On December 21st, Central Command issued a requisition order for a new high-performance computing solution with the most up-to-date components for facilitating fight-by-wire operations in the United States Midwest theater of operations.
Unlike previous upgrades, certain parts were specifically targeted and delays resulted from stuff not being available at order.
- Noctua NH-U12P: This has been re-released with an LGA1366 mounting kit, but Newegg wasn't stocking any version of it due to the impending re-release, so I got it off another site, xoide.com or something. When it finally arrived I discovered it had only older mounting kits. WOOPS
Now, Noctua claims they have a free mounting kit order program, but I submitted the information to them - at least I think I did, since the site didn't show any evidence that it had taken the pics they demanded - and got no response. Ended up ordering it for $10 elsewhere. Noctua seems to make good stuff but I'm not going to give good marks to their customer service or ease of understanding their product lines after that.
- Hard drive. Tom's Hardware (lolz) was pushing the Hitachi’s Deskstar 7K1000.B in December, so I had to get it from some buy.com seller. Buy.com has the most aggravating order process of the three initial sellers involved in this process.
- Power Supply. I was hoping to keep costs down by using a Seasonic PSU I was keeping around, only to realize I haven't put it in a machine because it's 500W. Got lucky and found a BFG 650W at a local Best Buy on sale. Not the brand I'd normally go for, but this should theoretically squeak by with the system I've set up, if only I can keep the parts from drawing too much power under load.
- Case. Enermax "Uber Chakra." Aside from the lol name and the e-SATA ports, it's a somewhat too big case with a plastic top panel that wants to peel off. Kinda shitty in some ways, but good enough in others; I mainly got it due to the good rep on noise and the e-SATA ports which I figured I'd be using. Didn't cut myself on it even working on it with just one hand.
- Video card.
Ahhh, the Powercolor Radeon HD 4870x2. No signal to the monitor, and since the Asus P6T motherboard isn't beeping, I assume this part is the culprit. From what I read there's the possibility that upgrading the P6T BIOS could solve the issue; for that, I'll need to pull the 8800GTS out of my other machine and put it in this one temporarily. I would love to figure out how to limit this card's power consumption, but whatever.
Aside from the fact that I put most of the thing together on one painful day with just one hand (got help at a few tricky points), I feel pretty good about this particular platform. Core i7 has a pretty decent heatsink securing mechanism, much better than the scary and cheap Core 2 Duo one. I managed to put the whole thing together without the motherboard complaining via speaker beeps; that doesn't mean I haven't messed something up in the build, but I feel reasonably certain it's just the 4870x2.
On that note, my next challenge will be figuring out how to underclock the 4870x2. I'd like to have a Vista 64 system running and not just for a better filesystem, but at the moment I'm starting to see that there's really no reason I should have gotten that card since I won't even be using it for a while - and by the time I run some game that demands its potential I'll still be hating its energy demands, I'm sure.
Random thoughts about the FALED Oscurido Upgrade Program
I haven't paid much attention to Hitachi Drives since the whole IBM Deathstar drive debacle (although I lucked out and had one last nearly seven years, even though I stopped using it some time ago) but the recommendations on drives that I've seen seem to recommend to the WD VelociRaptor 10K drives for speed. Definitely not the cheapest thing out there though.
I did my last system build just a few months ago (before the Core i7s made it out) and this system worked the first time I hit the power button (a bit of a rarity in my experience,) and has been pretty much rock solid ever since. Here's what my build looked like:
-Asus P5Q Pro (P45) motherboard
-Core 2 Quad Q6600
-Xigmatek HDT-S1284 heatpipe cooler (a bit big, might be a tight fit in some cases)
-8GB Corsair XMS2 (DDR2 800) RAM (maxed out the system capacity)
-BFG Tech GeForce GTX 260 (had to do some measuring to make sure this one fit in the case too)
-OCZ GameXStream 700W PSU (I thought about using my old one, but it didn't have the power connectors for the video card, and was only 500w)
-WD Velociraptor 150GB 10K drive (system drive)
-Seagate 500GB (from my old system, storage drive)
-Antec Sonata case (also reused from my last build)
-Vista X64 (I'll probably switch to Win7 as soon as the release version comes out though.)
I haven't done much gaming on this, but it handles Fallout 3 great at 1600x1200 with high settings.
I did my last system build just a few months ago (before the Core i7s made it out) and this system worked the first time I hit the power button (a bit of a rarity in my experience,) and has been pretty much rock solid ever since. Here's what my build looked like:
-Asus P5Q Pro (P45) motherboard
-Core 2 Quad Q6600
-Xigmatek HDT-S1284 heatpipe cooler (a bit big, might be a tight fit in some cases)
-8GB Corsair XMS2 (DDR2 800) RAM (maxed out the system capacity)
-BFG Tech GeForce GTX 260 (had to do some measuring to make sure this one fit in the case too)
-OCZ GameXStream 700W PSU (I thought about using my old one, but it didn't have the power connectors for the video card, and was only 500w)
-WD Velociraptor 150GB 10K drive (system drive)
-Seagate 500GB (from my old system, storage drive)
-Antec Sonata case (also reused from my last build)
-Vista X64 (I'll probably switch to Win7 as soon as the release version comes out though.)
I haven't done much gaming on this, but it handles Fallout 3 great at 1600x1200 with high settings.