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I hate it when I waste resources. Letting the water run while I brush my teeth, leaving the door open when the air conditioner is on, and leaving my computer idle all bother me. The first two examples probably seem very obvious as to what is being wasted, but what about the third? Do you see it? For most computers, from the moment you turn it on the processor is churning away at a specified frequency. No matter what is going on, that processor of yours is running full tilt, computing nothing. This is what bothers me, processors computing nothing, this is both electricity and computing capacity being wasted. Now what if I told you that all these unused clock cycles could be used to help mankind? If that interests you, keep reading and maybe you’ll find a new competition to join.

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With a 3 day weekend coming up there won’t be much going on this weekend here, but I do have some greats links from XS.org. I have been watching the top overclockers play with their AM2 and Conroe chips and here are some of the results. So far Conroe is looking very good with AM2 nipping at its heals. AM2 does lead in a few things though such as 3DMark05 and 3DMark03 with SLI 7900GTX’s, so all is not lost for AMD. Now let the linking commence.

OPPPAINTER overclocks FX-62 to 3635MHz
JuanFlaiter tests AM2 4600+ and 4000+
hey overclocks a 3800+ to 2948MHz
Onepagebook overclocks Conroe to 3304MHz
Coolaler overclocks Conroe to 3409MHz
Coolaler overclocks Conroe to 3608MHz
Coolaler overclocks Conroe to 4259MHz
Fugger overclocks Conroe to 3619MHz

It sure seems like Conroe is a force to be reckoned with, especially when compared to the dismal performance of AM2. It sure looks like Intel will be winning this round but once the K8L core releases in the Fall we might see a fair fight. Now time for me to go take a weekend off, be back Monday.

Normally I could care less about productivity tools, let alone Microsoft Office. Previously, every new edition contained a few tweaks, a slightly different interface, and a hefty price tag. Unlike the previous Office products though, this beta copy was free and it looked good, maybe even great. The last Office product I had used was Office XP and when you compare Office XP to Office 2007, the programs have very few similarities. The only relation they have is that they are productivity suites, otherwise 2007 is the better looking, faster, cooler version of Office.

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Just thought AMD should get a little plug with their hardlaunch of AM2. I just checked MonarchComputer.com and they have AM2 chips in stock with a shipping date of 4-6 business days. Hopefully this is the continuation of a new wave of hard launches by hardware companies. If I had the money to spare I’d love to pick up a AM2 motherboard and perhaps a Sempr0n and see how well these new memory controllers overclock, maybe a budget chip and decent board will fall out of the sky. If you want to be one of the first to buy an AM2, head over here for the currently available chips. More chips will release in the coming weeks with a few faster chips coming out also. The FX-62 released a dual core processor operating at 2.8GHz with 2MB of cache shared between the two processors. Price tag:$1169. Hopefully a few more computing World Records will fall with these new chips.

Here is a review of the AM2 processors by HardOCP with a lot of attention to the small details. This review covers everything from prices to performance compared to s939 processors so check it out. It looks like AM2 won’t be offering to much in the way of performance but the AM2 processors weren’t overclocked so we don’t know how high they will scale with the new memory controller. Perhaps AMD has made the memory controller less sensitive to temperatures, no coldbug would be a boon to extreme overclockers. Only time will tell how effective this chips are in the hands of an avid overclocker.

I was browsing through Digg.com the other day and I found this new service called Elephant Drive. With the advertising of unlimited online storage my ears perked up and I clicked the link. Apparently this new service is being offered by Amazon.com and is currently in the beta stages. According to the website, while Elephant Drive is in beta the service will be free but once it goes live there will be a fee involved for most of the accounts with the option to have a limited but free account. Since this service is currently free, lets take advantage of some free space and check this program out.

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While I try to stay focused on my technology topic with this website, I need to deviate temporarily to announce this new blog. This new “off topic” blog will provide me with a place to rant and rave about the world while providing a backup site for this place. If my server dies or my database dies, Chrismorrell.wordpress.com will contain an explanation and will keep you updated. If all you read here are the technical articles and don’t care about my personal life, steer clear and just keep that site in mind if this one crashes.

I spent a few minute digging through the settings on wordpress.com and I felt very limited. There will be no custom theme since I can’t upload k2, and I really don’t need it to look pretty since it is essentially a diary. Anyways, I hope you have enjoyed reading what I write, knowing that people read what I have to say is very important to me and I hope I have been doing a good job. I am still learning this whole blogging thing though, it’ll be a few months till I feel completely settled in. Thanks for reading.

For the last 6 years I have been a very active player in the computer cooling community. I have done everything, passive cooled, watercooled, Peltier cooled, and phase cooling, so I have seen just about everything. When I had finished building my most recent Phase cooler, I noticed how much noise my case was putting out. There were whirring fans, a vibrating compressor, and a very loud Western Digital hard drive. Luckily for me about a week ago, this hard drive failed me and I had removed the phase cooler and then enjoyed the silence. Remembering how loud my computer had been, I decided I would try to re-build my computer utilizing near-silent components. With this requirement, air-cooled heatsinks were out, and so were loud hard drives, and small fans. For my cooling solution I picked up a Thermaltake Bigwater SE and I also grabbed a Seagate 7200.9 300GB drive. Since I have never reviewed any hardware on this website, lets make this first time a good one.

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I figured I should probably do a state of the nation address for this website considering that the past couple of articles have sort of been very haphazard in their topics. Yes I do have a grand master plan, no I don’t know all of the details, and no I can’t tell you. However what I can do is list a few of the things that interest me and will potentially become articles here.

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