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Hello everyone! This my first post. I came here to find the answer to a question I have, but decided to stick around.
I used to be big into building and modding(cold cathode's, LED fans, temp monitors, fan controllers, glow in the dark IDE cables, UV wrap over ever cable... the whole 9 yards) PC's back in the day. I bought an HP m8120n multi media PC back September 2007 as I thought it was a decently powerful and inexpensive way to fill my needs.
I promptly upgraded the graphics card to a Radeon 2600XT and added another tv tuner to the mix.
It worked great for over a year as a media center hub for every room in the house ( I have 3 xbox 360's for media hubs). My cable company had to go and ruin it by requiring a converter box for most channels. Dual blasters were out of the question.
It started on October 3rd 2009 when i decided to get a new gaming mouse, keyboard, and a headset for Team Fortress 2. (the 30" apple monitor is not new). I'd been playing TF2 on the 360 and felt it was time to make a jump
Then I decided october 4th to go to fry's and get a new PSU. I knew my 2600XT required more power than my stock PSU. I'd also been casually looking at video card reviews online. I told myself that if fry's had the ATI Radeon HD 5850 in stock... i'd pony up and get it. I doubted they would though. to my surprise they had two shiny 5870's on the shelf. They'd just gotten them in the previous day. My better judgement overcame me and I bought the 5870 and a PSU for it.
Then on October 10 I decided to get a new case and CPU cooler. I thought the Skeleton looked incredible from the moment I saw it a year ago. I'd been reading how hard it was to set up, and how a lot of video cards and CPU coolers didn't fit. I read somewhere that the Thermaltake Duorb did fit. I read the reviews on the Duorb and fell in love with the look and its performance.
So here's where I'm at now. Everything fit just fine and I had no issues with installation difficulty. I'm not concerned with dust as the m1820n had been laying on it's side with its door off for over a year. The dust you see on the components is all that accumulated over that time. I learned a long time ago a closed pc accumulates dust a lot quicker than an open one.
And a couple of videos:
the side w/ cpu cooler and rear
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBIQdAMq49U
front and the big boy fan with all the pretty colors.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6obnmmgUdxU[/QUOTE]
I'm now getting ready for the next phase. I can't upgrade the CPU in this board. Also, HP links their hardrive's to the bios of their exclusive motherboards. I would have to wipe the harddrive to make it work with another motherboard.
I'm looking at an i7 920-950. I'm still researching motherboards at this point. The crappiest thing is I really love the Duorb, but Thermaltake has no plans to make a socket 1366 version. I will need to find a somewhat showy cpu cooler ( I like fans and LED's) that will fit in the Skeleton. I'm also planning a Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM hard drive for the OS and a terabyte 7200 rpm drive for storage. I realized after i bought the PSU that I should have gone modular to reduce the clutter. I think I will swap my PSU for a modular one. I will ofcourse need new memory. I'm targeting 8 gigs or so.
What have I learned? I will always build my PC's. New updates to come.
I used to be big into building and modding(cold cathode's, LED fans, temp monitors, fan controllers, glow in the dark IDE cables, UV wrap over ever cable... the whole 9 yards) PC's back in the day. I bought an HP m8120n multi media PC back September 2007 as I thought it was a decently powerful and inexpensive way to fill my needs.
I promptly upgraded the graphics card to a Radeon 2600XT and added another tv tuner to the mix.
It worked great for over a year as a media center hub for every room in the house ( I have 3 xbox 360's for media hubs). My cable company had to go and ruin it by requiring a converter box for most channels. Dual blasters were out of the question.
It started on October 3rd 2009 when i decided to get a new gaming mouse, keyboard, and a headset for Team Fortress 2. (the 30" apple monitor is not new). I'd been playing TF2 on the 360 and felt it was time to make a jump
Then I decided october 4th to go to fry's and get a new PSU. I knew my 2600XT required more power than my stock PSU. I'd also been casually looking at video card reviews online. I told myself that if fry's had the ATI Radeon HD 5850 in stock... i'd pony up and get it. I doubted they would though. to my surprise they had two shiny 5870's on the shelf. They'd just gotten them in the previous day. My better judgement overcame me and I bought the 5870 and a PSU for it.
Then on October 10 I decided to get a new case and CPU cooler. I thought the Skeleton looked incredible from the moment I saw it a year ago. I'd been reading how hard it was to set up, and how a lot of video cards and CPU coolers didn't fit. I read somewhere that the Thermaltake Duorb did fit. I read the reviews on the Duorb and fell in love with the look and its performance.
So here's where I'm at now. Everything fit just fine and I had no issues with installation difficulty. I'm not concerned with dust as the m1820n had been laying on it's side with its door off for over a year. The dust you see on the components is all that accumulated over that time. I learned a long time ago a closed pc accumulates dust a lot quicker than an open one.
And a couple of videos:
the side w/ cpu cooler and rear
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBIQdAMq49U
front and the big boy fan with all the pretty colors.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6obnmmgUdxU[/QUOTE]
I'm now getting ready for the next phase. I can't upgrade the CPU in this board. Also, HP links their hardrive's to the bios of their exclusive motherboards. I would have to wipe the harddrive to make it work with another motherboard.
I'm looking at an i7 920-950. I'm still researching motherboards at this point. The crappiest thing is I really love the Duorb, but Thermaltake has no plans to make a socket 1366 version. I will need to find a somewhat showy cpu cooler ( I like fans and LED's) that will fit in the Skeleton. I'm also planning a Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM hard drive for the OS and a terabyte 7200 rpm drive for storage. I realized after i bought the PSU that I should have gone modular to reduce the clutter. I think I will swap my PSU for a modular one. I will ofcourse need new memory. I'm targeting 8 gigs or so.
What have I learned? I will always build my PC's. New updates to come.