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.

Built Computer from Spare Parts

I have been hanging on test parts that have been given to me for reviews, and been allowed to keep. So I have held on to them because, who the heck throws away good computer parts?
Again they were all free so they are not top end but they aren’t trash.
So I snapped together a complete computer using an old HP case.
The computer boots up fine.
The parts are now dated a bit. IDE hard drive and a single core 2.5 gig Pentium Processor and an AGP slot on the motherboard.
but the cooling is good and the boot up is fast and smooth. XP operating system.
I am considering making a contest here, or turning the computer into a Roku box type media center.
The computer is currently plugged into my little 19 inch LG tv right next to the cable box and dvd player. Nothing is passing through, like cable, or dvd player. Heck it isn’t even plugged into the internet yet. I may go wifi with this computer. Uncertain yet.
I do have other cases in the garage, but I kind of want to save those for the custom mod cases I will be doing pretty soon. but that case is very heavy. Has to be over 30lbs.

You tell me, just vote yes or no if I should give the computer away in a contest here on the tech review.

[poll id=”15″]

Should You Overclock Your Nvidia 9400

The question has always come up. “Should I overclock my video card?”.

We all want to know we are resourceful and frugal enough to make a good deal out of what we have. It’s in our nature.

Contrary to popular opinion.
Overclocking shows no actual performance difference.
It may show increase in certain feilds of benchmarking but will also show a hit in other fields. If the card makers made it so you could unlock magical sections of your gadget so you can save money, no one would buy better. The best you can get from overclocking is a cool score on a benchmark test.

Your video card is fine for what it is made for. I have seen some extreme benchmark scores come from that video card. Truth is though, once you put any weight on it like actually gaming and random processes such as gaming, you will see a drastic hit on it.

I have busted many video cards and processors and sticks of memory through the years (12 years) playing the cheap role.

For better performance buy a video card that performs better right out of the box. and then go back to your 9400 and overcliock the dogsquirts out of it and see what it’s full potential is. get benchmarks and play some games. Then toss it aside and put the newer better card in and see for yourself.

If you overclocked good enough the 9400 would have out performed a boxed 9600 right out of the pack. Low shader count means your video card will stop at the low number and not stress on drawing the greater shaders. In fact it will ignore them. So your benchmark scores could smear the 9500 9600 9200 210 video cards. but in actual game play. That’s a whole different story.

Just because a video card does not have certain features does not mean it will not perform as good. it just means it will look like crap and not have all of the image features. In some cases it will perform 1000 times better and faster when clocked like crazy, but you will not see what everyone sees in the game.

heck it was almost 3 years before I realized gtaiii billboards actually had crap on them. and that there was smoke coming out of the stacks at teh first safe house.

You do not want the video card with the first of a feature. you want the video card that came years later. The 9500 and the 9600 have huge shader counts yes, but they don’t have the nuts to use them.

move into the 200s or greater (which is the same processor as the 9000s) .. the freaking 500s are right around the corner.

Yank that card and stick it in a media computer. It’s great for dvd and 720p hd.

Linux User Rant About Microsoft vs Apple

Apple Versus Microsoft

Do we not get tired of hearing the same argument over, time and again? ” Well Microsoft is better than  apple just look how many users we have” the retort is “well look at how many viruses you have”. and then as we all shrug at the next statement as a reaction is ” well that is because we have so many users, who in their right mind would create a virus for a mac?? why bother with infecting the three mac users out there” This always stumps the mac guy so he usually mauls around all the stupid responses he can come up with then he responds with the big be all end all answer ” Well i don’t care how many users there are on mac or Microsoft, I just like how much better Mac edits video and audio files”.

Really… Really??? Really guy? show me this huge massive collection of videos you have created and all the audio content you edited. Don’t show me some stupid cd you burned at 2 seconds faster on your mac than what some other dude could have done on his windows machine, Don’t send  me to look at some clump of pirated videos you burned to a CD or DVD collection. I will have to, by all means  grab my keyboard and give you a close frontal of a home row tattoo.

“Well a Macintosh is the best computer you can put windows on” . Ok that reaction is pretty good. Not that it is says either is better than the other, it does say that mac actually took the time to find the right set of components and slap them into one machine and mass produce many slightly varied versions of it and know that all parts are a great fit together. Cool great deal. What happens if you have two identical macs, format one and install windows on it, and install equivalent software on each and begin a benchmark? and then check out software that has no match and see what one is the best bang for the buck.  Can the mac play as many games? of the game they both can play which many plays the games the best,fastest,smoothest, has better image quality? What machine has the largest collection of software to be installed and used between the two ? Has either company broken any labor laws? ok that was a mean stab.

Truth is, since Macintosh has a legal bind against Microsoft saying that Microsoft can not build personal computers, after so many years They should at least agree to build computers that Microsoft can be installed on. Wait I guess they already do, since they are 90% PC parts already. The only big Money Microsoft can look forward to is to build something like a tablet or mobile device that you can not technically call a computer, and install it’s operating system on it. Wait.. I guess they already. We call them palm.

Well I am glad they both make an operating system you can install on a thumb drive and take on you when you make a family trip across country and do not feel like bringing your whole computer. Wait?? they don’t? Why not?? Oh you say because the instabilities and mass driver errors? I guess that makes sense. I mean how could any operating system be put on something so small . i mean that would be like  a pendrive boot disk. I guess that would take an operating system used by NASA or good enough to be used in most schools across the country. Would be crazy to think you could do everything Microsoft claims to do or be even better on a mac than mac is, all the while run from a measly 4 gig (or greater if you want) thumb drive.

Man if good wishes could come true.

Budget Tech Reviews

Finally enough time to actually do reviews. There is now a tech review section of the site created specifically for budget tech. From imitation components, to budget makes and models.

See it’s as if 99% of review sites out there do the high dollar high interest  stuff. For some of us that means “dream stuff”. well this site has a whole section for the budget shopper.

you will most likely not see reviews of the 9800 video card, but you will see a review of the 9500,9400 and so on. If the best video card costs $400, you will see reviews of the $59 video card, tricks that the High end video cards barely use and how to make your budget card just as good as the $400 video card.

Inexpensive cell phones, old used cell phones found on Ebay and craigs list and so on. I call them “GEMS”. The ones that everyone owned a year ago and hacked and modified so much you could almost not tell it was the same one, The site will show you how.

Do not worry, the news section (this section) will still have tech news. All news here, all budget review and budget tricks will be found on

Budget Tech Reviews and tips

You are all welcome to visit.

Hello world!

Tech Reviews on a budget. Reviewing new budget products, used products and faulty products to tell you  how it can be used to make it better or even used  toprove it’s full value, some stuff can be tweaked and that will be posted also.

Website reviews, download reviews of opensource products and free programs.

Custom built computer (Jewel box Project)

Today I was Clicking around in the G4 forums. You know , Looking for game news.

Well I stumbled upon a thread that caught my eye . They guy seems to have built a

Complete custom pc case with the idea of it looking like a Jewel Box.  Look at the way he navigates the air through that thing. and the heatsinks he has all over everything. I mean the video card has the same heatsink as the processor. Amazing.

He has this thing designed to a T. Except two things. The second platform has no front support, and the build just looks kind of retro ugly. But the way it looks does not mean squat. I am 100% for the cooling it has.

here is the complete project

I have to say.

very good job man.