How to get the best performance of an AMD


I have always been for the underdog. The guy no one likes, the team no one supports, the processor that everyone thinks is no longer in the game.
I have also always been a little under the funds and great with overclocking, cooling and mods.
I have only once owned an Intel, but have had probably 10-15 AMD computers in my time.
These computers always under performed, but got me a good, strong enough computer for the money I spent.
So I always spent about $400 on my computers total. Cheap motherboard and processor combo and wait for upgrades or low cost motherboard paired with a mid cost AMD processor.
Well, I found out AMD has been making awesome processors all along. I was just doing it wrong. I found the fix that makes your AMD run just as well as the Intel in the same class.

I ran an AMD FX8320 on a MSI 970A G46 for a couple years and came into a deal for an FX9590. So I got it. I forget what I paid, but I did okay. The problem was, the FX8320’s default watts is 125W while the FX9590’s default watts is 220W. Big difference. So I bought liquid cooling because that beast gets hot. Super hot. And, what I never expected, the 970A G46 caps at 200 watts – which explained the sudden crashes. So I go buy a Sabertooth 990 motherboard and slap the FX9590 on it and I’m good to go. I also grabbed some more RAM and a hard drive because now I have two computers; one that runs like a tank and one that gives the spank. What I saw in performance in the short time the FX9590 was on the G46 board, was outrageous difference. My girlfriend used to borrow my G46 computer to edit videos and it would take forever to render them in Camtasia. Meanwhile, her i7 2600K would do it in no time. What would take my FX8320 1.25 hours to render, her i7 2600K would do in 15 minutes or less. Often less. The FX9590 on the G46 motherboard would render the videos in just under an hour. Now the FX9590 on the Sabertooth motherboard was showing great progress. It would render the videos in just under 22 minutes. Not as wonderful as her i7, but sure was a huge difference from the G46. Well, I got curious. I pulled the FX8320 from the G46 motherboard and put it on the Sabertooth and used the same last video to render. Under 18 minutes. So, I launched my AutoCAD, opened the last drawings, grabbed the nearest PDF I could find and dragged and dropped it into AutoCAD. No problem. Faster than I have ever worked in AutoCAD with an Xref PDF in my life.

It’s the motherboard.

The whole trick is the motherboard.
Everyone thinks AMD is for cheap builds. As if you can just buy everything cheap in the same class as Intel. So they buy cheap on everything. You can’t. You have to have a solid motherboard.

Match the Intel processor price range with your motherboard. What I mean is, if you want a high, strong, mid-grade running computer, look at the i5 cost, find the nearest motherboard to that cost, turn to AMD and grab a mid-grade processor. You will perform close enough to the Intel processor that it won’t make a bit of difference. Other than that, the biggest difference is the Intel guy making the same machine will have to eat the cost of his Intel motherboard.

By the way, I sold the FX9590 on eBay and the customer loved it. I made a fair amount back for what little use I had with the FX9590.
There is good chance that I could have and should have done more with the FX9590, but I was beyond happy with the FX8320 after the motherboard upgrade.
It is still running strong, right next to my latest build…which will be in another post at another time.

The main message here is don’t skimp on the motherboard. You can save money on everything you feel safe saving money on, but you will, without a doubt, see the best performance of a processor if you do not skimp on the motherboard.
And the gf now has an i7 7700K liquid cooled I put together for her so her computer would at least be from this decade. But she still uses the 2600K. It literally is just as strong as the 7700K.
Anyhow, later post about the Ryzen machine in the works. I may do benches of all 4. Let’s see if she wants to cooperate on this.

Heatsink Upgrade to Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus on AM3+ Review

The Girlfriend does a lot of video recording and editing internet companies. She runs an i7 processor and an Nvidia 970 video card with 16 gigs ram. She uses Camtasia software for a lot of her work. During the phase of compiling, we noticed sometimes her pc would crash, or lock up. After we installed speedfan we realized that she was hitting 180+ degrees so her intel was peaking high.
Until we could find her a new heatsink for her work horse, we tried to get by with my Athlon II X3 445 (Tri-core cpu) and my AM2 6 core which I bought for $5 at Epic A resell store.

This was a hard fact to face. The i7 is flat out a beast, and my AMD machines were completely useless for her. Except maybe recording. Rendering a video that she just compiled normally would have taken 10-17 minutes on her machine (when working right) ended up saying it would take 45 minutes on the AM2 and approximately 3 hours on the tri core.

So we took a trip to the computer store and bought the best heatsink they could advise, and what has the best/most reviews on line. We bought her computer a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO. Her temperature now stays in the 110s while compiling. Oddly there is no noticeable damage to the cpu or motherboard.

PcCooler Heatsink

PcCooler Heatsink

IMG_1218 My AMDs that I was proud to have had running for so little investment, were crushed in the dirt and now useless for every function in the house. Between her video work and my autoCAD work, it was time for an upgrade. So I (being the true AMD Fan I am) took a trip to the local computer store and brought home an AM3+ 8320 processor, 16 gigs of pny Anarchy 1866 ram, and an MSI 970A-G46 motherboard. of course a new case. Dropped my Geforce GTX460 Video card in and slapped on the factory heatsink, installed a spare power supply we had. Installed windows 7 and pushed the computer to her and said “well, try it out”.

We head back up to the computer parts store and buy a $21 heatsink.  Give it one test and find that it was time to take another trip to the computer store to buy the exact same heatsink we bought for her intel cpu. Within 1-2 minutes of rendering, the temperature of the processor jumped from the cool 98 degrees up  near 140 degrees and was climbing faster every second. The PCcooler heatsink is great for dissipating heat, at idle. but it was as if there was a threshold of like 115 degrees before it’s method of absorbing and dissipating heat become utterly useless. I will not throw it away. I will be installing it on another pc, but I’ll have to add an extra fan or something experimental.

Since I remember the instructions for the girlfriend’s computer came with instructions and spare parts for an AM3+ processor, I decided to search for the same heatsink.

I found the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus sounded like and looked like the same heatsink. Chased down the reviews and found everyone complaining about the install instructions but praising the cooling. Bought it for $35 and got free shipping.

DSC_0002It took all of about 10 minutes to install the new heatsink. I admit I cheated and watch this guy’s video though. I had to remove one side case fan for clearance, the processor heatsink was just too tall for my ENERMAX case.
Right away I went to rendering a video I compiled last night . When I tried to render the video last night, though the new computer made light work of the task, my cpu temperatures got to 145 degrees.
but now with the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus heatsink, re-rendering the same video took less than half the time it did last night and temperatures never exceeded 116 degrees.

The build is finally a success. and total cost under $600. and so far nothing runs slow, nothing hangs so far and it seems my autocad is flying. even using the knock off brands of cad design like bricsCAD, nanoCAD or ProgeCAD. They all run smooth with no pausing, no “thinking”.

Temperatures while in autocad never exceed 113 degrees.

I even ran a windows benchmark.
tempsidle
Sorry about the screenshot with in a screenshot. Only way I could think to get both scores up at once.

Review score for the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
Ease of installation: 10/10
visible appeal: 10/10
effectiveness: 10/10
noise factor: 9/10

Final score: 10/10

Extra score = Instructions booklet usefulness: 1/10

Burn a CD or DVD when you don’t have the software

So you have a windows computer, and the computer has a cd burner or dvd burner on it. you’ve looked all around the software and can not find nero or power dvd/cyberlink or any other software known for burning discs.

There’s a good fix and it is free.

It is called CDburnerXP
The name clearly has been around since the windows , and yes the name reflects a time long gone. Clearly they didn’t think ahead when they started the project. doesn’t matter what the name, the software is lightweight, easy to use and does exactly what is expected. Burns your cd or dvd. Will burn either one and seems to work with any brand of typical burner. The burner software even comes with dvd intro selections.

How to burn a CD with CDBurner Xp
Install CDBurner Xp
Insert  a CD into your CD burner on your computer
You should get a menu asking you what you want to do with  the new blank disk. Select the CDBurnerXP option.
Next menu asks you what type of disc are you trying to create. If it’s just files to back up, select Data. I use this option for pictures.
If you want the disc to be  playable media select the  other options related.  but let’s do “Data” for this example.
cdburnermenu
The next window will be titled “data compilation” look near bottom left where you see the word “Disc” with a cd symbol to the left of it. Right click the word “Disc” and select “rename” from the menu. Now type the desired name of the disc your burning.
namedisk
Just drag and drop the files you want to burn in the area that says “Drag and Drop Files Here”
When ready just click the burn icon, fifth from the left at the top row.
burn-disc
Now you just click burn. Your cd should eject when done.
Free, fact and light weight.
Been using this software for years and I tell the creator thank you every time I download it. I won’t even use name brand anymore.

If you have any questions feel free to ask below.

 

How To Use Control Panel Windows 10

Took a while to locate control panel on windows 10.
Found it.
Found that “settings” thing but that seems useless for what I need to do.
For those of you who want to get your control panel back, what you can do is either of two things.  You can navigate to the system32 folder and look for control.exe right click and add to start or add to taskbar or you can right click and create shortcut and move that to the desktop

Or you can cut out the searching and create a shortcut right there on desktop without digging through your folders and files.
Like this

Right click desktop and select “Create Shortcut”

Target= C:\Windows\System32\control.exe

Start in= C:\WINDOWS\system32

After that I just open control panel and change to small icons. This way I get all of my old control panel icons back like  they have always been since windows 95.

Or you can bring your mouse over the start button. right click and in that menu you will find control panel.

Is Computer Technology in a Slump?

Sure computer technology is in a slump.
A slump created by the lazy and braggadocios.
The ignorant with money to burn, and the poor who want to look like they have money to burn.
It is now taboo to show people Technology you created from scratch. It makes you look poor and unworthy of honor. No longer do we feel the pride of learning new things and piecing together our ideas and things we learned, into one space to make the things we need.

We have built ourselves into a corner of ignorance.

We used to hack our phones to have web browsers they didn’t have before. We used to get our phones to surf the internet when no one even considered it useful. and we did it with phones that didn’t have a touch screen or a scroll wheel. We created our own mp3 players to suit our phones per model and we would burn that to a 3.5 disk or to a c.d. so we wouldn’t have to rebuild when we changed our phones, we’d just have to modify to work with the version of Symbian on the phone. but now, everything is right there for free with ads, or for sale. No one has to learn anymore. We just nod and smile when someone calls you stupid for not knowing about some app they just downloaded that does what you did 10 years ago, manually. And for god’s sake you can’t tell them this, or they will call you a hipster.

Tech trends are a shame.

All websites are starting to look the exact same crappy HTML 5 over simplified big buttons so people can use it better on their little phone displays that no one can compile a good Java or flash player for.

The days of complexity are gone.
Now are the days of “look, shiney and simple”
and complacency.

It is as if we have dumbed ourselves.

There was a time when software exceeded the abilities of hardware. Which caused the hardware makers to try harder. build better. To evolve.
But now the software makers aren’t trying to create the new.. the more bundled. the bigger deal to make people buy it.
They want to make it easy and super light weight, so you pay again to buy the other crap that used to be in the older version, one by one.

We have become the fat consumer.
And tech… The world for the outsiders… Became fashion-ware for the trendy.
where abilities and functionality no longer matter, just the name brand and brag-ability.
$10,000? Made by apple? Of course it has features functions and abilities that their $150 watch does not have.
In the day when we dreamed of that, we dreamt of hackability. The ability to mod that computer on your wrist to have your own functions to fit your own needs. Now you just download someone else’s idea (app) that best suits you and like it and show off what you downloaded.

We had our DVR. Our home entertainment center from a computer we built with a series of hard drives stacked together to burn our tv shows onto while we worked. With hundreds upon hundreds of function. Those are gone and now we have it in a “cloud” (some hairy dude’s server in his basement Shhhh) and we install an ap for some of the functions and Features with nothing to want to learn.

Budget Build

my boss had a customer he needed to make happy so he gave me an exact budget to stay in. I had two stores to pick parts from. But get better office points if I can save time by going to just one for the computer parts.
IMG_20141017_071315_616
as you can see I was up to the challenge.
The person already had their Monitors and keyboards and Speakers, Quickbooks, and Windows 7. My duty was to just build a tower that can withstand the daily office use of quickbooks, and other office tasks.
Me being the wiser know there will be some Youtube going on. I build this machine to stand against most office employees.
$750 was the challenge.
I build the ultimate work computer.
On someone else’s budget of course.

DVR-SH-224DB/BEBE Black Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE 24x SATA Internal DVD Burner, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 12x DVD-RAM, 1.5MB Buffer, w/o Software. OEM 1 16.99
MB-H81M-E ASUS H81M-E LGA1150 uATX Motherboard, Intel H81 Chipset, Supports Intel 4th Generation Core i7/i5/i3 Haswell CPUs, Dual DDR3 1600, Gigabit LAN, SATA III, USB 3.0, 8ch HD Audio, DVI 1 529.95
CPU-BX80646I54430 *Add Add Processor == Intel Core i5-4430 3.0GHz 22nm(+189.99) 1
DIMM-997026 *Add DDR3 Memory == One 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600 Mushkin 997026(+45.99) 1
SOFT-T5D-01575 *Add Office Suite == Microsoft Office 2013 Home / Business T5D-01575(+181.99) 1
HD-ST1000DM003 *Add SATA Hard Drive == One 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 3.5in Seagate ST1000DM003(+54.99) 1
CS-PA06-LF Black Ark Technology PA06-LF Mid-Tower ATX Computer Case, with 500W PS2 Power Supply, Front USB 2.0 and; Audio 1 39.99
Subtotal 586.93
Coupon -11.74
Subtotal 575.19
Tax 47.45
Total 622.64

IMG_20141017_071255_595

IMG_20141017_081535_226
IMG_20141017_081547_908

Work Computer vs Home Computer

Just a quick benchmark I did a year ago between the two computers.

Though the computers seem to be a generation apart and one seems to have half what the other has, they run relatively the same performance through my daily tasks of design.

Work computer

Work PC

Work Computer. 6 core with 16 gig memory

 

 

Home Pc

Work PC

Home Computer. 3 core with 8 gig memory

 

 
Computer I just bought at resell shop for $5.50

Work PC

$5 Computer. 4 core with 4 gig memory

What the Inside of a Solid State Drive looks Like

Have you ever wondered what the Inside of a Solid State Drive looks Like?
I have. I always imagined tons of stuff inside the hard drive that would just blow me away.
Since I have 120GB Chronos SSD Solid State hard drive sitting around that doesn’t ever seem to work anymore, I took it apart. (don’t worry, it only worked for about a month)

Weird, to my surprise it looks as if the internals of the solid state drive are pretty simple. almost the same as what is inside a thumb drive. but many all on one main board.

 

There was literally very little to the solid state drive.
4 screws
2 plates for housing

1 main board.
That was it. I was seriously expecting a tightly squeezed set of two or three boards wired and clipped together.
Nope.

List of Undesirable Programs on a windows 8 computer.

Programs found in the “Programs and Features” section of control panel on a Windows 8 computer that I found in one sitting after a recently dismissed employee left the company here.

WinCheck
Zoomify
Search Protect- by Client Connect Ltd – Browser Hijacker that uses Trovi.com
MyPC Backup – spammy annoying software that keeps telling me I need to back up the computer.
Remote Desktop Access (VuuPC)
Goodgame Empire
geniusbox 2.0
FastPlayer
consumer input compete inc
ip finder 3.2.1.3

I was working on a computer and found all of these bundled up in the same machine. This was a nice fast laptop slowed down to a snail’s pace.

After removal of these undesirable programs that could very-well be malware or viruses, the computer is running like brand new again.
I don’t even advise going to the websites of these software because if they are a virus or malware, then your probability of getting these again is quite high.