One Click Root For Google Nexus 7 On Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

One Click Root For Google Nexus 7 On Android 4.1 Jelly Bean:
The Nexus 7 gets rooted before it’s even launched! Not that it’s surprising at all considering we’ve been through this before in the past with other Android devices, but the device was actually rooted quite a few days back. However this time around Google’s and Asus’ 7” Android 4.1 Jelly Bean running tablet has received a simple One Click solution for users to gain root access. Even more, this will install ClockworkMod recovery as well. So if you do not fancy going through long geek like procedures, this One Click root solution courtesy of XDA-Developers forum member m.sabra is just the tool you will need.

If you have no prior experience of rooting an Android device and are wondering why and if you need to root your device, you can take a look at our top 10 reasons of rooting an Android device. For those of you unaware of what ClockworkMod recovery is all about, head over to our guide on what is ClockworkMod recovery for Android and how to use it. If you are convinced that life without root is just not the same, we take a look at how this tool works and what you need in order to get it working.

Do note that if your bootloader is locked prior to running this One Click root tool, you will loose your entire data. The tool includes all the needed drivers so you will not worry about those nagging driver issues before running this tool.

Disclaimer: Please attempt this guide at your own risk. AddictiveTips won’t be responsible in case your device gets bricked or damaged in any other way due to this method.

Requirements:

• Preferably an unlocked bootloader if you don’t want your data to be wiped.
• One Click Root for Nexus 7.

Instructions:

1. To begin, download the One Click root tool from the link above and extract the contents.
2. Makes sure USB Debugging is enabled on the Nexus 7 and connect it to the PC via USB.
3. Run root.exe from the extracted contents to begin the rooting process and follow the on screen instructions.
4. Once the process completes, reboot the device and cross your fingers!

Congratulations! You should now have ClockworkMod recovery installed, and complete root access on your Nexus 7 device. You may want to see our guide on the top 15 apps to install on your Android device.
For updates and queries related to this One Click root tool, head over to the forum thread at XDA-Developers.

Related Articles:

1. Install Android 4.1 Jelly Bean ROM On Galaxy Nexus GSM
2. How To: Root HTC Google Nexus One With One Click
3. Install Android 4.1 Jelly Bean On Samsung Galaxy S3

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Create Detailed File Lists In Various Formats With Filelist Creator

Create Detailed File Lists In Various Formats With Filelist Creator:
Sometimes, you need a file list in order to have the index of all the images in a folder, or a list of songs that you are writing to a CD. This way, you don’t have to go through the folder again in order to know the name and number of files that were in it. A file list can also be used when you have to send the only the name of some items over a network. For instance, if you are working on a project, and you want to check if you and another developer has the same files, instead of sending the whole project archive, you can just create a file list and send it to the other person. They can then match it with the files in their own system, and see if any important file is missing. However, if there are a lot of files in the folder, creating their file list manually becomes a very tedious and time taking job. Filelist Creator is a portable application for Windows that allows you to quickly create file lists. Other than the file name, you can include extended information about the file, such as its format, size, date created, accessed and changed, file attributes, associated applications and file paths. It also features a built-in file renamer. Details just past the fold.
The applications presents a preview of the file list that will be created once you are done tweaking it. The list can be saved in multiple formats, and advanced settings allow you to fine tune the final look of the list. You can choose which elements to include in the list with separate settings for each one, and files can be saved as Text Files (TXT), Comma Separated Values (CSV), GIF Image (GIF), JPEG Image (JPG), Bitmap Image (BMP) and HTML Tables (HTM).

The main interface of Filelist Creator has File area in the top left, where you add the files for creating the list. The bottom left part shows the preview of the file list, while the right side has Columns and Design section that lets you configure what to include in the list and how will it look once it’s complete.
To add files to the application, just drag and drop them over the area named Files (top left side). You can choose to search all the subfolders, as well as watch the content of the added folder (applicable if you add files using the Open Folder option).

The Filter button under Files allows you to specify the types of file formats that you want to include in the file list. This lets you quickly select only the required files, without having to go through them manually.

The Columns and Design section in the right side allows you to choose the file elements that you want to include in the file list. Each element has its own set of Options to further specify the information. Other List Look options related to General Options, Grouping, Order of Columns etc let you change the look the list.

Filelist Creator works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Download Filelist Creator for Windows

Related Articles:

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3. GonVisor: Viewer For Images, E-Books, Comics And Compressed File Formats

The post Create Detailed File Lists In Various Formats With Filelist Creator appeared first on AddictiveTips.

Paragon Releases Beta Combo HFS+ & NTFS Driver for Android

Paragon Releases Beta Combo HFS+ & NTFS Driver for Android:

Paragon today announced the availability of a two-in-one driver solution on the Google Play Store. The beta driver provides access to both Windows NTFS-formatted file systems, as well as Apple’s HFS+ file system. HFS+ is used on all OS X installations today, as well as is the underlying file system for iOS devices.
The availability of this driver for Android will allow for USB host devices, namely hard drives and flash drives, to connect to Android in a similar manner to how one would plug them into a traditional PC.
As Android tablets and smartphones increasingly add support for USB host mode, the demand from consumers to plug in a USB hard drive has been rising. While Android supports FAT and FAT32 file systems, through an open source driver, Android has not integrated support for other filesystems. The FAT and FAT32 support stems from microSD card integration, but Google has seemed reluctant to add support for NTFS and HFS+. Both NTFS and HFS+ have one key advantage over FAT32: both can handle files that exceed 4GB in size.
Paragon’s driver has a major downside though, it requires root access to operate. This is necessary because as a file system driver, it must be able to permissions and authority to operate on the same level as part of the Android system.
For many, this means the driver will be relegated to hackers and enthusiasts, for now. Paragon’s main motive is to sell this driver to device manufacturers, who will be able to tout that their tablet/smartphone can play back large files and hard drives that their competitor’s (Android) devices cannot. When integrated into a device, the driver will require no intervention from the user, HFS+ and NTFS will “just work” as if the support came directly from the Android platform.
Paragon will benefit from enthusiast feedback, and stresses that the driver is a beta. Since this is a filesystem-level driver, we do not suggest using any drive that is not backed up fully before connecting it. Filesystem driver bugs can render entire drives unreadable. Even though Paragon is a reliable company, beta filesystem drivers warrant this level of precaution.
Paragon HFS+ & NTFS Beta – Google Play Store

Copyright 2012 PhoneNews.com

1Tap Quick Bar Brings Extensive Personalization To Your Android’s Notification Panel

1Tap Quick Bar Brings Extensive Personalization To Your Android’s Notification Panel:
The team behind a couple of hugely successful Android apps, Root Uninstaller and Smart RAM Booster, are back in business, and the app on offer this time around is arguably the most comprehensive notification widget personalization solution that we have come across so far. Surpassing the versatility and level of customization of most (if not all) of its counterparts, 1Tap Quick Bar tries to enhance your multitasking experience on Android manifold. It does so by empowering you with the option to pin customizable bar/widget(s) to your Android’s notification panel, so that you may quickly launch required apps and trigger system toggles, music playback controls, quick launch actions, contact interactions and/or virtually any aspect of your Android that you wish to have at your fingertips. It lets you stack up to as many as six different apps, tasks, system settings and/or required controls on a fully customizable notification panel widget. In just a few taps, you can define multiple custom widgets, complete with an outlook of your choice, and activate only the required ones. The extent of personalization ranges from specifying a custom widget background and text visibility settings to choosing from various icon sets and text color for the widget content.
1Tap Quick Bar might not be the only app of its type in the Google Play Store, but it certainly is a special one among its contemporaries due to its hyper-customizability, price ($0) and, more importantly, because it hasn’t been designed to work only certain brands or custom Android ROMs, as is the case with quite a few other alternative solutions.

  
With this particular app, you may add to each custom status bar widget whatever combination of items you like. There can be a widget catering to your web browsing needs, another might house your music playlist and playback controls, whereas a third one might carry your chosen system toggles. To cut it short, 1Tap Quick Bar brings forth endless possibilities when it comes to customizing your Android’s status bar widgets. All you need to do is create a new widget and start picking your favorite content from within the available categories by just tapping the required items. Each added item shows up on the preview bar at the top, and can be removed from there with a tap.
  
Apart from your preferred system and third-party apps, bookmarks, map directions, specific contact interactions (calling, texting, mailing), Dropbox folder and favorite music playlist, you have the option of adding to the bar several relatively hard-to-navigate-to options, such as battery info, custom text input method, UI mode, screen timeout toggle, running services list, proxy settings, custom media playback controls and whatnot! Another good thing about 1Tap Quick Bar is that it maintains detailed history of your recently used apps/settings, so that you may easily reuse them in another bar as per requirement.
Need to tinker with the looks of your 1Tap bars? Just head over the Design tab, and you’re ready to embellish the current bar as you please. In this regard, you have the option to select from almost half a dozen of different custom backgrounds, icon sets, text colors, status bar icons, multiple divider styles and the option to view/hide title of added items.
 
As mentioned earlier, each custom widget gets displayed on the app’s homescreen, and can be de/activated upon will. In order to remove or deactivate a specific widget, just hold it down for a couple of seconds. Did we forget to mention the immensely helpful 1Tap Setting Shortcut that the app has on offer? Of course, not! Said toggle, if added to a widget, lets you quickly access no less than 30 different aspects of your Android from under the same roof. Various options included within this particular widget comprise toggles for mobile data, screen orientation, volume control panel, media playback controls, 1-tap RAM optimizer, app manager, Wi-Fi tethering, NFC settings, quick search bar, auto-sync settings, camera, running services and lots more.
  
It must be mentioned here that 1Tap Quick Bar is a free app that lets you play around with just one custom bar/widget at a time. In order to lift this restriction, you may resort to the in-app purchasing feature, and upgrade to a Beginner, Premium or Ultimate account to get your hands on 2, 5 or unlimited simultaneously active bars for $1.22, $2.44 or $3.06, respectively.
Download 1Tap Quick Bar For Android

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1. SwiftKey X Beta For Android Brings Cloud Personalization & Better UI
2. Smart Taskbar For Android Brings Quick Launch / Fast App Switching
3. Yankee Clipper Brings Quick & Easy Management Of Large Clipboard Data

The post 1Tap Quick Bar Brings Extensive Personalization To Your Android’s Notification Panel appeared first on AddictiveTips.

10 Best Free YouTube Video Downloaders For Windows

10 Best Free YouTube Video Downloaders For Windows:
YouTube Downloaders allow you to save your favorite videos to your local hard drive, allowing you to easily view them at a later time, even when you are not connected to the internet. Moreover, even if the video is taken down due to some reason, you can still watch it again, or show it to others, if available. We have covered a lot of applications, as well as web extensions, that allow you to download videos from YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Metacafe, and lots of other video hosting websites. In this post, we bring you ten of the best YouTube video downloaders, each with its own specific set of features.

Direct YouTube Downloader

Direct YouTube Downloader is a dedicated grabber for YouTube, which not only lets you download single videos by copying their URL, but you can also download all the videos of a specific User, Channel, or any Playlist. The application supports downloading high-resolution videos up to Ultra HD 4K resolution. Downloading a whole playlist does not require any more work than copying its URL. All the videos of a User, Channel, or Playlist are listed in the main interface before downloading, and you can remove the ones you do not want to download. You can save videos in WebM, MP4, FLV and 3GP formats, and audio only streams in AAC.

The massive range of video resolutions offered by Direct YouTube Downloader to download videos, including the Ultra HD 4K resolution, in combination with the ability to download complete Playlists, makes this tool a must have for people who want to download videos from the popular video hosting service.
Download Direct YouTube Downloader
Read the complete review 

Best Video Downloader

Best Video Downloader is the tool that I personally use when I want to download any video from YouTube. The reason for using this particular YouTube downloader is that you don’t have to keep and run a separate software every time you want to download a video. After installation, the tool just adds an extension to the selected browsers (it currently supports Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer), and whenever you play a video on YouTube, a button pops up below the video window, allowing you to download the file in multiple audio and video formats. The tool lets you download the video in M4A, AAC, MP3 (128K, 64K), MP4 720p HD, MP4 360p, and FLV (480p, 360p. 240p). Moreover, you can also download the album art (thumbnail image) of the video from the same list.

Best Video Downloader, while downloading videos from YouTube, keeps the interference to the minimum. The ease with which one can download the video in different formats and qualities makes it my personal choice as a YouTube Downloader.
Download Best Video Downloader

Wondershare vDownloader

Wondershare vDownloader allows you to download videos from multiple websites, including YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Metacafe, Facebook, Vevo, Hulu, Blip.tv etc. Other than the normal 360p and 480p resolutions, it also allows you to download videos in the full 1080p. The application offers you two ways to download the video: you can download the video by pasting its URL in the main interface of the application, or you can use the integrated download option in your browsers, which allows you to download a video in different resolutions just by hovering your mouse over it. Wiondershare vDownloader also features a built-in video player with full screen as well as repeat mode. By specifying the program preferences, you can also choose to disable browser integration for specific browsers.

Its ability download videos from multiple websites using clipboard, as well as mouse hover, makes it a very solid choice.
Download Wondershare vDownloader
Read the complete review

NoVirusThanks YouTube Video Downloader

NoVirusThanks YouTube Video Downloader is a portable application that lets you download one video at a time from YouTube. However, where the tool lacks in terms of capturing multiple streams, it makes up in its ability to convert videos directly after downloading them. The application allows users to convert the downloaded video to MPEG, FLV, Apple QuickTime MOV, WAV and a lot of other video formats. Besides the conversion after download, the tool also allows you to change the file formats and extract only the audio layer from a video stored in your local hard drive.

The portable program offers real-time conversion of videos (as soon as they get downloaded), and conversion of stored videos in multiple audio and video formats. This tool can be useful for people who want to copy the video to a device supporting only specific video and audio containers.
Download NoVirusThanks Youtube Video Downloader
Read the complete review

yMule

yMule is YouTube downloader that does not rely on the clipboard to download videos. Instead, it features its own search function, which lets you scour the YouTube database for any motion stream. The search results are listed with the name, duration of video, number of views on YouTube, upload period, availability in HD, and Description of each that matches the search criteria. You can also set several filters to narrow down the lookup, such as show only HD videos, search for music, sort criteria of the results list, upload data, and duration of videos. Double clicking a video adds it to the download list, and for music videos, an option is available to download only the audio track. Default settings can be chosen for allowing the maximum number of parallel downloads, as well specifying the download quality for the selected videos.

The application lets you download YouTube videos without making you open the website, or copy the URL of each video. The search options allow users to quickly locate the required video and download it in any quality that they want.
Download yMule
Read the complete review

ClipGrab

ClipGrab is video downloader that supports not just YouTube, but also Vimeo, College Humor, DailyMotion and a lot of other video hosting services. The program allows you to convert videos after downloading them into Original, WMV, MPEG4, OGG Theora, MP3 (audio), OGG Vorbis (audio) file formats. ClipGrab can download HD videos from any website that offers high definition videos, such as YouTube and Vimeo. The application also allows you to search for videos directly from within the main interface. Videos can be downloaded using the clipboard option (by pasting their URL in the application), and the automatic site-recognition allows it to work on a large number of online portals. You can also choose to keep the metadata in audio files, and connect the program to the internet when using a proxy server.

The wide range of websites supported by ClipGrab, along with its ability to search and download videos from YouTube, makes it a try-worthy candidate on our list.
Download ClipGrab
Read the complete review

RealDownloader

If you are looking for a reliable video downloading application that gets regularly updated, try RealDownloader. It is a video downloader from the developers of Real Player that lets you download videos from video hosting websites such as YouTube, MetaCafe, Facebook etc. The application allows you to download videos in MP4 and FLV. After installation, an extension is installed to your browser, which adds a Download this Video button on top of the currently playing videos. Click this button to add the video to the download list. You can choose when the download button should appear on a video, from options including On load, On mouse over and Don’t show (download using right click).

RealDownloader is already a very famous video downloader, used by a lot of people without any complaints. Its simplicity and stability makes it a very good choice for downloading video streams.
Download RealDownloader

Freemake Video Downloader

Freemake Video Downloader is another tool that supports multiple websites – in this case, 10,000+. Along with YouTube, it allows you to get videos from the likes of Vimeo, Facebook, TubePlus, DailyMotion, Vevo etc. Videos can be downloaded in every available video resolution, such as 360p, 480p, 720p (HD), 1080p (HD) and 4096p (4K). Before downloading the video, Freemake Video Downloader lists all the available formats, their resolutions, audio quality, and the file size that will be downloaded. You can choose to extract the audio from the file, or convert the selected video to AVI, MKV, MP3, iPod/ iPhone, Android, PSP, and 3GP formats. The program features both a desktop client, as well as plugins for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

The resolution and size listing functionality, as well as the built-in video converter with support for multiple formats, and built-in presets for audio and video formats compatible with iPod, iPhone, PSP and Android, make this eye candy tool a decent contender among our list of top 10 YouTube Downloaders.
Download Freemake Video Downloader
Read the complete review

Orbit Downloader

Orbit Downloader is another very famous tool for downloading videos, as well as other content from the internet. It provides you with a lot more flexibility in terms of where the content is hosted. The specialty of Orbit Downloader is that it works on any type of audio or video Flash content. So, you are not restricted to download the videos only from YouTube, Vimeo or other big video hosting websites; you can grab any video or audio that is available inside a Flash container. Orbit Downloader grabs the video while it’s playing and creates a download link, enabling you to store the file in your local hard drive to a location of your choosing.

The program works with all the major internet browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Opera.
Download Orbit Downloader
Read the complete review

YouTube Downloader HD

YouTube Downloader HD is one of the most famous tools available that allow you to easily download videos from YouTube by just copying their URL. The application supports downloading the video in multiple resolutions, from a range of 240p up to videos with a 1080p Full HD resolution. If you are downloading the videos at a lower resolution, there are options available to convert them to AVI as well as MP4, making them compatible with most portable video players, including iPod and Quick Time. You can save the video in a custom location and stop the download process, if needed.

The simplicity of YouTube Downloader HD makes it a good choice for situations where you need to simply download a video for keeping it in your collection.
Download YouTube Downloader HD
That concludes our list of the 10 best tools available for downloading videos from the internet, specially YouTube. If you have any other that we have missed in our review, feel free to drop us a tip in comments below!

Related Articles:

1. Compilation Of YouTube Downloaders For Windows 7 And Windows 8
2. Download And Organize YouTube Videos With YouTube Video Organizer
3. YouTube Statistics – Download And Save YouTube Video Stats

The post 10 Best Free YouTube Video Downloaders For Windows appeared first on AddictiveTips.

How Can I Save Un-downloadable Online Video Content to Watch Offline? [Video]

How Can I Save Un-downloadable Online Video Content to Watch Offline? [Video]:

Dear Lifehacker,
I watch a lot of online video, and it's great when I'm actually connected to the internet, but sometimes I want to finish what I'm watching somewhere Wi-Fi or cellular data doesn't reach. Is there a way I can download videos from YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, etc., so I can view them offline? More »

Operation Upgrade: How We Rebuilt Three Old PCs, Part By Part

Operation Upgrade: How We Rebuilt Three Old PCs, Part By Part:
Note: This feature first appeared in the July issue of Maximum PC. Some pricing info may have changed.

The PC upgrade is, sadly, a lost art form today. Fifteen years ago, the vast majority of PC buyers bought machines with long-term plans to upgrade them as newer, more capable parts became available. Today, most people would rather just chuck an aged PC into an e-waste bin and buy a completely new computer. We say boo to that. A well-thought-out upgrade can be the most economical option, extending the life of your PC’s still-useful parts—not to mention giving you a tremendous sense of satisfaction at your resourcefulness.

The trick is in knowing where and when an upgrade makes sense. Sometimes the lure of an upgrade can walk you down a path you never should have started on. For example, it may be tempting to buy that Core 2 QX9650 on eBay for $300, but you’d be much better off upgrading the CPU and motherboard to a Core i7 instead.

On the following pages we detail three distinct PC builds desperately in need of performance boosts. We walk you through our thought process in determining realistic upgrade goals for each PC and how and why we choose the parts to get there. Before and after benchmarks reveal the fruits of our labor.

While these are just three case studies, let them serve as useful examples of sound upgrading practices that you can apply toward the resurrection of any elderly PC, within reason. The first step is always to thoroughly weigh the costs/benefits. Some PCs, after all, truly should be retired.

Because We Can

One of Dell’s first PCs to eschew proprietary parts is just begging for an upgrade

ORIGNAL BUILD
CPU	2.66GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600
RAM	2GB DDR2/800
Motherboard	Custom Dell
GPU	GeForce 8800 GT
COOLER	Custom Dell
HDD	320GB 7,200rpm
ODD	NEC DVD burner
OS	32-bit Windows Vista
PSU	Dell 750 watt

The Dell XPS 630i was budget state-of-the-art in 2008, but is now in serious need of more performance.

THE MACHINE

Crank back the clock to 2008 and you get Dell’s XPS 630i. A nicely outfitted gaming rig for its time, the XPS 630i sported a 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600, a GeForce 8800 GT, a 750-watt PSU, and—get this for a last-decade flashback—a Hitachi 320GB 7,200rpm HDD. In 2008, this was a decent machine in a very nice brushed-aluminum case for around $1,500. What made the XPS 630i particularly special was its use of off-the-shelf industry components. Dell has long been kicked around by the media for using proprietary power supplies and motherboards in its machines. Dell’s defense has been that the changes were made to improve the specs. For example, Dell was one of the first consumer PC makers to use larger, server PSUs and plugs in its machines—a practice that bugged everyone, including us. Today those server power plugs aren’t unusual at all, but a staple of ultra-high-performance machines, so it seems like Dell was on to something. But we digress…. More to the point: The XPS 630i was one of the first rigs in which Dell exorcised proprietary parts. It’s industry standard all the way, or so the company said at the time. Well, baby, we’re going to find out.

THE MISSION

Since the XPS 630i began its life as a budget gaming rig, we thought we’d keep the machine’s mission the same, with upgrades that would transform it into a budget gaming rig fit for the modern day. Since we’ve always been fond of XPS 630i’s case, we had no intentions of upgrading the enclosure—just pretty much everything else.

THE UPGRADES

If you run old games or a browser all day, the classic Core 2 Quad Q6600 is plenty of computer—but we wanted more. We pondered a CPU upgrade for about five seconds, but the prices of older LGA775 chips and the performance it would yield didn’t seem worth it, particularly since we didn’t know if the board in the Dell would support higher FSB chips or even 45nm parts.

UPGRADES
	PART	URL	PRICE
CPU	Intel 3.3GHz Core i5-2500K (overclocked to 4GHz)	www.intel.com	$225
RAM	8GB Patriot DDR3/1600	www.patriotmemory.com	$42
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3	www.gigabyte.com	$155
GPU	XFX Radeon HD R7870	www.xfxforce.com	$359
Cooler	Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO	www.coolermaster.com	$35
SSD	120GB OCZ Agility 3	www.ocz.com	$136
USB Expansion	NZXT IU01 Internal USB Expansion	www.nzxt.com	$18
OS	64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium	www.microsoft.com	$99
Total			$1,069

We next considered an X79 board paired with a 3.6GHz Core i7-3820, but most X79 boards are simply too wide for this chassis. We also had to mind the Intel-style front-panel connector, which rules out any Asus board without doing some wiring surgery. Then we remembered the internals from our May 2012 “Build a PC on Any Budget” story. The Sweet Spot PC and its Core i5-2500K part seemed perfect for this upgrade. Yes, Ivy Bridge would have been nice, but we simply didn’t have access to the budget IVB parts yet. Since the Sweet Spot indeed seemed like the sweet spot, we figured we could just migrate all the internals over to the XPS 630i. Well, almost all of them. We hit a problem with our GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 card. It requires an 8-pin PCIe plug, and the Dell only gave us two 6-pin units, so we opted for a slightly pricier XFX Radeon HD 7870 card instead. It’s faster than the 560 Ti 448 card. Another option would have been to spring for a GeForce GTX 680, but that seemed to break our budget mantra. The machine originally came with the 32-bit flavor of Windows Vista Home Premium, so that was ejected for 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium. The 320GB hard drive was dismissed from its boot duties in favor of a 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 drive.

THE RESULT

We’ve always wondered if Dell was true to its word when it pledged that the XPS line used industry-standard parts. Our experience here shows that Dell wasn’t fibbing, provided you stick with a narrow board that uses a standard Intel-style FP connector. The Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 fit like a glove. The only sticky part was that the front USB and FireWire connector cables were too short. There are two ways to overcome this: $5 extension cables or a $20 NZXT internal USB expansion. We opted for the latter. You’ll also need to pick up a $5 internal cable for the front FireWire port if you plan to use it; we just left it disconnected since the board has a rear FireWire port, too. The original 320GB drive gets erased and reused for storage to keep costs down. It’s easy enough to swap in a 1TB or 2TB drive, though.

AFTER

The Dell XPS 630i was surprisingly easy to upgrade and exceeded our expectations in performance.

BENCHMARKS
	PRE-UPGRADE
Vegas Pro (sec)	WNR	3,021 N/A
Lightroom 2.6 (sec)	1,224	343(+257)
ProShow 4 (sec)	2,442	868(+181)
MainConcept 1.6 (sec)	5,580	2,009(+178)
STALKER: CoP (fps)	WNR	47.4(N/A)
Far Cry 2 (fps)	25.9	107.3(314)

The performance difference was like night and day. If you’re idling a Core 2-class machine today and wondering if you really need to upgrade, we say hell yes (unless you get paid by the hour and want things to go slower.) The 4GHz Core i5-2500K smokes the 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600 part in everything we could run. And believe us, some apps would not run, such as Sony Vegas 9, which gave us “out of memory” errors in 32-bit Vista. In Lightroom, we saw a 257 percent improvement; in ProShow Producer 4 we saw a 181 percent boost; and in MainConcept the difference was 178 percent. Even in general use, it was hard to believe how far we’ve come in just a few years. Thanks to the SSD, our boots went from two-minute affairs to 30‑second ones. In the end, we’re declaring mission accomplished, because this old dog now sings.

---

OLD LYNNFIELD GETS NEW LIFE

The LGA1156 socket is a dead end, but it’s still plenty fast

BEFORE

ORIGNAL BUILD
CPU	2.66GHz Core i5-750 running at 3.2GHz
RAM	4GB Kingston DDR3/1600
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-P55-UD5
GPU	GeForce GTX 295
Cooler	Cooler Master V8
HDD	1.5TB 7,200rpm Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
ODD	22x Samsung DVD+R
OS	64-bit Windows Vista Home Premium
PSU	Cooler Master Scout / Corsair 750 TX

At two years old, this CyberPower Gamer Xtreme 3200 can get a boost from the replacement of a few key components.

The MACHINE

CyberPower PC’s Gamer Xtreme 3200 is only 14 months newer than the Dell XPS 630i, but what a difference that time makes. The Xtreme 3200 packs the dual-GPU-based GeForce GTX 295 (two GeForce GTX 285 chips), a 2.66GHz Core i5-750, 4GB of DDR3/1600 RAM, and a 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda hard drive. When new, this machine sold for $1,600. In 2009 dollars, that’s a pretty good deal for this much hardware, especially when you consider that it packs a dual-GPU graphics card. Much of the credit goes to the Core i5-750 chip, which made Intel’s new Nehalem architecture affordable for the masses

but that felt wasteful. Yes, we’d pick up new technologies such as SATA 6Gb/s and the like, but the Core i5-750 is still very serviceable and really only two years old. With that decided, our mission was to boost the PC’s performance capability and make it DirectX 11-ready with a few key upgrades.

The Upgrades

We picked two main upgrades: the first was to dump the GeForce GTX 295 for a GeForce GTX 680 card. The original GeForce GTX 295 sold for $500, so swapping it out for the $500 EVGA GeForce GTX 680 card seems apt. This gives us modern API support, higher frame rates, and—over time—a savings in power, too, as dual-GPU cards don’t exactly sip power.

UPGRADES
	PART	URL	PRICE
RAM	8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3/1600	www.corsair.com	$54
GPU	EVGA GeForce GTX 680	www.evga.com	$499
SSD	120GB Corsair GT	www.corsair.com	$169
OS	64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium	www.microsoft.com	$99
Total			$821

The second big upgrade was a 120GB Corsair Force GT SSD. Using the second-gen SandForce controller, the NANDs in this SSD are a bit faster than those in the OCZ SSD we used in the Dell, so we decided to splurge a bit.A third, less significant upgrade was adding 8GB of DDR3/1600. Yeah, 4GB is fine for most chores, but, what the hey, memory is still cheap. That brings the machine up to a total of 12GB of DDR3/1600. We also decided that since the machine is a bit older now, we’d push the overclock a bit harder. The Lynnfield CPU is overclocked by increasing the base clock (remember that?), so we increased it from 160MHz to 175MHz. That takes us to 3.5GHz, and with Turbo Boost on, we saw the clocks hitting the 3.8GHz range. The last upgrade was moving from Windows Vista to Windows 7. We long ago made peace with Vista after Microsoft released SP1 and SP2, but we’ve become so accustomed to Windows 7 that we think it’s worth the $100.

AFTER

A modern GPU and SSD and a bit more RAM do wonders for performance.

BENCHMARKS
	PRE-UPGRADE
Vegas Pro (sec)	4,501	3,064
Lightroom 2.6 (sec)	616	345
ProShow 4 (sec)	1,216	1,137
MainConcept 1.6 (sec)	2,618	2,377
stalker: CoP (fps)	WNR	60.9(N/A)
Far Cry 2 (fps)	772	168.5

THE RESULT

We didn’t expect the same stellar performance difference with the Cyber‑Power PC as we got with the Dell rig. After all, that machine received completely new innards. But despite being the most modest upgrade here, the CyberPower surprised us with its improved performance. The combination of the increased RAM footprint, slightly higher clocks speeds, SSD, new GPU, and clean OS install gave us more than we expected in a few benchmarks. Sony Vegas Pro 9, surprisingly, saw a 47 percent performance bump. Adobe Lightroom also achieved a very healthy increase of 79 percent. In gaming, we saw an 86 percent jump in Far Cry 2, and our DirectX 11 test, STALKER: CoP, actually ran. In some tests, the results were more as expected, though. Main Concept Reference and ProShow Producer 4, for example, gave us about a 10 percent improvement, which matched our 10 percent overclock. Overall, we think our upgrades make sense and extend the machine’s service life. We might consider this stage one of our upgrade. Perhaps next year it’ll be time to dump the Core i5-750 for Intel’s next-generation mainstream socket, the LGA1150 and Haswell CPU.

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REBUILDING THE DREAM

Part two of an ambitious upgrade to a 3-year-old ‘Budget Surplus’ machine

ORIGINAL BUILD
CPU	2.8GHz Core i7-920 Running at 3.5GHz
RAM	16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3/1600
MOTHERBOARD	Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R
GPU	Sapphire Radeon HD 7950
Cooler	Thermalright TRUE-120 1366
HDD	1TB WD Caviar Black
ODD	LG Blu-ray player
OS	64-bit Windows 7 Professional
PSU	Thermaltake Element S / Corsair 850 TX

Here’s our aging warrior after the first round of upgrades in May—still X58, but with a modern GPU and more RAM.

THE MACHINE

In our May 2012 issue’s Build It section, we took a $1,400 gaming PC from our September 2009 issue and gave it a modest upgrade. The original rig was the midrange box in a trio of lean-year Dream Machines and was built around an Intel Core i7-920 and an ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2. It had three 2GB DDR3/1333 DIMMs, a 1TB hard drive, an LG Blu-ray drive, and an 850W Corsair power supply. The case was a Thermaltake Element S mid-tower.

In the course of our May upgrade, we took that aging PC and boosted it from 6GB of DDR3 RAM to 12GB (by buying a 16GB kit and using only three DIMMs). We also swapped the ancient, power-hungry dual-GPU card for a sleek Radeon HD 7950, but otherwise left the rig unchanged. The goal was to offer an immediate performance boost while paving the way for a second, more comprehensive round of upgrades down the line. That time is now.

THE MISSION

The Core i7-920 was an enthusiast CPU back in the day, and this Hyper-Threading-enabled quad-core is still no slouch. In fact, we could take the upgrades we’ve already made, add an SSD, and call it a day—and we wouldn’t blame anyone who stops there. We’d still be stuck with a dead-end socket that has no feasible upgrade path, so we’re biting the bullet and going for the major upgrade.

Since X58 was Intel’s enthusiast platform at the time, we want to stay in the enthusiast realm while offering a generous upgrade path, so we’ll need a CPU with plenty of juice now and a motherboard with room to grow. We hate to run a fancy rig without an SSD to improve load times and all-around system responsiveness, so we won’t.

THE UPGRADE

We’ll keep the RAM and GPU from May’s upgrade, as well as the case, power supply, Blu-ray drive, and hard drive from the original build. Everything else gets an overhaul. In place of the Core i7-920, we’ll use Intel’s Core i7-3820. We briefly considered keeping the X58 platform and upgrading the CPU to a hexa-core Core i7-970, but they’re $650 new and around $525 used. The Core i7-970 would add performance for multithreaded apps, but paying so much for a CPU on a dead-end socket didn’t sit well with us. The Core i7-3820 is a quad-core Sandy Bridge-E part with Hyper-Threading that overclocks well despite not being an unlocked part. And our internal benchmarks indicate that its performance is competitive with older Westmere hexa-core chips anyway, so there’s no point in buying the i7-970 when we can get the i7-3820 and a new X79 motherboard for the same price

UPGRADES
	PART	URL	PRICE
CPU	Intel Core i7-3820	www.intel.com	$300
Motherboard	Intel DX79SI	www.intel.com	$270
Cooler	Xigmatek Aegir	www.xigmatek.com	$68
SSD	240GB SanDisk ExtremeSSD	www.sandisk.com	$290
Front-panel USB 3.0	Biostar USB 3.0 Adapter	www.biostar-usa.com	$14
5.25-to-3.5-inch Drive Bay Adapter	Silverstone FP55	www.silverstonetek.com	$16
Front Panel Extensions	NZXT Front Panel Connector Extension	www.nzxt.com	$8
Total			$966

Intel’s DX79SI is short on frills but long on value. It’s one of the less expensive X79 boards on the market, but it has eight RAM slots for up to 64GB of RAM and will support the upcoming Ivy Bridge-E CPUs—so if you want to upgrade to a hexa-core down the line, you can. Early boards required a BIOS update to play nicely with the i7-3820, but new ones should be fine. The DX79SI provides decent and intuitive overclocking support, even for locked processors like the Core i7-3820—we easily got our Turbo Boost to 4.4GHz.

We’ll recycle the three 4GB DIMMs from the first part of our upgrade, and add the fourth. This is why we bought a 16GB kit instead of a 12GB kit in May—so we’d have the extra DIMM ready when it was time to go quad-channel.

Because of LGA2011’s integrated universal backplate, we’ll need a new cooler—
Thermaltake doesn’t sell an LGA2011 mounting kit for the Ultra Extreme 120. We like Xigmatek’s Aegir due to its direct-contact heat pipes and powerful cooling performance.

Last we’ll add an SSD. Solid-state drives dramatically reduce load times and come with blazing-fast read and write speeds. SanDisk’s 240GB ExtremeSSD is a speedy SandForce-based 6Gb/s SATA SSD and is price-competitive with others in its class. 240GB is generous enough that we won’t need to micro-manage programs, though we’ll still want to make sure media and documents are kept on the 1TB drive.

Because the Element S is an older chassis, it has a few problems of its own. It doesn’t have front-panel USB 3.0 ports, and though it shipped with 2.5-inch drive‑bay adapters, they’ve long since vanished into the depths of the Lab. The front-panel connectors are just a few inches too short to reach the pins on the motherboard, though we split the blame for that between Intel and Thermaltake. Fortunately, all of those problems are easily solvable. Biostar makes an inexpensive 3.5-inch bay device with two USB 3.0 ports on an internal header, and Silverstone makes a 5.25-inch bay adapter that accommodates a 3.5-inch device and two 2.5-inch SSDs. A few NZXT front-panel connector extenders, and our case is ready for 2012.

And here’s what it looks like now, complete with quad-channel RAM, a hefty Turbo overclock, speedy SSD, and front-panel USB 3.0.

THE RESULTS

BENCHMARKS
	PRE-UPGRADE
Vegas Pro (sec)	3,234	2,322
Lightroom 2.6 (sec)	394	256
ProShow 4 (sec)	1,184	857
MainConcept 1.6 (sec)	2,268	1,711
stalker: CoP (fps)	60.3	61.2
Far Cry 2 (fps)	1,185	121.8

Color us unsurprised: A modern Sandy Bridge-E quad-core at 4.4GHz trounces a 2008-era Bloomfield quad at 3.5GHz. Thanks to the overclocked i7-3820 and the SandForce SSD, we saw huge gains in CPU- and drive-limited benchmarks. Our MainConcept Reference score was 33 percent faster than the pre-upgrade rig, ProShow Producer showed 38 percent improvements, our Vegas Pro 9 score went up 39 percent, and our Lightroom test was as whopping 54 percent speedier.

With the GPU and RAM upgrades we made a few months ago, we’ve gone from an aging X58 gaming PC with a hot, slow GPU and a dead-end motherboard to a fresh, speedy gaming PC on Intel’s latest enthusiast socket—one that doesn’t lack for modern amenities like front-panel USB 3.0, a capacious boot SSD, or modern graphics.

Granted, the only parts this machine has in common with the one we built in September 2009 are the case, power supply, optical drive, and hard drive, but it’s still the same rig, right? Or maybe it isn’t. What’s important is that it’s blazing fast, actually draws less power than the original, and is ready for the future.

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UPGRADING DOs AND DON’Ts

Adherence to a few simple guidelines can make your upgrade go much more smoothly

DON’T REUSE YOUR THERMAL PASTE

If you upgrade your CPU or heatsink, you may be tempted to just plop the old heatsink back in place, but it’s generally recommended that you clean off the old thermal paste and re-apply fresh paste to the new CPU or heatsink. If the old thermal paste is gunked on like concrete, it may take more than elbow grease to clean it off. We use Arctic Silver’s ArctiClean, but a bit of 99 percent isopropyl alcohol also works in a pinch.

DON’T UNDERESTIMATE YOUR POWER NEEDS

Just upgraded from a single card to a dual-GPU card? Sure, the plugs may fit, but if your PSU is sagging under the load on a cool day, it’ll get even worse when temperatures rise. It can be tough to gauge the power requirements, so check with the GPU vendor for what your new card requires.

DON’T UNDERESTIMATE YOUR COOLING NEEDS

If you just swapped a G-series Pentium for a Core i7-2700K you should probably upgrade your heatsink fan, too, as a faster CPU usually means more heat. If you’re using the stock Intel cooler, keep in mind that the budget chip’s cooler might look the same, but it’s actually different from the higher-performing heatsinks.

DON’T THROW AWAY THOSE OLD PARTS

So you just added a second optical drive and upgraded the GPU. Just throw away that old bezel and expansion card slot cover, right? Not so fast, buddy. We recommend that you save those parts for the future when you decide to give away the case. That’s usually when you start looking for that old bezel or other parts that you thought you didn’t need anymore.

DON’T REUSE YOUR OLD WINDOWS INSTALL

We know, we know, one of the pains of doing a major upgrade is dealing with an OS reinstall. However, when your upgrade involves swapping the motherboard and chipset, it’s recommended that you do a clean install. You can get away with just letting Windows redetect the new hardware, but a clean install will protect you against any potential problems.

DO PERFORM A BACKUP

Before you do your upgrade, we recommend that you take the time to perform a full backup of your files. Why? Because this is the time when something breaks and the last person who touched it gets blamed for the breaking, even if you had nothing to do with it. So consider this your public service announcement.

DO MOVE YOUR DEFAULT LIBRARIES

If you just upgraded to an SSD, don’t forget to move your default library location from that limited-space SSD to your HDD. Do this by clicking the Start button on Windows 7 and selecting Documents. In the left-hand pane, expand the Documents entry by clicking it and then right-click My Documents. Select the Location tab and click Move to move it to your HDD.

DO TIDY UP THE INTERIOR

If you have four years’ worth of cat hair circulating in your PC, it’s time to clean it. We use a vacuum cleaner to carefully suck up the dust bunnies. Take care not to get the vacuum so close as to remove components from your motherboard and GPU. Also clean the case’s filters and vents of dust. If your wiring is a mess, now is also a perfect time to make it ship-shape.

DO MAKE THE JUMP TO AHCI

If your machine is old enough, you likely did not have AHCI, or Adaptive Host Control Interface, enabled, as many motherboards left it off by default. AHCI lets you take advantage of advanced capabilities such as support for booting to devices larger than 2.2TB, native command queuing, and hot swapping. You should only enable AHCI if you’re doing a clean install of the OS, which would be the case if you’re installing a hard drive or SSD. If you enable AHCI without doing a clean install, Windows 7 will fail to boot until you turn it off.

DO CHECK YOUR AIRFLOW

Since you’re in your box tinkering around, we recommend that you take a look at the case’s airflow. Generally, you want air flowing from the front of the case to the rear of the case where it’s exhausted. You can reposition fans and adjust fan speeds to help with this. We generally recommend running more intake fans than exhaust fans in dustier environments. This should aid positive air pressure in the case and help reduce dust issues.