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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| sourdough | daddy | i7-7700K Kaby Lake @ 4.2 GHz | 32GB(2x16) | Two EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 SC GAMING ACX 3.0 8GB (SLI) | Intel SSD 600p + 1 TB HDD | Three 23" Dell LCD + 1 Acer 23" accessory | CORSAIR RM750X 750W 80 PLUS GOLD | ASUS ROG STRIX Z270H | Cooler Master HAF 912 | Win 10 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 10 64-bit |
| irish | 13-year old daughter | AMD FX-8350 Black Edition Vishera 8-Core @ 4.0GHz | 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3 1866 | EVGA NVidia GTX 560Ti | One Seagate 1TB 7200 RPM | One 23" Dell LCD | Corsair HX 750 | ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 AM3+ AMD 990FX | Cooler Master HAF 922 | Win 10 64-bit |
| elephant | 11-year old daughter | i5-4690 @ 3.5 GHz | 32GB(4x8) | EVGA GeForce GTX 770 4GB | 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 10 64-bit |
| spiderman | 8-year old son | AMD FX-8150 Quad-core @ 3.6GHz | 16GB(4x4) | One XFX FX-785A-CDFC Radeon HD 7850 2GB | Western Digital 1TB HDD | One 23" Dell LCD | Corsair HX 850 | MSI 990FXA-GD80 V2 | generic | Win 10 64-bit & Linux Mint w/Cinnamon |
| koala | 6-year old son | AMD FX-8150 Eight-Core @ 3.6GHz | 32GB (4x8) | 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 10 64-bit & Linux Mint w/Cinnamon |
| 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 10 64-bit & Linux Mint w/MATE |
| hammerhead | daddy | Intel Core i5-6600 6M Skylake Quad-Core 3.3 GHz | 32GB (4x8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2133 (PC4 17000) | Built-In Intel | Samsung 950Pro SSD | Acer H6 H236HL 23" | Coolmaster GX 750W | SABERTOOTH Z170 MARK 1 | Antec full tower | Linux Fedora Core Release 23 64-bit |
| steamnuc | daddy | Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7567U CPU @ 3.50GHz | 16GB (2 x 8GB 260Pin SO-DIMM DDR4 2133) | Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 | Samsung 950Pro SSD | Headless | Built-in | Built-in | NUC7I7BNH | Linux Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS |
Home Network
WAN connectivity
Our house uses both Google Fiber and AT&T Fiber at 1 Gbps synchronous Internet. I get approximately 945 Mbps for upload and 945 Mbps for download on Google Fiber. AT&T Fiber is approximately 840 Mbps download and 940 Mbps upload.
For residential homes Google Fiber only offers dynamic IP address assignment (my IP has changed once in over 3 years). AT&T Fiber has better IP address options than Google Fiber. AT&T doesn't care whether your fiber connection is residential or business. AT&T Gigabit Fiber offers static IP addresses. The AT&T Fiber cost per month is $15 for block of 8, $25 for 16, $30 for 32, $35 for 64, and $40 for 128.
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
Image or graphic tools
Use ImageMagick® to create, edit, compose, or convert bitmap images. It can read and write images in a variety of formats (over 200) including PNG, JPEG, GIF, HEIC, TIFF, DPX, EXR, WebP, Postscript, PDF, and SVG. Use ImageMagick to resize, flip, mirror, rotate, distort, shear and transform images, adjust image colors, apply various special effects, or draw text, lines, polygons, ellipses and Bézier curves.
ImageMagick is free software delivered as a ready-to-run binary distribution or as source code that you may use, copy, modify, and distribute in both open and proprietary applications. It is distributed under a derived Apache 2.0 license.
ImageMagick utilizes multiple computational threads to increase performance and can read, process, or write mega-, giga-, or tera-pixel image sizes.
Vector graphics
Inkscape is professional quality vector graphics software that runs on Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux. It is used by design professionals and hobbyists worldwide, for creating a wide variety of graphics such as illustrations, icons, logos, diagrams, maps and web graphics. Inkscape uses the W3C open standard SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) as its native format, and is free and open-source software.
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
MP4Tools is a collection of cross-platform free tools to manipulate MP4 files. It contains following applications:
- MP4Joiner is a free application that allows join multiple MP4 files into one without reencoding and without quality loss.
- MP4Splitter is a free application that allows split a MP4 file in multiple files without reencoding and without quality loss
MP4Tools is Open Source Software and is completely free.
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
I switched to Bitvise SSH client for SSH client. I like some of the features Bitvise offers. 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
Console utilities
Cmder is a software package created out of pure frustration over the absence of nice console emulators on Windows. It is based on amazing software, and spiced up with the Monokai color scheme and a custom prompt layout, looking sexy from the start.
ConEmu-Maximus5 aims to be handy, comprehensive, fast and reliable terminal window where you may host any console application developed either for WinAPI (cmd, powershell, far) or Unix PTY (cygwin, msys, wsl bash).
Steps to put Cmder in your environment variable
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
Screen Capture
In December of 2017 I switched my entire family over to Greenshot for screen capture software. With each new version of SnagIt the user interface kept getting worse. Not only is Greenshot free I actually like using it more than SnagIt. I have been using TechSmith's SnagIt for many years and with each newer version of SnagIt I had to buy another copy and the program got worse due to added complexity and bloat.
Snagit by TechSmith
Note on Snagit version 12.4.1 I noticed a TechSmith Uploader Service taking up 1.7 MB of RAM. I contacted TechSmith support and explained what the service did and how to remove it.
Purpose: The TechSmith Uploader Service is used when Snagit is integrated with TechSmith Relay, which is an Enterprise service that we offer. The service is designed to run in the background and not be visible to the user.
Removal: Remove TechSmith Uploader Service by browsing to C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\TechSmith Shared\Uploader on your computer. Right click on the "UninstallAndRemoveUploader.cmd" file and choose Run as administrator. Once that is done reboot your machine.
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
Use PowerShell built-in command
Command line SHA256 Checksum Utility for Windows
Voxel utilities
MagicaVoxel is a free lightweight 8-bit voxel art editor and GPU based interactive path tracing render-er.
MagicaVoxel keyboard shortcuts.
Tutorials
MagicaVoxel 3D Art Tutorial for Beginners
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