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Upgrades for Dangman!!

I run the CM 212+ on my OC'd i5-760 setup I just finished up. I also run the GTX460-1G. Both are extremely excellent. You will not be disappointed.

And I second the awesome advice you give. I've read many of your recommendations for multiple people's builds, and the info is always right on :)
 
Just thought I'd post a bit about the Gigabyte vs. MSI motherboard idea. I am looking at that exact same motherboard from Gigabyte to replace my board, which just blew it's VRM capacitors this weekend.

I've read the horror stories too about MSI boards. I also work at a PC shop that LOVES to purchase cheap MSI boards for customer builds. Granted, we tend to buy lower end, sometimes older chipset MSI boards, but I have seen A TON of these burn. I'm talking over 100 in the last three years. I would like to think that their newer boards, and higher end ones, would not have these kinds of problems, but it is really steering me away from them right now. I kinda wanted a Matx MSI board, for looks and a compatible layout for my parts, to fit into an NZXT Vulcan case I want to buy in the near future, but I just can't get myself to be convinced that the MSI board won't fry/blow/burn on me.
 
Danny Bui said:
The HD 6850 is a little faster than the GTX 460 1GB but the HD 6850 cards tends to be a little more expensive if you want one from a reputable manufacturer. However more apps do take advantage of Nvidia's CUDA better than AMD's Stream SDK.
Click to expand...

First, it sucks to be broke. I was going to build a new Sandy Bridge PC in Jan, but financials ruined it. So I'm now just going to swap chips in my current rig. I picked up a Q6600 off of someoen on the forums here, sel;ling my E7300.

I do a lot more video encoding than I do gaming, and if I can squeeze and extra 9-12 months out of this PC for $40 (after selling my E7300) it's worth it to me since the C2quad core is so much better at handbrake x264 MKV encoding.

OK, on to your issue.

Personally I'd go with the 460 over a 6850. The framerates in games are so close, that even if there is a difference, you won't really notice it. However in terms of apps more making use of CUDA this might be big for you.

Similar framerates, slightly cheaper price, more application compatibility. The 460 just seems like the better choice to me.
 
I guess I'm way too late to say, "Answer the questions from the sticky."

Glad to see you're upgrading. I look at your .sig and think: there's a guy who could use some bit of upgrade!

Great thread. Learning stuff as usual.
 
Damn man, that's a tough upgrade situation. Your Core 2 Duo might be light on cache, but it's still a performer at 3.2 GHz. If you expect to get a real noticeable upgrade out of that Phenom II X3, you're going to have to unlock successfully AND get a sizable overclock (3.4+). Best of luck to you on that.

Sucks that you can't save for a little longer and get Sandy Bridge - you could upgrade the GPU now and then save for a processor/MB later. But it seems you've already received the processor, so I guess you're committed.
 
canna said:
First, it sucks to be broke. I was going to build a new Sandy Bridge PC in Jan, but financials ruined it. So I'm now just going to swap chips in my current rig. I picked up a Q6600 off of someoen on the forums here, sel;ling my E7300.
Click to expand...
Upgrading to a Q6600 and calling it day was one of my upgrade plans but I ruled that out after thinking about the following:
- I need more than 6GB of RAM. There are days where I can easily hit 95% RAM usage with 6GB of RAM. The prices of 4GB DDR2 RAM is just too high for me to justify the costs
- I really want a third monitor. But my motherboard only had one PCI-E x16 slot. Trying to find a PCI-E x1 card was a pain in the ass and finding a PCI video card that would work with Windows 7 was also a pain
- I wanted something new :D

So with that in mind, I went for a new platform altogether.
Standpoint said:
Just thought I'd post a bit about the Gigabyte vs. MSI motherboard idea. I am looking at that exact same motherboard from Gigabyte to replace my board, which just blew it's VRM capacitors this weekend.

I've read the horror stories too about MSI boards. I also work at a PC shop that LOVES to purchase cheap MSI boards for customer builds. Granted, we tend to buy lower end, sometimes older chipset MSI boards, but I have seen A TON of these burn. I'm talking over 100 in the last three years. I would like to think that their newer boards, and higher end ones, would not have these kinds of problems, but it is really steering me away from them right now. I kinda wanted a Matx MSI board, for looks and a compatible layout for my parts, to fit into an NZXT Vulcan case I want to buy in the near future, but I just can't get myself to be convinced that the MSI board won't fry/blow/burn on me.
Click to expand...
Yeah, your post pretty much confirms some of my initial hesistation about that MSI mobo.

If the Gigabyte doesn't suit your needs, this Asus mobo is also a good choice:
$140 - Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AMD 890GX ATX Motherboard
defaultluser said:
Damn man, that's a tough upgrade situation. Your Core 2 Duo might be light on cache, but it's still a performer at 3.2 GHz. If you expect to get a real noticeable upgrade out of that Phenom II X3, you're going to have to unlock successfully AND get a sizable overclock (3.4+). Best of luck to you on that.
Click to expand...
The unlocking shouldn't be a problem since the seller I bought it from unlocked that CPU. The OC might be an issue but I'll be fine even with a minor OC of 3Ghz. The extra cores are really the key thing I want out of all of this. With the same 8800GT from my PC, there was still a noticeable difference in performance between my brother's Athlon II X4 635 CPU and my E6400 at 3.2Ghz in Battlefield Bad Company 2. Considering that the Phenom II X3 730 has that extra L3 cache and can also unlock to a quad-core, I'm fairly sure that I'll notice a difference.
defaultluser said:
Sucks that you can't save for a little longer and get Sandy Bridge - you could upgrade the GPU now and then save for a processor/MB later. But it seems you've already received the processor, so I guess you're committed.
Click to expand...

Yup committed. I saw that CPU for sale and so I just went for it.
 
Danny Bui said:
The extra cores are really the key thing I want out of all of this. With the same 8800GT from my PC, there was still a noticeable difference in performance between my brother's Athlon II X4 635 CPU and my E6400 at 3.2Ghz in Battlefield Bad Company 2. Considering that the Phenom II X3 730 has that extra L3 cache and can also unlock to a quad-core, I'm fairly sure that I'll notice a difference.
Click to expand...

Well yeah, but BFBC2 stands as one of a very small number of games on PC that has perfect scaling beyond 2 cores. Most other games, you're lucky if it uses 3 cores. This is why I would not feel comfortable making the change you did without a good overclock.

I'm in nearly the same situation as yourself - been running my Core 2 Duo at 3.2 GHz. But unlike you, I've actually been satisfied with my BFBC2 performance with that CPU, so I've seen no reason to upgrade. I am, however, waiting for Sandy Bridge because I know it will take at least that much horsepower to make me notice a difference over my (already fast) Core 2 Duo.
 
So this came in in with the mail around noon today:
IMG_6909.jpg


However earlier tonight UPS dropped this off at my doorsteps:
IMG_6906.jpg


Yup, that's the Antec High Current Gamer 750W PSU. It seems that Antec did not get my email that I didn't have the proper equipment to test that PSU. With that said, not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth :)

Gonna have a preview of the PSU up tomorrow. Now got to go play some games :)
 
bastage said:
That actually looks like a crappy deal at 179 after MIR.. But thats actually 179 before MIR so 159 after the MIR.. Makes it a fairly decent deal..
Click to expand...

actually i paid $214 for the Talon Attack model which i installed last night and played with a few hours and it was worth every penny and then some, so it's a smoking deal either way
 
Danny Bui said:
So this came in in with the mail around noon today:
IMG_6909.jpg
Click to expand...

you know i almost bought those, and i switched to the blue CAS 7 model instead for $10 more, which as it turns out they only do that on a i7 system, when used on the AMD AM3 platform they seem to only be able to run CAS9 LOL

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...skill_ripjaw_ddr3_1600-_-20-231-303-_-Product

so anyways, i got mine built last night Danny, told you i would provide feedback

i havent done anything beyond play one game last night, but it was a resource heavy Crysis mod.....and it played it pretty much maxed out, all high settings, etc.......flawlessly.....best build i have ever done, it just flies

only thing that annoys me is i set up the two 320gb drives on raid 0 standard....so 640gb single partition

it now takes longer to boot than on my old system, because the AMD RAID controller adds a good 5-6 seconds to boot time. so i get the BIOS post, then another black screen showing the AMD RAID is "scanning drives" for a few seconds....and then it starts to load windows

so the boot process, which i was expecting to be much faster, is now actually slower because of the RAID initialization
 
Last edited:
Ouch. The irony is apparent here.

Good to see that your build went well.
 
Just a quick update:

The motherboard came in yesterday, one day ahead of schedule :). So spent most of the day disassembling and reassembling the PC. Now I'm doing some stress tests to make sure that this quad unlock is actually bloody stable.

With that said, even as a tri-core, I can already feel/see a tangible difference in performance in BF:BC2 and Fallout 3. And it's nice being able to run 4 VMs at once now with reasonable performance rather than the two VMs with reasonable performance. Also hooking up

More thoughts and pictures coming up later in the day.
 
what video card did you end up with? i just got through playing BFBC2 last night, and with the quad on the 460GTX it was butter smooth maxed out, 16xAA and 16xAF too....
 
So after eighteen hours of testing, I can now say this new PC is stable but sadly unfortunately. More on that later. For now some pics:

So the motherboard came in yesterday. The unboxing:
IMG_6955.jpg

IMG_6957.jpg

IMG_6954.jpg


Once I took it out, I proceeded to install the CPU, RAM, HSF, and PSU and do some BIOs tweaking:
IMG_6962.jpg


Another shot of the assembled setup (Man that Coolermaster is a little huge!):
IMG_6965.jpg


So because I didn't have a spare drive for testing and since I was pretty confident of the stability of the setup, I proceeded to take apart my current setup and hook up the new setup. My PC before the tear down:
IMG_6970.jpg


Goodbye old friend:
IMG_6974.jpg


That new Antec PSU is a little larger than my old Corsair 520HX:
IMG_6972.jpg


Here's the setup after I setup the new hardware (yes it's messy but I didn't want to take the effort of cable management until I knew for sure this setup was stable:
IMG_6983.jpg


I then proceeded to boot up Windows 7. Unlike past OSes, Windows 7 is really stable even after a complete motherboard and CPU reset. It just booted up, found the drivers for the items on Windows update, downloaded, installed, and rebooted. After that, the system worked just as new. And that's what I love Windows 7 :D

Anyway, since the guy I bought the CPU from had noted that the CPU was sucessfully unlocked, I unlocked the CPU right from the start and did some stability testing. Four hours of OCCT testing, two runs of Intel Burn Tool, and two runs of Memtest on each stick of RAM individually was enough for me to think that the PC was reasonably stable. And then I fired up BFBC2. That's when things went wrong.

It was little random at times but the game would crash to the deskop. I had task manager opened each time and noticied the second the 4th core was loaded to 100% for more than 2 secs, the game crashed. Just to make sure that I wasn't seeing things, I loaded up Fallout 3 and noticied that the same issue occured there. And to make sure that it wasn't related to the system as a whole, I went down to a tri-core.

Damn games were super stable. Even for 2-3 hours of gaming each. Went back, unlocked, and again had CTDs with both games. So went back to the BIOs, upped the voltages a bit more, and went for additional stress testing:
Stress.png


And three more runs of IBT just to make sure. All passed with flying colors. Then loaded up BFBC2 and Fallout 3: Goddamn more CTDs. Needless to say, my gamble did not pay off: Despite what those other stress-testing apps stated, this was not a stable unlock. At least for games.

So I'm a little peeved at the moment. But despite that, I did the next best thing: I just OC'd the X3 720 to 3.2Ghz and called it a day. Gonna stick with this for a few days just to get a feel for this system and then see if I can hit a higher OC.

But still, that extra core is coming handy as well. BFBC2 and Fallout 3 still play a whole lot better. I can still run more VMs than I could with the old setup, and right now I'm cleaning up my desk to hook up four montiors :D. So despite the failed unlock, still not a bad upgrade so far.
nobody_here said:
what video card did you end up with? i just got through playing BFBC2 last night, and with the quad on the 460GTX it was butter smooth maxed out, 16xAA and 16xAF too....
Click to expand...

Still deciding on the GPU actually.
 
It's a bummer you can't you use the 4th core though. Maybe the guy you bought it from lied about it.
 
Not sure how much money you have to work with, but did you see the Newegg Webmaster deal in hotdeal forum? gtx 470 for $230, 200 after rebate.
 
4LC4PON3 said:
im waiting for a the 4601gb or 470s to go on sale for xmas @egg. You think that hyper 212 is big? I got a Corsair A70 now. Its Huge
Click to expand...
That's true :)
Skunt said:
It's a bummer you can't you use the 4th core though. Maybe the guy you bought it from lied about it.
Click to expand...
Hmm, can't exactly blame him since I forgot to ask him whether or not he actually tested the unlock in a game. More than likely he saw the same thing I did: stress testing says the unlock is sucessful and went from there. I don't think either of us could have forseen that the CPU would crash during gaming.
Direfox said:
Not sure how much money you have to work with, but did you see the Newegg Webmaster deal in hotdeal forum? gtx 470 for $230, 200 after rebate.
Click to expand...

Yeah I saw the deals. But I get charged tax there. So that $230 card quickly becomes $253 after taxes. And that's out of my $200 budget range.
 
Danny sorry to steal your thread but here is the latest build you did for me. I added the A70 its big takes of most of my Mobo. There is hardly any room between the Sink and GPU about half an inch if that. Pic is terrible

100_1250.jpg

100_1271.jpg
 
Last edited:
Nice cable management there 4LC4PON3! The cable management in that NZXT Beta Evo case is a lot better than I thought it would be. Thanks for the pic!

All right time for an update!

GPU Progress
Still haven't bought a card yet. Basically, I want to buy a HD 6850 or GTX 460 1GB or similar from a reputable manufacturer for $180 shipped without rebate. That's the max I want to spend. So still looking around for that.

Main PC
As for the main system itself, I still need to do a bios update to see if that fixes the 4th core crashing games. But for now, I OC'd the X3 720 to 3.5Ghz:
Untitl2222222222222222ed.png


System has been pretty stable so far. But I have run into a few quirks of the motherboard:
1) The motherboard does not pick up my main keyboard while the BIOs is loading. It does detect my other keyboard during the BIOs load.

2) Changing any of the RAM timings will cause an unstable OC or lose all the settings for it altogether.

Minor quirks for now.

Cable Management
With all these new parts, cable management has been a pain in the ass with the P180. The Antec High Current Gamer's PSU cables are a lot thicker than the Corsair 520HX PSU cables which has made it stupidly hard to hide and tuck away. I literally have to leave off the right side panel just to get any semblance of cable management. So this has made me reconsider the prospects of getting a new case a lot sooner than expected. However I am planning on swapping out the Antec PSU back for the Corsair for easier cable management.

Thats all for now!

Happy New Year everyone!
 
Danny Bui said:
I then proceeded to boot up Windows 7. Unlike past OSes, Windows 7 is really stable even after a complete motherboard and CPU reset. It just booted up, found the drivers for the items on Windows update, downloaded, installed, and rebooted. After that, the system worked just as new. And that's what I love Windows 7 :D
Click to expand...

Wait a minute here. You're telling me you didn't reinstall Windows after changing ALL the hardware in your system including the motherboard and CPU and it works perfectly?? I've been contemplating selling my current setup and going SB, but I dread having to reinstall all my programs/pictures/ect.. but if that's the case then I will gladly pick up two brand new hard drives and give them the new disks so I can keep my old ones. :D:D

Really bummer to see that the 4th core didn't unlock. Hmm...
 
Skillz said:
Wait a minute here. You're telling me you didn't reinstall Windows after changing ALL the hardware in your system including the motherboard and CPU and it works perfectly?? I've been contemplating selling my current setup and going SB, but I dread having to reinstall all my programs/pictures/ect.. but if that's the case then I will gladly pick up two brand new hard drives and give them the new disks so I can keep my old ones. :D:D

Really bummer to see that the 4th core didn't unlock. Hmm...
Click to expand...

Yep I have had win7 survive a change of motherboard chipsets & cpu's more then once.. Only OS seems to be any better then win 7 at changes is ubuntu.
 
bastage said:
Yep I have had win7 survive a change of motherboard chipsets & cpu's more then once.. Only OS seems to be any better then win 7 at changes is ubuntu.
Click to expand...

I don't know about the ubuntu part. I had it installed on my old Brisbane setup a while back, took it down (just removed the hard drive) and replaced it with a new hard drive so that I can resume using my desktop as a desktop and not a server anymore, since I had picked up a 1U server. I then placed that hard drive in that hardware and it refused to boot. :mad:

So I put the stock hard drive back in and tried to add it as a slave, so I could pull the data off and no go. I ended up spending days trying to get the data off that setup but to no avail.

Maybe because I was using hardware that wasn't very common, it's a Dell SC1425 Poweredge.

With the being said, I do have a question about RAID 0+1.

Lets say I go ahead and pick up those two identical 1TB F3 hard drives(new ones) and put them in my computer as RAID 0+1, using them to mirror my current RAID 0 setup (The old ones). Could I technically sell the hardware with those hard drives(the new ones) only, taking the primary drives out(The old ones). Reformat them (The new ones) for the person who buys my stuff, then just use the old two hard drives (The old ones) in my new setup and go with it? RAID kind of makes this a bit tricky, eh?
 
GIGABYTE GV-N465MT-1GI GeForce GTX 465
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125343&cm_re=gtx_465-_-14-125-343-_-Product

180.00 free shipping

***************************************

MSI nVidia GeForce GTX460 OC 1GB
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php...GB-DDR5-2DVI-Mini-HDMI-PCI-Express-Video-Card

$174.00 (Promo Code: KICKOFF) also has a 20.00 MIR

***********************************

MSI ATI Radeon HD6850 OC 1GB
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php...-2DVI-HDMI-DisplayPort-PCI-Express-Video-Card

$164.00 (Promo Code: KICKOFF) also has a 20.00 MIR

*****************************

DIAMOND 5850PE51G Radeon HD 5850 1GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814103085&cm_re=5850-_-14-103-085-_-Product

$184.99 ($164.99 after mail-in rebate)
 
Skillz said:
Wait a minute here. You're telling me you didn't reinstall Windows after changing ALL the hardware in your system including the motherboard and CPU and it works perfectly??.
Click to expand...
Yup. Solid as a rock.
Skillz said:
Really bummer to see that the 4th core didn't unlock. Hmm...
Click to expand...
Yeah. But luckily the Phenom II X3 is a still a pretty decent step up from a C2D E6400. Thought I might break down and pick up a Phenom II X6 1055T + mobo combo from MC.
4LC4PON3 said:
GIGABYTE GV-N465MT-1GI GeForce GTX 465
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125343&cm_re=gtx_465-_-14-125-343-_-Product

180.00 free shipping

***************************************

MSI nVidia GeForce GTX460 OC 1GB
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php...GB-DDR5-2DVI-Mini-HDMI-PCI-Express-Video-Card

$174.00 (Promo Code: KICKOFF) also has a 20.00 MIR

***********************************

MSI ATI Radeon HD6850 OC 1GB
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php...-2DVI-HDMI-DisplayPort-PCI-Express-Video-Card

$164.00 (Promo Code: KICKOFF) also has a 20.00 MIR

*****************************

DIAMOND 5850PE51G Radeon HD 5850 1GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814103085&cm_re=5850-_-14-103-085-_-Product

$184.99 ($164.99 after mail-in rebate)
Click to expand...
Thanks for the links. Unfortunately, both Superbizz and Newegg charges tax to CA residents like myself. So those prices will be higher actually.

Skillz said:
With the being said, I do have a question about RAID 0+1.

Lets say I go ahead and pick up those two identical 1TB F3 hard drives(new ones) and put them in my computer as RAID 0+1, using them to mirror my current RAID 0 setup (The old ones). Could I technically sell the hardware with those hard drives(the new ones) only, taking the primary drives out(The old ones). Reformat them (The new ones) for the person who buys my stuff, then just use the old two hard drives (The old ones) in my new setup and go with it? RAID kind of makes this a bit tricky, eh?
Click to expand...
Depends on your current platform and your next platform: I.e you probably won't be able to recover the RAID arrays ata all if your current is an AMD and the future platform is an Intel and vice versa.

I recommend that you start a thread over in the Data Storage subforum to get a clearer answer.
 
Danny Bui said:
Depends on your current platform and your next platform: I.e you probably won't be able to recover the RAID arrays ata all if your current is an AMD and the future platform is an Intel and vice versa.

I recommend that you start a thread over in the Data Storage subforum to get a clearer answer.
Click to expand...

i7 870 to an i7 2600K
 
Danny Bui said:
Yup. Solid as a rock.

Yeah. But luckily the Phenom II X3 is a still a pretty decent step up from a C2D E6400. Thought I might break down and pick up a Phenom II X6 1055T + mobo combo from MC.

Thanks for the links. Unfortunately, both Superbizz and Newegg charges tax to CA residents like myself. So those prices will be higher actually.


Depends on your current platform and your next platform: I.e you probably won't be able to recover the RAID arrays ata all if your current is an AMD and the future platform is an Intel and vice versa.

I recommend that you start a thread over in the Data Storage subforum to get a clearer answer.
Click to expand...

Sorry man didnt know you was in CA. I guess your stuck with amazon lol
 
Guess what I got in the mail today? :D:

IMG_7097.jpg


Thats right! My new video card! Finally made a decision!

Now might be a little surprise to some of you as to why I chose the HD 6850 when it looked like the GTX 460 1GB was in the lead, here are my reasons for buying the HD 6850 over the GTX 460 and HD 5850:
- The GTX 560 Ti wasn't priced as low as the GTX 460 according to a few early previews that I read. I really really wanted to get that card once I heard about it. Then the actual reviews and price were published

- The price drop on the HD 6850 made it significantly cheaper then a GTX 460 card when comparing both cards on Amazon.com. The card I bought was $177 shipped, compared to the $205 shipped at the time for a GTX 460 with a 3 year warranty. And the lifetime warranty didn't hurt either.

- The HD 5850 does outperform the HD 6850 but the quieter HSF, lower heat, and the fact that it's newer and more than likely will get slightly longer driver support by AMD made the HD 6850 the clear choice for me. Not to mention the lifetime warranty I got from the XFX HD 6850 rather than the 2-3 year warranty of the Diamond HD 5850

- I wasn't planning on using Photoshop CS5 or Premiere Pro anytime soon. Those are the two big apps that I know of that takes advantage of Nvidia's CUDA tech.

- A good reason that I will show later

Now the unboxing:
IMG_7098.jpg


IMG_7099.jpg


Placed the HD 6850 next to my PNY 8800GT for comparison (looks beastly compared to it):
IMG_7100.jpg


And for shits and giggles, here's an old pic of my PNY 8800G next to my old 7900GS when I upgraded video cards 3 years ago:
IMG_7267.jpg


Now plugged in (Yes it's messy :():
IMG_7104.jpg


And here's the last reason I wanted a AMD HD 6850:
IMG_7107.jpg


Triple monitors!

I remembered from a while back that you can now use the onboard AMD GPU for additional displays if you have a dedicated AMD video card. This was important to me for a few reasons:
- I didn't have to buy another video card for my Hyper-V/Maybe ESXi server. Now I can use the 7900GS from my backup gaming PC in the server. The backup gaming PC will now get the 8800GT.

- It left that second PCI-E x16 port on the motherboard free for future usage

- I didn't have to buy a $30 VGA to Display port adapter that may or may not work just to get three monitors off the HD 6850.

And for the curious:
- The Sony 15" on the far left is connected via the motherboard's onboard VGA port. It ia set to portrait mode. Res is 768x1024

- The center Dell 20" is connected via a VGA to DVI adapter (My original DVI cable was accidentally cut) to the HD 6850's top DVI port. Res is 1600x900. Word of warning: The HD 6850 only supports one VGA to DVI adapter.

- The Hannspree 19" on the far right is connected via HDMI to the HD 6850. Res is 1440x900.

Yup definitely a hodgepodge of resolutions but I certainly enjoy it :) I actually would have had four monitors since I have a second spare 15" monitor that only has VGA. But the onboard DVI port on the motherboard does not support VGA to DVI adapters. So for now, I'll have to be content with just three monitors :D

Now to start working on that Hyper-V/ESXi server.

Total:
$80 - Phenom II X3 720 CPU unlocked to quad-core
$125 - Gigabyte -GA-890GPA-UD3H 890GX Motherboard
$110 - G.Skill 2 x 4GB DDR3 1600 RAM
$177 - XFX HD 6850 1GB
$27 - Coolermaster Hyper 212+ HSF
Free - Antec High Current Gamer 750W PSU
----
$519 shipped
 
Last edited:
Nice setup. Monitors with different resoultions annoy me. Although I am currently using different resolution monitors on my dual setup. 1920x1080 and 168x1050, but I only use the 1680x1050 monitor to full screen my FTP client so I can transfer the work I'm working on the main monitor over to the server without having to pull up the window.
 
Danny Bui said:
Triple monitors!

I remembered from a while back that you can now use the onboard AMD GPU for additional displays if you have a dedicated AMD video card. This was important to me for a few reasons:
----
Click to expand...

My little brother was using his GTX260 along with the onboard HDMI port on his AMD based Mobo for probably over a year. Ran a 23 and 22 LCD from the 260 and a 42' Vizio HDTV from the onboard HDMI.

He recently upgraded his machine with a new board, AMD 1090T and an HD6850, and was using the onboard HDMI again to the TV, until he built a small HTPC a few weeks ago.
 
Skillz said:
Nice setup. Monitors with different resoultions annoy me.
Click to expand...
Thanks! I'm use to differing resolutions by now: Before I bought my second 19" monitor, I had a 15" monitor as my secondary for 2-3 months. And before that, I use to hook up my laptop with a 15.4" screen and 1280x800 res with a second 15" monitor with 1024x768. So yeah, I have no problem with differing resolutions at this point

Zepher said:
My little brother was using his GTX260 along with the onboard HDMI port on his AMD based Mobo for probably over a year. Ran a 23 and 22 LCD from the 260 and a 42' Vizio HDTV from the onboard HDMI.
Click to expand...
Hmmm, odd. Because I tried the same thing with my 8800GT and it wouldn't work at all. Could be that I have an older card, AMD locked out Nvidia with their 880 series chipset, or Gigabyte was locking out Nvidia.
4LC4PON3 said:
Time for new case there Danny :)
Click to expand...

Yeah been thinking about that for the past month or two. Cable management is a bitch with this case. However that's gonna be a ways away until I can gather some cash for it. But so far, two cases have been at the top of my list of cases to get:

1) NZXT Phantom: Beautiful and stylish case IMO. Plenty of cable management features and cooling. However seeing it for $100 on Cyber Monday kinda makes me really wary of buying the case at its current $140. Plus it's a little loud from what I've seen.

2) Fractal Design R3: Its clean and simplistic look really really appeals to me. The ability to hold 8 drives and designed from the ground up as a quiet case really appeal to me. Unfortunately the case isn't available in the U.S yet,
 
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