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
Our house uses Google Fiber 1 Gbps synchronous Internet. I get approximately 950 Mbps for upload and 950 for download. The latency to east coast servers is approximately 30ms. The West coast servers are approximately 40ms.
LAN connectivity
Our house has a 1 Gbps wired network over Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) CAT5E with face plates installed in various rooms. The wires connect to a 24-port patch panel. The 24-port patch panel connects to a 24-port non-managed Gigabit switch.
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
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 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
FTP clients
VoIP clients
IRC client
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
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
Backup
MozBackup is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Sunbird, Flock, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite, Spicebird and Netscape profiles.
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
HASH utilities
Command line SHA256 Checksum Utility for Windows
Accessories
Mouse pads
Prefer Xtracpads
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