A funny thing happened on the way to building a gaming system for somebody else..... pa-dum. Well, actually; here's what happened. Once I had identified that the Z77 platform had some potential to become a fertile area of growth for my in client (Librarian's son), I started turning over rocks to see where I could find some good boards on which to build. Of course, there was the every-present online retailers such as Newegg and Amazon. Shoot, I even went over to Fry's brick and mortar store and touch physical product! But in the end, I ended up at the tried and true eBay and of course, it's poor cousin, Craigslist. In the last post, I detailed the nice package that I was able to land from eBay which resolved several problems at once at a good price.
However, it wasn't that Craigslist didn't bear fruit; it was that CL didn't bear the fruit that was really useable for a client. In fact, there was a listing that fairly jumped out at me! An ad for a Gigabyte (although the ad didn't say that), GA-Z77X-UD4H motherboard for a $75 asking price. You might ask, what was wrong with that price for a budget build!?! One hitch. The second PCI Express (x8) was broken clean off the board! Now, I don't expect that this kid is ever going to go triple SLI on the machine, but when dealing with a "client" (even one that I'm not planing on making money from), I don't take chances and don't like to deliver anything where something isn't right. And, as it was, I had found that pretty killer deal on the Asus P8Z77X-V Pro board anyway, so I passed.
But the several days, this $75 board is working on my consciousness, nibbling away. If you've read many of my posts, you are probably aware that I have a pretty decent history with Gigabyte product, currently running 3 of their motherboards in my 5 desktop machines. Finally, I gave in, contacted the guy to see if he still had it (he still did) and offered him $65 for it (which he took).
The fact is that it's a risk. Although, anyone can accidentally break things, but you find that if somethings broken on a rather sophisticated device like a computer motherboard, there's every possibility that other stuff is broken on it as well. I'm not being a cynic; that's just the way things like that usually go. But I figured, "what the heck", $65 is a risk worth taking, weighed against landing a very nice mid-line board. In the motherboard world, $100 is the low end, $300 is the high end, and $200 is "mid-line". If you've been around computer building for a while, you know that mid-line leans more toward the top than the bottom. And this board cost every bit of $200 less than 6 months ago! Besides.... I had an Ace up my sleeve. Less than an hour after I got home, I was on the Gigabyte website submitting an RMA (return merchandise authorization) asking that this board be repaired or replaced under their 3-Year warranty. I also know that these sorts of connectors are put on by robotics, so if they OK it, I'll get another board.
Yup, I came home today to find an email, authorizing the RMA with an attached label and questionaire sheet to be returned with the board! That's so cool, I had to include a picture of the motherboard's onboard on/off switch! I really love this feature which most nicer current MBs include.
Which brings us to the dinosaur.... Although, my old workstation which finally got a quad-core processor earlier this year runs very well, it's really pretty darned old, in that the socket 775 came out in July of 2006 as the successor to the 478! It even originally ran P4s in it! The Q9550 "Yorkfield" CPU that I run in it is literally the last series made for this line. In it's day, they were the coolest (temperature) running high-powered quad cores having been manufactured on the 45nm process. The total TDP of 95w was ridiculously low for a 4 core high-end chip. These January 2009 processors were literally the last of their breed, newer even than the XE (Extreme) processors or the Q9650.
So, let's just say that in the 4 years since, some progress has been made by Intel (even AMD for that matter). First there was the Gen 1 Sandy Bridge i3/i5/i7-xxx, followed by the Gen 2 Sandy Bridge i3/i5/i5-2xxx, then the Ivy Bridge Series i3/i5/i7-3xxx. Now, on the eve of the "Haswell" invasion, I might have found the reason to put the old dino out to pasture. When that GA-Z77X-UD4H board comes back "strong, faster......", it can be home to any number of Intel's legion of 2nd or 3rd generation "Core" processors. I'd love to jump on that $180 priced i5-3330S processor that I saw last night, but....
In all probability the dragon slayer will be my brother's old i5-2390t which he just replace. Go ahead, click on that chart and see what it says. That's right, I'll probably replace my 4 Core rig with the world's only 2 Core i5! Thought all i5s were quad-core didn't ya? What that.....? Did you see the TDP of 35w? Yes, that's 35w, essentially about a 3rd of my Q9550. Yup, my computing world is about to go silent.....
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