white noise

Just made some tweaks to my case. I replaced the stock case fans with a couple quieter chrome ones and cleaned up the wiring a bit. The new fans have 3pin connectors that can be plugged into the mobo for rpm monitoring/control.

I also added two 4″ red cold cathodes to light things up. That makes for a really nice effect.

Even with the lid on, redish-orange light pours from the side grills and leaks from the front slots.

No worries, I mounted a switch for the lights in a PCI blank so it doesn’t need to look like a 16 year-old’s box all the time (I can just hear Lesko commenting on that now).

So, I guess it’s time I add it all up.

All in all that’s a little more than my goal of $2k, but this does include a new monitor and a copy of windows. This post will be updated with any additional purchases.

I’m in the OC now. No, not California, overclocking-land. Since getting the machine together I’ve been researching and tweaking, researching and tweaking. My first 3DMark06 score was 4656. Since then I’ve oc’d the graphics card (gpu from 475 to 525, mem 1360 to 1500), tuned the ram timings to the rated values instead of SPD (now at 2-3-3-6-1T from 3-3-3-8), and last night I started overclocking the cpu and fsb (actually htt for AMD).

I was sad to (re)discover that the cpu multiplier for the X2 cant be changed in the BIOS – it’s stuck at 11. Oddly enough though it can change itself – at one point I had the fsb cranked way up and the multiplier dropped itself to 9. I’m currently at my conservative goal of 2.42GHz (fsb at 220 and multiplier at 11). The is with the RAM still at 2-3-3-6-1T with a speed divider of 12, making the run at 201.7MHz – which isn’t really oc’d, but the timings are tight. The best part right now, is that everything is still at default voltages (1.39 core, 2.6 ram). I know I can take things a little higher with overvolting, but I don’t want to go too much higher (especially while all my cooling is still stock). Now that I’ve matched a stock 4800+ I’m pretty happy.

Latest 3DMark06: 5100 (will post more detailed stats later). I still need to run it through a prime95 test for stability, but gaming is working great.

So after about two months of piecing it together how does it do? It do good, real good. My first test was BF2 since that’s my game of choice lately. I decided to give it a good test right from the start by maxing out all the video settings at 1280×1024. As expected, my machine crushed the game. Frame rates were as high as 90 and rarely dropped below 60 fps even in the highest points of action. Silky smooth and hyper detailed.

The first step in putting the beast together was taking apart the case (removing the drive cages). Then I added the standoffs and screwed down the motherboard. It took some work to get the cover plate over the rear ports and into the back of the case, but in the end I’m glad it was a snug fit. After that I dropped in the power supply and connected the 24pin power to the board. It was at this point I realized just how much room was in the case…lots!

Check out that reflection in the chrome power supply. Too bad it will be tougher to see once everything is installed.

Next, I installed the processor which was a piece of cake with its ZIF socket.

Then I put a dab of Artic Silver on the cpu and I attached the stock heatsink.

Next to be installed was the RAM and the graphics card. I kept the BFG card in the PCI-E slot away from the power supply mostly to separate the two heat sources. Otherwise, not much note here. Everything slid into place just fine. Same with the DVD and SATA drives. Then a game port with a couple USB ports in the back. And lastly a lot of wires to connect everything up(front controls, fans, power to drives, DVD IDE cable, touchscreen USB and power conenctions, etc.). The only real surprise was that my 2 pin P4 power connector was almost too short to reach the far side of the motherboard. I’ll get en extender when I have the chance to clean things up, but it’s fine for now. Here’s a look at everything hooked up.

Saturday I loaded the OS, updates, drivers, and…ah crap, the DVD drive turned out to be on it’s last legs. It must’ve shaken out of alignment in shipping. It managed to load a few things (including BF2, thank you!), but the reads kept stalling and failing on many disks. So that’s going back to newegg for a swap. In the meantime, I’ve popped in my very old CD burner (which is actually in the pics above).

Today the last two key components arrived: the graphics card and the OS. For the graphics card I went with the BFG 7900 GT OC. It’s a 256MB, 256 bit, PCI Express x16 card which uses Nvidia’s latest chip (24 pixel pipelines). It comes out of the box slightly overclocked, but I might end up taking it higher. And of course I might eventually pick up another one to run them in SLI.

As far as the OS, I went with XP Media Center. Pretty easy choice here – cheaper than XP Pro and added media playback features that will work great with the small touchscreen on the case.

Now let the build begin!

Yet another box from newegg at my door today. This time it was the CPU and DVD burner. For the CPU I went with the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+. It’s a dual core, 64 bit, 2.2 GHz (stock), with a meg of L2 Cache for each core. The included heatsink is actually a nice unit, too – we’ll see how it performs soon. My goal is to overclock this to 2.4 GHz that the 4800 chip runs at (which is $170 more).

Also in this shipment was a Lite-On DVD Burner. It’s 16x for DVD+/-R, 8x for dual layer, and 48x for CD-R. Oh, and it does Lightscribe direct disk labeling. A sweet buy at under $50.

Both items pruchased at newegg.com

One more component showed up today, a 80 GB SATA 3Gb/s hard drive. It’s the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 and has a 8MB cache and NCQ. Sure, I would’ve prefered a 16MB cache, but those jump up in price a fair bit. This little guy should be nice and speedy for the OS and core applications. I’m still debating whether to pick up another one for RAID 0 or maybe RAID 1. I’m also still shopping for a deal on 250-300 GB SATA 3Gb/s to do the heavy lifting.

Purchased from newegg.com

The next piece just arrived, the A8N32-Deluxe motherboard from Asus.

This is one killer board – two x16 PCI express slots, 6 SATA II ports, on-board RAID controller, on-board 8 channel audio, dual Gb LAN, and so on. It’s probably a bit more than I needed for a dead processor line (939 socket), but it’ll serve me well through the next chip gen or two before I switch.

Asus really provides a great package – lots of cables, OC and tuning software, extra external ports to install if you wish (fire, usb, game, serial). It looks great, too, with the black PCB and copper heatpipe.

Purchased from newegg.com

OK, it’s not really part of ‘the build’, but it will be part of the system. I picked up a new 19″ LCD monitor today. I’ve been looking at getting one for a couple years (remember my VIAO laptop has a 12″ screen), but I’ve gotten more serious lately with the build happening now. After much debate (what’s new) I decided on the Sony HS95P.

I really wanted something a little higher-res and/or widescreen, but $140 in rebates swayed me to this one at well under the $400 mark. Its feature set is pretty average (1280×1024, 4:3 ratio, 12ms response, DVI and VGA in, decent contrast and brightness), but the picture is AWESOME. Super crisp, and super deep. I’m a big fan of Sony’s XBRITE treatment and this monitor is no exception.

Purchased from CircuitCity.com