The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Lian Li are more like the Wartime tanks of PC cases. Utterly unstyled (note, not un-stylish), very expensive, but almost indestructible.
FOr ref, the last of those three is a modified Antec P182, there are a lot of those about.
Coolermaster are a bit more like, I suppose Fords. Very popular, inexpensive, build quality not too bad but could certainly be better, some stylish ones, some not so stylish ones.
I'm not sure who I'd compare Apevia to, someone that makes very poor quality products that look ridiculous.
Omegaman: The HAF is nice, if I had the money to play around with builds (some day I'm sure I will), the HAF is one of the cases I'd love to try out, along with the Cosmos-S, the NZXT Khaos & Tempest and the Antec P190.
I agree with Russ, of the three choices. Coolermaster offer the best value, as they aren't crap but they aren't absurdly expensive. Still, for $50 give me an Antec Three Hundred and for $70 an NZXT Alpha
Omegaman, again: There is NOTHING a cheap PSU can do with ease. As for the board, it's an Asus, why would you? LMAO! That aside though, it's far more expensive than the DS4H, and the DS4H is by far the best AMD motherboard.

Russ: Two nvidia cards isn't crossfire, it's SLI. Likewise two ATIs are Crossfire not SLI. The only boards I trust to do SLI in any form are the X58 boards for i7 as they aren't unreliable as hell.
Quad SLI isn't actually THAT bad in principle - the problem is that by the time you need it, the only cards you can use for it only have 896MB of RAM per GPU, not 1GB, so at the ultimate high settings, they run out of memory and run worse than the pair of 1GB cards. Triple SLI is the way to go for now for absolute performance, but anyone with any sense would use Crossfire for now as it's so much better value for money. This goes for single cards too. I have yet to see any occasion since the end of Q2 2008 where an nvidia card is better value than an ATI one. The only exception is Linux-based HTPCs, where the 8400GS cleans up!

 

doing some benchmarking. first time in a while. doing them at different clock speeds. this is at 3.4ghz. super Pi.


gonna do sandra testing soon and orthos.gonna take it up as high as 4.0ghz if it lets me. test it at each clock increase. i havent had it over 3.6ghz in a long time..lol

 

First few of mine at 3.65:

If only Superpi was multi-threaded...

 

thats not your quad is it sam????? WOW???thought they would be alot better numbers.

 

Superpi only uses one core, so dual, quad, octa, whatever, you get the same scores. Since I'm running at 3.65, and you're at what, about 3.8? There's not much to tell. Since Superpi is such a teeny app, the extra cache doesn't help either, we both have enough. Those with 1M Cache chips might struggle though.

 

i took that test at 3.4ghz...

on another issue.. im in the bios changeing things to test at different clocks,,, i cant get it to do anything over 3.7ghz... will not get stable.. i even got my mem back to 800 down from 1066 did all the little tweaks that one does.. i cant get it stable over 3.7ghz..not without takeing the volts higher than im willing to go.. the highest i have had the volts is 1.425v with vdrop it is at 1.382? which is as high as im gonna take it.lol
back to 3.6ghz and leave it alone..

 

That is odd, perhaps Superpi considers memory speed...

 

Creaky, Now there is a handsome looking case, LOL. Ahh hey, looks arnt always the best factor, Though it helps. Heck, I would take that beige tower over my pavilion. My pavilion is a baby. It wants to be a tower when it grows up. LOL

 

what a tower that would be a great modifing job there to do...
i seem to cause a case war between the cooler master & Lian Li case in here...i think it's fun to take a case and modify it around and change it up make something different that some one else don't or give people ideals for them self my question do you think antec got there ideal from cooler master have top and side fan ports? I'm a guy that believes in good air flow in all my cases..the case below has been modifyed big time with the power supply moved to the bottom and in place to fans added and the hard drive bays turned same as the cm690 dropped to the floor dampers add for sound reduction two 120mm added to cool the video cards..Me..I would have cut two 120mm in the top...

 

Top and side fans is a feature common to the majority of cases and has been for a while. Coolermaster may have been one of the first companies to adopt the practice but I don't think they were THE first.
I personally am not one of the people that looks straight to coolermaster or Lian Li for cases, but I would very much like to work with a Stacker or any large Lian Li. The small ones aren't really to my liking, though I'd certainly like to see a 690.
I really want to get into the PC building business, but I'm not really sure how to drum up interest, there are so many of us in the market.

 

Nice build there Will. The PINCHED sata cable made frown though.
Im seeing alot of cases with the PSU area on the bottom. Is that the future of them now? Seems to me, PSU's put off a bit of heat, Not mine, but...heat rises. I suppose if a large fans pulling it out immediately though...

 

It doesn't take much for that heat to be removed without it rising. Also, efficient PSUs don't generate a great amount of heat unless under heavy load. Overall I'm no fan of the bottom-mount PSU as I think it's more awkward for cable management and it's too easy to drop things into the PSU.

 

lian-lis are just pure pure pure class!

for once i agree with russ about them

that are amazing, looks at my case:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112141&Tpk=pc-a70b



(any excuse to show it off )



they are amazing

you can take apart the entire case, because it uses screws for everything, 99% anyways. the mian frame has the top and bottom bars riveted to the side bar so its very strong

its an immaculate case, and harvardguy calls is buckingham palace

and i AGREE!

as for cable management:

 

cincyrob,

I agree with you 100% on the cases! The quality is there with the Lian Li, but I would also buy the Cooler Master. The Lian Li seem to lack any sort of style, even in their very high dollar cases. The Lian Li cases look too utilitarian to my eyes.

The purple Sata ports can be used for any Sata device, not just E-Sata! They are ideal for E-Sata because you can hot swap them with the computer running. For me, it makes checking a Sata hard drive so much easier than having to install it in the machine. I don't get all the reviews that complain about the "crappy" GigaByte ports. They are as good, or better than the 6 intel's IMO!

BTW, what do you think of these ODDs? Samsung IDE Model SH-S222A. I was going to get the Optiarc AD-7220, but I've heard too many conflicting reports about them not being so good. What's your thoughts about them?

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I know. Quite irritating. Ive heard that the 7220 is AND isnt a lite-on. I wish somebody would just give it to me straight. Cause im sure not buying one to take it apart for everyone elses benefit. Sorry guys, but 20$ is better thrown out the window if it turns out to be a FALSE NEC. If im paying for NEC I want NEC!!!

 

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2009/01/21/gigabyte-ga-ex58-ud4p-and-ds4-review/8

to back up russ (once again, i should make a habbit of this )

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2009/01/21/gigabyte-ga-ex58-ud4p-and-ds4-review/15

shame they dont OC so well, but they cost a good £30 less than their competitors (£50 ish less with the DS4) the MSI SLI costs £60 more than the UDP4

 

Russ, After seeing Spamual's post, I must thank you once again. It looks like Gigabytes got the current bragging rights, as well as some decent overclocking abilities. You guys just pushed me into the right direction.
I suppose it would have happened anyway though. Ive been itching to give another manufacturer the benefit of the doubt. Most the time when I do, I dont regret it. We'll see

 

Shaff,
Just throw it a teething ring and wait a couple of months! LOL!! Since they didn't do any OC tests, whether it OC's well can't really be predicted by this review. Besides everyone has had problems with X58 with compatibility/hardware problems. Eventually they will all come right! I have no personal interest in i7, as it's just too expensive to build for my budget. While the performance may be great, so is the cost!

Russ

 

The Gigabytes are excellent, but I think I'd probably try for the UD5 if I went all out. I like my no nonsense motherboards, and also the low profile southbridge should allow dual graphics of even the top end cards. Gigabytes also tend to improve overclocking with BIOS revisions, so let's wait and see (Rather than Asus which update the BIOSes to stop them from failing to POST... lmao, or DFI which update to add yet more confusing features!)