So my mom has taken up golf and I have been trying to play with her once a week to really help her out. So she decided she wanted to get a new fairway wood and driver. So she came home with a new Taylormade ladies burner driver. So she put on her new golf shoes as well and decided to try and hit some golf balls into the woods. The problem is we have a ton of dear in the back yard and she was aimed in that general direction. Which for new golfers, anything in front of you is in your target line, lol…

So I have not posted much lately on my blog. I have played a few rounds of golf the last few weeks. It seems my swing has made a pretty good turn for the better. I have played the practice course out at Wakefield Plantation, the last 3 times I have played I have shot 5 over, 3 over, and 4 over. Now this is only 9 holes and a par 34 for the 9 holes. I don’t hit the practice range before hand, I just go out there swinging and end up shooting pretty well. I’m really want to get out on the main course since I’m driving the ball very well and hitting my irons good and chipping and putting very well. But founds are tight right now and I really don’t have the extra money to play as much golf as I would like. Hopefully I will be able to get a round end before the end of the week, we will just have to wait and see.

Me and a buddy decided to create a new site called Douchebagparking.info. It will be up in a few weeks and will be pictures of really bad parking in the wake county and surrounding area. These will be pictures taken by us and submitted by you guys as well. We are just looking to have a lot of fun with this. If you wish to submit pictures now please send pictures to submit@douchebagparking.info. I will also need dates and location of the images and any other information you would like added to the images.

This is my first time using a Biostar product and I must say I’m very impressed with the product so far. It has many features that don’t come on most boards in its price range. Now I’m not going to list off everything that this board can do but I will list some of the nice features that you would not normally get at this price point. The Phase on this board is higher then most the boards in this price range which is great if you like to over clock your CPU’s, I have heard of people running there cpu’s at 5.0ghz on this board with no trouble and lower vcore, which means running lower temps and less power consumption. It also has a great realtek built in sound card that supports THX 7.1, now I did not see any other p67 boards that had that at this price range. It also has usb 3.0 and sata III which supports 6gb of date transfer, which is great for those of you running Sata III SSD’s. I do run a SSD but it is not a Sata III SSD but still gets incredible  transfer times.  Now the board does have a built in LCD screen on the bottom right that displays any codes that your board is not running correctly and after your computer has booted it displays the temp of your CPU.

The board also supports SLI and CrossFire for those of you that like to run dual graphic cards. Which for you hardcore games is a nice feature, not all motherboards support both if any. So if you have a lower budget then this would be something that would make it a big plus to have. Now the one down fall is that it only has 5 sata ports, which for a lot of you is not a lot. Because I know a lot of you that Like to run raid set ups need to have more sata ports, but works out just fine for me because I’m running a single SSD, one HHD, and one CD drive. So that does not leave me with many more ports but I’m not going to use more then what I already have so Its not that important to me to use more then 3 maybe 4 if I get a blu-ray drive.

Now the biggest down side for me and this is not towards the board at all is all the other components I use follow a blue color scheme. That being said, it does not look as good in my case, so I’m going to replace my tubing for my water cooling loop later down the road. But I really don’t want to spend the time to do that unless I get a different case to put everything in. I really want to wait for the Fractal Design Arc Midi. This case is a little more refined looking and is  designed with water cooling in mind at a much lower price point then some of the other water cooling friendly cases like the corsair case at almost 300 dollars. But that will be much later down the road as I really don’t need it now.

I have only been using the board for a few days but I have to say that I’m really impressed with my purchase of this board. If you have some questions you would like please feel free to press on this post title to go to the post page where you can leave me a comment or press here to go to my contact page where you can ask me a question via my contact form.

The new i5-2500k quad core processor is one amazing processor. This thing flies like nothing I have used before. I have ran a few bench test and it beats the pants off my last processor. I know its hard to compare my older AMD Athlon II 640 to the new line of Sandy bridge processors but I’m comparing my upgrade and why I think it was worth the money after using my last cpu for only 8 months.

After getting Windows 7 installed and up in running in about 10 or 15 minutes I started loading all the drivers for my motherboard and graphics card, which took another few minutes. Its really nice having an SSD drive, but I will cover that in another post. Just so I was able to judge the upgrade when it comes to performance, I benched both processors at stock and at over clocked ratings. My Athlon cpu had a base clock of 3.0ghz, when I ran cinebench 11.5 I came up with a cpu score of 2.57, now I’m not going to go into a bunch of info about these scores but you will get the idea of how much faster one chip is then the other. Now I then over clocked the chip to 3.24ghz and ran the same bench and got a score of 2.82, you can see this is a improvement over the base bench and every little improvement you can get really helps in performance. Now the Intel chip has a faster base clock of 3.3 ghz and then runs turbo core that bumps it up to 3.7. Now you see the difference in the AMD chip when I go from 3.0ghz to 3.3ghz, but check the score when I bench the new Sandy Bridge chip. I ran the test with the base clock and turbo mode on because this is how it comes out of the box. I was able to put down a cinebench score of 6.26, now with the chip only running .4 ghz faster at stock, you would not think that the score would be 2 and a half times faster then the base clock on the AMD chip. Now I have also over clocked the chip to 4.0ghz and ran the same test and was able to post a score of 7.01. Now with both processors over clocked .3ghz more I was able to get more turn around on the i5-2500k. Now you can argue that the Intel chip has a fast clock on it buy running at 3.7ghz when the turbo mode kicks in. Yes the chick does run at a higher clock speed but that does not explain why the bench is 2.5 times faster. This just means that the Intel Chip processes info faster at the same clock speeds. So to prove this I down clocked the i5-2500k to 3.0ghz and I was able to post a cinebench score of 4.64. Now the AMD did not even come close to this at that stock speed nor the over clocked speed. Now I’m sure some of the other AMD processors can post better scores for sure, but I don’t think you could match the performance of the i5-2500k for as cheap as you can pick it up.

Now here is the great news about the Intel chip. It is running at lower temps then my AMD processor, which is nice because you will not need to spend as much money on a cooler to get higher clock speeds. Now I’m a water cooling system on my computer but I was running the same one from the AMD chip with the same thermal paste as well. The chip is also running on less volts which means less power consumption and that translates to a smaller power bill.

Now people complain about the price difference from AMD to Intel chips. If you just look at what the clock speed is to price then yes, the Intel chips are more expensive. But what you have to take in consideration is that the Intel chips process faster when compared clock for clock. This is one of the reasons that AMD really bumps up there stock clock speeds, because you need to run a AMD chip much faster to get it even close to a Intel at low clock speeds. Now some people do not need all that power nor never use it. So then going with a AMD chip is just fine, or going with a cheaper Intel chip. This is were it comes down to who do you want to support and what are your needs. Yes I could have got away with a high end AMD chip, but to use it to its full potential and my other parts to there full potential I  would have to spend almost $200 on a motherboard. So a good AMD chip starts around 140 and moves up from there, so I’m looking at a 340 and up for a good AMD set up. Now Intel sells this chip for $230 range, but the boards are cheaper and you don’t have to get a high priced board to get high performance. Socket 1155 boards all run about the same and the big difference is in the features of the board, this is what you are paying for in the Sandy Bridge series. The board that I got was 139 and all of my stuff from my AMD build that I was able to use came over to this build. I used everything except the cpu and board from my last computer and all my parts run faster. My SSD (solid state drive, which is a hard drive that is really fast) reads about 10 megabits faster which is a nice improvement, I went from about 200mb a second read times to about 210mb a second read time. This took my WEI (windows experience index) from a 7.2 to a 7.6. My Ram went from a WEI score of 7.4 to 7.8 and this is a nice improvement as well, because anymore power you can get out of your parts with out doing anything is great. Even my graphics card runs faster, so I was like getting all new parts just buy upgrading my CPU and motherboard.

So all in all I’m very happy with the upgrade to Intel’s new Sandy Bridge line up, there would only be one other processor to move up to at the moment and I could not see spending an extra hundred bucks for something that I would not even use and that is the i7 chips. If you have any questions about the build or about this chip please feel free to leave a comment or click here to submit something to me via my contact form.

I have ordered the new parts to my computer and they should arrive in the mail in the next few days. I decided to go Sandy Bridge this time around because of the performance you get out of the price of there new CPU and MB. From everything that I have read about these CPUs fly compared to spending about the same amount for the top of the line AMD chips. My current rig is dying on me because I have pushed it past its limits and with my ambient temps being so high the board and chip could not hold up and everything started crapping out on me. So instead of spending money on stuff that is really out dated, I decided to buy new stuff that will hold up for years to come.

Most people are able to overclock there chips around 5ghz on air (but not run 24/7), since I run a full custom water cooling system in my computer I should be able to run 5ghz 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Hopefully in the next few days I will be posting a build log of everything that I have purchased and stuff that I’m pulling out of my old computer and show you the step by step build of my new Sandy Bridge computer.

There are a few things that I will explain why I went with this CPU and Motherboard. The chip is a K series chip which means that I can overclock the chip from its original settings. The stock chip rates in at 3.3ghz and 3.7ghz when the turbo feature kicks in. With the i5-2400k Sandy Bridge chip you don’t overclock the base clock like most chips you overclock the turbo feature, so I will be overclocking the 3.7 stock turbo feature to 5.0ghz. This will really make this chip fly.

To overclock the i5-2400k you need to get the p series chip set. I’m getting the only p series chip set out right now and that is the p67 chip set. With this chip set you are able to overclock the CPU but you don’t get to use the chip’s built in graphics. This is not an issue with me because I already have a nice graphics card, I have the gtx 460 with 1gig of ram (that is also overclocked to run better and faster). Now if you are building a computer that you are going to use for daily use then all these feature are not really necessary but are nice to have. With everything that I use my computer for these are things that are really necessary to have. I will be able to render video much faster along with all the other stuff I use. I could have gone up to the next level processor but I could not justify the extra hundred bucks just for the CPU. But the board that I purchased is the Biostar TP67XE, I have read a lot about this board and people are rating this board very while for the lower priced boards. If it was not for this board I don’t know if I would have gone with the Sandy Bridge build.

I have found that you can build a much better computer for cheaper then going to any place and just buying one. In the end I will have about $1000 wrapped up in just the box of the computer (many parts are coming out of my old computer, this is included in the price) and it will kill just about any computer that you could buy from Dell or HP for a third of  the price. This does not include the monitor, mouse, or keyboard. But those you can spend very little on or a lot. That really just comes down to your needs, wants, and budget.

For example I have gone to Dells web site to find a computer that would be similar to mine and this is the price and specs of that computer vs what I have built. The only way I have really found to build a computer to similar specs was to go with there alienware line. Now this line is much more expensive but is the best way to compare. I did find a computer at Best Buy that had the a couple steps down from what I had and it was $1700 compared to my $1,000. And that computer was not even have as good as mine in anyway shape or form.

So here we go:

I decided to pick there Area 51 desktop, the base price was $1,799, now that is before I had to upgrade everything to meet of be even close to what I have. The final price of the computer was $3,104, so you decide if the extra 2 grand is worth it.

CPU: the Area 51 desktop comes with the i7-960 which was last years model, you can upgrade but that does add more cost to the pc. It is a 6 core processor but when benched against my i5-2400k. The i5 comes out on top, not by much but in most benches it is beating the i7-960 which is a higher model chip. Now it is last years model but for a lower grade chip i5 that is only the next generation chip to beat a chip that has two more cores is pretty impressive. Now the Sandy Bridge line is suppose to be better in every way and it is really showing how much better of a chip it is then last years models.

GPU:Now I have selected the same option for the graphics card so there would not be that much difference here in performance. It was an upgrade from the base model Area 51 desktop, but I wanted the Dell computer to be as close to mine if not better.

OS:I have also selected the same option for which Operating system the computer would be running so this would be the same as well. I do run Windows 7 professional 64-bit, this allows you to run more ram on your computer. If you are going to own a computer that uses 4 gigs or more then a 64-bit OS is a must have, or you will not get to use all your ram.

Memory:Now the Dell computer comes with a different CPU that is a 1366 socket and mine runs a 1155 socket. The socket is the type of plug the CPU uses, so these boards have different channels for there memory. Mine runs a duel channel and the Dell runs a triple channel. I have opted for 4gigs of ram with 2 sticks  of 2gigs each. Mine runs at faster speeds then the Dell that runs 6gigs of memory that is 3 sticks of 2gigs each. Yes, the Dell comes with 2 more gigs of ram but there is a lot to consider with ram. If you are running slower ram then it does not mater if you are running just a little less at much faster speeds so it equals out.

HHD/SSD: Now I do run a regular hard drive for storage and a SSD to run all my apps and OS. The SSD (solid state drive) runs so much faster than a normal hard drive, for example; my computer when from the off position only takes about 15 seconds to turn on and have a usable desktop. So when it comes to using my editing and photo software it runs so much faster, its not even funny. Which is a really nice feature to have with all the stuff that I use my computer for. Dell does give an option for this on the Area 51 desktop so I did select it.  So this will bring the hard drive performance up to the same level as my computer. But through Dell this does bring a very high price tag.

Don’t forget now that you have spent $3100 on a computer from dell you still need to get monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Maybe paying 3100 from a company like dell is something you want to do because you have peace of mind that you have purchased a quality product from a good company that uses quality parts. Now this is something to talk into consideration, the parts that Dell uses is mostly from the same manufactures that I have purchased most my parts from. I just had to put mine together for myself. And putting a computer together, really is not that hard. If you read the instructions that come with everything, anyone can really do it. I built a computer for the first time 1 year ago and I thought is was going to be overwhelming but it really is not that bad. Now if you are thinking you are getting good tech support from dell, think again. To get the same customer service from Dell that you would from the different manufactures that I bought my parts from, you would have to pay for this. Most places you buy these parts from have good tech support and will help you if you are having any problems from putting the parts together to solving any problems that you have. Now some companys are not that great but there are large communities out there that will help you as well. I really like Overclock.net, they have been a big help with helping pick what I wanted to buy to helping me solve some of the problems with my computer.

Now for the people that do not want or have the need for a high power high performance computer, and you want to go to best buy and pick up that cheap 500 dollar computer? Building a computer can save you a lot of money or get more bang for your buck buy building your very own pc. Plus when building you get to pick the case that you want to use and not really stuck with the form factors that are from the big computer companies like Dell and HP. So you get to put a touch of your own style in your computer. I have come to the conclusion that building your own computer is so much better in every way shape and form. You really can’t go wrong, build suits all your needs from I need something cheap to something that is just crazy over power.

If you have any questions about this post please click on the post title and feel free to leave a comment or go to my contact page here and fill out the contact form.

I really felt the need to put this YouTube video on my blog. This guy has so much talent, not just in music but as an artist as well. His videos are really fun to watch and entertaining. This is not my type of music at all but I do enjoy watching his videos, as you can see he records him making each track of the song and then puts it together in this video. He not only covers the vocals of the song but he produces the entire song himself as well. Enjoy!!!!

Played another round of golf today at Falls Village. This bad golf has got to come to a stop soon. I have reverted back to my old swing from when I started playing and this is something that I really did not want to happen. We only kept score on the front nine because it was getting dark and we knew that it was going to get to dark to finish. On the plus side I chipped the ball really well today and played some great recovery shots out of the woods, but we will not talk about why I was in the woods. The down side is I can not hit my driver or my irons at all today. I shot a 50 on the front nine and that is something that I don’t normally do. I’m more of a 43 to 47 per nine. But I have not been playing much lately or practicing because I have been to busy working on my computer getting everything fixed or done right.

So after playing today, I realized I need to practice more so I will be hitting the range more often and really work on getting my swing back where it needs to be. So hopefully my swing will come back and I start shooting in the 80s again.

Charl Schwartzel shot a closing score of 66 to win the Masters by two strokes. He started the first hole a little bad when he pushed his second shot and came short and to the right of the green. He turned around and used his six iron again for a bump and run and holed out. This was the shot that started his momentum to win the Masters. He then turned around and eagles the par 4 3rd hole, this was the starting point for him to take the lead towards the end of the tournament.

Rory McIlroy was the front runner after 3 rounds at the Masters. He was expected to win today since he had a 4 stroke lead, but was not able to handle the pressure of the masters at such a young age. He started off the round with a bogey on the 1st and 5th hole to start his down fall in the 2011 Masters. He did have one birdie on the front 9 but this was not enough to get him momentum going in the correct direction. He then turn around and started the back 9 with a triple bogey on the 10th hole. This was something that really destroyed his chances of making any kind of come back. you could see in the way he was caring himself that he really just wanted to give up and not finish the round. He ended up shooting an 80 in the final round at Augusta. I can not stress enough that this kid has the game and the heart to be one of the next great golfer. He just needs to play some more and learn what its like to be the front runner and not let the pressure or the excitement of being in the lead get in your head. He may act very mature for a 21 year old but he is still just a kid, he will be back and I would bet that he will win the Masters and a few other majors in a few short years to come.

Tiger did make one hell of a great push on the front nine, he made the 2011 Masters one intense final round of golf. He played almost perfect golf on the front nine, he did let a few puts get away from him but he more then made up for them on the next hole. I have a feeling that Tiger is on his way back to where he was just a few short years ago. He did everything that he wanted on the front nine today but the back nine where he has not had any trouble all week scoring was the down fall of him not winning today. But I would keep your eye on this guy in the coming tournaments, I do think that people will start picking him again to win some of the big tournaments this year. We all want to see him do it, now he just has to it off.

Today was one of the most on the edge Masters I have ever watched. The field was bouning all over the place and the front runner Rory was no where to be found on the back nine. Charl sneeked his way up the leader board with no eyes on him. Everyone was paying attention to Jason Day and Adam Scott that were battling it out on the back nine. Then Charl birdies 15, 16, 17, and 18 for the win by two strokes. From what I gathered today from watching the Masters is that he only had one bad shot and that was on the first hole and he still holed out for a birdie.

Congratulations to Charl Schwartzel for winning the 75 Masters at Augusta National.

Today is another day for masters history, Rory McIlroy is attempting to win his first green jacket. He will be the third person to win the masters at the age of 21, we all know that Tiger Woods was the last person to pull this off in 1997. Rory McIlroy has a 4 stroke lead over Jason Day that shot a 72 yesterday to keep his score of 8 under. Rory McIlroy shot a 70 yesterday to pull of 4 stroke lead over Jason Day. This does not mean that Jason is out of the running but I would think he would have to shoot a 65 to put enough pressure on Rory to make him crack. This would put him at 15 under and that means Rory would have to shoot a 69 to tie and a 68 to take the title. Now that leaves him room for error. Rory has had some experience in the lead but has never won a major, this could effect his game today in the final round. The best part is he does have a 4 stroke lead so this could take some of the pressure him to really play his game and pull away from the pack.

We all want to know what Tiger Woods is going to bring to the table today. He is currently at 5 under right now. That is 7 behind the lead but only 3 behind second. If Tiger gets all his ducks in a row and putts much better today he does have a chance to do some major damage today at Augusta. If Rory plays the same game today that he did yesterday that would put him at 14 under for the tournament. Now Tiger has played some incredible rounds of golf but has not done it in what seems like a long time. This could be the day that he shoots a 62 and that would put him at 15 under for the tournament. What are the odds that this would happen. I would say slim to none but Tiger is a fighter and I don’t think he is done at this tournament if we see old Tiger Woods. If he did win it would be his first win in a major when he did not have the lead going into the final round.

The biggest upset of the Augusta is Phil Mickelson, right now he is tied for 18 at 3 under. I was really pulling for Phil and he has the game to win another green jacket. But I don’t think we will get to see Phil put on another Jacket. He would need to get his Driver in line and hit some fairways today. At the same time he would have to play very aggressive off the tee box and not hold back. Phil has not been hitting the driver that well this week and I don’t think he will have what is needed to do it this time. We all know that he is the greatest at getting out of trouble, but that would only be helping him right now if he was in the lead and needed to hold it. But starting the final round 9 strokes behind the lead is only hurting him right now.

Looks like the vote for someone taking Rory out of the leader seat would have to be Jason Day. He is the only one out of 4 players that are at 8 under and has shot low 60′s. I really think that he has the potential to pull it off but he also shot a 72 yesterday trying to keep up with Rory. I would have to go with Jason not falling back but I really don’t see him pulling away since he did not finish strong yesterday, this is something I would think that he would need to really pull off a great round. But don’t forget about K.J. Choi, this is a golfer that knows how to get it done. He knows how to put the pressure on the leader and play his game. Rory his not had to deal with this kind a pressure in a major before, so he could crack under pressure. If Rory only shoots a 72 and stays at 12 under for the tournament then Choi has a great chance of catching up with Rory. But we will just have to wait and see what happens.

I guess we will have to wait and see how the 75 Masters at Augusta National…