once again I couldn’t delete anything from the ati folder because I didn’t have the required permissions (which was weird as I was logged into the admin account)…

So I had to boot into safe mode as the damn ati drivers are not loaded and then uninstall and remove everything there… Then I had to use a registry cleaner to remove all the registry entries and then reinstall the ati drivers when I reboot the system…

Then I installed the 9.4 drivers with the CCC and things looked fine until I got a weird “CCC has closed unexpectedly due to an error from an unsupported gpu. Please check the driver version”…

KNN so I had to remove everything again ala the steps above and then reinstall the drivers that came with the card… Everything is fine now but the drivers are at least 6 months old… Sigh… Looks like I will have to lose some of the new features of the CCC and contend with this for the sake of stability… So much for the newer the better eh???

Hmmm Quite Some Way To Go Yet…

At a mild 10% overclock, the 4850’s performance has increased by a fair bit but its still no 4870… Perhaps if I overclocked it by another 10%… Would that bridge the gap??? Hmmm…

i7 920 Desktop VS Q9400 Desktop???

In light of the current market situation, I guess it would be viable to put off buying that entry level i7 and putting the money on a much cheaper mid range Q9400…