Off-Topic: Almost Back in the Saddle Again

Horse and Saddle
Just a Little Bit Longer, Fella…

Hey y’all, how are ya? I’m writing because I’m finally starting to feel like my old self again after a month or so of CRAZINESS including moving my girlfriend in, switching roles at work and so on. The unpacking and rearranging at home is nearly complete — I need to buy a new desk — and I’ve gelled enough in my new position that I don’t feel as overwhelmed or exhausted anymore. YAY!

I recently purchased some new guts for my computer, used, from one of my friends who helped us in the move. I’ve now upgraded from:

  • A AMD 64 Dual Core CPU to a Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem Quad-Core 2.66ghz
  • 2GB of RAM ro 6 GB of RAM
  • ATI 5850 Video Card to a GeForce GTX 295

The new system is running a lot hotter than the last (CPU idling at ~50C, GPU at ~60C), mostly due to the video card, so I might swap the 5850 back in for the time being to see if that helps. Regardless, I now have an interim upgrade that allows me to put money aside for a year so I can do a huge upgrade next year while still allowing me to play newer games. YAY!

That’s the good news, and I was all excited to return to covering spacey games starting this week, but the bad news came by way of a notice on our apartment door. Tomorrow, they’re doing a mandatory spraying all of the apartments for bed bugs, which means we have to move all of the furniture away from the walls tonight, and then tomorrow, take the cats to the vet and leave them there all day, then seriously vacuum tomorrow night so there’s no leftover poison for them to accidentally nibble upon.

So my next maybe three nights are accounted for as we move furniture, then clean up the aftermath of the bug bombing and so on, which will all seriously eat into my game playing time. The short version is, I likely won’t be fully returning to said saddle until next week, sadly.

I just wanted to keep y’all informed so y’all don’t start wondering where the gorram heck I am and stop coming back. :/ I’d hate for that to happen, and I’m already not thrilled with how long this hiatus has taken, but what can ya do? Life happens, and I really can’t complain about mine. ;)

So I just wanted to let y’all know what’s going on, and to let ya know that I should be returning to my normal blogging duties next week. I have some reviews to finish up, at east one new one to begin, and some previews to crank out as well, so please stay tuned, and as always, thank you for visiting. :)

 

Author: Brian Rubin

4 thoughts on “Off-Topic: Almost Back in the Saddle Again

  1. Oh good god those 2 series Nvidia cards are hot and use a ton of power. The 295 is basically two GPUs so I imagine it’s hot as hell in your pc. Anyway, glad you got to do an upgrade and things are getting more on track.

    1. Yeah, and the sad thing is I had to remove a case fan to have it all fit, as the CPU cooler is HUGE.

      1. Is the CPU overclocked? When not you dont need such a big cooler. Smaller one does work too.
        Then you have more space for more case fans, they are essential. No air flow is deadly :D you should have one in the back at least (Pushing air outside). Better one more in the roof (outflow too) and and one in the front for new air. ;)

        1. I still have two case fans in the back, one on top and one in the front, so hopefully that’ll be enough. The CPU, as far as I know, isn’t overclocked. I’m tempted to put the old 5850 back in, but I wanna try this config under a stress test with a game or two for a few hours each to see how she fares. I’m only planning on keeping this rig for maybe a year.

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