Today I happen to read somewhere about Intel Rapid Storage and SSD performance. Well, I thought I had already installed it on my notebook but it seems I was wrong, so I did a quick google reserarch and downloaded the software from the Intel site. Someone says this software boosts SSD performance, so I did the usual ATTO benchmark to have a previous / after comparison. …

Yesterday Crucial released a new firmware for the whole M4 SSD lineup, the update over 0009 version was needed because of the so called 5200 hours bug. Basicly, every M4 after a power on time of 5200 hours or so will start to hung every hour, this is because something is messed up with the SMART data. This new firmware resolve this bug. Yesterday’s evening I’ve upgraded at this new version of the firmware the M4-128GB I’ve in my Thinkpad. Crucial doesn’t provide an update tool different from an ISO image to be burned on a CD but I’ve no DVD drive in my laptop. So I dusted of UNetbootin and created a bootable USB drive with the update tool inside. Then normally booted up from USB and followed the how to flash guide Crucial provide on its site. There was no need to set SATA controller in IDE mode, I’ve performed the update while in AHCI mode without any kind of issue. …

After the epic fail experience with Faildozer I dediced to use the latest litres of LN2 to freeze the P4 631 I had laying on the desk for some time. Honestly I didn’t expected to get such high clock. SETUP: CPU: Pentium 4 631 – VCORE 1.95 volt – VTT 1.5 – VPLL 1.6 cooling: Guglio’s CPU pot rev 2.0 MB: Rampage Extreme RAM: Crucial PC3-12800 D9-GTS – 1.9 volt – white slot VGA: nvidia 6200 LE 256 MB PCI-E HDD: seagate 7200.10 160 GB sata PSU: PCP&C 1200 OS: 2k3 server …

Last friday and saturday I had a 2 day LN2 trip with the CVF and my FX-4100 crap CPU. Results were not good due to the crappy CPU but at least I had fun pushing the setup at its limit. I only had time to test max frequency and do some super-pi 32M, then the CPU died. SETUP: CPU: FX-4100 – vcore 2.05 volt, vmch 1.65 volt cooling: Guglio’s CPU pot rev 2.0 MB: Crosshair V Formula – bios 1003 RAM: G.Skill RipjawX 2133C8 – Elpida MNH-E-Hyper – 1.9 volt – red slots VGA: nvidia 6200 LE 256 MB PCI-E HDD: seagate 7200.10 160 GB sata PSU: PCP&C 1200 OS: Win XP sp3 & 2k3 server TW …

I couldn’t resist, I’ve picked up a CVF to replace the crappy MSI 990FX. Today I had the time to do some tests along with a set of G.Skill 2133c8 and an FX-4100. _CPU: FX-4100 (later I will write down the batch) – vcore 1.5 volt, vmch 1.65 volt cooling: single stage on CPU, everything else air cooled MB: Crosshair V Formula – bios 1003 RAM: G.Skill RipjawX 2133C8 – Elpida MNH-E-Hyper – 1.9 volt – red slots VGA: nvidia 6200 LE 256 MB PCI-E HDD: seagate 7200.10 160 GB PSU: PCP&C 1200 _ …

With some hours of delay I’m here writing a post about past year, new year, what I did and what I will do. University in the past year went quite well, I also had the most importart thing: the healt; so really, I’ve nothing to complain about. My usual Christmas trip ended just a bunch of hours ago, now I’m back at home with some new toys to play with. I just love to go away the week across Christmas and Sylvester’s day, this way I don’t have the problem to go buy presents, I’ve not the problem to decide what to do the last night of the year. I just know these days I will be away from home and it makes me feel so relaxed. Doing presents is something I really don’t understand, I’m used to go out and buy whatever I need, probably I’m lucky, but I already have what I want. Starting from that point, whatever present someone will give me will be something I don’t need, just think how much stuff you have in your house that you never use and you have just because someone give it to you; if someone is importart for me he will still be it even if he didn’t gave me a present on my birthday or Christmas. Coming to the present I gave to myself, it is an ASUS Crosshair V Formula; after 3 dead MSI I decided it was time to buy something well know for being good. …

After quite long time away from overclock due to the fact that the current generation hardware looks quite crappy and every other things I have except the trusty 1366 setup is dead or half dead I decided to forget performance and every other thing, go back 6 months and play with the i7-950 togheter with THE MOTHERBOARD, also known as EVGA X58 SLI Classified E760, and my favourite Elpida Hyper kit when low frequency and tight timings are required, the Super Talent Chrome 2000 cas8. …

Even if the new AMD Bulldozer CPUs are crap I had an FX-4100 on the desk for 1 month or so, finally 2 days ago I had my 3rd MSI 990FXA-GD80 (the precedent two died cause MSI is a dumbass company that is not able to pull out a working bios). This third board came with an old 11.2 bios that doesn’t support Bulldozer CPUs, so I had to plug in a Deneb chip and flash another bios to be finally able to play with my new CPU. The first bios I tried was the last one, 11.6, and well, it’s crap. When having OC fail the bios corrupt itself so when you press del during post to enter the bios it works for 2 or 3 seconds and then freeze. At least it’s still possible to reflash it, so till the next OC fail the mobo will work normally. 11.5 was even worse, it killed one of my precedent mobo, so better to don’t retry it. 11.4 seems the best so far, but still have corruption issues, in fact 1 hour ago, after 3 or 4 hours of usage, it killed my third board. 11.7 is on the MSI site, but I can’t try it cause the mobo is gone. 11.0, 11.1 and 11.2 don’t support Bulldozer CPUs. So, if you plan to use a Bulldozer chip better to buy something else cause MSI is not able to make a properly working bios. If you use a Deneb/Thuban stick with the 11.2 that so far is the best and as long as I know have not curruption issues. I don’t wanna see this mobo anymore, will see if the retailer will be so willing to give me something else instead of this piece of crap. They don’t have C5F, so probably I will go for Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 hoping it’s at least a bit better than this MSI.

Finally the SSD I bought 2 weeks ago has arrived, it’s a Crucial M4 128 GB already equipped with the 0009 firmware. The biggest problem I had to face when installing it was the thickness of the SSD, the notebook just supports 0.7 cm hard disk but the SSD is 0.9 cm thick. After some thinking I came up at an end: there is no way to put it inside the notebook with its damn metallic case. So, I took the circuit out of its metallic case and just put it inside the notebook. To hold it in the right position I had to use a thin foil of neoprene. …

After one year or so without a notebook I decide the time to buy a new one is arrived. I’ve to say that I didn’t remember how difficult is to find a decent laptop, 99.999999 % of them are crap. Quite everyone have a damn glossy monitor, a completly useless DVD drive (good only to make the weight grow) and no E-Sata port. Other than that you can add that 85 % of them are also made with very poor materials, superthin plastic case and a very annoying flexible keyboard. After some days of googling I came up on the Lenovo site, the site itself could be better but their notebooks are exactly what I’m looking for. The name is different, Lenovo instead of IBM, but building quality is still exactly the same. So I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad E320, a nice 650 € 13″ machine equiped with Sandy Bridge i3-2310M, 7200 rpm HDD, 4 GB of DDR3, E-Sata, 3 USB 2.0, UMTS module, matt display and 6 cell battery. This is it: …