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  • Finally, a new computer

    I've finally gave in to building a new computer. My old machine has been running on the same 1GB of RAM from 6 years ago, and the same WD Raptor drive (36GB) from 6 years ago. The board, CPU, and video card were upgraded 3.5 years ago.

    New machine:
    Phenom II 720 Black Edition 2.8GHz (OC 3.4GHz @ stock voltage )
    Corsair XM3 DDR 1600 RAM 2x2GB
    Radeon 5770 1GB video card (haven't tried overclocking this guy yet)
    WD black 640GB hard drive
    WD green 1TB hard drive
    Corsair H50 watercooler
    Seasonic 650W power supply

    All are housed in an Antec Three Hundred case.

    By the way, the dormant 4th core of the processor does work, but I will keep it off for now. Supposedly 3 cores are better for games than 4 cores.



    "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

  • #2
    Wow! I was just happy to get a new Seagate external 2TB drive to back up everything! Sure beats my 8 year old VAIO that sounds a lot like your old comp.

    Looks pretty good buddy!

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    • #3
      Very nice. Short of going SSD which is ridiculously expensive, this config is about as good as you can get. Whats the rpm on the hard drive?

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      • #4
        GN, congrats on the new rig buddy. Hope you got a nice big LCD to go with it.
        Any reason you didn't go the core i5 route?

        Also hows the Corsair H50 working out for ya? Opinion on most websites is that something like a Zalman 9900 or 9500 would do just as well for about $20 less.
        Change the antec 300 for a case with a removable motherboard tray, you can hide al those power and SATA cables.
        Last edited by bolo121; 14 Apr 10,, 14:24.
        For Gallifrey! For Victory! For the end of time itself!!

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        • #5
          Wow.....gunnut...that's alot of firepower for downloading pr0n! :))

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by 7thsfsniper View Post
            Wow! I was just happy to get a new Seagate external 2TB drive to back up everything! Sure beats my 8 year old VAIO that sounds a lot like your old comp.

            Looks pretty good buddy!
            It's time to upgrade. You can buy a $500 laptop that blows away anything from just 3 years ago.

            Originally posted by chender View Post
            Very nice. Short of going SSD which is ridiculously expensive, this config is about as good as you can get. Whats the rpm on the hard drive?
            They are both 7200 rpm. The "black" model has 5 year warranty while the "green" model has only a 3 year warranty.

            Originally posted by bolo121 View Post
            GN, congrats on the new rig buddy. Hope you got a nice big LCD to go with it.
            Any reason you didn't go the core i5 route?

            Also hows the Corsair H50 working out for ya? Opinion on most websites is that something like a Zalman 9900 or 9500 would do just as well for about $20 less.
            Change the antec 300 for a case with a removable motherboard tray, you can hide al those power and SATA cables.
            I only have an ancient 19" LCD (1280x1024) that I bought 5 years ago.

            I stayed away from Intel because the platform is more expensive. A Core i5 plus motherboard will be easily $350. I spent $205 on my AMD board and CPU. Also, even these lower end processors have more than enough to feed my video card. Getting more power is just going to waste.

            The Corsair H50 is good, other than it's a pain to install. I ran Prime95 for 8 hours and the CPU was still around 26C.

            A case with removable tray will cost more. Besides, there's no need to hide the cables. I close the case and they're hidden. ;)

            Originally posted by YellowFever View Post
            Wow.....gunnut...that's alot of firepower for downloading pr0n! :))
            I wouldn't know how much power I need to watch pr0n...:P
            "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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            • #7
              Nice unit! time for me to update mine.

              More powerful power supply maybe? Don't know how much gaming you will do, especially if you want to overclock the video. Just a thought...

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              • #8
                Sigh...water-cooled. Just like an M1917 .30 caliber

                Blows my air-cooled i5 out of the water :(
                “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by texasjohn View Post
                  Nice unit! time for me to update mine.

                  More powerful power supply maybe? Don't know how much gaming you will do, especially if you want to overclock the video. Just a thought...
                  Actually a 550W power supply is more than enough for most machines, according to Anandtech.com:

                  Debunking Power Supply Myths - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News
                  "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
                    Sigh...water-cooled. Just like an M1917 .30 caliber

                    Blows my air-cooled i5 out of the water :(
                    Your i5 is still way faster:

                    CPU Heirarchy Chart : Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: April 2010

                    You just need a more powerful video card. Watercooling is not needed for these new processors. I just wanted one because I've never had one. Also, it's quieter. I can't stand the fan noise.
                    "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by gunnut View Post
                      Your i5 is still way faster:

                      CPU Heirarchy Chart : Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: April 2010

                      You just need a more powerful video card. Watercooling is not needed for these new processors. I just wanted one because I've never had one. Also, it's quieter. I can't stand the fan noise.
                      I wantses it....

                      I only have an ancient 19" LCD (1280x1024) that I bought 5 years ago.

                      I stayed away from Intel because the platform is more expensive. A Core i5 plus motherboard will be easily $350. I spent $205 on my AMD board and CPU. Also, even these lower end processors have more than enough to feed my video card. Getting more power is just going to waste.

                      The Corsair H50 is good, other than it's a pain to install. I ran Prime95 for 8 hours and the CPU was still around 26C.

                      A case with removable tray will cost more. Besides, there's no need to hide the cables. I close the case and they're hidden.

                      I saw a nice 24 inch EIPS panel on sale from dell a while back, it should be cheaper there in the US of A, it would use all the power of that HD 5770.
                      About the motherboard+cpu combo, $205!, thats just Rs 9500 or so heck of a deal. I so wish India had a newegg equivalent. By the way any reason you took the oldest phenom II, rather than something like the phenom II 955 BE its 4 good cores and also a decent overclocker? I think the difference would only be around 40$.

                      Sadly the P50 is not carried by corsair india and no one i know in the US is coming any time soon to India. I see from your pic that the radiator is mounted on the inside of your case, are the hoses long enough to try external mounting? My amd stock fan is driving me nuts with its high pitched whine, ambient temp here is around 30 c so its always flat out. That's the only thing i miss from my old rig, the nice quiet zalman cooler on it.

                      About the cables yeah if using water cooling the airflow around the CPU (and therefore cable management) would not be that much of a concern.
                      Last edited by bolo121; 15 Apr 10,, 16:32.
                      For Gallifrey! For Victory! For the end of time itself!!

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by bolo121 View Post
                        I saw a nice 24 inch EIPS panel on sale from dell a while back, it should be cheaper there in the US of A, it would use all the power of that HD 5770.
                        About the motherboard+cpu combo, $205!, thats just Rs 9500 or so heck of a deal. I so wish India had a newegg equivalent. By the way any reason you took the oldest phenom II, rather than something like the phenom II 955 BE its 4 good cores and also a decent overclocker? I think the difference would only be around 40$.
                        The 720 is not old. It's the same core as the 955, only one core was disabled. I went with it to save money. All these new processors have more than enough power to drive the video card that I want to buy. It's pointless to get anything more powerful, since I don't do video editing or photo processing. Since I am a tweaker of computer hardware, I want to minimize cost while trying to squeeze out max performance. I found out there's a good chance that the dormant 4th core could be activated, so I went with it. The 4th core really doesn't do much in today's gaming. In fact, I saw several tests showed that the 4th core makes the CPU perform worse than a 3 core processor. So with this 3 core processor, I have the option of either running 3 cores or 4 cores, if there's proof that the 4th core improves gaming performance.

                        Originally posted by bolo121 View Post
                        Sadly the P50 is not carried by corsair india and no one i know in the US is coming any time soon to India. I see from your pic that the radiator is mounted on the inside of your case, are the hoses long enough to try external mounting? My amd stock fan is driving me nuts with its high pitched whine, ambient temp here is around 30 c so its always flat out. That's the only thing i miss from my old rig, the nice quiet zalman cooler on it.

                        About the cables yeah if using water cooling the airflow around the CPU (and therefore cable management) would not be that much of a concern.
                        The H50 has short hoses and it's for interior mounting only. The entire unit was sealed at the factory and I didn't have to do anything more than secure the water block and the radiator/fan.

                        Have you tried ebay or amazon to seen if anyone will ship the H50 or a nice Zalman fan to India?
                        "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Very nice, it is a beauty.

                          I built a WC dual CPU Xeon a few years ago, it runs the CPU cores at about 5 C above ambiant - had an accident when I was changing out the noisy pump, and dripped some coolant on the main board - id didn't notice until I fired it up and it quit, black screen - If I was doing it again, I'd take more precautions.
                          sigpic"If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees.
                          If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children."

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                          • #14
                            Ever since about 4 years ago, I've been a laptop person. Had 3 laptops in 4 years. The one I've got now suits my needs just fine (since I'm not much into the gaming scene). I can surf the web, listen to music and watch movies, have enough power to play the few games that I do play, and can take it anywhere I want. The laptop I have now I bought 2 months ago, and hopefully will get me through at least a couple years of uni. At 100% the battery lasts for about 4 hours while listening to music and surfing the web, which is not bad either. It's got a 17.1" widescreen, a number pad, touch sensitive controls and a remote.

                            Just for comparison, I gave my family my old laptop, the one I had before this one to replace the PC which was on it's last legs. Took off all the data, plugged it in to the flatscreen LCD monitor, and they were good to go
                            Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

                            Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

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                            • #15
                              I finally bought a new monitor to go with my new PC. It's an LG E2350V LED monitor.

                              Newegg.com - LG E2350V-SN Glossy Black 23" 5ms HDMI Widescreen LED Backlit LCD Monitor 250 cd/m2 DC 5,000,000:1

                              Several people at work said LED monitors have superior picture quality compared to LCD. So I went with this one. It's a decent sized monitor with extremely bright screen. The color is a bit on the "cool" side. I had to turn down the blue and up the red to get a warmer color scheme that I like.

                              This monitor has an HDMI connection. I plugged the cable in but for some odd reason the screen does not display my desktop that covers the entire screen real estate. There is a black/blank band around the entire screen, and it doesn't seem to be in native resolution either because letters are fuzzy. I plug in the DVI cable and the screen goes to native resolution at 1920x1080 occupying the entire screen. I'm not sure if this is due to the HDMI output of my video card or this monitor has some issues with HDMI input. I should test it with my DVD player with HDMI connector.

                              There was an added bonus with this new monitor. I used to get motion sickness when I play FPS games. It was pretty bad over the last few weeks playing Left 4 Dead 2. I switched out my old monitor for this new one and I didn't get nearly as sick over the last 2 days. I have no idea why that is but I am happy about it.
                              "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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