My new build

Richard Dower

Gigabyte GA-8KNXP revision 2.1 FH BIOS.
Intel Pentium 4 Northwood 3.2Ghz 800MHz FSB
Corsair 1GB PC3200LLPT @ 2-3-2-5 DDR400
Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM 4.5ms, x2 - RAID 0 Array 128k stripe
PNY FX5700 Ultra 128MB DDR2 475/906MHz
AOpen H700a full size tower, supports seven 80mm fans
Plextor PX-712A 12x DVD+R
Plextor PX116A 16x DVD-ROM
Digital Doc 5+ controlling eight 80mm Vantec Stealth fans.
Thermalright SP-94
Panasonic PanoFlo 92mm
Arctic Silver 5
Sony 3.5" floppy drive
Zyxel 630-11 USB modem
Microsoft Wireless Desktop Elite
Creative I-Trigue L3450 speakers
Creative Audigy 2 ZS
Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2070SB, 2004 build.
Coolermaster rounded floppy and IDE cables
Antec TruePower 550W PSU - all power cables have been sleeved/heatshrinked by a company in the US, cost $150 + €40 to ship my PSU to them. I sleeved every other wire in my case myself using Vantec cable sleeving kits.
Microcool Northpole Northbridge cooler
HP monitor cooler
Windows XP Professional - SP2 RC2 slipstreamed.

Right now i have this rig overclocked to 3.36GHz @ 210FSB, DDR420, PAT enabled.
So whatcha think?....and it only cost me a few hundread quid, as i did trades with people for most of the parts, all brand new and retail also.

Don't ask what we traded.

CyberGhost

nice rig!

although I'd go for different speakers

Klipsch Promedia 2.1
Altec Lansing MX5021
Cambridge Soundworks 250D

CyberGhost

can you please explain:

Antec TruePower 550W PSU - all power cables have been sleeved/heatshrinked by a company in the US, cost $150 + €40 to ship my PSU to them. I sleeved every other wire in my case myself using Vantec cable sleeving kits.

heatshrinked what is that? can you please post a link?

PAT enabled

what's that?

jesus_thats_gre

Why are you getting two 74 Gig Raptors and a 3.2 GHz with a FX5700?

Col_Loki

Yea that would be the main thing that stands out. Top rig, nice parts.

Mabye hes not a gamer or is waiting for an X800 / 6800 or something?

unklerosco

Heatshrink is like a tube u place over the wire, u then heat it up with a hairdryer/heatgun and it shrinks. Gives u a nice neat finish...

I take it the $150 + €40 is a mistype... It aint that hard to do and u most likely could have got it done here cheaper...

CyberGhost

Originally posted by unklerosco
Heatshrink is like a tube u place over the wire, u then heat it up with a hairdryer/heatgun and it shrinks. Gives u a nice neat finish...

I take it the $150 + €40 is a mistype... It aint that hard to do and u most likely could have got it done here cheaper...

Thanks unklerosco!

Richard Dower

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
Why are you getting two 74 Gig Raptors and a 3.2 GHz with a FX5700?

I got everything, it's built...the FX5700 Ultra is something to tide me over until i get a Nvidia 6800 Ultra Extreme Edition, prices are sky high and and stocks are very low, everytime Newegg stocks them they sell out.

I'll wait a few weeks and pick the best model on the market.

Richard Dower

Originally posted by CyberGhost
can you please explain:



heatshrinked what is that? can you please post a link?



what's that?

http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/frozencpu/psu-79.html

That's what they charge, and the prices are correct. It costs $99 for the modifiction + the shipping costs back to Ireland are some $35-40. And it cost €40 to mail it to the US.

I tried to sleeve the power supply, it's impossible even with the molex removing and other tools for sale at Frozencpu.com, they don't work properly. You'll remove some connectors and not others.

You end up damaging all the pins and it's not worth it, it's very time consuming also. And please feel free to point me to somewhere in Ireland who will professionally sleeve and heatshrink all the cables of your power supply?

It's expensive both worth it and it looks the bomb!

Richard Dower

Performance Acceleration Technology, it's apart of the Intel 875P chipset.

Creamy Goodness

why don't you sleeve the psu yourself

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/cable_sleeving.html

it's cost roughly 10 euros for the sleeving,

and add £99 for the PSU here

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Antec_103.html

when it arrives sit down in front of the telly and be prepared to sit for about 2-3 hours to sleeve the PSU.

neokenzo

I have those speakers and I must say they are great. Really clear crisp sound. Would highly recommend them

Richard Dower

Read my post, it's impossible to do it. I used three Vantec cable sleeving kits and tried to do it. You can't remove the SATA power connectors, you would have to cut them off. You end up damaging pings which means they won't snap into your motherboard correctly.

And i got the Antec 550W PSU from Overclockers. 2-3 hours?...lol, it requires ALOT more time then this. See the video review at 3dgameman.com, 6-10 hours.

Thats being conservative IMO, i sleeved all the cables myself to my fans and any other wires in the case such as the case wires that connect to the motherboard, pc speaker etc.

Looks great inside the case now and no crappy wires to be seen.
And i am not finished, as soon as 1066Mhz FSB comes out i'll upgrade and get DDR2 800 and PCI Express, maybe then Creative will have a PCI Express version of their soundcards and optical SATA drives will be freely available + SATA II with ATAPI support and all the rest.

Interesting times to be a PC builder.

unklerosco

"Interesting times to be a PC builder"

Interesting times to have cash to spare u mean can I have some!!!!

Any pics of the setup, mainly the inside... Never thought about the SATA power connectors. I spend allot of time wiring the inside of my pc... Tis bleedin hard, watercoolin only makes it harder.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/attachment.php?s=&postid=1746161

CyberGhost

Thanks for info Richard!

Richard Dower

Sadly i don't have a digital camera, i might get one of the webcams/camera combo jobs so i can take snaps. Anyone recomend something?

You can buy SATA optical drives right now, such as the Plextor PX-712SA...but Newegg don't stock them so i bought the ATAPI version, besides i read that there is problems with SATA optical and going into standy...it won't resume.

Besides that, SATA optical offers no performance increase and are bridged running at UDMA33, but it's still sweet and has certain bragging rights.

MSI have a very nice CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive coming out, Tomshardware have a nice review of it.

Cable sleeving - how to:

http://guides.pimprig.com/modding/psu_sleeving_-_jonny_english_style.php

duridian

Originally posted by unklerosco
Interesting times to have cash to spare u mean can I have some!!!!

Too flipping right! Money doesn't go far on pc parts. I have spent about €1250-€1300 so far on bits for my new system and here's all I've got so far:

Black CM Wavemaster case
Antec Truepower 550W PSU
2 x WD 74GB Raptors
Black floppy
Black Sony CRX320E 16/52/32/52 DVD/CDRW combo
MSI Geforce FX5900 128MB flashed & running Ultra Bios
Vantec Stealth 80MM fan (replaced ports on top of case with fan)
2 x SATA cables
Round floppy cable and round IDE cable(for optical drives)

Not a whole lot for the bucks is it?

Here's what I eventually plan to add in approximately the order that I plan to add them:

Asus P4C800-E deluxe mobo
Pentium 4c either 3.2 or 3.4
Arctic Silver 5
Thermalright SP94 with YS Tech FD9325 92MM fan
2 GB DDR400
CM Aerogate 2 fan controller
Microsoft Optical Wireless Desktop
Creative Modem Blaster 56k USB modem
Creative Audigy 2 ZS
Belkin NW-001-BE external USB 4 port hub
Undecided on speakers
Undecided on DVDRW but am gonna wait till 16x dual layer is the norm before investing, the combi drive will do until then.
Undecided on monitor, would like a black 17' TFT though.
Plan to eventually add a pair of Hitachi 7K series hds as storage drives also.
Might change the vga card, not a priority for now tho'

Naturally this will be drawn out over the forthcoming months according as I have dosh to spend on it.

I'd welcome opinions on the Aerogate 2 fan controller, as I'd really like to get one of these but am a bit worried that its control knob protrudes too far for the door of the Wavemaster to close. Can anybody confirm if it is suitable for use in this case?

BloodBath

Man that's a lot of money down the drain and you intend on sticking with a 5900.

For starters do you need 2gb's RAM? Get 1gb of high performance RAM. I'd recomend the Abit Ic7 max-3 over the Asus pvc800-e deluxe. It's a better board.

Also why get an Audigy 2 zs? Will you really use 7.1 sound? The LS is less than half the price and has all the features of the zs except it supports 5.1

Don't get a 3.4. Why pay nearly as much for the last 200mhz as you did for the first 3.2ghz?

Any intentions of overclocking?


With the money you save there you could get a 6800 ultra or a x800xt.


BloodBath

duridian

Dunno man, I've heard the Max3 is supposed to be a far more quirky board and the OTES fans fail a lot. I know someone who has both and he pointed out the Asus as by far the better board.
The cpu will hopefully be supplied by a friend in the biz who can obtain one that was given out as a sample so I'll take whichever he can get me. Might o/c it a bit, will see how it goes.
For the amount of gaming I do the 5900 will do grand for now, I emphasise for now, who knows what Santa might bring.
Might reassess, nothing absolutely set in stone yet and remember I don't plan on setting this all up immediately (wish I had that sorta money) even after my next few bits are obtained I won't still likely have a fully usable system to switch over to, you know. The system I'm currently using will still be my main workhorse for a while yet spesh seen as there's near 2 years of stuff on it.

CombatCow

Tbh Rich i found the psu sleeving easy if you have the right tools.I was testing different ways of doing it using spiral wrap and cable ties aswell...the small bit of test sleeving i did took about 10-15 mins and looks quite good i think..i could get it better if i spent longer at it tho..i got a uv green psu power connector set aswell which looks propper bo'

CombatCow

BloodBath

Ah nice one. You can't beat the old engineering samples.

If it's definately and engineering sample your getting then get faster than pc3200. That way you can lower the multiplyer and raise the fsb so your cpu is running near stock but your fsb and ram speeds are a lot higher.

I have an engineering sample and my ram is running at 514mhz and my systems fsb is 1028. Higer fsb in in intel systems = big performance gains.

Well from all reviews i've seen and from owning the board I can say it's a great board but if your not doing much overclocking it doesn't make much of a difference.


BloodBath

unklerosco

ATT: Combat Cow

Where'd u get the UV spiral wrap???

In Rich's favour heatshrink looks a hell of allot better than the spiral wrap but then again its harder, more expensive n takes allot of time. I'm a spiral wrap man myself but m lookn for some uv stuff..

BloodBath

Jes computer have blue uv spiral wrap.

I'm sure I saw it there recently.


BloodBath

unklerosco

Too much hassle for somfin so small, was hopin to get some over here...

CombatCow

Yer i know,i like the sleeving better aswell,the small bit i did was just on a test psu to see how hard it was,i have to buy a new psu and im gonna use the sleeving on all of it.I got the sleeving and psu connector set from. www.fleetwoodcomputers.co.uk


CombatCow

kevpatts

Why do all you people still insist on buying Intel CPUs? I built a machine there just before christmas, box contains:

Asus K8V Deluxe mobo
AMD Athlon64 3200+, 800Mhz dual channel DDR
Gainward FX5700
Creative SB Audigy
DVD+RW
2 maxtor 250 gig (RAID0) and 2 samsung 120 gig (RAID0) HDs (total: 730 gigs)

Although the PC is only the smallest part of a superlative home entertainment system. forget your 550W speakers guys, invest in a nice pair of B&W 604 Series 3s. They'll give ya 600w per channel if you've a decent amp (or in my case, a pair of monoblocks). With a projector as a monitor and an 8 foot screen, Max Payne 2 could literally tear your head off.

Kev
__________________

Sony DVP-NS305 DVD player
Musical Fidelity X-Pre preamp controlling:
2 600W Musical Fidelity Amplifiers (running as monoblocks) whick are powering:
a pair of B&W DM604 Series 3 floorstanding speakers (I love these - best in the world!)
these run off Nordost SuperFlatLine II Cables
and an AMD Athlon 64 3200+, Asus K8V board, 1Gb RAM, 800Mhz Sys Bus, GeForce FX5700, SB Audigy, DVD+RW, 730Gb hard drive (58,340 mp3s) running RedHat 9, Fedora Core 2 and, unfortunately, XP

BloodBath

Why do all you people still insist on buying Intel CPUs? I built a machine there just before christmas, box contains:

Why not? My system performs just as well as any a64 machine if not better alll round as it overclocks better.

There is very little in it. Some extra fps in some games with a64 and better video encoding with p4's and everything elseis pretty much even.


BloodBath

unklerosco

Im starting not to like this thread.... Everyone seems to be super rich in it

Look at kevs spec for the love of pants, I used to be into Hi-Fi(thats what workin in Richer sounds gets u) n spent £1500 on speakers n amp n cd player. Damn credit cards

kevpatts

I ain't rich, just saved up for ages to get em. and only the speakers were that much, amps only 300 each, best you'll hear though, p140's.

Richard Dower

QUOTE]Originally posted by Combatcow

The sleeving you used is spiral wrap, that's alot easier compared to the sleeving used in the Vantec cable sleeving kits, Frozencpu used the same material. First of all everything is sleeved RIGHT INTO the power supply. They open it up and it's sleeved inside the PSU.

All the molex/atx/floppy and other connectors have to come off, i bought all the tools myself from Frozencpu, and while some molex come off others don't, you'll get some of the ATX 20 pin wires out and not others.

The tools are just not that effective, and you also damage pins, Frozencpu cut off the SATA connectors and replaced them. The work they did was pretty good and i was happy with it.

The also did tests on the power supply, stress test etc. Sleeving is something i never considered before but it makes the difference. It cleans up your case no end and can have an effect on temps, it might only be a 1 or 2C....

The only thing i will say is that sleeving will void the warranty, so please remember that. Overall i am happy with my PC...i sold the old parts to a number of Boards members.

I think i offered them good deals and they were happy, but i will have that FX5700 Ultra up for sale at some stage, probabllly in a few weeks...so i'll open it up on Boards for a good price!

Richard Dower

I spent €4,000 last year on my old PC, i bought all the parts retail over several months...many of them i had to import. So i kinda did things different this time...but even now this new PC will probably be worth half it's sale/retail price.

As soon as you take something out of the box it's value drops like a stone, tis a shame PC parts don't hold there value better.

BloodBath

4k wtf? That's stupid money.

I spent 2k on a pc and that's stupid money to spend on one but I got pretty much near top of the line everything for that money.


How did you manage to spend 4k on one?



BloodBath

CyberGhost

I think he is counting in all the beer he drank while building that pc

so that might easily add up to 4k

Slutmonkey57b

Do you have any idea how many prostitutes you could have had for that money?

Instead you've got your cables sleeves ALL THE WAY UP THE PSU.

There are better things to sleeve and put in other places imo.

CivilServant

Stoopid money indeed.

AMD 2600+ Mobile Barton @ 2.6Ghz - €85
Aero Cooler - €20
NF7-S - €91
512Mb PC3200 Twinmos - €92
Fortron 530w - €80
Case & 350w PSU - €54
WD 120G - €86
Radeon 9700 (350/310) - €150
System Price - €658

3dmark01 17988
3dmark03 ~5300
Superpi 41seconds

3dmark per euro ratio: 27.3 = through the roof!!!
Superpi per euro ratio = can't be beat!!

21" Trinitron CRT - €300

Richard Dower

I only buy the best, my monitor alone cost €970.

CivilServant

Can you at least tell us what it is. So I can tell you something better

Richard Dower

Mitsubishi 22" Diamond Pro, 2070SB, 2004 build. And yes the Sony 24" model rocks but costs €2,500.

BloodBath

Hmmm I got a second hand 21" sony trinitron that does 1600x1200 @ 100hz for 300 euro.

No way would I pay nearly a grand for a monitor.


BloodBath

BadCharlie

I would not like to think how much i spend on computers alone each year. But i would think in the region of about 2k. With all the computer mags and the Internet costing me 65euro a month. And another good few hundred on games " games i must stop buying them and start clearing them". Then there is always upgrading my 2 computers, sometimes my upgrades have gone wrong and i end up blowing some parts. But its all has been a learning experiences a very expensive one at that .

unklerosco

Im the exact same as BadCharlie, spec the blowing bits up... But u learn as u go along.

Richard Dower

Originally posted by BloodBath
Hmmm I got a second hand 21" sony trinitron that does 1600x1200 @ 100hz for 300 euro.

No way would I pay nearly a grand for a monitor.


BloodBath

To each his own i guess, i like things new and out of the box. It's not like i will change my monitor for 2 or 3 years. A monitor is a high ticket item that you buy once and get the best you can get.