Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129021
This case has zero room to hide cables in, but it knocked 10/20 degrees farenheit off my LOAD temperature on my CPU/GPU, and it basically acts like a windsock.



Sticking a Conroe Core 2 Duo E6600 in there, overclocking the piss out of it.

Power supply (Havent ordered yet)


Supplemental Power Supply dedicated soley to the Vid cards, runs @ 250 watts at 25 amps


I'd bought a 200$ power supply... then I saw this and the idea is kick ass. No spikes to the vid cards brought on by other crap, no reboots/crashes due to low power. And it looks kick ass.

Waiting until Jan. to buy a vid card, Direct X 10 capable cards should be out then with at least 2 bios revisions to fix problems.

 

Nice. I like the case, it looks great lit up.

 

I'll take a picture of it eventually, I stuck 2 cold cathodes in it and another 120mm LED clear fan on the side window. Lights the room up now

 

Nice case, I have something similar. ITs good if you dont want your computer to run too hot, but its a little loud.

 

Damn I'm jealous thats some computer you are building.

Buying 2 gigs of ram?

actually looking forward to graduating so I have money to buy stuff.

 

Sounds fun

It looks great, but...

I couldn't help but imagine something like this when I saw your title.

What's cheaper, building a new computer or buying a new one?

I'm guessing that if you don't make any mistakes then building one is cheaper, but you're bound to screw up somewhere right?

How long you been working on this?

 

That really depends on what you are going for. A high end game computer or just something to do work on. A server? What?

For high-end gamer computers, I would suggest building it yourself, you get experience building/putting together the computers. It also forces you to learn and study the differences in the graphics, Cpu, motherboard, and to a smaller extent the casing to make sure you are getting what you actually want. ( A Computer that runs very hot is not a happy computer.) Learn not to always rely on what computer companies tell you. Research a little. I myself, built my computer that I have now and it cost about 300 USD. If I went and bought one already made, it would have cost upwards of 500 USD. So instead I went and bought the pieces. Motherboard, cpu, and casing. Again depending on what you are going to use your computer for the casing is different. High game computer= needs fans/heatsinks (coolant maybe). Work computer at most 2-3(not including powersupply fans). One in back and maybe in front.


Summary: Game computer= build it yourself. Experience and cheaper in most cases. Work computer= buy it, unless you really want to build it your self, then all you need is harddrive, motherboard, decent cpu.

 

=\ Its getting hard to beat Dell pricing for basic "work" computers, excellent deals if you just need one for normal everyday usage.

Sounds like a nice system your putting together. What are you using for a card until the DX10 cards come out?

Imho unless your PC is ancient and too slow for everyday usage, you would be better off just buying everything at once, by the time the new vid cards are out you might be able to get a couple speed grades higher on the cpu for the same price.

 

Dell might have great prices but if you ever want to upgrade or overclock they are terrible.

Open up a dell one day it is scary what they do to it plus the motherboards are the cheapest things ever.

 

It's usually cheaper to build one, by a few hundred bucks, additionally, you get to pick what you want inside, which really isn't hard, just takes a small bit of research.

Buying mass produced computers usually gets you the bottom of the line, barely working parts. The motherboard I'm using until I'm finished was ripped out of a dell dimension 4600, it's not overclockable, it runs hot as shit (I bought temp sensors), no temperature sensors on the motherboard, no fan connectors, a buncha proprietary connectors for front panel audio/usb, and usually pretty often, gateway/dells won't have an AGP/PCI-E video card slot unless you pay extra for them. They tend to push the bullshit onboard video which is garbage to anyone not mentally vegatative.

Also just the compenents they use, I mean this is the first PC I'm building wholly from scratch so I'm not usually a part whore, but even the parts Dell uses, and Gateway is WAY worse, makes you look at them and wonder how the hell they got them working to start with.

I also love how Gateway will sell you a Pentium D system, 2 PCI-E cards in SLI, 2 hard drives in RAID, 2 optical drives, and a sound card and then they give you a 250 WATT power supply Z(190ish is enough for the vid cards alone if they get a good load on them) that chokes the system and lets it run maybe half of what it should.

http://www.journeysystems.com/power_supply_calculator_popup.php
The above link will tell you about how much you usein the neighborhood anyway, add another 150 watts to whatever it tells you to be rock stable on your power, it doesn't seem to take into account the draw of larger VGA cards that need a molex plugged into them, or SLI.

I'm using a AGP Geforce 6800 until the DX 10's get here, it's considered lower mid range now, but it can still play things like BF2142 with all settings on medium at 30 fps, or stuff like Half Life 2 @ 60fps with most stuff maxed out.

here's some updated pics.
Side window, there is nowhere to hide cables in thise case, when I do a full rebuild, I'm going to dremel out some cubby holes, and buy some extensions for my cables, and route them behind the motherboard mounting plate. I've added 2 12inch cold cathodes, and I had to get an ATX 24 pin adapter, that's the mass of cable you see sticking up at first, heh.


Front shot, Thermaltake 250watt supp. PSU for SLI cards, 2 120mm tricool speed selector intake fans intake, 16x Lightscribe DVD burner, and my shiny new fan controller, that I only bought b/c I wanted the 3 temperature probes it has in it, and.. it's shiny. werd.


Anf finally, you may of read my custom mousepad thread, here's a shot of it next to my g15 keyboard which kicks ass, you can't see it in the pic, but the keyboard is backlit with blue light as well.

 

*sighs dreamily* I really need to get a new computer.

 

got my memory a bit ago



Sticking it in my brother's PC for now it sits @ clocked at 4-4-4-8 @2.3v for when I'm gaming, 4-4-4-12 @2.1 for 24.7 use, both clocks set to 1150! (memory is designed for 2.2volts and 1000mhz )

 

Very very nice.

Do you currently have 2 cards in SLI or are you waiting for the midlevel DX10s to come out?

 

It looks like Las Vegas from the sky.

 

I'm using a 6800 atm, waiting on either the 8800 gts/x's to drop in price, or for the midlevels.

Rearranged the front of the case as well. DVD burner is in the lower most slot, supp. power supply is on the top, lcd fan controller/temp monitor moved inbetween the 2 120mm intakes.

 

*sighs* it still only runs windows and Linux

*prepares to be bashed for being a mac user*

 

Bought the proc. yesterday, then went and got a 7900 GS KO (that I shoudn't have, bought got castrated, heh but I wasn't about to put it all together and run it on a old ass MX 440 64mb PCI card)

Had alot of problems with the 680i as expected Raven, I'm Shadow007 over on the evga board, but here's a quote of my post.

 

http://s72.photobucket.com/albums/i177/tinowork/?action=view&current=IM001215.flv

Thats a video of my tracer Ram going off.

Quick inside shots now that it's put together.

it runs BF2142 @ a steady 80-90 FPS with 2xFSAA, and everything else maxed out.