[PROJECT] "The blank.box"

How much d'you have to spend on the drive? If you can afford it go for a higher capacity drive like a 500giger, as the denser platers will give slightly better performance, you'll have much more space and i don't think they're that much more expensive?

Well, I have enough to get two 500GB drives... but right now on my current computer (Mac mini) I've only used 50GB of it's 80GB HD. And it's only a 5400RPM drive, which I'm satisfied with so far, so I don't need a super huge and fast hard drive.
My dad says I should go for the two 320GB seagates, but my head says go for two 250GB 32mb cache drive... :p

And on the memory, i don't see how the Corsair's silver heatspreaders really fit the colour scheme any better? If you're going for overclocks etc worry about the performance of the chips more than the colour of the heatsink.

Another person brought that to my mind also that the heat spreaders don't exactly match the color scheme very well... but if you haven't seen the post, I've decided to get the Crucial Ballistix Tracers (black sinks).
Thanks!
 
OMI GOSH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Check out what my dad brought home for me last night!!!!
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Looky looky! Hard drives....

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500GB Hard Drives if 32MB Cache!!!!!
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I had talked to him about HD's the other day and how I couldn't decide, and well, he decided for me... I didn't do anything special or nutting, he just surprised me with em! I love my dad :D

More updates later.... :p
 
Ok guys, Heres the UPDATE!!!!!!!
03-01-08

I got the hardware from my buddy!
All for free. :biggrin:
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Motherboard, Video card, CPU.

So lets start off with the CPU, I got an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700.
It's an ES version, can't wait to use this bad boy! (sorry no pic.)

Ok, Motherboard... it's the ASUS 680i Striker Extreme:
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Very cool heatpiping!

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The nice convenient SATA ports.
Sorry for the blurry pic, I took all the pics quickly...

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Onboard switches!! Very nice!

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All the stuffs that came with the board.

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Came with Ghost Recon! Sweet! :cool:
It also came with a cool little keychain. :)

Heres the video card, ATi Radeon 2900XT 512MB 512-Bit... geeze:
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Very nice!! This should be an awesome card. :cool:

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And thats all the hardware he gave me. :)

Ok, I've been thinking, will my PSU be good enough?
It's the Antec NeoPower 550W...

BTW, for those interested, heres my current setup:
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The computer is there on the right side of the monitor sitting on a box.
It's a Mac mini... :D

Heres my "space" where I work and take pictures... etc.
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Wow, that was a lot of pictures!!!
I had one heck of a time uploading them..... :p:p:p:p

But there you have it, the "update".
For now!
~Parker
 
Dude.

I want friends like yours.

The ones who give you really, really expensive gear. :p

...for serious. The things I'd do for a QX6700... OP, you want to make some cash? I'll trade you my brand new full retail X3220 (Xeon version of a Q6600, hasn't been used more than an hour) + cash or stuff from my FS/FT thread for that chip... It's as massive waste if you aren't at least running high end water cooling, or ideally, phase change.
 
BTW, ES = Engineering Sample - your friend hooked you up :eek:

ES chips are known for overclocking well, but you'll need a serious cooler like a TRUE 120 to use it to the full potential.
 
LOL. I must be a crappy friend. All I give my friends are old parts. You have a great friend.
 
BTW, ES = Engineering Sample - your friend hooked you up :eek:

ES chips are known for overclocking well, but you'll need a serious cooler like a TRUE 120 to use it to the full potential.

Eh. I've seen ESes do well, and I've seen them do really bad. They seem to be hit and miss. Good luck, OP.
 
Thanks for all your comments guys!
I can't wait to get this little guy under water! (for those of you who think I'm air cooling, I'm not :D)

Silent-circuit, I'm going to keep the chip, sorry, but thanks for the offer! :)

But, I am thinking about selling the striker mobo, as I am looking at other chipsets, like P35 or X38.
Would anyone here be interested in the striker? It's brand new, never used. PM me if your interested at all.
 
Just a question about airflow... while I understand the benefits of pushing cooler air through the top of the case towards the board for the actual watercooling loop, doesn't it just mean increased heat stress on the rest of the motherboard's components? Since normal motherboards expect a certain amount of cooling from the CPU fan itself (especially with all the heatpipes that surround the cpu socket), doesn't removing the cpu fan entirely AND pushing the warmer air from the watercooling loop at the motherboard cause other issues?

Not to mention you'll have 1 exhaust fan (2 if you count your power supply, but where you'll put that hasn't really been explained) and 4 intake fans, resulting in a substantial static pressure problem. IMO you usually want an equal amount of intake and exhaust or slightly more intake than exhaust.
 
But, I am thinking about selling the striker mobo, as I am looking at other chipsets, like P35 or X38.
Would anyone here be interested in the striker? It's brand new, never used. PM me if your interested at all.

But... It's heart touching! The box says so!
 
Just a question about airflow... while I understand the benefits of pushing cooler air through the top of the case towards the board for the actual watercooling loop, doesn't it just mean increased heat stress on the rest of the motherboard's components? Since normal motherboards expect a certain amount of cooling from the CPU fan itself (especially with all the heatpipes that surround the cpu socket), doesn't removing the cpu fan entirely AND pushing the warmer air from the watercooling loop at the motherboard cause other issues?

Not to mention you'll have 1 exhaust fan (2 if you count your power supply, but where you'll put that hasn't really been explained) and 4 intake fans, resulting in a substantial static pressure problem. IMO you usually want an equal amount of intake and exhaust or slightly more intake than exhaust.

I've explained this before.

It does not cause problems with the mobo, a couple degrees difference in heat.
I will get better temps doing it how I have it, if I have the fans pulling air out of the computer I won't get as good temps.

I'm not going to explain any more, as I'm tired of people asking this question.

Thanks!
 
I cant believe your friend gave you all that for free! Is he wealthy? Or just gets free parts all the time?
 
I cant believe your friend gave you all that for free! Is he wealthy? Or just gets free parts all the time?

He gets free parts all the time. :p
He's a really nice guy.

Well guys, It looks like this build will be done very soon. :D
Can't wait to get some RAM, the new PSU, DVD drive....
 
I'd say you have some decent water cooling on there, I think you could really push that Q6700. Holy crap though, what a nice friend :D. Looking forward to seeing the completed product, good luck to you :cool:.
 
i want a friend like yours. congrats!

I'd say you have some decent water cooling on there, I think you could really push that Q6700. Holy crap though, what a nice friend :D. Looking forward to seeing the completed product, good luck to you :cool:.

Lol, thanks guys.
BTW, it's a QX6700 not Q6700. ;)

Cool parts, except for the 2900XT.

Go sell it and get a real card.

Yip, I'm gonna get an 8800GT 512mb. :D
 
Hey guys!
Just thought I'd let you know what I just ordered from the egg:

Newegg.com - EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

Newegg.com - CORSAIR XMS2 DOMINATOR 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

Newegg.com - CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX ATX12V / EPS12V 650W Power Supply 100 - 240 V UL, CE, CB, TUV, FCC, CCC - Retail

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 20X DVD±R DVD Burner - OEM

I decided to go with the dominators instead of the crucial because they are more reliable and because they have better cooling. :cool:
The total cost of that order was $512.84 shipped, + theres $90 in MIR's!!
MIR's FTW!!! w0000t!!!
Can't wait to get some hardware!!

BTW, I've decided to keep the striker mobo, because I found out that the board is kinda "special", it's the ASUS Striker Extreme "Green" board.
Not sure what thats supposed to mean, but in my way of thinking... it's an ES proc. :)

So, I will post more updates once I have more updates!
Thats all for now folks! ;)
 
It might be the one that they put in the hp black birds that can do crossfire and sli. Or it just saves power.
 
Alrighty, sorry this is late guys!
I've been eh, busy..... well not really, just having fun with the partsy's!! :thefinger:

So yesterday at around 2pm I got the package...
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Goody goody! Whats inside??

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2GB Corsair Dominators....

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EVGA 8800GT 512MB....

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Samsung DVD Burner....

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Corsair 650w Single 12v Rail PSU....

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And heres all of the parts for the build!! (excluding watercooling stuff, I don't have it all yet....)

So... more pic's in next post!!! :D
 
Ok, so heres pics of putting all the hardware together! :)
(NOTE: A couple of the pictures are blurry, I apologize...)

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Mounted the Striker Extreme onto my "almost complete" tech station...

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The 8800GT out of the box! Looks sweet....

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The CPU latch is open....

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And my proc goes in!! (QX6700)

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Dominators mounted!!

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Almost done.....

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Blob of ICD7 (my new favorite!! :top:)

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And, intel stock cooler without the fan.... I know I know, bad Parker Bad!!!!
I didn't have enough money to buy an aftermarket one!!! :p

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And there we go...

More pics in next post!! :D
 
More pics!!!

You better go stick a fan on top of that heatsink... unless you want toasted QX6700...
 
More pics!!!

You better go stick a fan on top of that heatsink... unless you want toasted QX6700...

Lol, more pics are here. :p:
Don't worry, I've got a fan to put on it:
_________________________________
Ok, so heres the actually setup...

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Thats a Vantec Tornado cooling the CPU and NB, it blows 87CFM.... very loud.
BTW, my idle temps on all four cores is 28-30C with that fan on it. :)
(Sorry the pic is blurry....)

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And there's another one of those uber loud fans, this one is pushing the cold air from the window onto the computer components.

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And again, here is my "almost complete" bench table, it's being held up by the new corsair PSU and an old PSU on the other side. I'm only using the Corsair one though. Very ghetto setup.... but only temporary.


Alright guys, heres where it gets messy...
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This is the BSOD I've been getting, please help me out... Heres the new thread I've started for it:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1032197377#post1032197377
 
Got vdimm set high enough? Download Memtest86 and let it run a few loops.

Based on that bluescreen, though, you're getting IRQ conflicts. Which is crazy, given you have a pretty bare-bones setup there and all modern hardware... and these things went the way of the dinosaur, more or less, in the Windows XP era.

Is the BIOS flashed to the latest revision? If not, get to that.

Also reset the CMOS (pull the battery, pull the power, and wait 5 minutes) so that the IRQ autoconfiguration thing can hopefully sort itself out.

Hmm. nvstor.dll. That'd be Nvidia's SATA / RAID driver causing problems. Got the latest version there? If so, try uninstalling it -- the stuff in Vista works fine in my experience. If not, update it to the latest and try again.

If none of the above works, come on back.
 
Yep that's the Nvidia SATA/IDE device driver, if it's vista that your installing then I have seen this happen when even though it says to use one or the other driver (depending on if your using RAID or standard SATA settings), you have to install both regardless or it will act like part of the driver is missing and cause that message.

The nice thing about Vista is it will pull the drivers from the zip files as well, just point it to both the SATA and RAID drivers, it's how I fixed the issue on a customers system.
 
Looks like some awesome hardware, I like your little test station, pretty clean.

I'm anxious to see where this goes, looks like a very simplistic and basic case mod but overall very tasteful and with function in mind. I really like the front fan mount you added and how cleanly it just fits with the contours of the face plate.
 
Alrighty guys, so this weekends been real busy, haven't been able to do much.... played some games though! And Sunday was my 15th Bday :D

Anyways, as far as BSOD's, I've firgure it out thanks to all the helpful people in and around this community! :)
I've got XP running and I think I'll stick with XP for now.
But I know vista will work, just need to install a certain SATA/RAID Driver and such that I didn't install before (hence the BSOD's).

So, I've been playing games over the weekend and I absolutely love the graphics the GT gives me!!! :D
I also got to some OC'ing of the card, it's stable at 700/1717/1003 atm.
I also scored 13k in 3DMark06 (I'll get a pic of that later on :up:).

I'm about to take everything apart and see how it all fits in the case, so I'm going to venture out into the shop for a little while.... ;)
But as far as I know.... I love this build!!!! :D
 
Happy b-day! Wow, 15 and you get all that nice gear. What a lucky guy.

Let's see some more modding of the case!
 
very nice i like, was this a bday gift? because it's fucking expensive!!
 
Haha, thanks guys! It feels somewhat different to be 15, I've had to catch myself when people ask my age cuz I always got "yea I'm four-te..... I mean, fifth-teen." lol.

Alrighty, small update!!! :D
5-2-08


So, the other day, I bought a Fuzion from "hardass" over on XS, and got it today....
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But then, the Fuzion V2 came out this morning.... couldn't resist :p:
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So now I've got two blocks, I'll be doing testing this weekend as now I have all the necessary parts for my watercooling loop!!!

FuZion V1 vs. V2 Review coming soon!
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:D:D:D
 
Small Update!! :D
5-17-08


So last week I got to some lapping!!! :eek: (BTW, sorry for the blurry pics, I didn't feel like taking the time to take good ones while I was lapping.....;))
It's a QX6700 ES.

Rubbed some 1500 grit on the proc to see where the dips were:
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Starting off with 400 grit:
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More 400 grit:
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Finished with 400 grit:
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And then after 800 grit:
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Finished pics:
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So far, I'm getting better temps than before by a couple C in idle temps, I haven't tested load temps though. But when I do, I'll let you guys know.

One thing though, do you think I should go to 1200 grit? or more?
I've heard that 800 grit is enough and that theres not any performance gain going above that.
Thoughts??
 
UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!
5-22-08


Woohooo!!!!! My package came yesterday.....

Looky looky!!
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My 8800GT card stripped down naked!!!:eek:
And also, on the desk you can see my thermal paste, it's some special Arctic Silver 5 mixture, it's two parts. Mix them together to make the paste slap a little blob on the ram/mosfets and stick your heatsinks on. Wait 5 minutes and it's stuck on! But they can come off, get a little heat on them and carefully pop them off, works swell.

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I didn't want to use that el' cheapo sticky tape on the back of the sinks as I know they don't work well.

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Took a couple minutes to install the heatsink, didn't get any pics of it though.
But heres the finished product all hooked up and runny smooth. Temps are low 30's idle and around 42c load. :cool:

Oh and, check out my awesome ghetto rubber band fan mount!!!
 
What a sweet setup :D looks great

Just wondering, what do you have the CPU OC'd to? Do you have a real hsf for the cpu yet?
 
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