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I bought a new computer! (bragging)


Baddox

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So my newegg shipment came in yesterday evening, I spent last night installing all the hardware and software. I got a Core 2 Duo e6600, 2 gigs of DDR2-800 RAM, an AMAZING evga 8800GTS GPU with 640 meg of RAM, and a 10k RPM WD Raptor drive. Put everything in my new full-tower Thermaltake Eureka case, which was very spacious and easy to work with. I was slightly worried about cooling, since it's a server case and not technically a "gaming" case, but so far, everything seems cool. All in all, I stayed up till about 2:30 am last night, got up at 7:30 am for work today, and here we are (it's 8:11 am now). I haven't run any benchmarks, but I got 80+ fps in CoD2 at my highest resolution (1650x1080) with ALL settings turned to max. Also, at highest res and settings, the Half-Life 2 Lost Coast stress test got an average of 141 fps. I'm gunna try Company of Heroes this evening, and perhaps Age of Empires 3 (a game which murdered my previous single-core AMD64, 6800GT system).

In conclusion, this system is amazing, met all my expectations. I can't wait to try some divx encoding with that processor, it's going to pwn my previous one. If you're still skeptical about the WD 10k rpm drives, in my one-day experience with it, I most definitely notice improvement in loading times for the few games I've tried so far (CoD2, HL2 games), and Windows seems incredibly responsive and quick as well (granted, a new install always seems quicker). I'm also impressed with the new Corsair line of PSU's, I picked up the 520-watt one. It's modular, with nice cabling, nice whisper-quiet cooling (a big 120-mm fan), and clean looks.

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You should've at least included a price and a picture for us to drool over.

I treated myself to some early christmas gifts aswell. Got two Sharkoon Rebel 9 Economic cases. These are midi-towers, and the front is a stunning 9 5.25" slots on top of eachother. This could make a great DVD copying rig, but I've got bigger plans. To those on the lookout for a new case, check out the Rebel 9 Value there with it's 25 cm (!!) side intake fan. Should keep anything cool and quiet. These cases are CHEAP by the way. Under 30 euros each.

As for the bigger plans, I got two Icy Dock MB455 SPF's. They call them "SATA Backplane Module", but it's basically a swappable SATA drive cage that can house up to 5 harddisks in a box the size of 3 5.25" slots... Yup, these will house my 10 SATA 250 GB harddisks and finally complete this fileserver I've been taking forever to build.

To top it all off, I've gotten a Morex Cubid 3688 Mini-ITX Case (mine's silver instead of blue) which will be equipped with one of my Mini-ITX boards and become a MythTV box. It will boot from the network, making it completely void of moving parts. Well, assuming running it fanless works out in that case. It should be possible, but time will have to tell on that one.

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All in all, my computer was about 1600 US bucks. I've got no pic of mine, but

this is the case.

Those Rebel cases look swell (does anyone say "swell"?). Reminds me of the Antec 900 case, which also sports a 250mm fan (on top). I almost got the 900, until I realized its appearance sickened me. That SATA multibay interests me---I too have been wanting a file server for some time (USB external enclosures get REALLY old, I think I've racked up around 2 TB in total storage between enclosures and internal). I'm not understanding how that hooks up though, is there a larger SATA plug that's not on standard mobos? As for your mini-itx system, I'm also jealous, since I've toyed with the idea of getting one for a while now. I'd love to have one just to stream videos (movies, tv shows, etc.) off the network and display on my TV.[/url]

Cooper: fixed broken link

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All in all, my computer was about 1600 US bucks. I've got no pic of mine, but

this is the case.

Those Rebel cases look swell (does anyone say "swell"?). Reminds me of the Antec 900 case, which also sports a 250mm fan (on top). I almost got the 900, until I realized its appearance sickened me. That SATA multibay interests me---I too have been wanting a file server for some time (USB external enclosures get REALLY old, I think I've racked up around 2 TB in total storage between enclosures and internal). I'm not understanding how that hooks up though, is there a larger SATA plug that's not on standard mobos? As for your mini-itx system, I'm also jealous, since I've toyed with the idea of getting one for a while now. I'd love to have one just to stream videos (movies, tv shows, etc.) off the network and display on my TV.[/url]

link - not working :roll:

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That SATA multibay interests me. I'm not understanding how that hooks up though, is there a larger SATA plug that's not on standard mobos?

Nah, there are 5 SATA connections on the back that you need to hook up to your MoBo. Since a lot of power supplies don't come with sufficient SATA connectors yet, you need to plug in 2 regular Molex power connectors, and 3 SATA power connectors to get it all going. For the SATA connectivity I got this BEAUTIFUL SuperMicro 8-port SATA controller. It's just a boring controller, no RAID or anything, but I don't want that stuff (software RAID FTW!) and it helps keep the price down. Combine it with an Asus PSCH-L and a regular P4 3GHz and you're well on your way to a respectable server.

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I got myself a new rig few weeks ago, posted in the forums a number of times.

ASUS Crosshair mainboard

am2 duel core 2.6ghz cpu

Corsair Dominator ddr800 (1066mhz)

Asus GeForce 768MB 8800GTX, Mem 1800MHz, GPU 575MHz,

Raptor 10krpm HDD

320gb SATA2 Seagate HDD

XP Pro

Alaska 500W PSU

Nice case and the psu got 6 sata power sockets on it so im happy with that.

CSS looks teh pwnage with a steady 60fps with everything on max.

Cost me £1670 in total.

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i went all out this xmas and got my self a great PC gift http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/10641

Yup, as u can see my Xmas bonus from work was high and mighty this year, hmm could have somethink to do with reading the forums and not working all year...

PS. Nice new PC ^_^ luv the case, and as for being worried about the cooling, server cases are better for the thermal expansion, therefore the bigger the better :)

@Cooper - mb455spf has been in my dreams for a few months now u lucky bastard.

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