It’s been over 3 years since the last upgrade, so this Xmas there was no postponing it. Time for another computer upgrade.

Upgrade
I kept my old tower and PSU which are still pretty nifty, and just updated the following:

• MSI P55-CD53, Socket-1156 Motherboard
• Intel i5 Quad Processor i5-760 2.8 ghz
• 8 GB RAM
• 120 GB Corsair Force Series SSD
• Gainward GeForce GTX 460

Damn you Samsung!
After doing this, I found to my dismay that the stupid Samsung Syncmaster 225bw started to act up, with the error message “Not Optimum mode” blinking.

That’s not to say that the monitor did not work, it worked perfectly 55% of the time, and not at all the remaining 45%.

I would boot up into windows, and the screen would be black with the “Not Optimum Mode” message flashing extremely quickly, even though the resolution and update frequency was set to the monitors native values. The problem even presented itself when Installing Windows 7 (64 bit).

I found an interesting “fix”, after waiting 10 minutes without using the computer (win 7 default), the screen would go to sleep mode. If I then clicked a button or moved the mouse, there was a 55% chance the monitor would work normally, otherwise it would just continue with the error message. This was the oddest part, that it sometimes worked even though no settings or any changes were made in the display settings on the computer.

After some googling I found that lots of other people have been getting the same error, and tried several solutions everything from creating custom refresh rates (60.001 hz) and using powerstrip. But nothing worked. So I decided to call Samsung support, who kept claiming there was nothing wrong with the monitor since it worked on another computer, an obviously fallacious statement, as I pointed out “there is nothing wrong with the computer since other monitors works great on it”, and by this logic neither the monitor or computer is to blame for the error.

I could have sent it in for testing, but that would likely just be a waste of money seeing that the monitor works nicely on other computers and my old computer. So they would just have charged me for testing it. Instead I got myself a BenQ XL2410T 120 hz monitor bundled with Nvidia 3d Vision. And I don’t regret that for a second, I was getting sick of that horrible bleeding on the top and bottom of the Samsung screen, so this new one with greater resolution (full hd), better response time, better contrast, etc.. is MUCH more comfortable. I’ll probably write up a review of the 3D part soon, but so far it’s pretty awesome on some games =)