There are several freely available programs I use for Overclocking my computer. These utilities are great for verifying your computer’s overclock (such as the ram and processor speed) as well as your computer’s stability.
This past Saturday, after plugging for over 13 consecutive days at over 10 hours a day at dissertation work trying to crank out a 27 page journal paper, I finally took a break and helped Frank build his new computer. I am really proud how awesome the journal paper came out, my adviser and I should be submitting it soon to a prominent geo-spatial image processing journal. This super productivity streak is mostly to blame for the lack of blog posts lately, when trying to graduate this semester, the blog gets pushed to the back burner.
The break was indeed a much needed one and although I only had 3 hours of sleep by time I got to Frank’s apartment, I was really happy to have the priviledge to help him build his new machine. For me, the actual building of the computer is one of the funnest parts. Never again will I buy a pre-built machine from IBM (like I once used to when I was in high school). When you do buy pre-built machines from Bestbuy, Dell, etc. you actually pay that company to assemble the computer for you (the construction cost is what makes machines bought from these companies more expensive than building the machines yourself). If you are a gamer or building a computer for intensive simulations and graphic rendering, it will most certainly behoove you to build your own should you so choose to do the research behind building your own. You can find pictures of the last machine I built <here>.
I have to confess, Frank did all of the research behind building this machine. With my dissertation work, there was little consultation I was able to provide when it came to component selection. About the only advice I gave him was when I thought a particular component was overpriced or simply incompatible with what he had selected elsewhere.
