Cement dust, gnawed-gate and exploding-crisp action from Kent.
The 2WD & 4WD classes charge through Longmoor
Sydewaze action at a damp Wembley carpark
The peloton follow the BMW advert through Oxshott
A few images from the event at Silverstone
The Chelmsford cone-killers back in action in Kent
British aircraft from post-
WWII to the 1970s
Happy Birthday!
Hot day. Big cars.
Welcome to www.maxatom.com - a
stylish slice of cyberspace served to your browser via the world wide web.
This site is (as ever) under (non) development.
I am pulling my finger out...
Operation 'Freestyle Phoenix' documents a restoration project spawned by a chance encounter at LeMans and a love of lager. Having briefly owned one of GT's finest bicycles 'back in the day', I could not refuse a friend's offer of a free 'Pro Performer'.....
Following a recent hard drive failure, I decided to identify where my record collection actually was. After some reflection, I realised that the 'really good stuff' was not safely backed-up - it wasn't even digital audio... Having languished for many years, it was time to dig out my cassette tapes...
Having recording several hundred gigabytes of audio data (see Compact Cassettes - nostalgic rubbish or digital's saviour?) my computer was really struggling. The plan was to build a low-cost, quiet, energy-efficient computer, utilising as many donor components as possible from the existing machine. I debated over quad, triple and dual-core CPUs - finally settling on AMD's fastest (full-power) dual-core, as apart from video-encoding tasks, dual-core multi-tasking should be fine and the clock-speed per watt ratio is good.
To
reduce power-consumption, heat and noise, a discrete
graphics card was unnecessary, settling for the onboard ATI 4200 graphics of
the AMD 785G chipset. This dictated the range of available motherboards
- the Gigabyte had a good mix of new technology and legacy connections
and gives me further options for upgrading in the future.
The goals of suitable performance and low-noise have been met (click the image for Win7 scores). The recent hot weather (27°C ambient room temperature) led me to seek a slightly better CPU-cooling option - I used a redundant AMD Phenom (heatpipe) heatsink and fan from a previous build. In these conditions, CPU idle temperature is 33°C, 100% CPU usage 52°C (down 10°C or so on the bundled AMD cooler), a good result.
| Component | Old PC - 2003 AD | New PC - 2010 AD |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (Barton) @ 1.9 GHz | AMD Athlon II X2 260 Dual Core (Regor) @ 3.2 GHz |
| Heatsink / Fan | Stock AMD | AMD 'heatpipe' HSF from Phenom CPU |
| Motherboard | Soltek 'Golden Flame' SL 75FRN-L | Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H |
| Memory | 2 x 256MB Kingston Hyper-X DDR Dual Channel + 512MB GeIL DDR | 2GB Corsair Twin X DDR2 6400 Dual Channel @ 4-4-4-12 |
| Graphics | BFG nVidia GeForce 6800 GS OC 256MB AGP | ATI HD 4200 (onboard) 128MB shared memory (512MB max.) |
| Hard Disk | Seagate Barracuda 120GB 8MB cache | Western Digital Caviar Green 640GB 64MB cache |
| Optical Drive | Philips DVDR16LS ATA | Philips DVDR16LS ATA |
| Sound Card | M-Audio Audiofile 2496 PCI | M-Audio Audiofile 2496 PCI |
| Case / Power Supply | Antec Sonata / 380w TruePower PSU | Antec Sonata / 380w TruePower PSU |
| Operating System | Windows XP Pro SP3 | Windows 7 Home Premium |