2016121201

I actually walked out the door of Micro Center today spending less than I orginally planned to.  I made my order on-line to be purchased and picked up and paid for at the customer service desk.  I believe that they have this program because it's usually the quick way compared to waiting in line to check out.  So, I ended up purchasing an expansion graphics processing unit, internal Blu-Ray drive, 39in of SATA data cable and some heat sink compound for when I attach the heat sink with the new CPU.  Here in my office, I come to find that I already have enough of that compound, but Micro Center isn't around the corner and I wasn't sure when I was in the store.  So, I didn't feel like going back tomorrow.

But I also have a new motherboard and 16GB of memory now.  The only things that aren't making this a new computer are several expansion cards, the 4 hard disks and 1 of the DVD drives.  Those are minor expenses compared to the motherboard, RAM and CPU.  It's like it's getting a new heart, but the brain stays the same.

This was all brought to me by old hardware and a Windows 10 upgrade.  If all goes well, maybe later this week, I'll get to see how Google Earth runs.  I want to see how much cache memory it allots and how the NCTA GIS Repository performs.

When it comes to CPU's, there's AMD and Intel.  AMD's are cheaper, but when I had them, they'd lag sometimes.  Gamer's like them, but I'm more clerical.  My laptop has ran AMD for years and there hasn't been a problem with how it runs.  My information on that lag could be years out of date, so I'm at the very least, I'm just an Intel guy out of loyalty.

About that Windows 10 upgrade on old hardware, recently, the operating system has been reporting my available RAM, or memory as being much lower than what's physically installed.  As per the diagnostic method, my conclusion just came to be that the motherboard can no longer process it's memory under the new operating system.  And my previous Windows Vista was no longer supporting certain things.  That's what caused that reluctant upgrade.

The bright side of this is that I'm also upgrading from a 32 to a 64bit system.  In theory, that should speed things up.  With that, my current CPU is an Intel Core 2 Quad on the old LGA 775 pin.  That socket was used for some of the Pentium 4 CPU's.  So, 8 years ago, I purchased the slow quad core.  Now Intel i5 quad core is mid grade and the motherboard can upgrade to the faster i7.  Whereas my current motherboard was "locked in," as in it was the fastest CPU that it could handle.

If I can get by 8 years and not had to upgrade these until now... well, it's not exactly the 90's where something goes obsolete the moment you buy a part.  But, I was a computer repairman and I've kept this machine running really well, despite it's bloated and former Windows Vista operating system.  But it's also has one whole hard disk almost committed exclusively to it.

"Bloated" refers to the file sizes in the Windows directory of the main hard disk.  If they're bigger, then those larger file sizes would have to come off the drive (a lesser limited resource), through the memory (a limited resource) and into the CPU (also a limited resource).  Windows XP came out at about 1.5GB.  It's Service Pack 2 is somewhere over 3GB.  Vista was about 6Gb.  When Vista came out, the price of RAM sticks skyrocketed.  Windows 8 and 10 are supposed to have a lesser footprint because first, they finally answered their critics and second, they're based on Microsoft's smartphone operating system.

Around here, The Robot has been notoriously difficult to configure.  I'd say it's a real fight sometimes and that end of it never lets up.  But once settled, it's been a stable machine.  I've been satisfied with the current motherboard and CPU.  But after 8 years, the current CPU is reaching it's 10 year estimated end of life anyways.