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I was a bit iffy on this earlier in the week, but now I’m quite confident, considering the fact that it doesn’t even POST anymore, that my motherboard is shot. While it was still kinda sorta working at the beginning of the week, I relayed all the symptoms from Wednesday’s post to the good folks in the ##hardware channel on Freenode, and a couple of them did happen to mention that their systems did the same thing… right before their mobos died.
So, that pretty well solves that mystery. Now, the million dollar question is what to do about it. I’m facing two options:
1. Replace with the same spec motherboard
This would run me about $70-$100, assuming I don’t bone up or shock the processor with the removal and replacement. However, if it turns out that the mobo is only one problem out of several (unlikely, but who knows?), then I’ve got even more problems, up to and including not knowing if the new mobo is just a dud.
2. Upgrade time cometh early
While I was hoping to get another 2 years out of this system, the fatal flaw to begin with was that I built it as a mid-grade system according to the technology available at the time. This was a stupid, stupid thing to do, and I’ve regretted it ever since. General rule of thumb is that if you’re planning on a regular upgrade cycle (4 years in my case), you build a high-end computer so that it’s still a mid-grade when the time comes for replacement. Future-proofing, basically.
The issue, of course, is cost. I specced everything out twice this week, and we’re looking at $700, almost exact. Do I have it? Yes. Should I spend it on this? Well, maybe. So here’s the part where I convince you not to kill me for doing so:
- Having a Core 2 Duo is annoying. Seeing reasonably priced processors pull 3-4 times the performance of it is annoying. And it hurts my geek street cred. Yes, really.
- It’s future-proof. I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t be able to easily upgrade such a board later on down the road, whereas my current board is old technology, and would basically be a waste to upgrade. What am I gonna do, put a Core 2 Quad on it? Puhleeze. That’s like chroming out a Ford Festiva.
- It (should) completely eliminate the planned upgrade/replacement 2 years from now. Why spend $100 on the same old thing now when I’ll just be replacing it in 2 years anyway? Sure, it seems like a long time, but it also seems a bit like throwing money away to me.
- Next month is a three paycheck month anyway, so the hit to my budget will be quickly repaired. I didn’t have any plans for that third paycheck yet anyway, so this seems just as good as any.
- I’ll be rather ticked off at myself if I go with the cheaper option. That’s as good a reason as any, right?
Your input is still valuable. No, really, it is. Nothing is set in stone. Honestly, I’m gonna regret it no matter which way I go, just for different reasons. For the curious, here is what I’m looking at:
Case: Cooler Master Storm Scout – my case is so old the front USB connections aren’t even the right kind of connection with my current mobo.
Mobo: Asus Sabertooth P67 – pretty top of the line right now, while reasonably priced.
CPU: Intel i7 2600k – going unlocked just in case it ends up not being enough down the road. Good price/performance ratio versus the i7 extreme editions which are still running for a grand a pop.
Heatsink: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus – again, in case overclocking comes in to play. I never liked the stock Intel heatsinks anyway, and from what I hear, this comes in 10-15C cooler at idle. Was going to go with a Zalman, but I don’t feel like bleeding all over my new computer.
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600MHz, obviously.
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I have, for a few months now, been having some pretty wicked problems with my computer. When I say wicked, I mean problems that even I can’t figure out. Constantly hanging during boot, needing to power cycle it 10 times or more until I’m lucky enough to get in to an operating system… good times. The obvious solution (or at least first step anyway) to rectifying the situation was to completely wipe my computer and start over fresh.
1. Back up
Finding somewhere to actually back up all of my data was the easy part. Lacking any external mass storage device (and by mass storage I mean more than my 1 gig thumb drive), I hit up WalMart and got a 500GB FreeAgent GoFlex from Seagate. The hard part was figuring out what exactly I needed to back up! My computer was by all means an unorganized mess. Movies, photos, spreadsheets, music, you name it, they were all in about 20 different places – EACH. I quite literally went through every single folder on both internal drives, and organized everything in to nice little folders. Organization itself took at least 4 hours, and a valuable lesson was learned. It’s much easier to keep everything together, in it’s place.
The copying over to the external drive was a treat, too. I wasn’t counting, as I ended up letting it run overnight, but I’m pretty sure it was somewhere between 6 and 12 hours. I has a lot of movies and anime series, y’know?
2. Wipe
Since I was not only wiping my internal storage drive, but also the system drive, I couldn’t just use a Windows formatting utility. I’m sure the Windows CD has something, but a simple format wasn’t what I was looking for anyway – I want complete erasure! It didn’t take too much poking around to find exactly what I was looking for: Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN). This little utility is great not only for my purposes, but also if you’re planning on selling or giving away your computer or hard drives. It includes a multitude of wiping functions, ranging from the Gutmann 35-pass wipe, to the DoD 7 and 3 pass wipes, to a simple zeroing of the drive. I originally chose the DoD 7 pass, but when I saw it was going to take on the order of 30 hours to complete, I dropped down to the 3 pass, and then skipped straight to zeroing out the drives. For most people, that is more than sufficient. With my 1TB and 500GB drives wiping at the same time, it still took a good 6 hours to complete.
And yes, I sat in front of it while doing real work (that may be an exaggeration) on my netbook, just in case any gremlins jumped out and started tearing the room apart.
3. Reinstall
Installing Windows is simple enough for most people, as they’ve managed to make the installer pretty dummy proof. Just do what the nice man in the black suit and sunglasses tells you, and you’ll be fine. I, however, had other plans. In order to rule out the possibility that it was Windows itself that was causing the problems, as well as to finally get back to my preferred system of choice, I chose to go with a dual-boot setup with Kubuntu. No worries if you forgot to burn yourself an installation CD before the wipe, though – you need to install Windows first anyway.
Somehow, somewhere, I forgot this well-known fact, that the Windows installation actively destroys your Linux install, and I wasted quite a bit of time doing it in the wrong order.
Results?
Well, it was nice to get all my stuff organized, and have everything backed up on an external drive. And it’s been really nice using Kubuntu again. That’s about the only good I can say that came out of it. It’s been a month now, and not only did the problem persist, but the other night it took a drastic turn for the worse. More on that later this week. *super facepalm!*
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Last month, when I went a bit, well, overboard on spending, one of my purchases was an Acer Aspire One netbook. That’s it. No beating around the bush on this one.
My stated purpose in buying it was, honestly, to help with my writing. We’ve all seen it a million times, that every now and then a change of scenery is necessary to keep those creative juices flowing. Without a reasonably functional laptop, though, this hasn’t really been an option for me.
And before you say it – no, I can’t just write on paper, my handwriting is horrid, and I’d just have to type everything up later anyway. Not exactly efficient.
I’m not gonna lie, it is $250 that I probably shouldn’t have spent. However, and I’m being completely honest here, it has drastically improved my writing productivity. Even moving to a different room in the house makes a huge impact. I’ve got pyroom running under Kubuntu, which cuts out all other possible distractions, which isn’t very easy to do on my desktop. To top it all off, I got a $5 reading light to clip to the top of the monitor so that I can write while I’m in bed, before going to sleep. Perfect for those nights that I ended up slacking off but want to get something done real quick.
I also expect it to be quite handy at FINCON11, so that I won’t have to be working on my phone the whole time. There are a bunch of other justifications I could come up with, but in the end, they do sound like excuses, even to me. It was still money I *shouldn’t* have spent. But dang it, it was money well spent indeed. I just wrote four articles in a row, from my bed. See?
Do you have a netbook? Watcha use it for?
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Whelp, I have officially been slacking. Not only did a good portion of my vacation go to waste by sitting around doing nothing, but I haven’t gotten much work done lately due to, well, work. Mad overtime is great for the finances, but not so great for spare time. Speaking of finances, this month has already been going not-so-well. I withdrew $100 ten days ago, and I’ve already got only two dollars left in my wallet. Neat. I’ll have to go through receipts to see where the heck that money went. The real problem is that I just haven’t been paying attention, and doing weekly account balancing like I should. I have an amazing $46 left to carry me through the end of the month. Quite the challenge indeed.
I did actually manage to get a lot of work done during my 2 week vacation. The reason I say that it went to waste wasn’t so much that I did nothing, but more because it was so long. As I had feared would happen, I just didn’t have enough tasks on hand to fill the time. Lesson learned. The junking out was a rousing success, to a point, but more on that later…
I’ve moved away from Rosetta Stone and have now started using the Pimsleur method for learning Japanese. So far, it’s proving itself to be much more useful in terms of actual conversational learning. Granted, it involves talking to yourself, but hey – whatever works!
And finally, no, I still haven’t called the collections agency and offered a settlement. Last month’s crazy overspending led me to dip in to that fund to balance things out, and I’m still sorting out what exactly I have left to offer them. Le sigh.
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Back in my scooter repair post, I mentioned that I have $150 saved up right now for scooter expenses. I started that savings category after paying dealership price for a new tire (stupid mistake), but it got me to wondering: When do you stop saving for specific expenses? When is enough, enough?
I’m currently putting aside $15/mo for the scooter. It doesn’t seem like much, which of course makes it all the easier, but it adds up to $180 each year, which is more than enough for inspection, service, and a new tire all at once. I don’t expect to need a new tire this year, though, and the yearly inspection and service only costs about $60.
The other factor I have considered is my insurance. My comprehensive and collision deductibles are $150 and $250, so maybe rather than relying on my general emergency fund to cover a deductible, it should be covered under the scooter category as well.
Considering all of the above, I could reasonably expect at the most, in one year:
1 insurance claim: $250
1 service/inspection: $60
1 tire: $70
Total: $380, $130 without considering insurance
I’m more inclined to go in the middle, maybe $200, since I’ve had the scoot for three years now with no real accidents, but regardless of whether I go with $130, $200, or $380 – do I stop there? My concern is that if I just keep going, eventually (hopefully, anyway) I’ll end up with this huge wad of cash of an unreasonable amount to ever need to be saving for the scooter, which could have better been used elsewhere.
So, how do you know when to stop saving? Do you have a particular idea or plan in place, or are you just winging it?
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