The (new) Official PC building thread!

You know what's funny? Every time I see your posts and you use your ellipses I imagine you taking a big breath and then you start talking again lol.

So what else is new? I see tomshardware updated their charts to include the HD 3800 cards.

 

Lp531,

I can get angry but I'm rarely nasty. I admit to calling someone who was bragging about ripping people off on E-Bay and His friend, who was also bragging about it, a Piece of S#!t, knowing that I could have been suspended for it. Someone had to say it, and I felt I owed it to myself after having been ripped of on E-Bay by someone else pulling the same thing on me! I was lucky with the rip-off I got, as my credit Card company squashed the deal and gave me my money back!

Fred made his choice after getting good advice from a number of folks here. That's the whole point isn't it, you listen to other people and what they have to say and you make your choice. I fully agree with his choice for the reasons he gave. He doesn't know a lot about building a computer, and his most important need is for communication with his kids under extenuating circumstances and need. He made the best choice for him, based on that need. A bird in the hand, as they say!

He'll be in a much better position when the summer comes and his Son is around to do it with him! I'm sure he learned a lot that he will carry on and refine depending on what's available at what price when he's ready and the beauty of it all, is it will be a project for him and his Son to do together. Can't beat that, and I've gained a friend!

Sincerely,
Russ

 

LP you seem to be a wiz at finding good deals. What's the cheapest I can get a Freezer 7 Pro?

 

They are $21.99 at Directron...SVC...and Newegg...thats off the top of my head...at least they were a couple days ago...

I would say Directron...will probably be...lowest for you...

I've been looking at Coolers for the last couple days...I'm looking for the right...low profile cooler...for my HTCP...I want to add a 120mm fan in the top of the case...directly above the CPU...my present cooler won't clear with a fan in place...
I think a down firing flower design...would be the most...appropriate choice...

I use the breaks to help clarify...trains of thought...I basically replace all (,) (.) and (pauses in speach) with (3)...

It works for me...I think I am...the only one on the site...that does it...

Heres the coolers...I've narrowed it down to...I'm kind of leaning towards...(1)...or (3)...
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16835133009
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16835103041
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16835185041
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16835133008

 

Lp531..Where did U find Hitman..All I've seen is bad Cams

 

Hitman is a jittery cam...1/5 for quality...
Of the ones I listed...only these are cam's...
A vs P Requiem...2/5...the movie sucked hard...
Hitman...1/5
National Treasure Book of Secrets...3/5...I have (2) more of these downloading...I'm hoping to come-up with a better one...

 

Lp531..Thats what I thought
Check out this site its NICE I use it a lot
http://www.rlslog.net/category/movies/

By the way does anybody know any reliable online outlets for DVD Media in Canada..or any U.S. OUTLETS that DELIVER to Canada

 

Thanks...I bookmarked it...
I buy from supermedia...I do not know if they ship to Canada...
If so...they are one of the Best for Media...

Just finished D/L another National Secret...It was in spanish...LOL...It was better video quality...but won't work for me...

 

Lp531..Go to that http://www.rlslog.net/category/movies/
I get excellent copies

 

If you can fit the Scythe cooler in your PC, that will probably work the best. Scythe coolers tend to work better than Coolermaster ones. I've not heard of nmediaPC so I can't comment on their coolers.

 

Lp531,

I've not been a big fan of what I call "Side Firing" CPU coolers. From what I've seen, they work fairly well if you have a good side fan blowing out but call me Quirky, I prefer a Rear firing ones like The Zalman or Arctic Freezer. What's with that crazy heat sink on the top of the base of the Scythe anyway?? Sort of defeats the purpose of a heat pipe cooler as the idea is to get the heat away from the CPU and transfer it to the fins on the heat pipes.

Looking at the Scythe and some others, what's with all the crappy cheap-a$$ ways to mount your fan on some of these coolers. You spend good money for a supposedly passive cooler that comes with "Paper Clips" or even less to hold an "optional" fan. I've found that any looseness in mounting a fan leads to vibration and buzzing sounds from the fan! I would like to try one of those supposedly passive coolers like the ThermalRight Ultra 120 or the Tunig Tower, even though I don't like the weight bending my MB, but the damn things are so tall, they won't fit in my case unless I remove the side cover fan an mess up my carefully crafted case airflow. If some of these huge coolers get any bigger, the case fans will have to be mounted on the outside of the case.

I did some looking around at cases and discovered that there are a lot of cases out there that are under 8" wide. not just the lesser manufacturers but name brands like Thermaltake that make some cases that are only 7.5" or less wide! So how do you install one of these big monsters in a case like that?

Just my thoughts!
Russ

 

Thermalright are indeed guilty of the inability to attach a fan properly to the cooler, but in their defense, the clips they provide do work well, and are easy to use provided you can install the cooler to the motherboard outside the case. If your case isn't big enough to do that, then that's when the problem occurs. The downside is that this is the case for most of us!
As for the design of it, it is indeed unusual, perhaps it's a way of boosting the surface area of the heatsink. IMO though, you could do that just by extending the top section further down!
Traditional straight heatsinks (or side-firing as theone puts it) have always worked, but if so many manufacturers are turning to side-exhausting ones, there must be a reason for it. Unfortunately in a limited size case, the traditional type are usually the only ones that fit.

 

sammorris,

Back in the day where traditional desktop cases ruled, I would quite agree as the heat would rise and be drawn out by the case fan/fans. Then along came "the heaters"! Prescots, that you could cook hotdogs on and some of the earlier Athlon and Athlon XPs. The Pentium D-9 series and AMD's 64x2s were a bit better, many fitted with Zalman 9500s or Arctics. Improvements came along with the Zalman 9700s and the Freezer Pro series.

Today with all the thermal efficiency that the new CPUs bring, it seems heat is becoming less and less of an issue. Yes the Tunig Tower and ThermalRight 120 ultra will still cool better than either the Zalman or the Arctic but unless you are stressing things to the max, which most of us don't do, the difference in temps is just too small for all the headaches found in trying to got one of those huge mothers shoehorned inside an average mid size case. In your case, desiring a near silent PC, it's a viable solution and it works pretty well for you. A lot of us don't mind what we consider normal computer noise, so high CFM fans running at lower speeds fit the bill nicely for the vast majority. Zalman 9500/9700 and the Arctic Freezer series will fit most modern cases and motherboards and do a good job in the process.

I'm not about to wet my pants over the prospect of 5C cooler temps when the max I hit these days, now that the AS5 has completely cured is 53C, which is far below the limits established by Intel for the CPU! When I borrowed my friend's Tracer 1066 memory, the temp only went up 1C to 54 running Orthos at 3.8GHz. At 4.0GHz it hit all of 55C but at a voltage I do not deem safe, at least not for me! I feel comfortable running at 3.8GHz with my CPU voltage set at under 1.50v, and for me, the risk of doing damage to my expensive CPU running it at 1.57v just to reach 4.0GHz just is not worth what I gain. My opinion of course, but it's my computer I'm concerned with, and it's health is important to me!

As you know, I've worked hard to limit the noise and still get good airflow throughout the case. Everything works well and i'm more than pleased with how it all comes together and delivers the performance it does. With all the hard work, the case now stays very clean inside, which is remarkable in itself given the extreme dust levels here in SO Cal. I have confidence that it's going to boot up each and ever time I turn it on. It runs day in day out like a fine swiss watch. All the components work extremely well together and I don't anticipate any problems now or in the future. You can't ask for more than that!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

The Athlon X2 may have been a distinct improvement over the Athlon XP (the single core 64-bit certainly was) and this is probably partly due to the larger heat-spreader. The Pentium D9, perhaps, but the D8 definitely not. Those were the hottest running CPUs I can remember. My old XP may have got hot, but the heatsink it had on it, well, suffice to say I wouldn't trust it on my overclocked Core 2!
It's interesting that you pull 55C at max (at 4G anyway) , since when I have my CPU overclocked, by the time it reaches that temp (this was with my freezer 7) it becomes unstable. I'd have to keep the temps below 53 for it to run well. It wouldn't crash, but the screen would start flickering... 43C may not be the lowest of the low, but for the noise level I can get that at, I'm more than happy.
I can't help but wonder how far I could get an E6750 at the same temperature...

 

sammorris,

I'm sure it will run out of steam between 3.3 and 3.4GHz. I had mine at 3.386GHz and it was stable but my core temps were doing a tap dance and the ultimate test, folding would bring errors, unseen in Orthos testing. If it won't complete the Wus, then there's unseen errors. I wonder how well some of these higher overclocks would do folding? I'll bet many would fail!

If I knew then what I know now I would have waited a little longer and gotten the E6850 for it's higher 9x multiplier as it would work better with PC6400 800Mhz memory than the 8x multiplier of the E6750. I may still wind up doing that in the future!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

An "If only" situation there... At present I have no means to upgrade anything in my PC, but really, I've no need to.

 

sammorris,

You know the old saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"! LOL!!

Russ

 

Quite agree. I need to sort out some issues with my XP install, but hardware-wise, everything's sound and has been for quite a while now.

 

Good Buy on a P/S...
Corsair TX 750W ATX 12V Power Supply - CMPSU-750TX $149 with a $50 rebate $99
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=206178325&adid=17070&dcaid=17070

@sam
I thought maybe you fell of the Earth...thats got to be the longest stretch with out a post from you in this thread in a while...I thought maybe...2 weeks with that Laptop running Vista...maybe just pushed you over the edge...

 

The PSU is pretty good. If course it has support for so much stuff that it has lots of cables and it's not modular.

I regret not buying a modular PSU. I had one before and it was much less clutter.