Things and stuff

Eight hours and $1100 later, I have a new computer. Here are some things I learned (most of which you probably already knew):

• Intel stock heatsinks are a pain in the ass to install, and you only get one shot since the thermal paste is pre-applied. You can buy more thermal paste, but I ended up buying a new (really, really large) heatsink at Frys which was only a little easier to install.
• The arrows on the pegs for the heatsink are full of lies, the screwdriver slot should be pointing at the heatsink, not parallel to it.
• Intel processors will shut off if they get too hot, which is nice.
• Windows XP cannot be installed on a SATA drive without either a floppy drive (which I do not have) or slipstreaming the drivers onto the install CD (which is probably as fun as it sounds). I ended up using a spare IDE drive I had lying around
• Windows XP would not install when I had 4GB of RAM plugged in, it would hang at the “Setup is starting Windows” prompt. I pulled my second 2GB RAM chip out and it installed just fine (well, after I addressed the overheating issues as well)
• Installing new USB device drivers may turn off your existing USB support, which is great if you are using a USB keyboard and mouse
• New graphics cards are really, really large.
• Your motherboard’s on-board ethernet may not have a driver available on an XP SP1 install, you probably need to use the CD that came with it.
• Microsoft seemingly has gotten lax with Windows XP activation.
• I finally see why everyone went ga ga (ga ga ga) over Spoon’s album last year.
• I have to apologize for that last bullet point. That was bad and I am ashamed.

In case anyone is curious about the new machine, here is another unordered list just for you:

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40 Ghz
• Biostar TP45 Motherboard
• Diamond ATI 4870PE5512 512MB GDDR5 Video Card
• 4GB 1066 DDR2 SDRAM
• 750W Power Supply (with ten million power connectors)
• Antec Three Hundred ATX Mid-Tower case (very nice but not flashy)
• 500 GB SATA drive (which is sitting nice and unpartitioned)
• DVD-RW drive

If you do not know what half of those things mean, it is okay, I do not either. I do know that this is by far the most powerful computer I have ever owned, and it still cost me less than a Macbook (and just Macbook, not Pro or Air) would have.

Things I have learned tonight:

• Video editing is fun. Before I had neither the software to do it correctly or the hardware to run said software with usable performance. Now I have a laptop which can run Adobe Premiere(!) and do all kinds of amazing stuff right there in the editor.
• Doing all kinds of fun things in the video editor means you look up and there is daylight coming through the blinds again.
• If you want to remove audio from a stream in Premiere, you need to right-click on it, select “Unlink” and then delete the audio stream the normal way.
• Video encoding continues to be a giant clusterfuck and annoying headache*
• It is a shame that a license for Premiere costs $800 cause this would be an awesome hobby. I guess I need to finish this project in the next 30 days.
• I need a bigger bandwidth pipe at my apartment.

Hopefully I will post the results of tonight’s efforts if it ever finishes uploading.