Configuring new build with Rebuilder/CCE focus

/me whispers so car doesn't hear me.. quite right, in fact i bought a posh SatNav for it ..however other than that my car is way past getting new parts, for the last couple or 4 years it gets just the bits required by each MOT, all other problems stay unfixed for good, 'tis a bit of a boneshaker, 160,000 miles on it now.... that LG dvd-rom drive i have has done almost as many miles too come to think of it

 

Well the new machine was eventually built, and running silently, had to see it running to believe it was in fact as silent as it was supposed to be; all going fine, then updated the BIOS (just because it was 2 versions behind). Major mistake was the understatement of the year as it would no longer boot, nothing whatsoever worked to get around it; so have had to RMA the board, and will most definitely not go near updating the replacement board; it didn't help that it had been a very long build up to that point, and in the end that was due to wierd reboots and somewhat obscure messages about 'overclocking failed' each boot time (plus it didn't help that the manual AND the BIOS errors are in pigeon English). Anyways, it turned out that there were 2 jumpers for the FSB that i'd overlooked. But the annoyance was that it all just worked, then i was stupid enough to flash the BIOS. Had done it countless times on countless bits of kit but not once had a firmware update turned something into a paperweight before but as i say, i won't make that mistake twice. Machine felt very very quick though, while it was working.

Realised when i'd first opened the motherboard box that there was in fact no onboard video, luckily i had an old Matrox Millenium lying spare (who hasn't!); have just bought an old cheap and cheerful (Silent) Geforce 6200 as don't want this machine for games, that'll do a treat. Am looking forward to an extended bout of movie encoding when the replacement mobo turns up, got quite a movie backlog now

 

Well the new replacement motherboard turned up, machine is all together again, haven't reinstalled much software yet, just wanted to see how DVD Rebuilder fared, a rather impressive 50mins to re-encode Pirates of the Caribbean World's End.... this thing sure flies!

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_jump.cfm/335628/3619796

 

Absolutely, though Hank's encoder is able to utilise all 4 cores but haven't had chance to try it on the new machine yet.

P.S. if you do get the Q6600, like the other guys advised, make sure to get the G0 revision of the CPU

 

I can certainly vouch for that; left machine on overnight moving many hundred GB around various disks and it greeted me this morn at 25C, nice (though the room was a tad frosty too)

 

Santa popped by early and noticed my PC Case had a few spare spaces so PC is now fully kitted out as follows -

CPU: Core 2 Quad Q6600 (G0 edition) @2.40GHz ie no Overclocking (yet)
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS 9700 LED Cooler (with fan in silent mode)
PC Case: Antec 900 (with all fans in silent mode)
PSU: Corsair HX Series 620W Modular
Motherboard: MSI P35 Platinum
Memory: 4GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 PC2-8500 1066MHz
Sound: Onboard 5.1 audio
Speakers: Logitech X-530 5.1 system
HDD's: 6 Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA-II drives (couldn't fit any more in)
Optical Drives: 2 LG GSA-H66NBAL 18x SATA DVD-RW's, Benq DW1650 IDE DVD-RW
Graphics Card: cheap nVidia GeForce 6200LE (Silent Edition)
Monitor: Acer AL1916WAS
O/S: Just good old XP (as don't want Vista on there, stealing resources)

Used to swear by CCE as my favourite encoder but now prefer to use Hank's Encoder (version 0.22) http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_jump.cfm/335628/3628341

..as it properly utilises all 4 Cores .

edited a little- as have added a couple more bits and pieces since the original build...

HDD's: 4 Western Digital WD5000AAKB 500GB drives in USB2.0 enclosures; also moved the 6th internal WD5000AAKS into an eSTATA/USB2.0 enclosure; also added a spare WD2500JB 250GB drive (previously used in one of my xboxes) into yet another USB2.0 enclosure as a spare work drive.
This brings the total of hard drives to 11. .
Optical Drives: added an LG 4167B drive internally (for ripping duties), also added 3 Benq DW1650 writers in USB2.0 enclosures
Misc.: a couple of USB2.0 leads with backplates to fully utilise the 2 unused onboard USB connectors

 

Exactly, they're the original Antec fans so they're staying, they're set to the lowest setting, nice and silent; as to the LG drives, i'm not a big fan of LG burners anymore, my 3 or so 4167B's have always been a bit flaky, the new new LG SATA's i only bought as (from what little i could find on the internet said that) apparently they are quite quiet; all i ever read about SATA optical drives is that they're all noisy and these are hopefully quiet. It's not that i want everything completely silent, it's just that there's no excuse in this day and age for noisy optical drives; remember back when 40x and 52x cdrom drives came out, a lot of them were stupidly loud, it seems SATA opticals are like that; if the LG's are too loud i might send them back. I haven't been at home much to do any actual burning, i have a backlog of about 70+ movies to do

The Quad runs very well, so much so that it's now frustrating using other PC's, ie my older ones and any crappy work machines

 

One thing i cannot stand is whining hard drives. Some of the drives i have are donkey's years old, they get recycled thru all the older PC's every now and then, but any that whine go in parent's pc's (as their ears are a little less sharp!), but at work we have to use old crap pc's long past their sell-by date; for instance they are too stingy to give us new pc's for linux use but my main one is ok as it's a P4 2.4 (and it's quiet!), though my other 2 pc's are slower, the other linux pc is an old P3 800 with a high-pitched whining drive (headphones are worn often) and the XP pc is a P4 2.66 i think but it runs like crap (but at least it's quiet). There's always whining hard drives around the office but we get used to it over the years as long as it's not too close by. Our 100s of call centre agents have brand new pc's (dual core Exx0 series) and they just use Internet Explorer and MS Office, so we've complained and we've been promised new ones soon; at least that means we can keep the faster of our current machines and use for linux and ditch the really old ones (or take them home). But yes, i've always got by with old machines, when you get spoilt by new stuff it's very frustrating going back to the old; (but of course that only really applies in Windows, any of my linux pc's are generally ok grunt-wise, it's only Windows that lets the side down!)