April Computer Build Thread

[Trippy]

- The 9800GTX is impossibly huge.  I mourn the loss of 4 (four!) SATA ports, but feel they served a cause larger--and I mean that both literally and figuratively--than themselves.

You can get right angle SATA connectors that might fix that problem depending on where the board is overlapping.

[Logik]

- The 9800GTX is impossibly huge.  I mourn the loss of 4 (four!) SATA ports, but feel they served a cause larger--and I mean that both literally and figuratively--than themselves.

You can get right angle SATA connectors that might fix that problem depending on where the board is overlapping.

In fact, the board came with one.  Unfortunately, to get it in, I'd need to remove the graphics card...again.  I'm not sure that I'm ready to consider that solution.

[Logik]

Update: System built!  Pictures to follow!

Update: Pics!

During the day:




When the lights get low:

[Mrbloodworth]

Whats the big ass black thing in your case in the upper left of the image? Heat sink?

Looks sexey. I need to post screens of mine.

[Hoax]

Power Supply: Ok so I'll figure everything else out, then bug Trippy.  I hate PSU's so much..

MOBO: I don't like ASUS, I'm going to look at hardOCP and see what they are liking these days.  I'll scratch MSI and add Gigabyte to my list of brands to pay extra attention to.

RAM: I think I'm going to go with 4x1GB sticks, probably just add two more of the same I have now (Corsair XMS2, blahblah)

Sound: Schild, I'm not sure why you think a sound card is worth adding.  I still remember the bad old days when sound card drivers cause half the problems.  Fuck Creative Labs and nobody else seems to even bother manufacturing the damn things. 

Case: Schild, I love Zalman, I've been using their copper flowers for a couple of builds now, those cases that look like stereos are fucking awesome, but fitting the type of components I need to fit would be a bitch.  I'm not going to spend $600 on a fucking ultra silent case, that shit can blow me.  I will sleep through WW3, silence is not worth that kind of cash.

Optical drive: I know it sounds stupid but I'd still like to hear someone tell me they love their cd/dvd/cdr/w uuuuultra combo drive.  That it isn't a noisy piece of shit and it actually seems to work well and do its job fast and reliably.  I have had such bad luck.

[schild]

Because I have used two new motherboards in the last 6 months with that high-end sound shit and there were huge performance hits to using them.

[Hoax]

Because I have used two new motherboards in the last 6 months with that high-end sound shit and there were huge performance hits to using them.

As in the board wasn't good or your performance suffered when you were running the on-board sound?

[Engels]

Because I have used two new motherboards in the last 6 months with that high-end sound shit and there were huge performance hits to using them.

Bingo. Not to mention that these 'high-end sound' is not 'high-end' in the least. Putting in even a 5 year old soundblaster PCI card shows a huge improvement to the most untrained ear (my own).

[schild]

Because I have used two new motherboards in the last 6 months with that high-end sound shit and there were huge performance hits to using them.

As in the board wasn't good or your performance suffered when you were running the on-board sound?

The board was optical out, it was fune, the performance hit was damning though. Like utterly and completely terrible.

[Hoax]

Noted then.  Does anyone besides Creative make sound cards??  Or do I just use my old Audigy pos if I can find the fucking thing.

[Mortriden]

Whats the big ass black thing in your case in the upper left of the image? Heat sink?

Looks sexey. I need to post screens of mine.

That's the Tuniq Tower CPU Heatsink.  I have one in my system as well.  It's bloody monster, and like he mentioned earlier, a super pain in the ass to install.  You absolutely must mount that thing before you install the MOBO, and it's still a bitch.  The top edge's aren't too sharp, but the bottom fins, down where you hand is when your screwing it down, yeah, they are a bit sharp.  It fucking works great though.  Under load, my CPU is only roughly 15-20 degrees over ambient temp.  It proably weighs something like five pounds though.

[Logik]

Well, I got vista installed, and--I really should have expected the fail to start here--it's not seeing any wireless connections at all, despite the fact that I'm seeing about 5 on my macbook currently.  Looks like I'm off to try various and sundry arcane solutions, but if anyone has a fix that worked for them, I'm all ears.


Additional info: router is a Linksys WRT45G running in mixed mode with WPA Personal encryption.

[Engels]

Drivers installed correctly? Make sure that you're looking at the right wireless manager. Some brands take over control from Windows wireless and use their own gui, making it look like broken when you look only at the windows wireless gui.

[Logik]

Drivers installed correctly? Make sure that you're looking at the right wireless manager. Some brands take over control from Windows wireless and use their own gui, making it look like broken when you look only at the windows wireless gui.

o7

You're the man, sir!  Asus's Wifi-AP Solo was hijacking Vista's wireless control.  Problem solved!  Now to figure out why my USB78 header is such a failure...

[Sky]

Drivers installed correctly? Make sure that you're looking at the right wireless manager. Some brands take over control from Windows wireless and use their own gui, making it look like broken when you look only at the windows wireless gui.

I always forget this when setting up new configurations and many customizations I do count on having the windows rtlgina thingy. It's a real pain in the gina.

[Calantus]

It's not April anymore but I'm sure God will forgive me for posting this here. Basically I'm buying the below and want to run it by you guys first... what do you think?

VGA: 512M 8800GTS Asus
RAM: 2G Kit-800(2x1G) Kingston (x2)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
HDD: Seagate SATA 500 (x2)
MOBO: Asus P5N Deluxe
PSU: Antec Earth Watts 500W
CASE: Antec P182
Optical Drives: Samsung 20X DVD+-R (x2)
Monitor: 24" Samsung 245B DVI WS

Also I was really shocked how low cost decent computers are these days. I had actually put aside $5k for a new computer so finding out the prices was like a very big tax return in May.

[Trippy]

Is that the P5N-T Deluxe?

[Calantus]

Yes.

[Hoax]

Thats the cpu I'm going with, so good choice there imo.  What brought you to that PSU choice?  I've yet to delve into PSU's for my build so I'm curious what you looked at.  I prefer Corsair to anything else when it comes to RAM but I've heard nothing negative about Kingston.

My only complaint is a personal one.  Frankly I don't really like the P18X series of cases but I know I'm in the minority.  I think the plastic clip in shit is annoying and the case is huge but somehow feels very cramped.  I also had one ship where the drive bays were not fit properly and getting cd-rom drives in and out as fucking rediculously annoying, enough so that I broke a drive trying to remove it and generally got really pissed off with the case.  I got my dad's black P180+ or 180B or whatever to look good and be nice but my own gunbolt metal P180 is a fucking piece of shit, the sides are so difficult to get on and off, the aforementioned cdrom issues and I'm really just over the whole plastic clip in shit.  I miss the days when things were done with screws.

[Engels]

I have a P180b here, and I'm not sure what you mean by the plastic clip-in shit. Do you mean the sliders you screw onto the side of a cd/dvd drive to have it 'clip in' to the chassis? If so, mine have worked great. If you mean the slide-in top fan, that's not been an issue.

[Lt.Dan]

It's not April anymore but I'm sure God will forgive me for posting this here. Basically I'm buying the below and want to run it by you guys first... what do you think?

VGA: 512M 8800GTS Asus
RAM: 2G Kit-800(2x1G) Kingston (x2)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
HDD: Seagate SATA 500 (x2)
MOBO: Asus P5N Deluxe
PSU: Antec Earth Watts 500W
CASE: Antec P182
Optical Drives: Samsung 20X DVD+-R (x2)
Monitor: 24" Samsung 245B DVI WS

Also I was really shocked how low cost decent computers are these days. I had actually put aside $5k for a new computer so finding out the prices was like a very big tax return in May.

I think the 8800GTS in 512Mb format is an incremental improvement over the 8800GT - go with the 8800GT or go with the 640Mb version of the GTS.  4 months ago when I bought there were also 1Gb cards starting to come out.  No idea if they're any improvement though.

[Trippy]

I think the 8800GTS in 512Mb format is an incremental improvement over the 8800GT - go with the 8800GT or go with the 640Mb version of the GTS.  4 months ago when I bought there were also 1Gb cards starting to come out.  No idea if they're any improvement though.

You have it backwards. The 512 MB version has the new faster GPU (G92).

[Hoax]

I have a P180b here, and I'm not sure what you mean by the plastic clip-in shit. Do you mean the sliders you screw onto the side of a cd/dvd drive to have it 'clip in' to the chassis? If so, mine have worked great. If you mean the slide-in top fan, that's not been an issue.

The whole thing was just too much plastic for me, I hate the I/O drive bays, I dont really like the way the HD enclosure is setup and all the things that are supposed to make the cables be more clean were a pita.  Kids on my lawn kneejerk reaction or something.  But mostly I really really fucking hate those stupid plastic clips you screw onto the side of your I/O drives.  That shit has not worked well on one case, worked perfect one another and failed miserably on the most recent Antec I bought.  To the point where I was so pissed that I'll never buy their shit ever ever again. 

[Calantus]

Thats the cpu I'm going with, so good choice there imo.  What brought you to that PSU choice?  I've yet to delve into PSU's for my build so I'm curious what you looked at.  I prefer Corsair to anything else when it comes to RAM but I've heard nothing negative about Kingston.

My only complaint is a personal one.  Frankly I don't really like the P18X series of cases but I know I'm in the minority.  I think the plastic clip in shit is annoying and the case is huge but somehow feels very cramped.  I also had one ship where the drive bays were not fit properly and getting cd-rom drives in and out as fucking rediculously annoying, enough so that I broke a drive trying to remove it and generally got really pissed off with the case.  I got my dad's black P180+ or 180B or whatever to look good and be nice but my own gunbolt metal P180 is a fucking piece of shit, the sides are so difficult to get on and off, the aforementioned cdrom issues and I'm really just over the whole plastic clip in shit.  I miss the days when things were done with screws.

The PSU and most of the choices really were me picking a brand I knew was solid from past experience or a friend's past experiences and then using google-fu to make sure they were still solid. Hence all the Samsung, Asus, and Antec. One of my friends has a p180 case and loves it (though it was a PITA to put together he says), plus it's pretty quiet. Good point on the RAM, I remember (maybe, been a while) Corsair being very good and very expensive but it looks like price wars have brought it down to reasonable prices now. I think I'll go with that over the Kingston. I'm also umming and arring over the HDDs because I've heard that the Western Digital drives are quieter, anyone know anything about that?

[Trippy]

The Green Power WD drives are the quietest standard desktop hard drives currently (ignore notebook drives, etc.). The non-GP WD drives may be quieter than the Seagate but it depends on which model you are thinking about.

[Logik]

Honestly, hemming and hawing over the noise of a hard drive is a bit much.  Never, with any of the different brands I've owned (Seagate, WD, and now Samsung), has the sound level of the drive been an issue.  If a quiet PC is your main concern, you should really be looking at CPU cooler first, graphics card second (unless things have remarkably changed), case third, and power supply fourth (if at all).

Speaking on the components I own: the Tuniq tower is all but inaudible when I turn the rheostat all the way down; as a bonus, at that speed it still provides adequate cooling.  The case I've got is definitely slightly louder than my old Antec 1080B--which was likely about as loud at the P182 you're looking at--but has the additional bonus of 5 120mm fans.  Nevertheless, the P182 appeared pretty solid, though I would've been more tempted had it been bigger.

Finally, why the mobo choice?  I didn't exhaustively research nVidia's chipsets, but I was under the impression that they were of dubious quality before the advent of 790i--which is still prohibitively priced.

[Engels]

Honestly, hemming and hawing over the noise of a hard drive is a bit much.  Never, with any of the different brands I've owned (Seagate, WD, and now Samsung), has the sound level of the drive been an issue. 

Not been my experience. Although most drives have modest noise, there are some out there that make some serious crunching noises. Currently, with stock cpu fan and stock CPU cooler, the loudest thing in my case are my drives when active.

If you've never had a hard drive that was louder than any one of your fans, you've simply been lucky.

[Lantyssa]

I've never had drive noise problems like that.

[Engels]

Well, 'problem' is a relative term. Sure, my drives make some noise, since I have 4 in Raid 5, which means that anytime something is read or written, all 4 go at it. Its not an invasive, problematic noise at all, but there are those out there that want a super silent machine that lets you completely ignore that you even have a computer under the desk

Case type, more than anything, can affect this. If you have a P180 that essentially encloses your drives in a sound vault of rolled steel, then you're probably not going to hear a thing. On the other hand, if you have a burshed aluminum light weight case like I do at home (Antec Lanboy), you sacrifice sound insulation for case weight.

[Calantus]

I sleep 4 feet from my computer and would like to leave it on overnight to download things because Australian internet is slow as shit, so my noise concern is a little more important than it not drowning out the game I'm playing. Harddrives can get very loud in the stillness of night when everyone is asleep, or trying to be.

[Mrbloodworth]

just in case anyone cared, the Hanns-g monitor i got, Really good picture, no dead pixels ETC..i recommend.

[schild]

just in case anyone cared, the Hanns-g monitor i got, Really good picture, no dead pixels ETC..i recommend.

Did you get the 28"?

[Lantyssa]

I built my machine Thursday evening and spent most of yesterday tweaking as I was having various issues at first.  Things seem to be running well now, but I'll need a few more days to know for sure.  The build I ended up with:

• ABIT IP35 Pro LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Yorkfield 2.5GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor
• ECS N8800GT-512MX+ GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
• COOLER MASTER Mystique RC-632S-KKN1-GP Black Aluminum/ SECC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
• COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power RP-600-PCAR 600W ATX
• Kingston HyperX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit
• Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache
• XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler

I got the Zalman HD coolers, unfortunately they weren't compatable with the case.  I'll need a plate or mounting bracket to fit them into the 5.25" bays because of their design.  A DVD drive and my old 160 Gb drive are the only old components.

The board needed a BIOS update to properly read the CPU temperature.  I thought I had messed up the heat sink installation so redid it a few times.  In some ways it's good as the final install gives the best airflow through the case.  Installing the tower cooler on this board is a bitch though.  Getting it out is worse.  Doing it three times sucked.  Oh, I hate the new CPU fan-clip system.

The cooler rocks though.  With a little burn-in time, my system now idles at 75 degrees, and hasn't broken 90 under moderate load.  Maxxed out CoX isn't exactly a huge stressor, however it's still far better performance than my old rig.  Everything was as smooth as glass.  No hiccups.  The Black Market loaded instantly.  Particles flying everywhere without any video lag.  Conan will be my real test.

Did I mention the cooler tower is a pain in the ass?  Either you install the sink while the fan is off and have to mess with slotting the fan while the sink is touching the processor (and likely to pop those stupid clips), or you have to contort your thumbs in wierd angles if you have the fan on when you install.  I have long, thin fingers and it was difficult.  But icy cold.

The power supply is the only real noise-maker.  Fry's price selection of 550/600 W supplies was limited.  It's not as bad as the New Egg reviews make out, but a super-quiet supply would make this system barely noticable.

My only question: How important is it to get a power supply with an 8-pin instead of 4-pin CPU power lead?  With the Q9300 using a lot less power than the previous generation of chips and the fact that it can be done like this I'm guessing I'm okay.  I'm just thinking about the long term.  Then I could get a quiet power supply and use the old one as a backup.

[Engels]

I can't answer your question about 8 pin vs 4 pin. I presume you're refering to the 4 pin socket on most motherboards. I didn't know they had 8 pin ones. Is that for dual socket motherboards?

Grats on the new build, it looks very very sweet.

[Miasma]

The thought of a woman building her own computer makes my nerd heart tingle.  Why are all the good ones gay?