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Wilier
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- #151
Im dissapointed that MSI dont do an AMD solution on that mega PC. 
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Jonty
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- #152
It is a shame, yes, however, there's an AMD solution based on the VIA KM400 chipset, and rumours of an nForce2 powered system, shipping around 4-6 weeks after. So all is not lostOriginally posted by Wilier
Im dissapointed that MSI dont do an AMD solution on that mega PC.
Kind Regards
X
Xavier
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- #153
S423 or S478 Williamette P4? Theres no way that the big bastid 423's will fit
intel dropped production of the chipset a few weeks ago, though there are squillions of chips still in the channel for boards.
Put it this way, 850e isn't going to reap any new motherboards so if you want to stick with the RAMBUS get yourself a P4T533-C from ASUS (top RAMBUS board on the market) and get a 533Mhz chip (using the 3x memory multiple).
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Jonty
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- #154
Hi guys
I really don't like plugging companies, since I always feel bad if something goes wrong with an order which was made only because of my recommendation But I felt you should know that MicroDirect are selling all their products at trade prices (i.e. without their usual mark-up) all weekend on all web orders. Now their website may not be amazing, and their delivery is still £8, however I've just saved somewhere in the region of £40-£50 on a system I'm building, and the prices I had before were the very cheapest I could find on the net.
These kind of deals work best when you're buying a lot of things, since the savings don't get outweighed by the delivery costs, but if you're in the market for some new kit, you could do worse than look here.
Kind Regards
I really don't like plugging companies, since I always feel bad if something goes wrong with an order which was made only because of my recommendation
But I felt you should know that MicroDirect are selling all their products at trade prices (i.e. without their usual mark-up) all weekend on all web orders. Now their website may not be amazing, and their delivery is still £8, however I've just saved somewhere in the region of £40-£50 on a system I'm building, and the prices I had before were the very cheapest I could find on the net.These kind of deals work best when you're buying a lot of things, since the savings don't get outweighed by the delivery costs, but if you're in the market for some new kit, you could do worse than look here.
Kind Regards
C
Clowneh!
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- #155
PIMP! ban jonty!
nice one tho
nice one tho
K
kameleon
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- #156
heh, microdirect is just round the corner from me
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.Cask
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- #157
Couldn't see any good deals on there at all really.
Trade prices smishes tbh.
Trade prices smishes tbh.
C
Clowneh!
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- #158
what are trade prices? where can i find them?
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Jonty
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- #159
Hi Clowneh!
Different companies have different ideas about what constitutes a trade price Essentially, a manufacturer will sell companies their products at £x per unit. Once the company receives the product, in order to make a profit, they have to increase the price to cover the cost of buying the product in the first place. Trade prices only have a slight markup, whereas the normal retail prices have a larger markup.
Trade prices are what it costs one company, in the trade, to buy the product from another company instead of the manufacturer. Say eBuyer can't get hold of a certain product, so they ask, say, OverclockersUK to supply them. eBuyer would be purchasing the products from OcUK at trade prices, which allow OcUK to make a small profit, but still allow eBuyer to increase the prices to the accepted retail level in order for them to make a profit too.
Did that make any sense?! hehe. Say you have a graphics card which the manufacturer sells for £100. A trade price may be £110, but to buy it on the street, you may pay £140. Deals like MicroDirect's weekend offer allow you to purchase at MicroDirect's trade prices even though you're not another company in their trade group. As .Cask says, you can question whether or not the deals are actually any good, but I can only speak from my experience, which in this case has been good.
Kind Regards
Different companies have different ideas about what constitutes a trade price
Essentially, a manufacturer will sell companies their products at £x per unit. Once the company receives the product, in order to make a profit, they have to increase the price to cover the cost of buying the product in the first place. Trade prices only have a slight markup, whereas the normal retail prices have a larger markup.Trade prices are what it costs one company, in the trade, to buy the product from another company instead of the manufacturer. Say eBuyer can't get hold of a certain product, so they ask, say, OverclockersUK to supply them. eBuyer would be purchasing the products from OcUK at trade prices, which allow OcUK to make a small profit, but still allow eBuyer to increase the prices to the accepted retail level in order for them to make a profit too.
Did that make any sense?! hehe. Say you have a graphics card which the manufacturer sells for £100. A trade price may be £110, but to buy it on the street, you may pay £140. Deals like MicroDirect's weekend offer allow you to purchase at MicroDirect's trade prices even though you're not another company in their trade group. As .Cask says, you can question whether or not the deals are actually any good, but I can only speak from my experience, which in this case has been good.
Kind Regards
S
smurkin
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- #160
small world...I work in the hospital across the road
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Embattle
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- #161
Time for another small update to the wonderful little box of tricks that is my Shuttle.
I decided that the time was right to get a new graphics card, this was prompted by the fact that my GF4 Ti4600 was over a year old now and that the price of a Radeon 9800 Pro was a tiny bit over 300 squid.
I plumped for the Gigabyte version because it was the cheapest, and to be honest most of the cards are a like bar the odd little difference in the games etc included in the package.
Nice little picture of what you're greeted to when you open the box.
As you can see this little box contains a lot of CDs and other items:
GV-R98P128D GFX Card
Users Manual
Driver CD
Power DVD XP CD
6 Games
S-Video & AV Output
DVI - D-Sub Converter
Power Lead
The card in the naked flesh, as you can see it has an impressive HSF on the GPU but no heatsinks located on the memory chips, this has lead many sites to comment that the memory has ocing limitations.
Here you can see my old GF4, almost completely blocking out the view into the innards of the shuttle system.
Just to give you an idea of big the Gigabyte Radeon 9800 Pro is compared to my old GF4. I was expecting the Radeon to be either the same size or slightly bigger but as you can see it is in fact smaller.
The final picture shows the Radeon located inside the shuttle case, again showing its smaller size compared to the GF4...this might aid a little bit in the cooling department.
You can see the power cable extender, provide in the package, go from the front corner, up and around the back towards the PSU.
You can naturally guess that the performance of this card is good, certainly a good improvement over the GF4 Ti4600. I'll most probably post some more info on its real life performance over the coming week once I get to stretch its legs a little.
I decided that the time was right to get a new graphics card, this was prompted by the fact that my GF4 Ti4600 was over a year old now and that the price of a Radeon 9800 Pro was a tiny bit over 300 squid.
I plumped for the Gigabyte version because it was the cheapest, and to be honest most of the cards are a like bar the odd little difference in the games etc included in the package.
Nice little picture of what you're greeted to when you open the box.
As you can see this little box contains a lot of CDs and other items:
GV-R98P128D GFX Card
Users Manual
Driver CD
Power DVD XP CD
6 Games
S-Video & AV Output
DVI - D-Sub Converter
Power Lead
The card in the naked flesh, as you can see it has an impressive HSF on the GPU but no heatsinks located on the memory chips, this has lead many sites to comment that the memory has ocing limitations.
Here you can see my old GF4, almost completely blocking out the view into the innards of the shuttle system.
Just to give you an idea of big the Gigabyte Radeon 9800 Pro is compared to my old GF4. I was expecting the Radeon to be either the same size or slightly bigger but as you can see it is in fact smaller.
The final picture shows the Radeon located inside the shuttle case, again showing its smaller size compared to the GF4...this might aid a little bit in the cooling department.
You can see the power cable extender, provide in the package, go from the front corner, up and around the back towards the PSU.
You can naturally guess that the performance of this card is good, certainly a good improvement over the GF4 Ti4600. I'll most probably post some more info on its real life performance over the coming week once I get to stretch its legs a little.
K
kameleon
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- #162
Originally posted by smurkin
small world...I work in the hospital across the road
Have you seen the case in ataltic pc's window then? with the fake fish tank on it?
C
.Cask
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- #163
Nice report Embattle. Has a really nice looking heat sink on that card. Give us yer benchmark results
Still think you're crazy buying 'top of the range' though. Much more cost effective to buy cards one or two notches down the ladder as you just know you're gonna be replacing it in a year or two.
But I spose when you're serving kippers for your only source of income you become kind of tight fisted with the wages
Still think you're crazy buying 'top of the range' though. Much more cost effective to buy cards one or two notches down the ladder as you just know you're gonna be replacing it in a year or two.
But I spose when you're serving kippers for your only source of income you become kind of tight fisted with the wages
Y
Yaka
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- #164
jamy setup embattle btw wot camera are you using?
btw wot camera are you using?
S
smurkin
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- #165
Originally posted by kameleon
oh yes indeedy...gives you something to look at when your in MDs often lengthy till queue....its quite cool...but Ive often thought (1) real fish plz and (2) plz can the fish tank be the reservoir for a water cooler
C
.Cask
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- #166
|=======================================|
|= = = = = = = = = YAKA TRANSLATOR --> v1.0 = = = = = =|
|=======================================|
>Input String:
>
--> jamy setup embattle btw wot camera are you using?
>
>Working... Please Wait.
>
>Translated Text:
>
--> Nice system Embattle. By the way, what camera are
--> you using old bean?
|===================END=================|
|= = = = = = = = = YAKA TRANSLATOR --> v1.0 = = = = = =|
|=======================================|
>Input String:
>
--> jamy setup embattle btw wot camera are you using?
>
>Working... Please Wait.
>
>Translated Text:
>
--> Nice system Embattle. By the way, what camera are
--> you using old bean?
|===================END=================|
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Jonty
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- #167
Glad it all went smoothly Emb. (Nice report, too )
Kind Regards
(Nice report, too )Kind Regards
E
Embattle
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- #168
Fuji Finepix 4900
E
Embattle
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- #169
Update #1:
Cooling might be an issue and you can combat this by turning up the fan speed in the shuttle BIOS, in the recent BIOS you can set it to a number of different levels.
I had purchased a slot cooler at an earlier date for something else, one like this:
I decided it might help in my shuttle case but there is a slight problem with using such a device, you can see in the picture below that the AGP slot is located on the outside edge:
The fan on the slot cooler sucks from the other direction, not only that but it is located behind the card. I managed to turn the slot cooler round so that it sucked from the right direction but it still sucks from behind the card.
The software side of things includes ATI Control Panels which can be accessed via the usual Display/Settings/Advanced method or by the little Tray App. These Control Panels are split in to 7 different sections including Displays, Color, OpenGL, Direct3D, Options, Overlay and SMARTGART which seems to include many more options than my old nVidia control panel allowed.
Cooling might be an issue and you can combat this by turning up the fan speed in the shuttle BIOS, in the recent BIOS you can set it to a number of different levels.
I had purchased a slot cooler at an earlier date for something else, one like this:
I decided it might help in my shuttle case but there is a slight problem with using such a device, you can see in the picture below that the AGP slot is located on the outside edge:
The fan on the slot cooler sucks from the other direction, not only that but it is located behind the card. I managed to turn the slot cooler round so that it sucked from the right direction but it still sucks from behind the card.
The software side of things includes ATI Control Panels which can be accessed via the usual Display/Settings/Advanced method or by the little Tray App. These Control Panels are split in to 7 different sections including Displays, Color, OpenGL, Direct3D, Options, Overlay and SMARTGART which seems to include many more options than my old nVidia control panel allowed.
J
Jonty
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- Thread starter
- #170
Are those thick, insulated wires a problem, Emb? I forget what they connect to, but on the Shuttle I've just built they seem to obstruct the AGP port quite significantly.
Just on some other Shuttle related news, it turns out Shuttle have an Athlon64 motherboard pretty much ready for their next generation of small form factor PCs. Now that could prove a very cool system indeed
Kind Regards
Just on some other Shuttle related news, it turns out Shuttle have an Athlon64 motherboard pretty much ready for their next generation of small form factor PCs. Now that could prove a very cool system indeed
Kind Regards
E
Embattle
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- #171
They connect the front ports and lights etc to the mobo. Look at the picture below:
I originally had a problem with cables getting in the way when I first got it but decided to cut the cable tie holding them together and then cable tied the three cables that run to the back of the mobo together again. This meant I could push the cable in front of the AGP down, thus getting it out of the way. It could of been better located but I guess that is the benefit of hindsight.
D
Deadmanwalking
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- #172
My insulted wires there arn't connected
No problems.. i dont thtink
No problems.. i dont thtink
J
Jonty
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- #173
Thanks guys
Just for reference, a couple of nice piccies courtesy of SFF Tech. This first piccie is one of the new 'Soldam' case designs . . .
The finish on these cases is akin to car paint on an aluminium shell, so it's extremely high quality (and rather classy). The drive bays and the front ports in this model are hidden under two 'stealth' flaps.
The second picture is the Athlon64-ready motherboard which Shuttle have developed . . .
Whether this is the final version is unknown, as, for instance, the AGP port is still on the left or the PCI slot (that said, I have a feeling this won't be changing any time soon).
Kind Regards
Just for reference, a couple of nice piccies courtesy of SFF Tech. This first piccie is one of the new 'Soldam' case designs . . .
The finish on these cases is akin to car paint on an aluminium shell, so it's extremely high quality (and rather classy
). The drive bays and the front ports in this model are hidden under two 'stealth' flaps.The second picture is the Athlon64-ready motherboard which Shuttle have developed . . .
Whether this is the final version is unknown, as, for instance, the AGP port is still on the left or the PCI slot (that said, I have a feeling this won't be changing any time soon).
Kind Regards
E
Embattle
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- Thread starter
- #174
Might be my next purchase.....although they better change that AGP port over
S
smurkin
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- #175
sb61g2
Ive been holding out on the shuttle purchase, waiting for sata (although I did buy one for work...turned some heads that did..everyone wants one)). Now the sb61g2 has sata RAID...which should do nicely...but the onboard graphics - Intel extrme graphics 2 w/256 bit 3d engine specs from here ? I'm not sure what thats all about...anyone ? is it pants ?
Ive been holding out on the shuttle purchase, waiting for sata (although I did buy one for work...turned some heads that did..everyone wants one)). Now the sb61g2 has sata RAID...which should do nicely...but the onboard graphics - Intel extrme graphics 2 w/256 bit 3d engine specs from here ? I'm not sure what thats all about...anyone ? is it pants ?
J
Jonty
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- #176
Hi smurkin
Although Intel's integrated graphics have come a long way, they're still not a patch on the integrated solutions nVidia (and now ATi) offer. That said, it really depends what you'll be doing with it. If it's predominantly 2D work, then the Intel solution will be fine. However, for 3D games, it simply doesn't have the raw power to keep up with other integrated solutions such as nVidia's GeForce4 MX, let alone the power to rival that of a dedicated graphics card. I can dig up some benchmarks if you'd like?
You may want to consider either ...
Although Intel's integrated graphics have come a long way, they're still not a patch on the integrated solutions nVidia (and now ATi) offer. That said, it really depends what you'll be doing with it. If it's predominantly 2D work, then the Intel solution will be fine. However, for 3D games, it simply doesn't have the raw power to keep up with other integrated solutions such as nVidia's GeForce4 MX, let alone the power to rival that of a dedicated graphics card. I can dig up some benchmarks if you'd like?
You may want to consider either ...
- Going with the (quite expensive) SB61G2 and sticking in a dedicated graphics card
- Going with the SN41G2 and buying an PCI card for your SATA/RAID needs
S
smurkin
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- #177
hmmm... additional problem...sn41g2...not enough drive bay space to make a RAID unless I rip out the CD ROM...
sb61g2...I assume there is space for 2xHDs... the crazy thing is sata cables would be ideal in nforce shuttles for making internal space...cant understand why they havent implemented sata yet :/
still these interesting little quirks keep this thread going
sb61g2...I assume there is space for 2xHDs... the crazy thing is sata cables would be ideal in nforce shuttles for making internal space...cant understand why they havent implemented sata yet :/
still these interesting little quirks keep this thread going
J
Jonty
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- #178
Hi smurkin
hehe, this thread has to reach 200 posts Having just spoken to Wilier, we seem to think you come perhaps use the internal 3.5" drivebay for one drive, and the external 3.5" drive for the other one (leaving the faceplate on). I'm assuming you wouldn't really need a floppy drive in such a system? (especially with the advent of USB 'pen' drives, recordable CD/DVDs etc).
Kind Regards
Jonty
P.S. Soltek do slightly larger small form factor systems, often with 2x 5.25" drive days. Perhaps this extra size also permits another internal 3.5" drive bay? I can check if you'd like?
hehe, this thread has to reach 200 posts
Having just spoken to Wilier, we seem to think you come perhaps use the internal 3.5" drivebay for one drive, and the external 3.5" drive for the other one (leaving the faceplate on). I'm assuming you wouldn't really need a floppy drive in such a system? (especially with the advent of USB 'pen' drives, recordable CD/DVDs etc).Kind Regards
Jonty
P.S. Soltek do slightly larger small form factor systems, often with 2x 5.25" drive days. Perhaps this extra size also permits another internal 3.5" drive bay? I can check if you'd like?
E
Embattle
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- Thread starter
- #179
I used dual drives in my Shuttle, it does require the removal of the floppy drive however.
S
smurkin
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- Thread starter
- #180
I had a butchers on Soltek....nice cases...mirror effects...but the mobos are looking a lil dated
intrigued about putting a HD in the floppy tho...might give that some thought
intrigued about putting a HD in the floppy tho...might give that some thought