Building a budget gaming machine Jan 2013 for less then £250

So, what with all the Christmas money (about £250), thought it best spent on a nice gaming machine. Where to start? Research:

• AMD or Intel?
• AMD is the cheap option, Intel the expensive. So, as it's a budget PC then AMD is first choice. If I had more money I'd go Intel.
• AMD just released FM2 socket A series, with APU (on chip graphics). After reading a few reviews this seemed the obvious choice.
• Go with cheap A4 chip or expensive A8 chip?
• basically I could buy a cheap A4 chip with good motherboard and good RAM or
• expensive A8 chip with cheap motherboard and cheap RAM
• I choose expensive chip. The only real benifit of an expensive motherboard is an extra 2 slots for RAM. But I think I'll only need a max of 32GB RAM for the near future.
• Chipset - A75 or A85X?
• I think the A85X is newer, but I like the fact that the A75 is cheaper and also has USB 3 native controller to make it more future proof
• both have SATA III support for fast SSD action
• graphics card or APU?
• after reading this nice review from Anandtech I wanted to go for the higher priced A8 chip, and when I get more cash, get a graphics card which uses crossfire.
• SSD or HDD?
• HDD are cheap and BIG! £40 for 1TB!
• I can't believe the price of an SSD (about £40 for 64GB). I can always plug an external one in for more storage, which isn't a priority. I want SPEED!
• Also SATA III is a must!
• 2 sticks of 4GB RAM, or 1 stick of 8GB?
• reading up on it, because the new motherboards support "Dual Channel" RAM thought it best to get two. Apparently works out at 1/3 quicker.
• Windows 7 or Windows 8?
• Windows 8 is the future. Also reviews say it's a little quicker.

So after scouting about in ebuyer.com I found:

£20 - Micro ATX case with 500W PSU

£75 - AMD A8 5600K 3.6GHz Socket FM2 Processor

£40 - Biostar HiFi A75S3 Socket FM2 motherboard

£40 - SanDisk 64GB Pulse SSD SATA III

£35 - 2 x 4GB DDR3 1866MHz RAM

£12 - Liteon DVD RW Drive SATA

----------

£222 - total!!!

So, when I get more money I can always:

1. Buy AMD 6670 graphics card
1. cheapest at the moment is £52
2. replace 8GB (2 x 4GB) with 32GB (2 x 16GB)
1. cheapest at the moment is £185!
3. Buy an AMD A10 5800K processor
1. currently £94

And these will be cheaper in the future.

I predict without the upgrades it'll last me 2 to 3 years (£220 / 3 = £73 per year), with the upgrades it'll last up to 5 years (hard to say what things will cost in 3 years time).

Just putting it together at the moment, will send some pictures and do some benchmark testing for games!

If anyone has any other recommendations, or perhaps what I should have done with the £250 then comment below.

NTFS drives read and write on Mac OS X 10.7

This is worth noting down for future referencing. A friend found a nice little article on how to get Mac OS X 10.7 to read and write to NTFS drives:

http://techbytesxpress.com/2012/03/13/ntfs-on-os-x-lion-10-7-solved/#

equipment booking system

Well, going over my previous post about booking systems it looks like my requirements are a little too niche. It appears there is no 'out of the box' solution. I shall review my needs below:

• booking multiple equipment at a time
• book day and time for pick up and drop off
• view availability
• 4 time slots per day
• all through online interface
• active directory logins

it appears jomrez is almost there, but lacks time slots and multiple items.

The only one which hints at all this is R&R, which is more of a custom build. No pricing up front, but they do demos. I shall chase this one up.

MacBook Pro left hand fan noisy

After turning on one of our 2009 MacBook Pro 17", after about 5 seconds, the left hand side fan would start making a buzzing noise. Thought it'd be something rattling around with it, or maybe catching a wire so I took it apart.

When I took the fan with the casing out I noticed nothing catching. It seemed to be rattling of its' own accord. I found this good post on how to fix the fan. Basically just take the two screws holding it together off. Then prize the fan off the motor.

Inside I found a little tiny bit of grit underneath the magnet on the main base. I tried to get it out but it proved pretty tricky. After 5 mins I got most of the bits out (very tiny bits), and I oiled the fan axle.

I put it back together and it worked a treat.

Thank you very much  ifixit.com and nofilmschool.com. This internet thing is very helpful.

Photoshop could not save because of a disk error

Well, quite recently students have been having trouble saving from Photoshop CS5 version 12.0.

It comes up with:
It's strange because if you try multiple times, sometimes it saves and others it comes up with the error.

Could not save as because of a desk error.

Looking in the console log I found these entries:

26/11/2012 16:09:36 /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS5/Adobe Photoshop CS5.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Photoshop CS5[1697] Allocator race detected: transaction is not verified for -103/2 - _mac_bind/Library/Preferences/Adobe/Color/ACEConfigCache2.lst
26/11/2012 16:09:48 /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock[1652] Allocator race detected: transaction is not verified for -103/248 - Untitled-4.psd
26/11/2012 16:09:49 kernel smb_maperr32: no direct map for 32 bit server error (0xc0000279)
26/11/2012 16:09:49 kernel smb_maperr32: no direct map for 32 bit server error (0xc0000279)

It seems to be a problem with users whose home drive is on Windows 2003 or before shares. Luckily I have my home drive on a Windows 2008 share.

Looking on the internet for the kernel error I found this down in the "Mac OS X bug: Empty oflders when browsing Samba shares on Windows 2003 Server". He gets the error when looking in sub-folders on a Windows 2003 server. Might be related.

Tried it with my login with my home drive on Windows Server 2008 share and works without problems.

So far I've tried:

• OS X 10.7.4
• OS X 10.6.6
• OS X 10.6.8
• Photoshop CS5 12.0.4
• Redirecting ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/ to a local folder

Just had a very similar problem with Windows PC's. Students trying to save from Photoshop to their home drive came up with a similar error:

Could not save as because the file could not be found

It looks like it's a server problem as it happens on both Windows and Mac. I shall update when I find out more.

HP Designjet 500 error 02:10 ribbon problems- trailing cable

I went to use the HP Designjet 500 and upon switching it on I noticed the print carriage stopping abruptly half way along the bed. Looking inside I noticed the ribbon which connects to the carriage was crumpled and had dried ink all over it. Thought this was causing the problem because it was unable to slide along with the carriage so I cleaned it.

After this it's had a few problems loading the paper, and also whilst printing. Just noticed this "System Error 02:10".

Found a few forums on the subject referring to the carriage and print heads. Replaced yellow printhead adn while it was performing an alignment it came up with:
System Error:  79:04

Found this (right at the bottom) one saying it was the connection with the ribbon cable. Looks like it's not getting the right 2.5V signal from the carriage. Needs reseating. Otherwise replace the cable.

The trouble is: How to get into the printer to reseat the cable? Looks like a bit of work.

Found a quick little tutorial on how to get the main cover off. Simply remove the three screws (hex) on the back main part. I unclipped the lift up cover, and you need to unclip the main cover by lifting it up.

Not sure how to remove the side panels.

I reseated the cables on the print carriage but after doing about 2 inches of print on a 36" roll it came up with this error again.

Found a service manual for the HP Designjet 500.
The error is found in section 2-8, carriage failure. It says to replace the Carriage Assembly, but my suspisions point to specifically the "Trailing Cable" as this was quite bent, possibly shorting when the carriage is moving.
To replace the "Trailing Cable" go to section 8-40

Looks like the trailing cable is about £15 so pretty cheap to try out.

If this doesn't work perhaps a carriage assembly. About £120 refurbished, or £350 new



Note ...................
7th Feb 2013
So, it's 3 months on and I finally got the chance to install a new "Trailing Cable". Nothing to note about changing the cable over, the manual is quite self explanatory. The only thing I found was that the torx screws were not size T20, were actually a size or two smaller.

After installation it worked perfectly!

Fixed.

Reseting a pasword in Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

Well, I needed to reset a password on a newly bought iMac (they'd forgotten what they had originally put??).

I knew how to do it back in 10.4 but thought the method might have changed a bit. Anyway, found this nice article on it. Basically:

1. Boot into Recovery Mode (hold down cmd + R)
2. Go to Utilities > Terminal
3. type:
1. resetPassword
4. a password reset facility comes up
5. Reboot the machine!

Done.

A little bit insecure. I basically means anyone reading this article can reset anyones password and access their files (unless fileVault has been used which has a lot of issues with it)