New rig in the works

[Looney]

I did it, I decided it was time for a new rig. My old one is acting funky with a possible bad motherboard and SLI no longer works.

New Rig:
Core 2 Quad 2.8
8 gig ram, (4X2gig)
2 Terabyte HDDs
MSI Neo2 MB
280 GTX Video (876meg)

All stuffed into a uv reactive clear acrylic case lit with 7 blacklight cold cathode tubes. I should have the MB and video card Fri or Monday. I will post pics when I'm done building it.

[ghost]

Whoo, gotta love the smell of new computer parts, that's one idea of heaven for me, lol.
Say how much the parts are altogether, if you don't mind me asking?

I was checking the video card out, wouldn't it be a 280 gtx? Typo there I guess, heh.
Overall, system looks darn fine. The ultimate question would be... to.. or to not.. overclock?

[Looney]

LOL Yeap 280 my bad LOL I'm not big on over clocking so I probably won't but I do tweak a bit.

I own a comp store so my parts are all at cost, total for me is $1937. We would sell it retail for 2999.99 if we build it, about 2500 if we just sell the parts.

[Doom_Dude]

I don't see the point in overclocking that machine...

Looks like a fine set up. Hope there will be pictures along the way.

[Looney]

Oh pics are coming LOL, I won't need a flash the comp case glows bright blue with the blacklights on. LOL Did I say glows... It could be used to land a plane in dense fog! LOL

[Aliotroph?]

Hehehe, monster computer. Mine has a flashy case. It's a cheapo case but has analogue gauges on the front that glow blue, along with some lights that make it look like part of one of Mystic's maps. Only problem with that is it's damn bright and kinda hard to sleep when it shines in your face.

[MR_ROCKET]

Was looking around for that motherboard, I didn't see an Evo 2, I guess short for Evolution 2. but they have Neo 2 and 3's.
There's an ASUS Evolution MB though. I used to like Asus back when but the past few years they havent been all that.
MSI and Gigabyte have always made good boards though.

Hell even ECS are making better boards than ASUS now days heh.

[Looney]

DOOOOOOOOHHHHHH LOL I meant Neo2 I hate acronyms LOL I always mess them up.

[ghost]

Heh, acronyms... *Imitating Morpheus* Welcome to the real 'computer' world..

Originally Posted by Looney

I own a comp store so my parts are all at cost, total for me is $1937.

Would that be in US dollars? Seems like a valuable system set up.. I think.... darn currencies!!

Originally Posted by Doom_Dude

I don't see the point in overclocking that machine...

Heh, it's not just making it faster, the purpose of overclocking is just sheer insanity and pleasure (), forcing the computer to achieve at a much higher point, compared to stock speeds. I am sort of an overclocking fanatic, I have an IntelC2D E6600 running 3ghz (stock speed 2.4ghz)

Originally Posted by MR_ROCKET

Hell even ECS are making better boards than ASUS now days heh.

That's interesting, I've always thought ASUS always made great boards, well my computer's running an ASUS P5B-Deluxe and my mum's pc has an asus p5k-se (i build all the pcs in my home) and I must say I have no complaints, I would like to hear your side of the story.

If I wanted a good quality motherboard, what brand should I go after? I mean, hypothetically, for a intel quad-core.

I'm planning to do a really wicked and heavy mod when I finish my exams, just for the sake of starting a hobby and being creative. I will get a good ol' Coolermaster Stacker 810, and cut with my dremels and paint it all over, add plenty of perspex, modder's mesh and LEDs with resistors, heck I might divide the airflow into chambers with perspex sheets as well. Think I'll make an artistic 'cyberdemon' mod. I'll definitely post progress logs in teh technical sub forum.

[Aliotroph?]

I find those P-series boards from Asus tend to work better than the M-series ones, which fail nonstop in interesting and baffling ways (my computer crashes if the room is too cold!).

Yeah, he's talking in American dollars. Right now Canadian dollars are worth about the same, making some things cheaper to buy in the states.

Overclocking is fun. Good way to destroy some hardware if you're not careful, but definitely fun.

[Looney]

Yeap, what Aliotroph? said it is in USD

Our shop was using the Asus boards and almost 65% have come back. I have been a long time fan of ASUS but, I have lost confidence in the ASUS products.

Overclocking will shorten the life of hardware. I would rather just spend a little more and not overclock to get the same performance.

I just added 2 x 22in LCD monitors and LED lit keyboard and mouse.

[Mystic]

That sounds like a pretty special PC.

My old pc has an asrock board (cheap ASUS ) and just died for no obvious reason, just didnt power up one day. Ive tested all the other bits and they are all fine. I wont be buying from them again. I never overclocked it.

[Looney]

Nothing special, just an upgrade for me. LOL

Here are some of my other builds... Clicky Thing Here

[ghost]

I like the looks of your Armor case there, looks neat. I've got a junior silver one, gotta love 'em. That blue paint inside the armor is really nice. What kind of paint is that?

[Looney]

Originally Posted by ghost

I like the looks of your Armor case there, looks neat. I've got a junior silver one, gotta love 'em. That blue paint inside the armor is really nice. What kind of paint is that?

Thanks, I used Krylons X-Metal paint

[Doom_Dude]

My first ASUS board completely died after a couple months of use and that was a few years ago, so I ended up not being an ASUS fan at all. I've been using MSI boards since and must say I really like them. That and DFI but I think MSI is better.

[MR_ROCKET]

Ah sorry ghost, I guess I shoulda been more specific. It seems that back in the Athlon days Asus was good, however on a lot of the boards if the onboard audio wasn't a bit glitchy, the software for it was. Which wasn't the biggest problem but on some of those older boards the caps would like to swell up and sometimes pop, when this happens it can cause a lot of things to go bad, namely onboard ide controllers or hdd controller cards etc. and hard saying what else heh. Not all those boards were bad, most lower end Asus boards. ~ which is something (holds nose) Pc Chips boards were known to do also.lol
But now days, or with-in the past 2 years when they really started pushing the p5's socket 775 boards out, the bios would either be somewhat broken or may need a bios update before the board would even fire up, which is a real pain, meaning the bios chip would need replaced before it could even be updated. yes new boards without a post. for example, no way to update the bios when the board wont even post beep. heh though this was early dual core cpu days also.
Of course not all Asus boards were bad, but again not all Asus boards were good either. :P

[Looney]

Things kinda changed here, Due to some miss communication I ended up with a 260 Vid card. When the card came in it had been what we thought was a return so we were going to RMA it back. To save time we ordered a replacement card. It came in the same way... static seal was broken and a new one was placed over it... In the mean time we got word from BFG that they tweak all the 2xx cards and reseal them. So now I have two tweaked 260s in my lap and a MB that cannot be SLIed. LOL So, I'm doing a MB change and RAM change. The extra parts will be built into a comp for the shop to sell so it will not go to waste.

New setup as follows:
Core 2 Quad 2.8
Asus 790i Striker II Extreme
2x BFG NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 OC 896MB PCIe 2.0 SLI
8 gig RAM OCZ DDR3 2000
X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series
2x 1 TB HDDs
2 Light Scribe DVD CD burrners

The only reason I went with Asus is because it is the best board for the SLI and sound set up I will be using. It is highend ASUS board as well so if... if it does blow on me I know ASUS will replace it.

[ghost]

I'm not a fan of the SLI system, I don't think it does really boost the performance, just the benchmark 3D mark numbers. I had an SLI system before, 2x 6600gts with an Asus A8n-sli, AMD64 3500+, I wasn't sure whether it's performance was good compared to a 6800gt since it was the first time I built the system. Then I gave one of the cards to another family rellie, and I noticed that the performance was hardly any different, probably even better, especially in Half Life 2/Counter Strike, and Doom3 slightly as well. Bought a 7900gt, which I still have now, awesome performance for its price.

If I had the money, I'd go for an ATI 4870, but otherwise your system's pretty good heh. *drools*

I never bought a gaming sound card, what is the difference between an onboard sound card and that sound card you are getting??
Is it even worth the extra hundred $?

[Aliotroph?]

EAX? I certainly never even used that when I had it. What I hate about my onboard sound is it picks up the interference from everything. I can tell my fan speed and what my computer is doing just by listening to the static in my headphones. I noticed my mic isn't working either. It used to work and reinstalling the drivers did nothing. Either the onboard sound is broken or my headset is busted. Shall test this with an external Audigy tomorrow. If it's the sound card my friend has an extra I can have. If it's the headset I'm happy to take recommendations on good ones.