Post-Christmas post - December 2021

 I received the following as Christmas presents:

Thrustmaster TWCS Throttle

M.2 2280 1 TB Solid State Drive

Cargo Area Weather Mat for my 2018 Jeep Wrangler

I got a few other things as well, but the top two are things I'll definitely be using as soon as I can.

That SSD will be replacing what's currently in my Dell G7 laptop (it came with a 128 GB M.2 SSD).

The Thrustmaster throttle system will be replacing my Saitek X-52 Pro throttle.  The Saitek throttle works, but I've been having issues with it's matching stick, which has a loose PS/2 port (connector keeps falling out during gaming, so I switched to a 1st Gen Thrustmaster T.16000M stick.  I didn't want the HOTAS combo since I already have a T.16000M stick; plus, I prefer my CH Pro rudder pedals over the Thrustmaster TWCS pedals, which are too close together for my preference.

The Jeep's cargo mat isn't a tech item but it's pretty cool.  I already have Mopar weather mats for the seating area.  This particular mat is from Quadratec (cheaper product)...looks every bit as nice as the Mopar mats, though.

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!

SSD Fever

Maybe 5 years ago, I bought a 750GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD drive for my Alienware 17" laptop.  It's still going strong (I don't use it as much as I used to).  3 years ago, I bought 2 x 500GB Samsung 750 EVO SSD drives for use in my gaming laptop.  2 days ago, I bought 2 x 1TB Samsung 860 EVO SSDs.

Why so big?  Why not?  Especially since they're super-cheap now.  The 1TB drives were $139 each.  The 500GB drives were around $170 each.  The 750GB was around $400.

I now need to determine how to use them.  I can sacrifice my two 500GB drives and put them into RAID0 for craps and giggles.  Or, I can put the two 1TB drives into RAID0 or RAID1...again, for fun.  I now have more SSD drives than I do mechanical drives.  I know many people buy small SSDs and put their OS on those drives.  Some put the OS and a game or three on the drive.  They would also have several mechanical drives for storage of files, images, and things like that. 


I've no idea how I'll use them, as I mainly bought them because they were on sale, but I'll find a way!  :)

UPDATE - 12/2/2018:

I decided to only use one of the SSDs.  I will probably put the other in another system or wait for a bit to use it.  For now, it's sitting bare but installed.  I could use it as a storage drive.  We'll see.

I reisntalled Windows 7 instead of cloning a different and older (and degraded) install.  I spend the Saturday installing Win7 and all of the required drivers and such, then attempted to install Win10 (I've an upgrade license).  The install hung at 63% and stayed there for 4 hours until I intervened and rebooted the system.  It did not like that but I had no choice.  I waited overnight for the rescue portion of the install disk to fix the errors.  I'll continue with Win7 and clone it, so that when I attempt to upgrade to Win10 and the process breaks, I'll have a fresh copy of Win7.

Bought a Samsung 840 EVO For My Laptop!

So, I've always wanted to install an SSD drive in one of my gaming rigs. Initially I wanted to install it on my main desktop gaming rig, but that system hasn't been stable in awhile and I've been almost totally reliant on my Alienware gaming laptop, so I decided to focus on using an SSD in that instead. Part of the problem is that the laptop is using 2 x 750GB Seagate drives in RAID0. No, it is not fast, but I have a crap ton of drive space. I did not want to lose any of that space, so in order for me to have an SSD, I'd have to go big. As well, the M17x R3 has issues with SSDs on drive 0 (of 0 and 1)...they had to nix the speed (so no 6GB/s with this drive in this system). I can go SSD on both drive slots if I wanted and even set them up in RAID0, but I wouldn't be able use SATA 3, only SATA 2. Dell has disabled SATA 3 in all BIOS versions over A08 for this system, also (I'm at A09...it's been like that since I bought it...I've had no reason to update to a higher version). So, I bought 1 x 750GB Samsung 840 EVO. I will break my RAID0 setup and replace the drive in slot 1 with the SSD (and I'll have an extra 750GB drive just sitting around, I guess...I can always throw it into one of my other laptops). I'll use the SSD for my games (BF4 and Arma 3, amongst others), and use the other drive as my data/archive drive. For now, I can live with bandwidth limitation. I can always reuse this drive if I decided to upgrade to an R4 or R5 later on. I'll post my OS reinstall experience a bit later.

M17x R3 Has Arrived

  

  

My M17x R3 has been delivered!

It was delivered 3/20/2013, late in the evening, around 7:45PM (rather late, but that's another story).

I cracked it open but decided not to capture the box-opening on video...there are FAR too many videos of this on the internet as it is.  Once you've seen one, you've basically seen them all.

Anyways, this is a large notebook, especially since I've been using a 13" Macbook almost exclusively.  This notebook positively dwarfs the tiny Macbook in size as well as weight (this notebook weighs at LEAST 10lbs).

The screen is awesome.  It's on par with my iMac's screen for brightness and clarity.  I'll certainly test both, as I plan to use the iMac screen when gaming on the M17x via a mini-DisplayPort-to-mini-DisplayPort cable.  I played BF3 several times over the weekend using the new notebook and my KDR went up at least on percentage point (it has been dropping in the last six months).  I primarily use the sniper class and noticed that I can aim and shoot quicker on this system, so I decided to use the engineer class last night.  This is something I usually don't use, unless I anticipate having to fix vehicles.  I used that class in Operation Metro, which usually has me dying left and right.  I used the AKS-74u.  In 8 minutes of gameplay using that class and that weapon, I raised my engineer score by several thousand and killed without mercy...checking BFStats.com, I found that my accuracy with that weapon went up 1.14% with that gaming session alone...unbelievable.  And with the M40A5, my accuracy went up 1.87% just with last night's few hours of play.  A large part of this is probably due to the video card in this system.  I also played some BF3 on my AMD 6-core system and noticed immediate differences in clarity.  I still have to install Fraps onto the M17x but I'm positive that the 580M is outgunning the ATI 5600-series card in my desktop system.  I've seen this before, when moving up from an Nvidia 7500 to a 9500...my gameplay kill scores skyrocketed due to pure FPS increase.  This means I might consider upgrading the vidcard in my desktop (again...when will it end????).  And we'll see if things get even better when I push the video to the 27" iMac screen...

I find I don't play as well if I have to use the notebook's keyboard (I bought the TacX keyboard for use with this notebook).  The TacX keyboard and mouse are awesome!  I play better with this keyboard because I'm used to the external keyboard layout when I game.  I have to have the arrow keys when gaming (I'm not a fan of WASD and never have been...been gaming since FPS became prevalent), as well as the upper row between the numpad and QWERTY keys.  I *might* try to adapt to the laptop's keyboard...we'll see.

I've installed only a few apps, such as Norton 360 and Norton Management, Origin, TeamSpeak, WinDirStat, HWINFO64, Chrome, BF3, and one or two others.

Temperature-wise, the 580M has been good, so far.  There are quite a few complaints of throttling due to heat on the NotebookReview.com forums, but the highest I've seen so far is 59C when playing BF3.  *knock on wood*

I've a few desktop gadgets running:  CPU usage, GPU meter, drives meter, and network meter.  When I installed Norton, it installed it's own desktop gadget, which I'll tolerate since it should keep me situationally aware.

I haven't noticed any issues with the notebook so far, which is good, since Dell's support appears to be rather shakey (from what I've gathered on the forums, as well as the pains I went through to even get the notebook delivered).

One last note.  The RAID 0.  It's getting a rather low WEI rating, due solely to the performance (or lack thereof) of the RAID 0 setup.  Now, I've not noticed anything abnormally slow with the drive writing and reading at all.  WEI has been massively sensationalized...the system runs good regardless of the low rating.  I don't need an SSD at this moment in time...really.  Many people are pushing for SSD, but it won't do much but help the OS start and shut down a few seconds quicker.  It might help game loading a bit, but not really much.  Besides, SSDs are REALLY expensive and to afford one, I'd have to buy a small one and shift my games back and forth between a platter drive and the SSD...not conventional at all and certainly not convenient to have to micromanage the notebook in such a manner.  No thanks...it's not for me.