Gaming Rig Ideas

[Furr]

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound for CPU and Chipset Coolers - 3.5 gram £4.30 £4.95
Antec P182 Advanced PERFORMANCE ONE SERIES Super Midi Tower Case, Gun Metal Black (no PSU) £102.55 £117.93
1TB Western Digital WD10EACS Caviar Green GP, SATA 3Gb/s, 16MB Cache, 8.9 ms, 5400 ~ 7200 rpm, NCQ £71.89 £82.67
Razer Lachesis Banshee v2 Blue 3G Laser Mouse, 4000dpi, USB 1/2.0, 7 Buttons, Blue £38.90 £44.74
Logitech G15 New Rev.2 Gaming Keyboard, USB, Wired, Silver/Black, GamePanel LCD, Illuminated £46.89 £53.92
Logitech G51 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System 155w RMS £88.99 £102.34
300 GB Western Digital WD3000HLFS VelociRaptor, SATA 3Gb/s, 10,000 rpm, 16MB Cache, 4.2 ms, NCQ £176.00 £202.40
24" Samsung SM2433BW Black Widescreen LCD, 1920x1200, 1000:1, 300 cd/m², 5 ms, VESA £175.98 £202.38
Intel i7 920, Socket 1366 (B), Nehalem, 2.66GHz, Cache 8MB, OEM £197.17 £226.75
6GB (3x2GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3, PC3-12800 (1600MHz), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24 £83.12 £95.59
Asus P6T, Intel X58, S1366, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), Triple DDR3 2000(OC), SATA 3Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATX £169.17 £194.55

Net Total £1,154.96

Carriage £22.62

VAT £176.64

Total
£1,354.22


From Scan


Bits salvaged from current PC are,

Sapphire ATI 4850 GPU for future upgrade, maybe wait for the 4890x2 or something
Create X-FI Xtreme Gamer Sound Card, works fine.
Antec 650W Modular PSU, should be enough.


Any ideas, criticisms, The price for this is from scan, the final build would be ordered from all over the shop

 

[TdC]

hmm for that price would it be wise to ditch the Velociraptor and get an SSD?

 

[Furr]

All the info I can find shows the Velociraptor outperforms SSD, it will mainly be purefly for Windows and maybe games while less intensive programs, storage etc will utilise the other hard drive.

I'm also wondering about cooling, this system will no doubt be putting out a lot of heat, wondering if its worth looking at water cooling? Although I have to admit water + computer bits scare me

 

[Lethul]

Hmm, i don't think Velociraptor outperforms intels SSDs ?

 

[Yaka]

the p182 should drop in price some what in the next few weeks as the p183 is being released. the main diff is that the new version can hold antecs pointless new style psu

 

[Furr]

Ah k, will look into the Hard drive, on the case that should be ideal as I'm intending to get this at the end of May.

 

[Lethul]

And don't bother with water, air is enough to cool computers unless you are into extreme overclocking. And by extreme i mean extremeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Air can handle even heavy overclocking today with the good coolers that are out there.

 

[Yaka]

aye my 920 is oced not tho heavily on standard intel cooler. tho many suggest the thermaltake all copper on or noctua ones for ocing on air

 

[Lethul]

aye my 920 is oced not tho heavily on standard intel cooler. tho many suggest the thermaltake all copper on or noctua ones for ocing on air

Thermalright Ultra Extreme is the best for heavy OCing. If you want great cooling at lower airflow Thermalright HR-01+ is the best. If they are the best performance/£ i doubht tho. But if you want great cooling those are the 2 best coolers. So if you want to have high OC (high RPM fan) TRUE is best. If you want good cooling at low airflow (500-1000rpm fans) HR-01+ is your best bet. But truthfully the difference between TRUE and the close competitors (like the noctua) are usually only 1 degree or something along those lines

 

[chipper]

Iiyama 24" Monitor ProLite E2407HDS Wide 2ms10000:1 DCR 1x VGA 1x HDMI 1X DVI ( Full HD ) Integrated Speakers Black (3 years on-site Warranty)- microdirect.co.uk


this is the monitor im considering getting, well i am getting. ive not read a bad review about it and 24" for that price is bleedin nice and nice stats on it too great contrast ratio and fantastic response time think this is as good as it gets for this price.

 

[confused]

SSD random access time is much much faster, its the sustained transfer rates that ssds get beaten by the velocoraptor...

 

[Kryten]

SSD random access time is much much faster, its the sustained transfer rates that ssds get beaten by the velocoraptor...

Exactly. For this reason they are great as OS drives. If you can afford big ones, it works out well having your OS and your favoured big games/applications on the SSD with plenty-o-storage available on traditional drives, for all your legally acquired music and arty real-life picture/video collections

 

[Furr]

My New Rig!


1 22" Dell 2209WA, Black High Quality E-IPS Gaming Screen, Widescreen, 6ms, DVI/VGA, 1680x1050, 1000:1 £187.87 £216.05
1 2GB XFX HD 4870 X2, PCI-E 2.0, 3600MHz GDDR5, GPU 750MHz, 1600 Cores, CrossFire, 2x DL DVI-I/ HDTV £209.48 £240.90
1 Akasa 8 Pin (F) to 8 Pin (2x4 Pin) (M) Extension cable (30cm) (End to End) AK-CB8-8-EXT £2.99 £3.44
1 1000W Corsair HX Series PSU ATX, EPS12V, PS/2, Modular Power Supply, UK Version, 5 Year Warranty £164.97 £189.72
1 1TB (1000 GB) Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache £65.64 £75.49
1 Akasa 3.5" AK-ICR-01EB Black Internal Multi Memory Card reader, USB 2.0 Port (SDHC Compatible) £7.59 £8.73
1 LG GGC-H20L Lightscribe SATA 16xDVD±R +RWx8/-RW x6 Also READS - Blu-Ray & HD Disc's black - Retail £68.19 £78.42
1 120mm Revoltec RL049 Smoke Grey 4x White LED Sleeve bearing, 49.21 cfm, 1200rpm, 22.5dB(A) £5.95 £6.84
1 Logitech G15 New Rev.2 Gaming Keyboard, USB, Wired, Silver/Black, GamePanel LCD, Illuminated £54.95 £63.19
1 Logitech G9 Laser Gaming Mouse, 3200dpi, USB2, 5 Buttons, Black, Retail £36.75 £42.26
1 Xigmatek PTI-G3801 Silicon-base thermal grease - High thermal conductivity > 3.8 W/m-K £2.20 £2.53
1 Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 Exclusive Dual Fan CPU Cooler, LGA1366 only £47.98 £55.18
1 Scythe KAMA-BAY Black System Cooler 120mm Fan for 5.25" System Cooling £13.49 £15.51
1 80GB Intel, SSD, X25-M, MLC-Flash, 2.5", 1 x SATA 3Gb/s, Read 250MB/s, Write 70MB/s £238.98 £274.83
1 Coolermaster RC-1100 V2 Cosmos S (Sport) Black Full Tower Case w/o PSU - NEW In Stock £132.89 £152.82
1 Asus P6T Deluxe V2, Intel X58, SLi/Xfire, Sok 1366, PCI-E 2.0, DDR3 1066/1333/1600(OC), SATAII, ATX £183.17 £210.65
1 6GB (3x2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR3, PC3-12800 (1600), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 8, DHX, EPP £106.12 £122.04
1 Intel Core i7 920, D0 (SLBEJ), S1366 (B), Nehalem, 2.66GHz, 8MB Cache, 20x Multiplier, 130W, Retail £187.17 £215.25

Print this page
Sub Total £1,716.38
Carriage £22.74
VAT £260.87
Total £1,999.99

 

[dysfunction]

Looks awesome!
Where did you buy that lot from?

 

[Furr]

Got it from Scan, Ebuyer is was quite a bit more expensive all together and CCL didn't have all the things I wanted which would have split the order and bumped up delivery cost.

My Budget was £2k, so came in at £1999.99 which was quite nifty! Decided on the 920 rather than the others which appear to be ridiculously expensive and with this kit the 920 should easily overclockable.

I was thinking of water cooling at first, but that was an extra £300 for all the various bits and bobs. I might undertake a water cooling switch-over in the future though.
Intel SSD for OS and Apps as it seems like that is the best thing to do these days. Ordered about 11am, and it's already been dispatched for tomorrow delivery!

 

[MYstIC G]

If you've got £50 to spend on a mouse, you should be paying to fly us all to that NL thing they're trying to organise

PS: Build photos plox!

 

[Furr]

Build photos will come soon! Still setting up the system, Spent hours yesterday being terrorised by it not posting with 3x sticks of ram but would with 2x... After much googling turns out the P6T delux is very sensitive to how tight it is screwed into the case as well as how tight the CPU brackets are done, If a bit too tight then it seems the board is slightly warped causing a connection on the board that feeds the A1/2 slots to stop working and the board stops working... very random and hugely annoying... but other than that a top board.

SSD... well worth it! Vista boots in no time! Slight problem at the moment in that the master boot record appears to be doing funny things, I think it is on the wrong drive This means that if I set the SSD as the primary boot device then windows won't boot saying no boot device is found, so have had to set the normal HD as the boot device which it loads and then loads the SSD.. random... Will look into it later.

The dell monitor is very good! makes me wonder how I didn't go blind with the other ones. Have over clocked it so the CPU is at about 3.5Ghz. Needs to stress test which I'll do tonight.

Still a lot of things to test. But so far so good! Still need to tidy up some of the cabling, the case it much large then I expected, if it fell over it could quite easily squish a small dog.

So downloading Crysis demo and various other benchmark tools and will post those as well!

 

[Embattle]

I've the same motherboard as well but before that I had a Gigabyte one which suffered the same issue as you, that was until it failed totally and I got it replaced with the Asus P6T deluxe.

I personally would of picked a OCZ Vertex over the Intel X25. I doubt it would of plonked the MBR on the wrong drive unless you did something strange during install, also if you enable AHCI after installing Vista check Error message when you start a Windows Vista-based computer after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive: "STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE" for fix although don't think that is your problem.

I got my 920 to 3.6ghz without much effort at all and if i played around I reckon I could sqeeze 4Ghz out of it on air without many problems.

I found it a bugger to get the accessories for my RC1100 case until I found Cooler Master Parts Shop which isn't exactly cheap when you add in deliverybut least they had them such as the bottom case fan bracket.

 

[Furr]

Some images of the build

 

[nath]

That last picture gives me a major nerdgasm.

 

[Overdriven]

What's the 5.1 system you've got? (Assuming it's 5.1) Nice build, gifv

 

[Kryten]

Looking good, but you need to activate your cable tidyness OCD and get that Cosmo looking spotless

 

[Furr]

Going to reseat the Heat Sink + fan today, as I don't think the thermal grease was applied too well by me. Had to order in some Isopropyl alcohol as apparently most places can't stock it now without special storage arrangements. Something to do with health & safety legislation...

The speakers are old Creative Inspire 5.1s , work well enough apart from the subwoofer builds up static and thus a buzz which is fix by giving it a whack. Will take it apart at some point to sort that out.

Got the CPU OCed to 3.78Ghz at the moment, only problem now is heat on load and an idle temp of 38-40 C

 

[nath]

Jeez kryt that's a little harsh, I thought his cables looked very nice and tidy. Hate to think what you'd make of the state of my machine .

 

[Furr]

I hate cables.... most annoying things ever....

Well my computer is moaning about the heat, doesn't help that my computer sits is in the annex which is an area of the house that's a bit of a heat trap, going to get 2x more fans for the case anyway + remove the side panel and mod it with a perspex panel, but since the ambient temp is hot in here I might as well just get an air con unit. Would be nice to have anyway since it gets so hot and I work in this room.

A warning on the Cosmos S case... it comes with a side fan, 200mm x 30mm. It's a little too deep for the case and because it sits over the heat sink it bangs up right against it. Some people can't get their cases closed, I just about can... another reason for the mod. Will replace the airflow provided by the lage fan with an additional intake on the front.

Erm what elseeeeee, got the system up to 3.8Ghz (at night) and was stable, don't dare have it at that speed during the day. X.M.P is a waste of time, and I'm still in love with having my OS on the SSD.

Vista is still as gay as ever.

//Edit
Also buying an aircon unit is cheaper than fitting the system with a water cooling solution!

 

[Ch3tan]

Got to ask, with the speed of the system anyway, what is the point of oc'ing it? Surely better to run it at atock speeds, and it run cooler.

 

[Embattle]

Yeah I had to take off the side panel case fan due to cooler height, as stated earlier on I go the fan bracket that gives me the ability to add another fan on the bottom.

 

[Kryten]

And what the hell are you using vista for?

 

[Furr]

I did download Win 7, but the whole have to wipe and reinstall it next year thing blew, I "might" still install it... but meh.

 

[Overdriven]

Talking about W7.. My uni is offering W7 Ultimate RC -_- That's tempting