• My Workstation aka Vearnstation V3

The PC game, “Crysis” which released in November 13, 2007 created a great phenomena in PC gaming hardware where most gaming enthusiasts spend every possible bucks they could afford to upgrade their rig to support if not to match up with the high graphics requirement of the game, Crysis! PC Gamer remarked that “Crysis has pushed PC gaming to a new plateau, marrying the most advanced graphics engine ever created with phenomenal gameplay. From the cinematic opening to credits to its cliffhanger ending, Crysis is mesmerizing.”

I’m a FPS or First-Person-Shooter fans myself. I played with Half-Life, Quake II & III, Red Fraction, C&C: Renegade, Counter-Strike, Condition Zero and many other titles back in my school days. Ahh… those sweet times when we got nothing much to worry beside homework and exam ~ LoL . I stopped my last FPS during the time of Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 legacy where my rig was almost impossible to host a smooth gameplay. I gave up both game after a few hours with it when I couldn’t bear the lagness anymore.

Late in year 2007, my AMD64 rig giving me numerous problems from time to time. It was also critical when I need to finish up my assignment but ended up the rig serving me some downtime and I need to spend time fixing it up. Fedup with it, I made my move to upgrade the whole damn thing! *excuses *

Special thanks to a friend of mine, a dota-kaki to be exact, he helped me to source a low price processor where I made the Intel’s Core 2 Quad Processor possible in my new rig specification . With a little of shopping again done at LowYat.Net, my new specification as follows:

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz LGA775 (overclocked to 3.2GHz )
• Xigmatek HDT-S1283 Air Cooler
• DFI LanParty DK P35-T2RS
• OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Titanium 4GB Edition Dual Channel (4-4-4-12 @ 2.0V)
• 500GB Seagate 7200.11 SATA2 32MB HDD
• LG H10A DVDRW-Rom
• HIS HD 3870 IceQ 3 Turbo HDMI Dual DL-DVI & TV 512MB GDDR4 PCIe
• Dell E1905FP 19″ LCD
• Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
• Edifier R501 MKII 5.1
• Fortron Bluestorm 500W
• Thermaltake Tsunami Dream
• Dell’s 104-Keys Black USB Multimedia Keyboard & Logitech MX-518 on Xtrac Ripper

This new rig provide enough “juice” for me to finish the game Crysis on high customized setting. Finally I be able to play same latest PC games, but I keep my finger-crossed on how long I be able to hold on it till a new game which set another blow to shame on current PC hardware capabilities .

I bought a new set of computer table as well. The IKEA’s Jerker series which I admired since long ago already stopped in production and replaced by Fredrick series . Not to say that the Fredick series is bad, but it just does not suits my liking. In the end I grabbed the Galant series instead . It just nice that I able to add 2 cable trunks below the table for some neat cable management . Besides that, I customized it by cutting a 8mm tempered glass to lay on the surface of the table since many people said that it can get scratches easily or leaving marks when something wet rest on it for some time. Now I be able to use it without worrying much about putting anything on the table .

Finally this is the Vearnstation V3.0 where I spent most of my time on it while I’m at home for working, surfing, entertainment and relaxing .

• My Workstation aka Vearnstation V2

Later late in year 2004, I decided to sell off my rig (which I took quite a long time to consider) and topup a little bit of cash to migrate platform into AMD64 system. It was the time when AMD pawned most of Intel processors with their 64-bit and embedded RAM controller architecture ~ LOL . It wouldn’t be successful if I not managed to fetch a high price for my RDRAM, it was ON-DEMAND back on that time when everyone stucked with Intel’s RDRAM motherboard and doesn’t want to migrate platform . I sold few pairs of RDRAM back then by doing some trading .

So I went to do some reading and study on what hardware and setting I should get for my new rig. Thanks to many forumers at LowYat.Net which shared with me their information, experience and guidance, this was my first DIY and self-assembled rig :

• AMD64 3000+ 2.0GHz (socket 754, first generation of AMDK8)
• 2x 512MB DDR400 Kingston Value Ram (Hynix-D43 chipset)
• DFI LanParty UT nForce3 250Gb (best overclocking board for AMD64 s754 by Anandtech’s review)
• HIS ATI Radeon 9600xt Excalibur Edition
• Samsung Spinpoint 120GB SATA HDD
• LG 16x DVDRW-Rom
• Enlight 420W PSU
• Thermaltake Tsunami Dream Silver
• 15″ Philips LCD Monitor
• Altec Lansing AHS502 Headphone
• Logitech MX518 Gaming Optical Mouse on XtracPad Pro
• ANC s650 Webcam

This rig served me for 3 years++ until end of year 2007 before I did another major platform migration again back into Intel Pentium Core 2 system which with me till now while I’m on it updating this post . Occassionally during the 3 years time I upgraded some hardware and device:

• FSP Bluestorm 500W PSU
• Dell E1905FP 19″ LCD Monitor (it is a 8-bit MVA panel )
• Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
• Edifier R501 MKII 5.1 Surround Sound System
• XtracPad Ripper
• Canon Pixma iP4300 Inkjet Printer

Vearnstation V3.0 coming up next…

• My Workstation aka Vearnstation V1

Wah… laziness strikes back? Ahh… it has been almost 1.5 months I did not update my blog T_T . I just came back from Hong Kong about 4 weeks ago and have been very busy with my work lately, thus hardly get the time to do with my blog (hopes I’m not lying ~ ).

The first thing I’m concerned once I’m back to my own room is my computer work place. Usually IT geeks will call their computer as rig and computer work place as workstation which sound more pro? Hahaha… so I put mine as Vearnstation . This idea came up suddenly yesterday and so I took some of my time for it. I dig out my old photo files and trying to make a chronology of my so-called Vearnstation.

I first own a computer back in year 2001. I bought it at a computer shop named SBC at Low Yat Plaza and the spec was:

• Intel Pentium 4 1.4GHz (socket 423, the first generation of Intel Pentium 4)
• 2x 64MB RDRAM (rambus!)
• Intel D850GB Motherboard
• MSI GeForce 2MX 32MB
• Seagate 20GB HDD (5,400 rpm)
• Creative Sound Blaster Live!
• Sony 52x CD-Rom & 1.44″ FDD
• Prolink 56Kbps Internal Modem
• Samtron 76DF 17″ CRT Monitor
• Power Supply Unit & Blue Metallic Casing.
• Thunder 2.1 Speaker Set
• Canon S400 Ink-Jet Printer

It was legend as I’m able to play Diablo II, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Starcraft and Tiberium Sun without any lag at all! This is the time when I started passionate interested with computer and learning the bits and bytes of the hardware.

Vearnstation V1.0 (nice Ergotech computer table? )

Later on late in year 2003 when I started with LowYat.Net, I begin to learn on how to assemble, troubleshoot and repair my rig. My rig was updated with:

• 2x 512MB RDRAM (rambus again for smoother run on Windows XP)
• JVC Liteon DVD-Rom
• Liteon CDRW-Rom
• Enlight 420W PSU
• HIS ATI Radeon 9600xt Excalibur Edition (for the sake of The Sims 2)
• Rear 80mm Coolermaster White Neon Fan
• Altec Lansing AHS502 Headphone
• 15″ Philips LCD Monitor (dual monitor setup is fun )

The Vearnstation V1.1 lasted for me about almost a year before I move on with V2.

Vearnstation V2.0 coming up next…