After two years of nonstop working for less money every few months, and 2 months of unemployment, I've dragged myself out of a pit of depression and decided my tax refund was going to something to cheer the mood up. All we do it sit in front of the tv and relax, so this was the logical thing to snag.

Vizio M550NV



http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y245/Midknight00711/DSCN1722.jpg

The first time I'm using Netflix, I understand now what the big deal was with them, I enjoy it a lot. The rest of the internet apps other then Pandora need some improvement, they're lagging a bit in anything interesting. Integrated wifi is nice, but the web video app, the whole reason I got an internet enabled tv, is a clusterfuck of clips and an unorganized mess.

I got a full motion mount to put this thing on, and at 55"s and 70 something pounds, plus the added weight of the mounting hardware, lifting this up over my head to get it on the clamp was an absolute bitch to manuever it, there's nowhere good to really hold onto it. It's obscenely thin too, 2" at it's widest point . Managed to get rid of a ton of cables too, I went to HDMI for the xbox, and I did away with every sound cable I had and just ran HDMI into the TV, and optical audio from it to the surround sound.

Going to replace my center channel with a sound bar, and mount the Kinect sensor towards the middle sometime soon, and then my transition from living room to tech cave will begin!

 

Interesting, at first I thought it was a tower connected to the TV.

An internet TV sounds interesting I suppose, how much did it set you back?

Just a thought if you don't already have it setup-A cheap dual core box hooked up to network storage (or even just a local 1 TB/2 TB internal/external drive bay) would make that even sexier. constant access to 720p/1080p content is awesome.

 

It's normally in the $1800's, I got it for $1250. As for the streaming, I have had a vga+audio cable running under the house into the tv from my computer for more than 8 years now, lol. I was home theatering before folks even know what it was =) Something I forgot to mention about the tv. It's got a bluetooth remote with a slide out qwerty keyboard. Awesome, and it'd be perfect if the fucker was backlit.

 

Moar toys because I hate my new job, because tax money came, and because my motherfucking EVGA 8800 GTX blew up again. I was in love with EVGA because of the Step Up program, and at the time they were the only one doing lifetime warranties. Now I've finally learned that the lifetime doesnt mean crap if when you RMA a card they just sent you back some crap they think works, cause I'll be damned if they're testing any of the 4 GTX's they've sent me once my GTS broke. I'm getting under 10 hours of gaming, and in a few cases not even that, before they're dieing. EVGA tech help tells me, well, let's try another one, sometimes it takes a half dozen cards to get a good one.... Seriously.

So let's try another company.



Zotac also offers a lifetime warranty if registered right away, otherwise it's 3 years, and since the newer video cards don't have to cost 600$ to be worth a damn any more, I got this nice deal.

Nvidia GTX 560 Ti.

250$ with 20 instant rebate, a 30$ mail in rebate, and it comes with a free copy of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, a game I was going to buy like any day now anyway, so for me I can basically take off another 40$ off the price. 160 bucks for a DX11 card that'll beat up on my 8800 GTX, and is a solid upper-middle tier card. I paid close to 600$ for my 8800 GTS shortly after it came out, and it was the upper-middle tier card back in the day. Thank god you don't have to spend that much anymore to play the new games maxed out. I was going to get MSI's version with the bad ass dual fans and all the heatpipes, but the free AC:B won me over.

Also snagged this



Ultra x4 1050w modular power supply. I got a new PSU because EVGA claimed up and down my PSU was bad, and despite thinking my Cosair TX750 was fine, I humored them and snagged this. Then two more cards died on me, and they're still trying to blame a faulty old psu, lol.

 

I need suggestion for a good 2.1 speaker. My older speaker just crapped out on me...

 

Anything Logitech really. They even sell nice cheap Logitech speakers at Walmart.

 

Ew no. Logitech no. Get what ever 2.1 you can afford from an actually company who actually make speakers, not a PC peripheral maker.

 

Unless you're an audiophile like Murton, I'd say something like the Logitech x230 2.1 speakers (which I have and enjoy) are very good value and will probably meet all your needs.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0002SQ0A4/ref=mp_s_a_36?qid=1301302602&sr=1-36

$40, universally good reviews (Over 450 reviews on Amazon, still over 4 stars).

Mid: just think: by buying that stuff with your tax rebate, you're doing your bit to help stimulate the economy. Really, it was your moral duty to buy all that sweet hardware.

 

I've always used either Logitech or Altec Lansing speakers, and never had a problem with them sounding anything less then awesome =P Besides, he's going for 2.1 setup, so nearly anything cheap will work just fine.

Taure, I've got the 5.1 version that uses those exact speakers and subwoofer. Got it like 5+ years ago as a hand me down from a friend who'd had it for years. They kick ass.

 

If I go a for 5.1 set up, my family members and neighbours will kill me. My place just too damn small for such an awesome set up. And Murton, your recommendation?

Oh and update as well...

This setup is so much cleaner compared to my older one. Had a haul over for my casing and liquid cooling system. Older one was too messy to make any major change. So I chuck the entire casing out and brought in CoolerMaster HAF X. Made a lot of changes for my system.

Old Set up







And a new monitor! Samsung SyncMaster SA350 24" LED Monitor!

Now waiting for Intel new mobo release to reach SG before I change my mobo and processor. I'm aware of the Ivy Bridge release in the second quarter of the this year so I didn't change my processor and mobo. Still stuck with my old Intel Core i7 920 @2.67 and Gigabyte X58A-UP7.

 

5.1 rarely means more volume overall, just more speakers that people never place right.

Whats your budget?

 

Oh, around US$60.. Now hit me. I can go higher slightly!

 

God there is a lot of suck in that price range. Get whatever Altec Lansing 2.1 you can afford in that price range.

On the other hand, I would buy $60 headphones over a $60 2.1 speaker setup.

 

I don't mind going over 100.. Bonus just came in. Got a nice chunk of money..

 

Altec Lansing MX6021 stretch the budget to those or get a pair of Sennheiser headphones in the same budget area.

 

EVGA GTS 450

EVGA sent this to me to replace the 3 8800 GTX's that have been worth shit, that were sent as a RMA for my 8800 gts going bad. Going to stick this in the top slot of my 750i FTW and stress test the shit out of it, to see if the top slot was maybe killing my cards.

Got the 560 Ti I posted above in the bottom slot, barely a half inch from the bottom of the case, and that sumbitch idles at 32c with 40% fan speed! Seen it go as high as 65c, but I think the heat increase has to do with the fan in it being a shitty loud fucking thing, and only being allowed to go to 75%, it's bios restricted to not do 100% for some reason. I think it does pretty good considering I don't exactly feel it exhausting shit.

 

Update to the rig.

Core i7 980 Hex Core @ 3.33GHz stock, will try for a 4GHz OC on a H70 Water Cooler.
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 Rev 1.0
Corsair 24GB DDR3 1600MHz 9-9-9-24
2x PowerColour AMD ATI Radeon HD6870 1GB
Lian Li PC32 4U Rack Mount Case
G.Skill Falcon 128GB SSD
2x 1TB WD Caviar Black
ThermalTake ToughPower QFan 750w PSU

My RAM was on the way out so I bought some new RAM, upped it to 24GB, was reaching 80% memory usage every now and then and things started to chug. Decided to max it out.

At the same time I bought the i7 980, up from the i7 920 and added another 6870. Yeah, got carried away.

Also have the server running nicely.
AMD Quad Core, can't remember what it was, it was basically stupid low wattage and still a quad core, sounds good to me.
Gigabyte mATX mobo
Haupagge Dual Head Digital TV Card
Some fanless GPU HD5700 or something, low power usage and good for Blu-Ray decoding etc over the gutless onboard GPU.
2 port RAID card. Sunix I think.
4x 2TB WD Caviar Green. 2 in Raid 0, two normal, one dedicated to media, the other as a backup, the RAID 0 volume is dedicated to Pro Tools session storage.
1x 500GB WD Caviar Blue 2.5" System Drive
Blu-Ray Drive
Some Lian Li mATX Case that can hold up to 8 3.25" HDD's and two 5.25" devices and still remain a small footprint.
Thinking of upgrading it into a rack mount case.

So yeah, sexy beast workstation PC and nice silent, low power good storage server/HTPC.

 

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. How much did that all cost you?

 

Too much. But seeing as the alternative, a Mac Pro, which would do the same job but at 50% more cost I got off easy for a machine that can do what I need it to do. I.e. handle large Pro Tools sessions, game on two, maybe three 24" 1920x1080 screens and all the normal stuff one does.