TechStop

Another TV pulled from the ashes...

2010-02-10T22:14:00.000-08:00

I found a guy selling an Emerson 32" LCD TV on craiglist for CHEAP! $40! I had my friend butch pick it up for me and $60 later i have a very nice working HDTV! Check out the video i posted on YouTube. Hopes this helps inspire you guys to fix your own TV or go find a deal and get the TV you've always wanted. peace...

SpeedFan

2010-01-18T21:42:00.000-08:00

3dmark06 and 3dmark Vantage scores

2009-10-20T20:50:00.001-07:00

Here are the scores from my 9800 gx2. Not to bad. I'm gonna shoot for a new Quad soon and i'm sure my core will be better. Myabe a Q9550 or Core i5 750(bundle price of $139 at micro center). we'll see...

BFG 9800 gx2...another sweet ebay deal!

2009-10-11T09:51:00.000-07:00

Ok, I finally have my dream video card! I know that the 9800 gx2 is over a year old but it still has better frame rates than the gtx 275 in most benchmarks. i had been watching these card sell for $150-$200 on ebay. I was searching one day and found this card listed on ebay through a pawn shop. They stated that car was sold "as-is" because they didn't have the means to test it. So i took a chance put a max bid of $60 and i won it for $51. I knew that it was a long shot but knew i should be able to $30-$40 on ebay for parts. To my surprise i put it in my system and it booted right up!!! So i lucked out. Below are a few pics of the set up. the card is huge and sucks up a ton of power. I had to order a new power supply because it couldn't handle this card and my overclocked quad core at the same time. I wont get to do any benchmarks until the power supply comes in but i will post asap once it arrives. shot me an email if you have any questions.

Intel Q8200 Core 2 Quad overclock R0 Stepping SLG9S

2009-09-30T09:16:00.000-07:00

Like i stated in my previous post i was having a hard time overclocking my new Q8200 but i finally cracked the little bugger. I have spec number SLG9S with R0 stepping. From what i learned when reading other posts is that the SLB5M M1 Stepping was a pain to overclock. I did get a chance to overclock a M1 Stepping Q9300 and was able to get it to 3.2ghz but heat was a big issue. I had to increase the voltage to max 1.36250 and with the northbridge cranked up to 1.40 volts core temps were 60c+ at full load. Now that was still under 71.4c thermal spec but i don't like heat.

I was able to get my Q8200 from 2.33ghz to 3.0ghz on stock/auto cpu voltages. I increased northbridge voltages to 1.40 volts and memory volts to 2.00. all of this on an Asus P5Q Se2 P45 motherboard. Idle temps are 20-22c and full load 32-34 on a Rosewell Z3 cooler and Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II northbridge cooler. Below are a few pics of cpuz and sepped fan while running prime95. 100% stable. I've run 3 rounds of prime95 for 8 hours each with 0 errors. Check out the Vcore on both cpuz and speed fan. let me know if you have any questions.

Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II Install on Asus P5Q SE2

2009-09-25T18:33:00.000-07:00

So last month my wife got me a Intel Core 2 Quad q8200 for our anniversary. I have been wanting a quad for the last 3 years since I first spotted the legendary Q6600 at Micro Center for $299.

I'm a big time overclocker so the first thing i did when i dropped my new quad in was pump up the FSB to 430mhz and increase the CPU voltage to the max OEM level of 1.3625 volts. I have always had great success overclocking Intel processors ever since the Intel Pentium D 905 but this was my first experence with a quad.

Once I made the chages in the bios my computer booted right up. I started in with Prime95 only to find that 2 cores had errors right off the bat. This was pretty disappointing considering i had already set my max cpu voltage and planned on working my voltage lower as time went on. no such luck. No matter how much voltage I gave it those 2 cores would not remain stable.

After reading a few blogs i found that raising the Northbridge voltage was essential for a good overclock on a quad core processor. I had to bump the voltage to the max of 1.40volts on the northbridge to get the cpu stable. I also had to increase my memory voltage to 2.00 volts. when it came down to it those were the only two increase i had to make. I was able to leave the cpu volts on auto after increasing the northbridge and memory.

With the increases in those voltages my northbridge temps went through the roof! My temps were running around 65-70c at full load. I checked into a few coolers but went with the one that had the best rating on Newegg Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II. It sports a solid copper base with heat pipes and a 40mm blue LED fan. Very nice results too. Dropped by temps by about 30c! WOW! let me know if you have any questions.

Windows 7 HTPC Up and running after repair!

2009-08-24T18:24:00.000-07:00

Here is a short video of the plasma i repaired. I've got it running windows 7 Ultimate, Core 2 Duo E6450, 2 GB Kingston DDR2, Biostar Motherboard, Sapphire Raedeon 3650HD 1GB and a 200GB Maxtor HDD. Nothing special, we use Windows Media Center, Hulu Desktop, itunes and Pandora and everything looks and plays great. Please go to youtube and rate my videos.

Who says eBay isn't cool anymore?

2009-08-18T22:06:00.000-07:00

I was reading a little article on yahoo finance the other day about eBay starting to show its age. Sure eBay has been around for a bit but it's still one a of a handful of place that i turn to when I'm looking for a bargain. Below is a few pics of my new Logisys Illuminate keyboard. I had been wanting one of these forever but didn't want to pay the $50 on newegg.com. Low and behold i was able to pick this one up new on ebay for $12.50. Not a bad deal if i do say so myself.

My Plasma Project

2009-08-16T21:34:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics and a video of my 50" Philips Plasma. I bought this TV for about $100 and with a little solder and about 3 hours of labor got it working again. I built a little media center PC out of some spare parts laying around and for less that $200 have a very nice media setup.