Recent content by CapaJC

I'm making this harder than it is. I'm sure of it. I bought a new WD Raptor 150GB for my OS. Nice drive! I installed Vista fresh-'n-clean on it, and I kept my old boot drive w/ XP in the system. Install went great, never hinting at the problem I'd have. Apparently my MBR is on that old...

Dear god, I had no idea what it would be like. Newly bought: BFG 7900GT CO (upgraded from an AIW 9800 Pro) Athlon 64 X2 4200+ CPU (from a P4 2.66GHz ABIT A8N-32X mobo (from an ASUS P4G8x Deluxe) Seasonic S12 500W PSU (from something quiet) Took my sweet time putting it together. At one...

I ordered my BFG 7900 GT CO from Monarch on Friday morning (California time), and it just arrived at my door. 2 business days. Not bad, considering the webpage estimated 2-3 days processing in the warehouse, and FedEx estimated it'd get here Wednesday. I am happy. --James in S.D.

I can't believe how many people are telling you to rip to a lossless format for mostly car and gym listening. They're either nuts or they have disk space and mp3-player memory to burn. Unless you're an acoustic engineer or have otherwise superior hearing, 192 LAME CBR will do just fine for...

I'd get an SLI mobo, PSU and two 7900GTs now, sell the 7800GT CO, and save the rest of the $$$ 'till summer '08. Of course, my first instinct in PC upgrades usually turns out to be pretty dumb... --James in S.D.

One more thing: is this a one-time decision? I mean, if I try the stock cooler, and it's too loud, is there any way to get it off later? If I remember correctly, my previous stock coolers have used some pretty strong glue to attach to their CPUs. At least, that's the impression I got at the...

DBAN is easy to use. The 3-pass wipe is DoD's "lite" standard, their full standard goes 7 passes. That's what I just used on about 6 old drives I'm selling or tossing. DBAN took about 2 hours on an old 2.78GB drive (slow drive!), and just a few hours for an 80GB newer drive. The 160GB took...

Audigy 2. Period. --James in S.D.

Okay, thanks all...that's what I wanted to know :) --James in S.D.

(edit) now trying to find out if installing a stock CPU cooler is a "point of no return"... ------------------------------- Hey all, I've read lots of great CPU cooler reviews here in the past couple hours, but haven't seen this particular question addressed. I'm really interested in your...

I'd tell you to restore from your backup, but I'd prob'ly just sound like a dick. Man, I'm sorry. That sucks. Those data recovery companies often charge thousands of dollars. Some don't charge unless they recover data, some charge anyway. Some offer 24hr turnaround, if it's critical. If I...

Be very careful if you have to reinstall later on with a drive full of data. I reinstalled vanilla XP Pro with a 200GB drive in my system full of data. When Windows booted up, it barfed on the large drive and corrupted about 60GB of data on the drive. Of course, I may have done something else...

I've read that Dell's next version of this monitor will change practically nothing about the specs. A good sign that this is a pretty good monitor. Personally, I love mine. I rotate it 90 degrees for MAME games, and it's like I'm in front of a giant arcade machine. No eye strain yet, but I do...

Yeah, the Sonata came with rubber grommets for the drives and rubber screws for the fans. A nice touch. --James in S.D.

For a case I already had an Antec Sonata, all foamed up for extra noise reduction. Excessive, probably, and the foam may or may not make a difference. I didn't do any testing. For the PSU, I have a quiet one, but it's not rated for SLI and is pretty weak anyway. I'm looking at the Seasonic...