UPGRADE ENVY

By Peter Hawkins

I just wish that this was a simple tale, easily told, with no great import. At least part of the previous statement is true! And, it began quite innocently too.

Just before Christmas, my son Matthew told me that he had bought the latest and greatest Windows XP Media computer. I don’t remember all he said, but quite clearly Core 2 Duo E6400, 2 gigs ram, 500 GB hard drive, 22 inch (yes…a 22 inch) wide monitor, and perhaps a few other things remained in my mind. Now you need to know that I am a recovering upgrader. I have faithfully recited the 12 step mantra every day for the last 4 years and thought that I was well on the way to recovery. 

Alas…such a fool was I! The ugly truth is that his simple declaration, said in all innocence and pride, knocked me off the wagon! I was becoming envious! I mean really envious! To the point where memories of coaxing every last byte of ram space out of my 286 (and later 386, oh yes and 486...) came flooding back in. The joys of loading tiny little programs in UPPER memory, changing the load order to squeeze just one more in. And then succumbing to the evil necessity (?) of a motherboard upgrade, just to stay 3 waves behind the front. I was doomed.

My every waking thought was directed at a new acquisition. How could I get my old (very old) Pentium 2.2 GHz renewed?  I could not afford to compete with my son…how unseemly, but something was needed. This of course required a trip to the friendly local computer store. (They must have seen me coming!) And the counter staff were so helpful…not just the usual 5 minutes for me. I got the royal treatment: a full discussion of an affordable upgrade path that would relieve my anxieties. The best part was that I could purchase just 3 little items over the next 3 months, hardly make a dent in the family budget, and, once again, be able to discuss computing with my son from a position approximating equality. (Note: this is just self delusion talking - there wasn’t the proverbial snowball’s chance in h3** of being 2 stone’s throws from the next county, let alone “equality”. But such is the nature of an addict’s mind!)

On that fateful day I bought item #1 - a 1 gig stick of PC3200 ram memory to spruce up my laggardly computer’s performance. And it worked too, even better than I had hoped, for I discovered that after installing the aforementioned stick, not only did I have 1.256 MB of wonderful active ram memory, but another completely unexplored path opened up, something that the guy in the computer store hadn’t even breathed into my ear - overclocking!  

What joy! What bliss! Almost like winning the lottery or getting the very best Xmas present. Just pump up the CPU I had, and virtual miracles would take place! Nowhere in my thoughts had this ever come up and I was just blown away. Could it work? I decided that the only was to take a look at the CPU I had - I mean to physically grasp it in my hand and look at it. Feel it. Have its potential of unlocked power in just one hand. 

At this juncture, you the reader, a sensible straight-forward thinker might be asking yourself: “What could possibly go wrong?” Just a simple look really, just 2 little plastic levers to open. So I did what you would expect: I pulled those 2 little plastic levers up and in full expectation that my fan and CPU would spring clear, I tugged the assembly upwards. The total length of travel was less than ¼ inch. What a disappointment! But do not yet decry my ineptitude. Where there is a will, there is a way. In my case, all that was needed was gentleness, patience, and 15 minutes with 2 screwdrivers and a pair of pliers. And I succeeded. In my hand was the brains of my computer. There it was, glued almost in the center of the back of the big aluminium heat sink - the CPU. It was, as you already knew, slightly bent!  And there was no way I was going to be able to see what pins were wrong, let alone ever get it back where it came from!

What to do? The answer is obvious - just go back to that wonderful customer-centric computer store and ask for a little help repairing my adjustment. They recognized me, and remembered me and that gave me big warm feelings towards them, and of course one of their techs could fix my adjustment real quick, no problemo! Just have a little faith that I was still on the right track. Everything was OK. See you next month for the next part of the plan.

At this point in time, I did a little stock taking, an evaluation of the situation as it was unfolding. The new memory stick cost $140 (taxes etc) but the tech’s help was only $10, so I’ve only spent $150, pretty close to the planned trajectory. Onwards and upwards.

The second month arrived, and part two was due to be implemented. This was simple - just purchase a new motherboard for $80 and wait until month 3 when I would buy the new chip. That went pretty well. I called the store, and they had two in stock, one with MY name on it! Could it get any better than this? I picked it up and spent the next 30 days reading about how easy it was to install a motherboard. Just simple hand tools, a little care, and just 1 hour of time. It took longer to read the installation manual than it was going to take to install the thing.

What could I do while I waited for the final step of my plan? That was an easy choice. OVERCLOCK! So I did. I discovered a universal secret of overclocking: the CPU gets hotter! Most of the time the sensor tried to tell me that things were OK.  The CPU ran 4 or 5 degrees warmer (not hotter than tolerances I told myself) measured in Celsius. As long as the workload didn’t stray over 30 percent, things ran fine. I had a 3 GHz Pentium, a 30% plus faster chip for NO more money. Well again there is a slight deception here. There was no way I was going to say that I had a 2.994 GHz chip, just a little rounding up, and after all, isn’t that how you would round it up anyway?) Problems however were encountered. Not BIG problems, just little ones. Any really serious work load on the processor made the temperature spike. I didn’t think that the motherboard would allow a chip to get that hot and not shut down. Automatically, according to the BIOS. The actual number my defective sensor tried to report was 85 degrees. Just momentarily. For a very short time. Not even long enough to cause a shut-down. Barely! Oh well, to alleviate my worries, I focused on the new CPU purchase I would make next month. And one other thing.

You see, I had purchased a 19 inch monitor the previous August, so the 17 inch one was sitting on a shelf, gathering dust. I used it with my laptop to show pictures to friends of the lovely vacation spots where I had sustained body-damaging injuries to several joints, which had necessitated a very long rehab, as of this writing, not yet over. I digress! I could use that older monitor because I had an AGP card with slots for 2 monitors. I could have a 19 + 17 = 36 inch monitor, which clearly was better because it was even wider than my son’s 22 inch one. Maybe that was how it all started.

To be continued…