Personal Computer

Hardware, software and accessories that are used on personal computers.

I use NewEgg for about 95% of my computer related purchases and MicroCenter and Amazon for the remaining 5%. NewEgg service, price, and website interface leave the others in the dust.

Household Personal Computers

When I remember I keep this up-to-date.

Nickname	Primary User	CPU	Memory	Video Adapters	Storage Devices	Monitors	Power Supply	Motherboard	Case	Operating System
sphinx	daddy	i5-4690 @ 3.5 GHz	32GB(4x8)	Two EVGA GeForce GTX 770 4GB (SLI @ 5760 x 1080)	One 2TB HDD	Three 23" Dell LCD + 1 HP 23" accessory	Corsair HX 1050	ASUS Sabertooth Z97 Mark1	Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP	Win 8.1 64-bit
frog	mommy	AMD FX-6350 Six-Core @ 3.9GHz	16GB(4x4)	One XFX R9-270X-CDFC Radeon R9 270X	One Seagate 7200RPM 1TB HDD 64MB cache	Acer G6 G246HLAbd 24" LED	Corsair HX 850	ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0	Cooler Master HAF 912	Win 7 64-bit
irish	11 year old daughter	i7-930 @ 2.8 GHz	12GB(3x4)	EVGA GeForce GTX 560Ti	One 1TB HDD	One 23" Dell LCD	Corsair HX 750	Sabertooth X58	Cooler Master HAF 922	Win 7 64-bit
elephant	9-year old daughter	AMD 955 Quad-core @ 3.2 GHz	8GB	XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770	Western Digital 1TB HDD	One 23" Dell LCD	Corsair HX 750	ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 AMD 790X	Cooler Master	Win 7 64-bit & Linux Mint w/MATE
spiderman	6-year old son	AMD FX-8150 Quad-core @ 3.6GHz	16GB(4x4)	One EVGA GTX 260	Western Digital 1TB HDD	One 23" Dell LCD	Corsair HX 850	MSI 990FXA-GD80 V2	generic	Win 7 64-bit & Linux Mint w/MATE
koala	4-year old son	AMD FX-8150 Eight-Core @ 3.6GHz	16GB	One XFX FX-785A-CDFC Radeon HD 7850 2GB	One 1TB HDD	One 23" Dell LCD	XFX PRO850W XXX Edition Semi-Modular	ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0	Silverstone	Win 7 64-bit & Linux Mint w/MATE
shark	daddy	AMD FX-8150 Eight-Core @ 3.6GHz	32GB(4x8)	Two XFX FX-785A-CDFC Radeon HD 7850 2GB (Eyefinity @ 5760 x 1080)	Samsung 256GB SDD	Three 23" Dell LCD (Eyefinity)	Corsair HX 1050	ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0	Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP	Win 8.1 64-bit & Linux Mint w/MATE
hammerhead	daddy	Intel CPU Core 2 Duo E6550 2.333GHz	4GB	EVGA GTX 460	Samsung 256GB SDD	Acer H6 H236HLbid 23"	Corsair HX 850	EVGA 122-CK-NF66-T1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i Ultra	Antec full tower	Linux Mint 16 64-bit w/KDE

Home Network

WAN connectivity

Right now I have Time Warner Cable 100 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up. Another cable competitor CCI (used to be Everest then SureWest and now CCI) offers 100 Mb down / 5 Mbps up. The price is about the same. I've been participating in the FCC Broadband reporting for years. CCI never went above 4.6 Mbps up so I switched to TWC. TWC consistently average 5.1 Mbps. The downloads are both 100-105 Mbps down. Although TWC has a consistently better download the latency on TWC to some of my popular game servers is 65ms to 100ms while CCI averages 35ms to 60ms for the same servers.

I signed up for Google Fiber and they plan to install 1 Gbps synchronous within a few months. My friends who have Google Fiber consistently experience 25ms to 35ms to servers on both East and West coast so the family is excited about the higher bandwidth and extremely low latency for an ISP. Google is serious about their network efficiency and it shows in their latency to both coasts.

I have experienced nothing positive for DSL from AT&T. The latency and bandwidth are inferior to both cable companies. I never recommend DSL unless that is the only option available (when people don't want to move).

LAN connectivity

100 Mbps wired network over CAT5E. Using a 16 port 100Mbps switch. Installed 24-port patch panel and wired my existing house with CAT5E. Plan to buy a 24-port Gigabit switch a few weeks before Google Fiber will be installed.

Old notes regarding some computer issues

Marvell 91xx Config ATA Device

Issue:

BIOS defaults to IDE Mode and I changed to AHCI Mode. Windows found standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller and ATA Channel 0 through 7. The Marvell driver failed and I got a "No driver found" for Marvell 91xx Config ATA Device.

Screen capture (no driver):

Fix:

I downloaded Marvell 91XX Controller Beta Driver V1.2.0.1002 for Windows 32/64bit Vista & 32/64bit Windows 7.(WHQL) Beta Version 1.2.0.1002 from ASUS support page then installed it. Windows 7 did not even require a reboot and drive has been found.

Screen capture (driver installed):

Intel DX48BT2 motherboard support site

Software

Office Suite

Open Office

CD / DVD Burning software

To burn data and audio CD / DVDs I use CD BurnerXP.

To create personal copies of protected DVDs that I have purchased I use 1ClickDVDCopy Pro ($79 fee) and DVD43, a free decrypter.

Multimedia software

VLC - the cross-platform media player and streaming server.

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Video Capture

Fraps is a universal Windows application that can be used with games using DirectX or OpenGL graphic technology. In its current form Fraps performs many tasks and can best be described as:

• Benchmarking Software
• Screen Capture Software
• Realtime Video Capture Software

Video Editing

Freemake offers freeware in the truest sense of the word: no feature or time limitations, no hidden costs. Download and use our free Video Converter, Video Downloader, Audio Converter and Free Music Box! Convert video free to AVI, MP4, WMV, MKV, FLV, 3GP, MPEG, DVD, Blu-ray, MP3, iPod, iPhone, iPad, PSP, Android, Nokia, Samsung, BlackBerry with Free Video Converter. Convert audio free to MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, AAC, M4A, OGG, convert audio to MP3 player, iPod, iPhone, iPad, PSP, and more with our Free Audio Converter.

I like FreeMake products as the software is simple to use & their site provides video tutorials.
Their products work, have lots of features, & no hidden spyware or adware.

TMPGEnc converts *.AVI files to MPEG1, the format which is used in VideoCDs. Using a variety of options in TMPGEnc, you can compress your video file in high quality.

TMPGEnc enables you to adjust bitrate, quantize matrix, GOP structure, interlacing and many other parameters so that you can create the most appropriate movie file depending on your needs.

Virtualdubis a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms (98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/Vista/7), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters.

Communications Software

Browser and E-mail

Firefox and Thunderbird

My Thunderbird Notes

Firefox add-ons

FireFTP

Download Status Bar

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself.

Torrent

qBittorrent project aims to provide a free software alternative to µtorrent. Additionally, qBittorrent runs and provides the same features on all major platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, OS/2, FreeBSD).

Java

Java

FTP clients

Filezilla

VoIP clients

Ventrillo

TeamSpeak

IRC client

HexChat

SSHv2 & SFTP

Putty is a free SSHv2 program. You can also get SecureFTP program from same site.

mRemoteNG is a fork of mRemote, an open source, tabbed, multi-protocol, remote connections manager. mRemoteNG adds bug fixes and new features to mRemote.

eRemoteNG allows you to view all of your remote connections in a simple yet powerful tabbed interface.

mRemoteNG supports the following protocols:

• RDP (Remote Desktop/Terminal Server)
• VNC (Virtual Network Computing)
• ICA (Citrix Independent Computing Architecture)
• SSH (Secure Shell version 1 & 2)
• Telnet (TELecommunication NETwork)
• HTTP/HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
• rlogin
• Raw Socket Connections

Tunnelier

Bitvise Tunnelier

Utilities

eBook

calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has a cornucopia of features divided into the following main categories:

• Library Management
• E-book conversion
• Syncing to e-book reader devices
• Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form
• Comprehensive e-book viewer
• Content server for online access to your book collection

Password manager

Keepass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish). For more information, see the features page.

PDF Viewer & Printer

Foxit Reader Foxit Reader is a free PDF document viewer and printer, with incredible small size (only 2.55 M download size), breezing-fast launch speed and rich feature set. Foxit Reader supports Windows Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista. Its core function is compatible with PDF Standard 1.7.

Compression

Open Source

Peazip Note: Ensure you read install directions carefully to avoid extra software (crapware?)

Closed source

WinRAR

Backup

MozBackup is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Sunbird, Flock, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite, Spicebird and Netscape profiles.

MozBackup

Hardware Monitor

SpeedFan is a program that monitors voltages, fan speeds and temperatures in computers with hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can even access S.M.A.R.T. info for those hard disks that support this feature and show hard disk temperatures too, if supported.

GPU Utilities

RadeonPro

HASH utilities

Command line SHA256 Checksum Utility for Windows

Accessories

Mouse pads

XTracPads

Prefer Xtracpads

RatPadz

Second choice is RatPadz. Over the years my Ratpadz start to fail
as the surface becomes worn & smooth in areas which impacts laser mouse
movement

To Go

Gear Grip