GTX 570 - out of the box

Well, I finally got this.
I've been waiting for GTX 670, but it was too expensive for me (~$400).
The next best thing was 660 or 660ti, but the rumor was there were too many 570 in stock, and until they are depleted nVidia wouldn't release 660.

I even saw someone saying there are over 120000 new 570s in market, so it'll take some time until we see 660. Also, because there are so many 570s waiting to be taken, there may be a deep price cut in near future.
Well, there may or may not be a price cut.

Anyhow, I noticed 570 is already getting cheaper, so I just bought one from Amazon.
It was $250 after $20 mail-in-rebate.

The box.

There are several variations of 570 out there, and I couldn't figure out what "HD" meant, and I don't really care. "DS" means "double shot" - it has 2 cooling fans.

Yes, 2 fans.

What's in the box.

Upper side. The bulge on the bottom of the card is a heat-pipe route.

See that heat-pipe? It supposedly draws heat from the cheap compared to the cooling-fin-alone type.

One thing I'm worried about is the side of the vent. Compared to other 570 models, this one has smaller exhaust vent.

The smaller exhaust vent may not be a serious problem, but until I put the side panel of the case back on, I can't be sure what the temperature will be (I'll show you what happened to the side panel later).

It requires 2x 6pin 12V power.

The card is installed. Because of the weight the right end is sagging a bit.

Since I opened up the case, I decided to replace the dust filter I put on there. My case (Corsair 600T) has one intake fan (shown in the bottom right in the previous picture) and 2 exhaust fans (one top and the other on the top left corner). Because the largest air intake through the intake fan, I figured I could put a dust filter there when I bought the case.
The filter is nothing but a sheet of Swiffer. You know that dust picker-upper thingy. See here.
It reduces the air flow a bit, but when it comes to the  dust filtering, it works like magic.

This is the Swiffer sheet only after 3 months of use. It it wasn't there, all that dust could have ended up in my computer.

This is the air intake.

Now it's covered with a clean sheet. I'll have to replace it in a few months, but this will keep inside clean.

Some may wonder why I care how much dust my computer collects inside. Well, usually the dust ends up on the cooling fins preventing effective heat transfer. So, the fan has to run faster making more noise. If you don't care about fan noise, I guess you don't care much, but I hate those fan noises.
Keeping the dust filter in the air intake keeps the computer clean and "QUITE"

Anyhow, if you're looking for a filtering material for your computer, consider Swiffer.

This is an exhaust fan I took out from my old Dell computer. It runs on 12V and I just realized the 4pin fan controller on the mobo supplies 5V. The fan is not running.

Yes, I've been looking for a better exhaust fan for the case and transplanted the case fan from my old Dell. Unfortunately the power supply on the mother board's 4pin connector is 5V. The airflow of the existing Corsair fan didn't provide satisfying airflow.

I ordered a new exhaust fan with good airflow from Newegg, and until I get it, I'll just leave my case open.

I installed Windows 8 Release Preview

Last month I mentioned that Windows 8 Release Preview is on the way, which was improved version of the Consumer Preview.

Last night I installed it.

Release Preview. You can get it from here.

Installation took 3min 15sec, which is 6 seconds less than that of consumer preview. In other words, it's about the same.

Release Preview

The overall interface seems about the same. It let me choose the color scheme after the installation (I don't recall choosing colors with Consumer Preview. I might be wrong), and that's the only noticeable difference I can find so far.

One really interesting (or creepy) thing about this new installation is that it restored most of my settings.

Before I installed it, I wiped the C drive clean (well, sort of. I just removed the system reserved partition). When you remove drive partition, all the data in the drive is lost.

After the installation, I gave it my Hotmail address and password. Then, voila. It restored my language settings and desktop picture. The Internet Explorer 10 remembered the the 10 most visited websites as well as my homepage address.

Wait a minute. That means the MS is collecting this information and keep it somewhere remote.
Last few years using Google's service, one thing really bothered me was "they know too much about me".

Now I start to suspect MS is doing the same with my computer. I wonder what else they're collecting.
With Google's service, if you feel uncomfortable with sharing too much info, you can switch to others (like yahoo or MS).
If you feel your Windows is collecting too much information about you, what are you going to do? Switch back to XP?

Hmm.....

I'm not getting nVidia GTX670

When I first built my computer I planned to get GTX 670 graphic card.
At the time it wasn't out yet, and I didn't even know how much it's going to be.
Finally, it was released and the price was...

Really? $400+? $400+?? For a graphic card? Serious?

I was expecting high $200s. How naive.
So, I decided to get the second best option for me.

Price wise, this is way better than 670.

Amazon may offer extra discount on this one soon. It seems the price is sliding down faster than I expected.

Of course if you compare the specifications, 570 is no match for 670. But, the thing is, this is good enough to play Battlefield 3.

My main monitor (I'm using 2 now and planning to add 1 more) resolution is 1920x1200, and if I go easy on certain options I can still get decent frame rate (frame rate is how many pictures are shown in a second, DVDs and Blu-rays have 30frames/second. This series of pictures make it look like moving. Anything higher than 30 will be fine unless you're extra sensitive to it.)

I also though about getting 560ti-448, but its price is comparable to 570 now (see how cheap(huh?) 570 is becoming?).

At this point AMD's Radeon is out of picture because I've seen enough threads complaining about its compatibility issues in gaming.

It turns out my PCI-e 3.0 won't show its full potential for another couple of years.
Bummer.

Windows 8 Release Preview is on the way.

Wow, I've been super busy last several weeks.
Well, I guess I'll break the longest silence on my blog with a news I just saw.
I've been using Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
According to Engadget, an updated Windows 8 is coming.

In the last few months I found the current Consumer Preview was a bit buggy with odd problems here and there (nothing major) and the whole UI is not quite complete.

I hope the new one is better.

I've got Nokia Lumia 900 - 2

It's been 2 days with Lumia 900.
It's an amazing phone and I'll show you some of the features.

I'm comparing this phone to my old Android phone. iPhone may have some of these features, but I don't know much about iPhone, so, here we go.

This is what it looks like on the home screen. They call it "Start". Yes, that same start on the bottom left corner of your Windows PC screen. With Windows 8, when you press that "Start" button on the keyboard, a similar screen will show up.

This is the "Start" screen. There are more "tiles" on the bottom. The top right corner tile is "People". I'll talk more about it in the next posting. These tiles are fully customizable. Sliding the screen to the left will take you to the app list.

This is the app list. It's like "Start->Program" thing on the computer. As usual, there are a few apps from AT&T that I don't want.

Unlike the Android phone, you press those icons and hold for a few second, it will let you uninstall it. No rooting, no jail breaking, no unlocking required.

Since it's Windows Phone and somehow Google is not really into making Google Talk or Google Voice app, I installed 3rd party apps and they are working pretty much seamlessly.

This is what Email looks like. It lets you add many different email types. I have one Hotmail, one work email, and one Gmail. They all work fine. Plus, the large font and the layout makes it really easy to read and identify each email.

This is the account set-up screen. It lets you add whole bunch of things to it and it takes care of them all literally seamlessly. I'll show you what I mean by "seamless" next time.

I've got Nokia Lumia 900 - 1

Last time I mentioned I ordered it. Today I got it....and it came with a problem.
I'll tell you the problem at the end.

So, the box looks like this. Nothing fancy except it's made in Korea. Odd. I was expecting Finland or some Scandinavian countries.

Top view of the box. Just like any other AT&T smartphones.

I covered the IMEI numbers. I don't know what that is, but it looked important.

This is a SIM card key. You need it to open the card tray.

Things that came with it. I like the design of the charger. I guess they've got the design cue from Apple, but this one is much smaller.

This is it. I guess I should have put something else on the side for the size reference, but it's definitely larger than Galaxy S or iPhone 4S.

Bottom.

Top. The USB slot doesn't have a cover. The small pin hole on the right is the SIM card tray key hole. I haven't figured out what the other small hole on the right is. The far right is the headphone jack.

8MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens on the back.

One thing to note is that it didn't come with a wired headset that most phones come with. I guess they realized that most people use bluetooth headset nowadays.

The very first impression out of the box was "heavy", although I can't really tell the weight difference between this one and my old Galaxy S.

So, now the problem I mentioned on top.
It does not have data connection. Wifi is fine. It's just that 4G network connection is dead. Engadget reported there are a number of customers with the same problem. When I first saw the article I thought, "oh poor things. They just got the phone and have a problem already" and it turned out I was one of them.
Nokia said it's a software problem (Microsoft!!!) and the fix will be available after 4/16. They're offering exchange to a new phone, but I already personalized this one too much to switch today.
I guess I'll just stick to the wifi until then.

I'll write more about the Windows Phone experience in a few days.

Nokia Lumia 900

This past weekend Nokia released its flagship Windows phone called Lumia 900.
The price was $99.99, which was pretty decent for a flagship model (think about how much Apple charge for its iPhone), but still it wasn't good enough to open my wallet.

Nokia Lumia 900. (source: CNET)

Then my friend told me yesterday, it's $20. Ah! $20. It was Amazon wireless offering additional discount. I'm sure Nokia and/or Microsoft took care of the additional $80 discount.

Anyhow, since I really needed a new phone (my Android is suffering. I'll talk about it some other time) I ordered it last night and I'll get it tomorrow.

$20 for upgrade was a great motivator.

Since the new Windows Phone 8 will be out at the end of this year, I though I should wait until Christmas. But $20 for upgrade was just too good to miss, so now I'm waiting for the package to arrive.

Samsung 830 SSD -2, Performance

I know there are many websites showing how many mega bites per second you can read/write on your SSD.
Whenever I see that kind of info I get a bit puzzled because I don't understand what that means in every day usage.

So I figured I can compare my new SSD's speed to older HDD in minutes and seconds.

HDD vs SSD
Windows 8 installation:
This is the most impressive of all the measurements.
HDD took 5min 30sec, while the SSD did the same in 3min 21sec.
Installing Windows in 3min 21sec was a pretty interesting experience.

Windows start-up:
33 seconds until BIOS check, 15 seconds afterwards.
14 seconds until BIOS check, 20 seconds afterwards.
Well, I guess not having a moving parts has something to do with faster BIOS check (although 19 seconds difference seems a bit too long) but I don't know why it takes 5 seconds longer to load Windows.

MS-Office 2007 installation:
<3min vs <2min
Yes, SSD is faster.

Restart the computer:
1min 40sec vs 42sec

MATLAB start:
Usually people use Photoshop to test this, but I don't use it any longer. It turned out other lighter, smaller, and free programs work as just good. So no Photoshop loading test. However, I figured it takes quite some time to start MATLAB, so here it is.
20sec vs <4sec

Yes. Less than 4 seconds until it says "ready"

Yes, it's faster with SSD, and when I surf the web I can feel the difference as well.
I have a habit of opening 30-40 tabs on the Firefox at once and close them one by one as I read each page. With HDD when I move onto the next tab, there's slight delay in loading/placing pictures on the page. With SSD this delay is gone.


I start FireFox 11 by clicking the icon, and before my hand is off of the mouse and on to the keyboard, the window is open and ready to go.

If you're wondering if it's worth the extra money compared to HDDs, yes it is.
Get SSD for yourself soon.

Samsung 830 SSD -1, Opening

Last week, there was one day sale on Samsung 830 SSD 128GB.
What is SSD? Think of it as a hard drive that works like a flash drive, or a flash drive that works like a hard drive.
It doesn't have a moving part, no noise, lower power consumption, and above all, faster speed.
Read more about it on Wikipedia.

Today I've got it in mail, and this is what it looks like.

Top view

Side view

On the back you see the summary of 830 series SSD.

Back side

Some models come with cables, brackets, and Norton Ghost CD.
This is what's in the box. Pretty simple. No cable. No bracket. No Norton Ghost.

What's in the box

The backside of the SSD you can find model numbers and stuff.

Soon I'll write how much faster it is compared to my old SATA2 HDD.

Remote Desktop and Windows 8 CP

It's been a few weeks with Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
I tasted many interesting new features of Windows, but I figured the new Remote Desktop was pretty confusing.
I use Remote Desktop a lot to get to my work computer especially when the weather is bad and I don't feel like going outside.

I'm no network expert, so when they changed the interface, I couldn't figure out how to set it up.

Huh? How do I use this?

Then, I found out MS still put the old style Remote Desktop hidden in system32 folder. If you're on Windows 8 and miss the old style Remote Desktop, this is how to get it.

Find "mstsc.exe" in C:\Windows\System32 folder.

Right-click, Send to, Desktop (create shortcut)

Now you have it on the desktop.

How to recycle UPS battery pack

I have a UPS at home. Not that brown truck thingy.
I mean Uninterrupted Power Supply, UPS.

It's a small battery pack that goes between the power outlet and your computer, so when the wall outlet loses power you still have 3-4 minutes to save all your stuff and turn off the computer.
Brilliant!!!

Mine is 6-year-old one from APC. It's been working great until about a month ago.
It started beeping like nuts-day and night.
I checked out the customer support website and it was my old battery that's causing the problem.
The manufacturer says replacing the battery back every 2-3 years is recommended.

2-3 years. Hmm. I've been using it for 6 years.
So, I found the best price at Amazon, and got it in a few days.
Then, next question was, "what am I gonna do with the old one?"

This is the old one. Do you see the sides of the pack are burst open?

I couldn't just toss it in a dumpster because it's lead-acid battery, the same type as the car batteries.
So, I went to the local Waste Management place. They said, "Oh, we don't accept batteries here."
Oh, bummer.

Then I took it to the city recycling center. The guy working there took a look at it and said, "I've never seen this kind before. I don't know what to do with it. I can't accept this."
Bummer.

So, as any wise person should do, I Googled what to do with it.
And I found out that APC actually recycle these battery packs for free. I just tell them the model number and they generate the shipping label and I can just bring it to the local UPS store (yes, the brown guys).

I'm sending the old battery away tomorrow.
By the way, if it's not from APC, they don't accept it. So, if you have other brands like Belkin, ask them what to do with it.

Renren HD on Windows 8 App Store

Ah, look what I've found.
Actually I didn't find it. I just saw an article talking about it.

Windows 8 comes with app store. Since MS is planning to have one OS for different hardwares-phone, tablet, computers-I get an app store on PC.
This Renren app is available now.
No Facebook yet.

I guess the Chinese SNS was a few steps ahead of Facebook on this.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview - first impression

Thursday afternoon I saw an article saying over 1million people downloaded Windows 8 Consumer Preview (CP) on first day of its release.

I was so eager to join the club, so I installed it, too.

Yes, it happened.

The installation was done from my USB thumb drive, and it took about 5min 30sec again.

One thing I noticed this time is that during the installation, it's not really installing windows. Instead, it copies and pastes files from the USB to the hard driver. Why do I think so? Well, after this 5:30 "installation" period it restarts once.
Then, it starts to configure all the hardwares and install drivers during this 1st re-start. The configuration takes about 8 minutes.

So, I guess it's fair to say it takes 13-14 minutes to install Windows 8 on a decent hard drive.

One thing to notice is, its Metro UI became more PC friendly. In the developers preview it was quite  a hassle to find things I wanted with Metro UI on. Now I just type the first few letters of what I want, it'll bring them up to the front.

For example, if I type "cont", it'll find control panel and bring it to the front.

It's true that it's a bit odd to see Windows without "start" button, but brining the mouse arrow to the bottom left corner has similar effect as clicking "start" button. It may feel a bit odd, but I doubt people will have hard time getting used to this.

Here are a few important things I'd like to mention.
1. Firefox 10.0.1 is unstable. I just installed 10.0.2, and it's working fine.

2. Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.1000 64-bit Client doesn't run right. After installing it, it prompted me with a message requesting re-start. When I restarted, it entered infinite loop of re-starting. Well, it stopped looping by itself after about 4 re-starts, so it's not really infinite. Windows gave me a message saying it's trying to fix it, and when the fix was done all the Symantec files were gone.

3. MS-Office 2007 works fine (duh~!).

4. Internet Explorer 10 is still in beta phase. It's fast (faster than Firefox) and smooth, but you can tell it's not complete.

5. Within 10 seconds of waking up from sleep, my computer's wifi is connected to the internet, being ready for an action (fast re-connection is what MS has been bragging about)

6. When you click the bottom left corner of the screen, this shows up. It's like clicking "start" button. The problem is, it will show everything it has without suppressing details. I mean everything. Take a look at the picture.

See? It spits out everything on the screen. Everything!! Why don't they hide details?

7. App store is activated, but there's not much to see yet.

8. It comes with a built-in disc image viewer. No need for Daemon tools.

9. It has a pdf reader. It's not as versatile as Adobe reader yet, but it's there.


I'll write more about it if I find something interesting.

Making a bootable USB

I just put a page up describing how to make a bootable USB memory.
It's at http://semicomputerexpert.blogspot.com/p/how-to-make-bootable-usb.html or click it on the page list on the right.

Getting a new keyboard soon

My keyboard is from Dell. It's that free keyboard that comes with a computer. It's been great, but it started making squeaky noise. The noise comes from not just one key, but from pretty much of entire left side.

I remembered a friend of mine told me to get the Arc from Microsoft. Huh? Keyboard from MS? He told me it was a beautiful one, and.... yup. It looked more than just a keyboard.

I seriously thought about getting one, but I ended up talking to another friend of mine.

Me: Do you know much about keyboard? I need to buy one. Do you have any recommendation?
Him: Buy a mechanical keyboard.
Me: Huh?

Mechanical keyboard. Yes, I heard about it at one point. To me it seemed more like high-end audio systems-something expensive, yet I can't tell the difference. But he kept telling me how good it was. Next day, he brought his from home for me.

This is it.

It's made by a Japanese company called Filco, and it had blue switches (I'll explain some other time).

How was typing on this keyboard? After a few minutes I could see why people talked about mechanical keyboard. It's just different in a very good way. It's like comparing McDonald's Cheeseburger and In-N-Out. It's like "I didn't know keyboard could do this"-kind.

I looked around to figure out which one to buy, and I ordered a Das Keyboard S Professional.
Once it gets here, I'll compare it with my old Dell keyboard.

MS SkyDrive

Last time I talked about the improved SkyDrive for Windows 8.
Until I wrote that post I've never cared for it, but since I wrote about SkyDrive I figured I should check out what it's like now.


So I went in there.
It's right on top of the hotmail menus.

Yup. It's right up there.

When you click SkyDrive, it'll take you to here.

When I went in, I saw 4 familiar icons up there with "Create: " sign. Oh, really?

So I clicked the W icon.

This is just wonderful. Click the picture to enlarge.

The interface is very much like MS-Word 2007 (I haven't really played with 2010, so I can't tell). It's missing many advanced features, but if you're not writing a thesis or research paper, this might be what you're looking for.

If you're looking for basic features, you don't have to buy these any longer. How nice.