HP DVD Movie Writer dc4000

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This was my second attempt trying to convert my Sony Mini DV TRV-22 home movies to DVD. I initially bought a generic DVD-+RW recorded and used the USB out of the Sony to make a DVD. The quality was really bad. I did some research and it turns out that the data/signal coming out of the USB port is compressed and only suitable for VCD. The Sony does have a DV port, but my PC didn't have a DV (firewire?) input. Rather than waste more time buying additional hardware, I read a review for the dc3000 and went shopping.

For movies to be played back on a home system, HP recommends DVD+R discs. I burned my movies on DVD-R discs and they played fine on my really old DVD player (Onkyo DV-C601) with a single laser pickup and my newer JVC multi-player. From what I read online, 95% of all home DVD players should be able to play DVD-R?

Here are the pros and cons of the HP dc4000:

PRO: Easy to use and has good quality analog/digital converters (RCA style and S-Video input). Use S-Video if you have it.
PRO: Nice bundled software. I've only used Arcsoft's ShowBiz 2 for editing and burning, but I really like the product. Much better than the Sonic bundle offered with most other DVD burners.
PRO: Quite.
PRO: Works with both USB 1.1 and 2.0.

CON: The external case is painted silver and parts of it are missing some paint.
CON: Unit is heavy.
CON: Made in Malaysia.

Sony DRU-700A

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I've had this drive for about 4 days and already it made 6 coasters and 1 good disk (I am hoping). I made a mistake of backing up 4.5 GB of data to a DVD and then deleting the data from the hard drive. A couple of hours later I realized that I still needed some of the information on my computer. When I tried to copy from the DVD, the DVD drive reported that the disk was defective. You can imagine how I felt! I was glad that I hadn't archived some of my most valuable image work yet.

I'd like to note that I was using an up-to-date firmware and an updated version of Nero recording software, which is one of the best on the market and still got "coasters" (no errors from Nero, but the drive refused to read the information afterwards). I also tried backing a couple of my movie DVDs with DVD X Copy Platinum, and again two coasters and one disk that worked yesterday, but produced garbled output today (go figure) -- DVD X Rescue reported logical errors in the DVD.

I had gone through much software uninstall/update/try again, before I read on the net that lots of other people were having similar problems with the drive. No solution is available as of yet. Apparently, Sony's tech support is subpar as well.

Sony CRX320AE/U 52X/32X/52X

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I just love this cd burner/dvd rom!!!!
I bought it for my kid so she could play a dvd-rom game but I had always wanted to try burning my own music cds.
Well I am soooo pleased. Sony has made this so EASY. It was easy to install and plenty of instructions and with diagrams for the mechanically uninclined. I was intimidated but I got it in, and it worked right away.
Sony gives you some free music downloads so I went there right away to try it out. You have to download their software which took me a long time because I have a dial up connection, but it was worth it. You pick your song and download, which takes 15 minutes at dialup speed. Then you transfer it right to the cd. Bam! I got in a hurry and used a cd-r (which is not erasable) and only put two songs on the cd. After I took it out and played the songs it wouldn't let me put any more on the cd. So I need to wait until I have all my songs downloaded before I burn them to cd. I still have some things to learn.
Sony gives you software so that you can make jacket covers for the cd and to make a track listing. Nothing fancy but I liked it.
You can watch dvd's on your computer and you can drag and drop information on your hard drive to a cd so that your info is backed up. I love that too, having a way to back up my photos and other info.
You can also create video CDs.

(...)I'm very happy with my Sony products!

TEAC DV-516EA02 16x

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Just like the other review said, black face and OEM packaging( no cables, no software and no manual).I Do not recommend this item unless black OEM is what your looking for.

Antec EA500 ATX

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Just as the other reviewer has mentioned, the first unit had high pitched noise issue. I waited about four days to make sure that it is permanent issue, and had it exchanged for the same unit.
Second unit, to my relief is quiet and without a drama to report on. It is relatively quiet, about as quiet as the OEM unit that died on me after 14 months of service. I took quick wattage reading from my APC, and it drains about as much as my OEM unit, which was rated at 350W.
Something to watch out for: Antec recently phased out EA-500 and replaced it with EA-500D, which is made by Delta, and not Seasonic as EA-500 (this unit). Delta is known for making OEM products, but their reputation is still pretty much unknown.

Thermaltake Purepower W0100RU

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Thermaltake Purepower has always been known for their quality. I purchased this one to replace a older one due to upgrade of system and adding a PCIe card. The dual 12v+ rails and design sold me on this Power Supply. So far it has exceeded my expectations; Quiet and plenty of power. The black goes with my case and the 12cm large cooling fan does the job. Since installing this power supply my case temp has decreased 5 degrees. I would highly recommend this power supply to anyone looking for a dual 12v rail and power for todays pc components. Currently running 3 hard drives, 2 opticle drives, card reader, floppy, 4 120mm cooling fans, one 250cm side case fan, duo core processor and a 512mb PCIe graphics card. This power supply handles it well.

Corsair CMPSU-550VX

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This is a great, rock solid power supply. This PSU is capable of handling almost anything that you can throw at it, except for some extremely exotic setups.

Most computers only consume around 100-150w, and even a high end computer might consume maybe 200w. That's why most OEM computer manufacturers put small 250-350w PSUs in their systems. If you look at online reviews of highly overclocked systems with multiple video cards (SLI/Crossfire) they consume at most about 500-600w. Anandtech (a very trusted hardware review site) in a comparison of the ATI Radeon HD 4890 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 (google it) also did a roundup of other comparable video cards and some SLI/crossfire setups. Their review system was a Core i7 965 @ 3.2Ghz (non-overclocked), 6GB of RAM, and SSD drive, and X58 based motherboard. Idle power consumption ranged from 170-260w, and full load from 260-420w.

The point is you don't need a 1000w PSU even if you have a high-end system. The wattage race is long over. A good PSU from a good PSU manufacturer is all you need. For regular desktop systems, a good choice is Corsair's 400CX or Antec's EA380. If you need a bit more power for an overclocked system, or multiple video cards this PSU is a great choice. Also for consideration in this price/quality range are Antec's EA650, SeaSonic's S12 and M12 550w & 650w versions, and PC Power & Cooling's 650 & 750w versions along with Corasir's own 750w version of this same power supply.

This power supply is also 80 PLUS certified, which means that it maintains at least 80% efficiency across a range of power usage from 20% of it's capacity (~130w) all the way up to it's rated maximum. This is *very* good. Most off-brand PSUs only make about 70-75% efficiency. This doesn't just make a difference in your electric bill (not much, but every bit helps), but it also means the PSU runs cooler since less energy loss during conversion from AC to DC. Generally speaking the 80 PLUS certified PSUs use better quality components to achieve the higher efficiency which means they are less prone to failure than the other cheaper brands.

In addition to having quality components, it also looks very good in the case. A very dark grey matte finish accented by yellow and black markings. The cables are long enough to reach pretty much anywhere. This is in my Antec 1200 full-tower case, which has the PSU at the bottom. The 8-pin motherboard power connector has plenty of room to reach the top of the motherboard. However, I had to run the cable the "normal" way over the video card and past the CPU fan since it was not long enough to feed behind the motherboard tray as I was hoping. Then there are 2 cables with 4 SATA power plugs on each, 2 cables with 6-pin PCI-e video card cables (each having an optional 2-pin attached for those video cards that require 8-pin power), and 2 cables with 4 regular molex plugs each.

iMicro IM400W

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It is really hard to beat the price on this. Is it the best PSU I've ever owned. Absolutely not. It feels a bit cheap, it only has one SATA connector, and it is a touch loud. But for the money, what more do you want? I needed a PSU for a few days to keep a system up during an upgrade cycle, and this fit the bill perfectly. If you need a dirt cheap PSU, this is a great choice.

Thermaltake W0070RUC TR2 Series 430W

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This is a really nice power supply for the money. I have bought several of them and they work very quietly and efficiently.

If you are unfamiliar with how to install a new power supply you might want to follow these 10 simple steps:

1 Unscrew the four screws holding the old power supply to the case.
2 Pull the old power supply out and rest it on a corner of the case.
3 Put the new power supply into the case.
4 Follow the first cord of the old power supply noting the color of the wires and where they are located. You might want to write this down if your memory isn't the greatest.
5. Find a cord on the new power suppy that matches and plug it in to the empty socket. Push down hard to make sure the cord is well seated.
6. Keep doing this untill all cords on the old power supply are unplugged and replaced with cords from the new power supply.
7. Screw in the four screws to secure the power supply to the case.
8. Plug in the power supply
9. Turn on the switch to the power supply.
10. Turn on the computer.

The whole process takes less than 10 minutes and with the low cost of the Thermaltake power supply it makes it cost-and-effort effective to upgrade your old power supply.

EVGA GeForce 9500GT 1GB

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It seems from the reviews that I read that the fan has bad bearings- I did not heed this, and decided to buy it regardless. Well needless to say it died- started whining then wouldn't boot to BIOS. I unplugged the fan and tapped a case fan to the card and it works again! So just be warned about the standard fan- there is a great chance it will go out. FYI, video card fan lasted for less than a month for me, but I threw out the packaging- hence no return, besides I have a workaround!

XFX Radeon HD 5770 1GB DDR5

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My very first true graphics card was a Radeon rage 128 with like 8 or 16mb video ram. I have gone through many Radeon cards and for 180$ this is one hell of a card. Lets face it not many, if none games today support direct x 11 however my nvidia 9800gt did not support my Panasonic resoultion which was because my 9800GT didn't have a HDMI output connector. The fact is when I grew tired of the Radeon 5850 being out of stock I bought this card and so far hooked to a Panasonic 46" plasma it has performed outstandingly. If you want maximum performance wait for the 5850 for 5870 but the fact remains 180$ for a graphics card with direct 11 and capable of running L4D at full 1920X1080 resoultion is remarkable. This card almost didn't fit into my NZXT cases so be prepares it requires some room, for this price this card is outstanding and its in stock woot :). I am not a nerd nor going to give anyone a pros or cons verdict. Fact is I'am a gamer so for 180$ this is a great deal and lets face it ladies and gentle men why should anyone pay more than 200$ for a graphics when it will be outdated within a year? Too many manufactures are looking for profit with no gain to consumer experience, all I have to say is watch what you spend and remember corruptions are looking out for any amount of money they can acquire, was this card worth the 180$? So far yes but beyond 200$ is insane especially considering a x-box is 200$

EVGA 01G-P3-N945-LR GeForce 9400

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EVGA has always been a great upgrade card because they manufacture quality items at very good prices. This card is no exception. The installation is easy only taking up 1 PCIe x16 slot. There is small fan just over the processor. The memory is only DDR2 which is ample for most games. The really nice part is that this card allows older machines to catch up to Direct X 10. I tried it with Vista 64 and it installed just fine. I also tried it with Vista 32 and had no issues. I did not try it with XP.
Specs: Model EVGA 01G-P3-N945-LR Interface PCI Express 2.0 x16
Chipset NVIDIA GPU GeForce 9400 GT Core clock 550MHz Stream Processors 16 Memory Clock 800MHz Memory Size 1GB Memory Interface 128-bit Memory Type GDDR2 DirectX DirectX 10 OpenGL OpenGL 2.1 DVI 2 TV-Out HDTV / S-Video Out RAMDAC 400 MHz Max Resolution 2560 x 1600 Cooler With Fan Dual-Link DVI Supported Yes HDCP Ready Yes
If you need a good card to upgrade your system you cannot go wrong with this one.
Thank you for reading my review.

Seagate FreeAgent Go 500 GB

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I'm a professional photographer who fills up two portable drives a year (I swap the onsite and offsite copies after each shoot). The Western Digital (WD) Passport portables I've been using, at 320 GB each, are full to the brim with all my 2008 'raw' work. Wanting to preserve the data on them, I went shopping for two more portable drives, and came across the Seagate 500 GB GO models.
You can't really go wrong with either drive (both companies offer a great five-year warranty), but I like the form factor of the Seagates a bit better (they're a fraction of an inch smaller in all dimensions but LOOK even more svelte than they are). Also, an Amazon promotion currently offers a free dock with the Seagate drives, much like an iPod dock -- just slide the device onto the connector and it mounts on your desktop. Handy and elegant. The WD drives don't have this option.
The downside to using the Seagate dock (and this is why I give this setup 4 stars, not 5) is that, for reasons I don't comprehend, it takes up TWO USB ports on your computer. Those have to be powered ports, so you can't use a non-powered USB hub (at least that doesn't work with my one-year-old iMac and my el-cheapo hub -- your mileage may vary). The alternative is buying a powered hub, OR just not using the dock, instead connecting the drive directly to a single USB port on the computer with the supplied cable.
Speaking of USB connections: Apart from the dock, another advantage of the Seagate drive over the WD Passport is that it seems more power-efficient. At least, I can use the Seagate with my aging Powerbook and a single (supplied) cable, no problems. The WD drives, on the other hand, won't mount on my Powerbook's desktop unless I purchase a special three-plug "power booster" USB cable that (again) takes up two of the machine's ports. This may be a small thing, but it's meaningful to me. With the Seagates, I can finally just slide a capacious drive into a shirt pocket or any other available small space, and use the device on the road, nothing else necessary beyond a standard mini-to-regular USB cable (supplied) -- no booster cable, no power supply.
There is also a Mac version of the Seagate drive. I inadvertently purchased the PC version but it makes zero difference, I believe: the thing works fine, no drivers needed. The Mac version contains platform-specific backup software and maybe a couple of other goodies that I don't need or won't miss.
Due to the idiosyncracies of file systems and how bits and bytes are counted in the computer industry, the usable capacity of the 500GB Seagate drive is actually just 465Gb. That 'shortcoming' goes for every drive on the market, though -- no big deal, just something to keep in mind.
The Seagate's speed is fine: on my Mac, it took just under 4 minutes to copy 5 gigs' worth of smallish files. So it's neither a speed demon nor a slowpoke.
One more thing about the dock: It comes with a nice enough black leatherette padded sleeve for the drive. That bonus really should have been packaged with the drive instead of the dock, but I'm not complaining. The Passport drives come without a case or sleeve, and I paid another 30 bucks for two Case Logic soft-side cases at the time. I will continue to use the Case Logic cases for the Seagate GO drives, because the Seagates, outfitted with their own leatherette sleeves, fit snugly inside the Case Logic clamshell design -- double protection and peace of mind.

Iomega Prestige 1 TB

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Amazon offers this unit for less than some big-box stores. Another good reason to buy from Amazon.
Always remember that outfits like iomega, LaCie, Fantom and others are packagers, not hard drive manufacturers. There are only a few hard drive manufacturers and all of them turn out good products. This does not mean that hard drives don't fail - they do and anyone who keeps only one copy of critical data is a fool.
The units I purchased both had current models of Seagate Barracuda drives installed: excellent devices. Right now, the drives themselves from some sources cost only a few dollars less than the iomega unit, so you are getting the external housing for just a few dollars.
The housing has a power switch, very nice at a time when other manufacturers are eliminating such "frills" and a white activity light on the side, which strikes me as a strange place for it. Since the housing has no fan, there is no fan noise. The noise from the drive itself should be imperceptible. (If it isn't, return the unit immediately.)The housing remains cool to the touch in use.
The unit size is nice and a plastic base is included for those who prefer a vertical mounting.
A power supply and USB cable round out the package.
One of the very nice aspects of this unit is that there is no software installed on the drive - nor is any included in the box. Yea! The drive comes NTFS formatted and, for use with an Apple Macintosh, must be reformatted.
Overall, a very nice value.

Toshiba 500 GB

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I have half a dozen Toshiba portable drives and some of them have served me well for several years. They are reliable and fast -- with the 500GB portable drive I get about 20MB/s read and write speeds (tested on two recent HP laptops, one with Intel and the other with AMD both running Vista), which is half of USB 2.0 high-speed's theoretical max throughput. The drives can be used with the PS3 and Macs out-of-box, but for best results with XP/Vista/Win7 you can convert it to NTFS without reformatting or losing existing data via a DOS command: convert g: /fs:ntfs [where g: is the drive letter, or you can use a volume name like "tosh_500g" if your drive is already named tosh_500g].
Because this drive (like other portable drives) does not use a separate power line -- it draws power directly from the USB port -- your computer must have a powered USB port to use this. Almost all recent desktops and laptops have this feature, but if you experience any problem, it may be due to an insufficiently powered USB port (or USB hub), so try another port or another computer.
In addition to being a fast 5,400RPM drive, this Toshiba includes some valuable features:
- Backup software that backs up system files in addition to regular files and folders (great for system recovery!) - Password-protect your data through encryption - Drive space alert lets you know when free space is running low - Toshiba's famous shock-absorbing technology, also used in iPods.
BTW, this drive is also a great value because at present a 320GB Seagate portable drive costs over [...], plus tax.

Kingston ValueRAM 1GB

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I am very happy with the product, works great. Shipping was very fast as well. I only had 512, now with this additional 1gb, wow it is like night and day, speed is much better. Price was half of what most places sell it at. Good deal.

Crucial 2 GB

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The memory installed easily into my Dell Dimension 4600. I now have a total of 4GB of ram in this system. It runs much faster, cooler and quieter. My fan was always running in overdrive with only 1GB. This has allowed me to go a while longer until I have to upgrade the entire computer system. Overall I feel it was a good investment.

Crucial CT2KIT25664BC1067

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After doing a bit of research how to upgrade RAM to 4GBs in new Macbook Pro (2009 edition, MB990LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop with 2GBs RAM) and failing to order from Crucial directly I went with this option. The upgrade was painless - with the right screwdriver for those little screws on the back of the laptop it took me 10 minutes to replace the default RAM (and I spent most of that time by looking at the other internal parts to see how the laptop is built). It works flawlessly so far (couple of days). I tested the RAM by loading memory hungry applications to fill the 4 GBs to see both modules work fine.

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P

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Ordered 9 of these for in-house builds. We have used foxconn, abit, and asus. Nothing matches the stability of this board. All 9 work great, with the exception of 2 that had some sort of startup delay where the fans kick on, then off, then on again. Then it boots up fine. When shutting down, the fans shut off just slightly before everything else and an alarm sounds until you press and hold the power button. We did hear of others having this problem, so we got and used the latest bios and that seemed to solve it. With Q9550 (2.83, 333x8.5 stock) we are able to get 3.77Ghz just using the tool in the bios. Stable in Intel burntest as well as 12 hour Prime95. Video conversion will often bring a system to its knees and cause BSODs where Prime95 doesn't, but with this combination I converted a 22gb transport stream into a 4gb x.264 using ffmpeg and had no errors. It has a dual bios, so no matter what, you can power up and solve any issue. You can also brand your bios with a 256-color BMP and in a corporate environment it is nice to not have a Monster Truck or Alien showing up first thing when you deploy a system. E-sata is a huge plus also. SATA Raid works very well, although it is slightly slower in RAID1 than I think it should be. But it is stable. Will not ever try RAID0 on onboard raid, so can't comment there.

Intel DP45SG Extreme Series P45

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I can't think of a single bad or wrong thing about it. Except for what I wrote in the update.
It had the slot configuration I wanted. Not many did.
There are no PS/2 (keyboard/mouse) or PATA (IDE/ATA)connections, just 12 USB ports (6 back panel, 6 more internal) and SATA (5 internal, 1 external), etc.
You can boot in legacy disk mode, which runs the SATA drives as if they were an old PATA (IRQ14/15), so I presume that you could install XP pre-SP3. Switch it back after install.
The driver disc is dated 19 June 2008; newer stuff at intel.com.
-------- Update: Audio out the analog jacks is messed up. I got a second/replacement board and it does the same thing. The audio goes in and out about once a second, sometimes it will play for 10 seconds straight, until you do something. Others have similar problems; somehow, some say audio is fine (never more than "fine").
The audio optical out is okay - no gaps or dropouts - but only for 2-channel stereo PCM. No AC3/Dolby Digital Live/Home Theatre - not that I can get to work EXCEPT from one (of two) test panels in the MS Vista mixer program, and that only tests the channels with tones. The other Vista MS mixer test panel fails to do anything w/r/t Dolby digital. This is with the IDT audio driver installed (current). Using the built-in MS Vista driver for the audio, the same drop out happens. Worse, the optical out does not work at all (no red light).
I've put the lastest BIOS (0109) in and no difference. The only card in this is an EVGA 9600GT video card. CPU is Q8200.
Important. The driver pack on the included CD will freeze XP since the USB portion (inf) is wrong. Result: No keyboard. No mouse. Not even safe mode gets around it so you'll have to reinstall XP. Go to intel.com and download the newer inf package for this board. I don't know if a vista install of this inf is the same way since I didn't use the CD there.
Besides that, this motherboard runs okay. Maybe intel can fix the problem. P.S. If you find references to use a Realtek "Vista_214.zip" driver, don't bother. It doesn't really install, and all you get is the built-in Vista driver for the mobo audio.
I have no internal audio connnections hooked up, only the back panel audio connections are being used.
--------------
UPDATE 2.0: Flashed to BIOS 0116 (5 May 2009) and the audio problem is no more. An updated audio driver package is available but that wasn't installed yet. The s/pdif (both 2.0 pcm and 2.1 digital) is still working fine. I can now say it's working fine (currently windows 7 rc).

Intel DX58SO Extreme Series X58

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First off their is no IDE or PS/2 connections so be ready for that. After I got everything in my computer put together and ready to go I went to plug in my keyboard and it was usb only. So just find yourself an a adapter or get yourself a new keyboard. The price of DDR3 is cheap so its not so much a big deal to invest in. There is one PCI slot and now with the newer BIOS update its SLI compatible which is great since when I read the description it says that its only Crossfire ready. If you want to go with something beyond two way SLI than you may want to go with the EVGA model which has more DIMM slots as well. I was going to go with EVGA but my new case would not allow it and I don't have the budget for three cards. I like the way the board is situated with DIMM slots running vertical and looks like everything is closer to the processor than on other boards I have seen. I guess when everything is moving at light speed a smallest measurement closer makes a difference on a motherboard. Install is a cinch just make sure you take your time and don't rush and make a stupid mistake. I have found that in my experience I mess up on stupid things instead of something big. Overclocking has been a little more simplified on this board which is what you should probably do if you invest in these boards. Overall this board has everything that I need with lots of SATA and USB ports and its super fast with my i7 920 along with my 6 Gigs of Corsair Dominator DDR3. All I can say is I can't wait to get my hands into some overclocking when I get the free time. Keep in mind only 64 bit Vista will see anything above about 3 and a half gigs so if you don't want 64 than just be ready not to see what you put in. One minor issue is the setup of the PCI Express slots since I have an 8800 GTS (one of the fatties) and a Creative X-Fi sound card it doesn't leave room for another 8800 GTS without me having to remove my sound card. Its not that big of an issue though since I plan on getting a smaller newer card anyways. Though if you have a fat card like me and something in the PCI slot and want to run SLI you might run into trouble so that is worth noting in my mind. Is this board worth it though I would have to say absolutely yes.
According to Intel sticking in a fourth stick will cause a degrade in performance so since most ram that's DDR3 come in three packs its not so much a big deal. Also when it first came on and I entered BIOS everything was recognized but I could not get the thing to boot my ROM drive and it would just sit there with a black screen and then it would ask me to select cd drive type 1 or 2. After about three hours or so it all of a sudden worked after I selected 1 it booted finally and everything was installed (operating system). The next problem was it would not restart and as soon as my computer would go off and come on again it would be a black screen going nowhere. Then I remembered update your BIOS dummy and I read all the notes and a lot of issues I had was fixed in the BIOS update including my restart problem. There was an issue also with my type of ROM drive not booting when put first in priority and that is the issue I had with trying to get it to boot to install my operating system. Now everything runs perfect and I could not be happier. The reason I put all this in my review was it did not go as smooth as I thought it would and someone else might have problems. If you do have issues just drop me a comment and maybe I can help you out just from what I had to do.

Intel Core i7 Processor 2.80

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If you're looking high-performance CPU that is also energy efficient and doesn't cost an arm and a leg then look no further.

The i7 860 has all the horsepower you'll need for fast picture editing and even editing AVCHD videos. But what really is cool is how little power it uses when your only checking e-mail and on the web. I built my desktop PC with this CPU and a Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4P mother, Corsair 620HX power supply and a Western Digital 640GB "Blue" HD. For light duty task like web browsing it consumes just 65 Watts! When it really kicks in high gear for serious number crunching it goes to 110 Watts. This is the result of Intel's Turbo technology that can turn off cores that are not in use. Plus if you give it a really good cooling system it can even drive the clock rate up to the thermal limit. This ability to save power is so important as it translates into less electricity, less wasted heat and noise and increased reliability. For me this was ideal since I wanted a computer that was super quiet when running basics tasks but had the muscle for demanding applications when needed.

This is a great CPU that will can handle anything you can through at it and won't be obsolete in a few years.

Intel Core i5 Processor 2.66

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This processor is part of a ground up gaming build that I've done and upon completion this little baby rocks. It is very fast and will quickly prove itself as something incredibly difficult to bog down. I don't think that I have been able to push this processor to its limits yet and believe me I've tried. I wouldn't waste your money or time considering a faster 1156 processor unless you have *EVERY* possible bottleneck accounted for. Believe me you won't be dissapointed.

Intel Core i7 Processor i7-920

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I upgraded to the i7 from an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400. The main reasons I made the upgrade were:

1. Low power consumption (significantly lower than a Q6600 which is about $100 cheaper than the i7)
2. 8 logical cores available (quad core + hyper threading)
3. The ability to play cutting edge games that take advantage of all 8 cores.
4. The potential ability to load share between CPU & GPU once Windows 7 is released.

The upgrade might have been a bit premature, as the primary reason to buy an I7 processor won't be possible until Windows 7 is released. Windows 7 will allow load sharing between GPU (graphics card) and CPU. This will enable some really nice performance gains in games, or other graphic intensive applications like video editing software. Allegedly, games like Crysis will get a 20-30 percent performance increase. However, I heard that before when Windows stated that Vista would provide significant performance gains for DirectX10 games, which has not proved to be the case.

Regardless, the i7 920 is truly an amazing CPU. I've yet to experiment with overclocking much, but I do have it running at 3.12ghz stable and with a core temperature of 41C at idle and around 60C under load. I'll likely push things further in the coming weeks, and I'll give updates on temperatures and performance when I do.

Combining this card with two 4870hd 512mb graphics cards in Crossfire mode produced a 3DMark06 score of just over 19,000! That is a 5,000 point gain from my previous rig, and is in about the top 4% of all systems out there. That is pretty phenomenal performance. In Crysis with all settings at very high and DX10, I average over 50 frames at 1980x1200. This CPU is a gaming beast.

If you plan to overclock this card even a little, invest in an aftermarket heat sink and some Arctic Silver thermal compound. The heatsink provided with the retail package is small and ineffective at cooling an overclocked card. I recommend this Zalman Cpu Cooler for moderate overclocking. It is a very quite and very effective fan.

If your in the market for a 'future-proof' processor, this is a great option at a reasonable price point. The ceiling speed of processors is growing increasingly unimportant as multi-thread programing become the norm in both games and applications. You could spend a lot more for a higher GHZ CPU, but you're not really gaining as much performance as the jump from 2 to 4 cores, and then quad core to octo core. This processor will eat anything you throw at it and come back for more. Just make sure your mother board supports i7 chips before you buy one.