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Well, I've had my new rig for a full month now. It performs like a dream and is rock stable. Lots of detail below the pictures. Please forgive the photo quality, I need a good book on photography. Full system details are in my signature.
Heres the master shot. Look at the reflection of the big screen in the window to get a better idea of the richness of the colour. I've got it nicely calibrated. The 52 Toshiba Regza is working fantastic as a secondary display and for playing games and watching Blu-rays. It makes the Dell 3007 look tiny.
Here I have turned the flash off. Sorry for the bad focus.
Here are the guts of the case. The wiring is nothing special. My temps are great.. CPU idles at 33 or so, goes up to 48-54 in games. Vid card idles around 52, goes up to 70-80 in games unless I really crank the fan. Ive used the secondary bracket provided by Cooler Master to install a fan pulling air up across the hard disks. I swapped out the main intake for for a Thermaltake 96CFM fan with an external controller. I run it about 50% and its pretty silent while still moving more air than the fan provided by Cooler Master. Ive also added a silent rear exhaust fan. I only have two hard disks and a single optical drive (LG Super Multi Blue). Im able to make the system almost silent for watching movies.
Heres my new UPS, APC VA1300 980W. System draws about 545W with both monitors on and a 3D app running. My old computer is also hooked up for another 240W of draw, but its turned off in this photo. That cabinet holds computer supplies like writeable media, printer paper, backups, etc. It also contains my printer, hidden from view.
I built this system myself. I purchased the parts from the same boutique that built my last PC for me (Extreme PC in Guelph, Canada), because they never steer me wrong and are very patient with my Goldilocks shopping style. I tend to return and exchange a lot of stuff rather than try to make it work or find satisfaction in something that`s not blowing my socks off.
I researched pretty obsessively for about a month before pulling the trigger. I decided to go with the E8600 rather than a quad core, because I'm a maniac about PC games and my work is not all that demanding from a computing standpoint. I do web design, spending 90% of my time in Homesite, Flash, and Photoshop. I may still upgrade to 8GB but I want to keep my overclock at 4.12ghz and wonder if 4 DIMMs would allow that.
Before this box, I had never dealt with motherboard risers or installed a PSU, CPU, or cooler before. The build went pretty smoothly, except for the fact that I put the CPU in the socket sideways and actually pushed the lever down and snapped it into place. It took me a moment to realize what Id done the CPU and socket seem to be none the worse for wear. Now that Ive done it, I guess theres really not much to putting a computer together. It took me about three hours from starting to unpack the case to beginning to install Vista. I figure I could build the same system in about an hour now that I know what to expect.
After the first couple days, the system became very unstable. Random freezes, even in BIOS. This was the start of ten days of non-stop troubleshooting, it completely took over my life! I must have driven 600KM making round-trips to my system builder to exchange parts and have him test the rig. I tried different PSUs, different video cards, sound cards, hard disks, etc. we just couldn't figure out what was making the system unstable. I'm still not sure but I could swear it was caused by the front panel headers between the Cosmos 1000 and the P5Q Deluxe. Since disconnecting them Ive had a very reliable dream system.
I feel I made a great choice in adding a large screen LCD for a secondary monitor. I had been considering a smaller secondary monitor. The big screen allows me to have a secondary monitor as well as a worthy gaming and cinema display.
Here's my media cabinet, which has all of my movies but only a small selection of my comics and reading material.
Here is the absolutely ghetto stand I cobbled together to hold the monitor at the right height above my desk. I don't want to wall mount it, so I'm looking for a suitable stand that could do the job.
Looking at my post, wow, these pictures are crap. They really don't put across the zen command centre vibe I've created. I'll probably take another pass in a couple weeks, after I do an hour of reading about photography here and there.
Heres the master shot. Look at the reflection of the big screen in the window to get a better idea of the richness of the colour. I've got it nicely calibrated. The 52 Toshiba Regza is working fantastic as a secondary display and for playing games and watching Blu-rays. It makes the Dell 3007 look tiny.
Here I have turned the flash off. Sorry for the bad focus.
Here are the guts of the case. The wiring is nothing special. My temps are great.. CPU idles at 33 or so, goes up to 48-54 in games. Vid card idles around 52, goes up to 70-80 in games unless I really crank the fan. Ive used the secondary bracket provided by Cooler Master to install a fan pulling air up across the hard disks. I swapped out the main intake for for a Thermaltake 96CFM fan with an external controller. I run it about 50% and its pretty silent while still moving more air than the fan provided by Cooler Master. Ive also added a silent rear exhaust fan. I only have two hard disks and a single optical drive (LG Super Multi Blue). Im able to make the system almost silent for watching movies.
Heres my new UPS, APC VA1300 980W. System draws about 545W with both monitors on and a 3D app running. My old computer is also hooked up for another 240W of draw, but its turned off in this photo. That cabinet holds computer supplies like writeable media, printer paper, backups, etc. It also contains my printer, hidden from view.
I built this system myself. I purchased the parts from the same boutique that built my last PC for me (Extreme PC in Guelph, Canada), because they never steer me wrong and are very patient with my Goldilocks shopping style. I tend to return and exchange a lot of stuff rather than try to make it work or find satisfaction in something that`s not blowing my socks off.
I researched pretty obsessively for about a month before pulling the trigger. I decided to go with the E8600 rather than a quad core, because I'm a maniac about PC games and my work is not all that demanding from a computing standpoint. I do web design, spending 90% of my time in Homesite, Flash, and Photoshop. I may still upgrade to 8GB but I want to keep my overclock at 4.12ghz and wonder if 4 DIMMs would allow that.
Before this box, I had never dealt with motherboard risers or installed a PSU, CPU, or cooler before. The build went pretty smoothly, except for the fact that I put the CPU in the socket sideways and actually pushed the lever down and snapped it into place. It took me a moment to realize what Id done the CPU and socket seem to be none the worse for wear. Now that Ive done it, I guess theres really not much to putting a computer together. It took me about three hours from starting to unpack the case to beginning to install Vista. I figure I could build the same system in about an hour now that I know what to expect.
After the first couple days, the system became very unstable. Random freezes, even in BIOS. This was the start of ten days of non-stop troubleshooting, it completely took over my life! I must have driven 600KM making round-trips to my system builder to exchange parts and have him test the rig. I tried different PSUs, different video cards, sound cards, hard disks, etc. we just couldn't figure out what was making the system unstable. I'm still not sure but I could swear it was caused by the front panel headers between the Cosmos 1000 and the P5Q Deluxe. Since disconnecting them Ive had a very reliable dream system.
I feel I made a great choice in adding a large screen LCD for a secondary monitor. I had been considering a smaller secondary monitor. The big screen allows me to have a secondary monitor as well as a worthy gaming and cinema display.
Here's my media cabinet, which has all of my movies but only a small selection of my comics and reading material.
Here is the absolutely ghetto stand I cobbled together to hold the monitor at the right height above my desk. I don't want to wall mount it, so I'm looking for a suitable stand that could do the job.
Looking at my post, wow, these pictures are crap. They really don't put across the zen command centre vibe I've created. I'll probably take another pass in a couple weeks, after I do an hour of reading about photography here and there.
