It's deadweek, university rules state that "no exam or quiz shall be given on the week prior to the week of finals" you'll have to reschedule your quiz for next semester.
Roxy On DA...Finally!
I currently have this case and it's magnificent:
Foo that's the case I planned to get except with the solid side instead of the window. I like that it has two front fans and a top fan which is a 210mm I believe (at work can't confirm just going of memory). Also it has the bottom mount Power Supply but not the vent in the bottom like "B" does. I also like that the USB ports all are on top and angled to the front as my comp sits on the floor under my desk to the left quite a bit.
But like I said for me it is a toss up between the two and which one I find on sell at the time I start building...... or have CR build (crosses fingers that wifey is cool with me getting my own Christmas present MUAHAHAHA).
Yay for you Pyro! I can imagine how excited you are! 
@The Omega Elementress
Currently playing Project Willow lvl 50 DB/WP Incarnate Shifted Scrapper
This is an awesome thread, thank you Pyro and CR for sharing this with us. I am extremely jealous and now want a custom computer too! Hmmm maybe I'll start saving up now... *runs and puts pennies into his piggy bank*
Member of the Hyperion Force
Cooler Master makes good cases and B is a good choice. I am currently building a new PC for myself this Christma and choosing a case is sometimes the hardest part of the "parts selection process" for me. This go round (I've been building my own PCs since 85), I had narrowed my top 3 to be the Cooler Master Cosmos, the Black Sniper Edition or the Corsair 800D. But, New Egg had a surprise sale and the Silverstone TJ10 went on-sale for a cool benjamin below normal price and I had no choice but to go with it. So far the case has been a joy to work with.
Sir Zane (Lvl 50, Inv/SS/Nrg Tank);Atomic Jake (Lvl 50, Kin/Rad/Elec Defender)
Nikolai (Lvl 50, DM/EA/GW Brute);Raging Stallion (Lvl 50 MA/SR/Weap Scrapper)
Archmage Tristam (Lvl 50 Ill/Son/Psi Controller)
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-g=C800:5
Quote:
Correct Pyro, all parts are now ordered, the majority have already arrived and it was only the|
Originally Posted by Pyro_Nympho
Update: As I understand, the one last part finally arrived in stock, and was ordered on Tuesday. So we're getting closer to the building process (or CR may have already started). I'm really getting excited at this point.
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video card that was perpetually out of stock due to it's popularity and a shortage at the fab.
I am tracking it's (and two other cards for other machines) shipping progress and actually got a
message from UPS stating that shipping has been held up by one day due to us getting the mother of
all snowstorms here (18 inches fell in my neck of the woods) but if there are no other delays I
should have everything I need to complete the build this weekend (though normally I don't work Sundays).
Indeed I have started (mwhahaha
) building and I have some pics and more info regarding some ofthe cool technologies going into the build that I will be posting soon as well.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by PowerStream
Foo that's the case I planned to get except with the solid side instead of the window. I like that it has two front fans and a top fan which is a 210mm I believe (at work can't confirm just going of memory). Also it has the bottom mount Power Supply but not the vent in the bottom like "B" does. I also like that the USB ports all are on top and angled to the front as my comp sits on the floor under my desk to the left quite a bit.
But like I said for me it is a toss up between the two and which one I find on sell at the time I start building...... or have CR build (crosses fingers that wifey is cool with me getting my own Christmas present MUAHAHAHA). |
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Manny
This is an awesome thread, thank you Pyro and CR for sharing this with us. I am extremely jealous and now want a custom computer too! Hmmm maybe I'll start saving up now... *runs and puts pennies into his piggy bank*
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Sir_Zane
Cooler Master makes good cases and B is a good choice. I am currently building a new PC for myself this Christma and choosing a case is sometimes the hardest part of the "parts selection process" for me. This go round (I've been building my own PCs since 85), I had narrowed my top 3 to be the Cooler Master Cosmos, the Black Sniper Edition or the Corsair 800D. But, New Egg had a surprise sale and the Silverstone TJ10 went on-sale for a cool benjamin below normal price and I had no choice but to go with it. So far the case has been a joy to work with.
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a joy to work with but any of those high end cases you mention would be a great foundation for a gaming rig.
Sidenote: Zane if you are an old hand at building you probably already know this but for those that have are
not aware it is no accident that Silverstone makes high-end aluminum cases that resemble the CoolerMaster cases
of years past in build quality and construction... the team behind both are one and the same.
The ATCS team that used to design all CoolerMaster cases unhappy with their arrangement left
the company en masse to startup their own company called... Silverstone.
For a time, CM cases were dissapearing as stock dried up and there were no new cases forthcoming coming
and SS had yet to put forth any designs of their own, there was a dearth of high-end case designs
(there was of course the other major player Lian Li and a few other minor players) but thankfully CM is back
and going strong with a whole new case division and now with serious competition from SS and LL prices have come
down (used to be that you couldn't find a CoolerMaster for under $250) and both companies
are pushing the envelope with new designs on a regular basis.
Ok some updates and pics what's going into the system.
Samsung makes the best ROM drives and have for a while now. There really hasn't been a worthy challenger to the DVD drive crown.
Oh well I'll take a pair of your fastest "burns every format under the sun except Blu-ray (which won the HD standards war) and HD-DVD
(which is dead now)" Samsungs then... oh wait what's the L at the end of the model number stand for in this latest revision? 
That's right now there is no need to compromise, you can have the best DVD drives and LightScribe support thrown in...
oh and Speed Plus too since you know this rig is all about the speed.
For those that don't know Speed Plus goes by different names but is essentialy the ability to burn at a faster rate
than advertised on the media (disks) you buy. In the case of these drives a lot faster... up to 22x speed on
16x media and up to 12x speed on 8x media.
Lightscribe on the other hand is more a cosmetic technology. It was invented by the code monkeys at HP
and is licensed out to other companies as a superior method of disk labeling.
No need to bother with the black sharpie anymore to scribble a label for your discs... and why would you
want to when you can have results like these instead?
Pyro you always seems to be creating cool custom graphics for things so this should
be right up your alley bro.
P.S. oh and now the discs come in 5 colors...
...including orange.
Man I've wanted lightscribe for a good long while now. I hope you enjoy it Pyro, and send me a mix cd when you get it so I can see your scribing skillz 
wiggidy wiggidy wack dawg!
Bunch of stuff to post throughout the day today (assuming I find the time lol) and I will be wrapping up stuff from earlier
when I said things like "...more on this later" and also going over more of my build process
too and posting up more teasers, so stay tuned.
Some great news...
THE BEAST LIVES! MWHAHAHHAHAH!
...sorry had to get that out of my system... ahem.
It successfully passed it's alpha stage power up test late Saturday night/early Sunday morning and is on it's way to beta stage now.
Strangely I ordered three copies of Windows 7 (2x32bit and 1x64bit) and even though I ordered the 64bit
first both the 32s have arrived but the 64 has not. Shipping tracker says it's sitting in a town one hour away...
no reason given why it's sitting there. 
I will give it until Monday evening to arrive and if it's not here I will drive out and pick it up. Can't use a 32bit one
for Pyro's rig as he has waaay more than the 3.5GB cumulative of total memory in his computer addressable by a 32bit OS.
Anything more than 4GB would be going to waste so make note of that anyone building/buying/ordering a PC built
if you have more than 3.5GB total (including the memory that comes on your Videocard) in your system make sure you get
a 64bit operating system or you are needlessly bottlenecking yourself.
Note: I know some of what I say in this thread is "Well Duuuhhhh" to experienced builders but I don't know
who all will read it so I'm trying to help people avoid some of the rookie mistakes. If all this is old hat to you than
just skip ahead/skim through and sorry for the "obvious" stuff.
A few points about my build process:
The APT (Alpha Power Test) is assembling the basics like the Motherboard, CPU/HSF, Video card, power supply, ram etc
(no hard drives, or any non essentials though and no hardwiring anything) into the case arming the front switches
and turning it on. At this stage I am just checking to see that
A. the main components work
B. everything will fit (few close calls which I will post pics of later but nothing touches that shouldn't touch )
C. the voltages on the PSU are stable.
D. CPU temp is within spec
E. the ram speed and all it's timings are correctly recognized by the mobo's SPD (that's Serial Presence Detect)
mode which in this case the RAM is actually faster (and there is a ton more than the mobo expects ) so I have to
enter the values and tweak timings by hand.
F. there is a picture on the screen (i.e the videocard is in working order)
Note: D also verifies a correctly mounted and functioning HSF (read: Heat Sink/Fan or "that thing that cools the processor"
which is not a problem with the stock Intel cooler as it's just four plastic push pins and comes with some thermal compound pre-applied...
But stock just don't cut it for a rig of this caliber and with a custom mounting bracket like the Crossbow bolt through system
and a HDT (Heatpipe Direct Touch) aftermarket upgraded cooler (which requires a different kind of application or the TC,
Arctic Silver 5 premium in this case, and a entirely different mounting prcedure) involved and without the use of a slideout
motherboard tray it's an exercise in manual dexterity and attention to detail to get it all done up right the first time (yay me ).
On most any my normal builds it would be nearly complete (but oh there is much custom work and tweaking to go)
I would just power it down take it off the test bench and load the rest of the stuff, clean up the wiring, install the OS.
i.e a flavor of Linux, Windows XP or Windows7,
....or maybe Vista or Apple OSX....
HAHAHAHA snort, ok just kidding about the last two lol
Then it would be time to run a 12-24 hour (depending on the system) burn in to check for stability, thermal envelope
(temps stay within the desired range), and that all components are working successfully and benchmark as expected.
Load up security and any software ordered + any bonus goodies like codecs (short for coder/decoder) and such and it's ready to go!
For those that have asked:
Build time ranges... my fastest was 1 day (including the 12 hour burn-in) and my longest was 5 (notincluding 24hour burn-in)
days but typically it's 2-3 days from the time I have all the parts on hand. Delays, parts lost or damaged in shipping to me
(thankfully rare), a non-successful burn in (i.e it works but runs too hot so I added more/better cooling and re-burned
it or something failed {that is why I do the burn in so if anything will fail I catch it before it goes out the door and fix it...
if a system passes my battery of tests I'm sure there is nothing the client will throw at it during day to day use that will
come anywhere near what it's been through already and so they should have years of trouble free PC goodness. }
and I replace it and re-burn) can add time to that. Also holiday shipping can add many days the closer it gets to Christmas.
That is all for this wall o' text... more to come later
For all that made it this far here is another teaser pic of some of the custom touches going into Pyro's rig.
Hmmm what be the purpose for all these silly looking "sticks" and blue Cheerios?
...and what's that strange black checkerboard in the background???
I have no idea. They look like spacers or supports.
Totally unrelated: I have to point out that I have trouble reading CR's longer posts due to the random line length. You must have a ridiculously wide screen, dude.
Okay I'll take a shot but I honestly have no clue nor time to search fu this....
Black Checkerboard is some kind of filter and or sound proofing. I only say sound proofing because it slightly resembles Dynamat (which is usually silver) used in car audio sound proofing/deading.
The other guys are some kind of supports because they appear to be rubbery. But I don't know where'd they go or what to.
I'm thinking sound and vibration dampening materials, myself.
But I think those are not Cheerios, they're Certs...with Retsin. Ding!
My Deviant Art page link-link
CoH/V Fan Videos
Quote:
Aha! your search-fu will not save you from inevitabl.... err I mean... I'm sure someone else will help out or have a guess. |
Originally Posted by Pyro_Nympho
I'm stumped...anyone gotta guess?
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by The_Foo
I have no idea. They look like spacers or supports.
Totally unrelated: I have to point out that I have trouble reading CR's longer posts due to the random line length. You must have a ridiculously wide screen, dude. |
You could say that... funnily enough they are using CoX to advertise their ultimate panel (5th image if you scroll down or hit the design tab and choose "display") I just added another slightly smaller one recently too.
So you are saying the lines are out of whack on your screen Foo?
Dang I thought by cutting my paragraphs even they would look better on a smaller screen?
What kind of monitor do you have Foo? And does anyone else have that problem with my text?
Quote:
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Originally Posted by PowerStream
Okay I'll take a shot but I honestly have no clue nor time to search fu this....
Black Checkerboard is some kind of filter and or sound proofing. I only say sound proofing because it slightly resembles Dynamat (which is usually silver) used in car audio sound proofing/deading. The other guys are some kind of supports because they appear to be rubbery. But I don't know where'd they go or what to. |
It is indeed a close relative to (you could say a premium version of) Dynamat which is most used for speakers and automobile damping. Good one Powerstream.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by DarkEther
I'm thinking sound and vibration dampening materials, myself.
But I think those are not Cheerios, they're Certs...with Retsin. Ding! |
Ding Ding (lol) we have a winner. Sound and Vibration dampening materials it is.
The black sheet is to make anything it's bonded to acoustically "dead" or not able to resonate or transmit sound. The black sticks are for "soft-mounting" fans so their spinning motion doesn't transfer to the metal of the case and the "Certs" are decoupling grommets to soft-mount hard drives and the like. All the above combined with the right parts (silent fans etc passive coolers and aftermarket addons) make up my "Cool and Quiet service. It's normally costs $100 plus labor but since Pyro was being so patient waiting on the video card (and now Windows7 ahhh holiday shipping
)coming back into stock I decided to hook him up for no charge. There is always a little material left over from a kit and I get extra sticks that build up so ever 4th kit or so I have enough raw material left to make a 5th for free so it just costs me time and effort... Pyro is the lucky recipient this time. Combined with a case that has huge rubber feet (I'll put up a pic) that decouple the tower from whatever it sits on you should barely be able to hear this sucker when idling. When gaming the videocard fan ramps up but I am still fine tuning the profile on that and most of the rest of his parts are thermally "aware" so cooler his system runs the less sound it will make... right now its running almost 9 degrees cooler than I even expected so yeah... we'll see how it holds up to the burn-in.
P.S. If there is a way to put up short video clips to Photobucket (I've seen them just don't know how they are done) I would post up a before and after of just how dramatic a difference Cool and Quiet can make.
This was to be teaser pic #8 but sorta spilled the beans early on it... yeah huge rubberized case feet... they are like triple size of anything else I have seen before. They own Mwhahaha
Another teaser for ya.
Cool! Your system comes with extra fingers!
You never know when you might need those...
My Deviant Art page link-link
CoH/V Fan Videos
Ah so you DID go with the cooler master case! Cool!
Ok dumb question time. What kind of things use those hole/grommets on the back panel of the case. I see cases with it all the time but it just seems odd to me. Why would I want random wires/cables coming out the back of my comp? Curious minds want to k ow!
Those grommets on the back are for liquid cooling connections, either an external system or external radiator.
your wall of text post looked weird on my screen too. The forums are based on 4:3 screens so i dunno how you managed to do that.
Roxy On DA...Finally!
Okay I guess that makes sense. I just haven't seen and external cooling systems.
Okay so techy question time. The two things that I really just don't get when I dream build on newegg are motherboards and power supplies. There are so many variables it boggles my mind. So CR what are some of the things that you look at for each that you deem mandatory vs "Oooh shiney!"?
Quote:
Whoa, 2560 wide. Mine's only 1440. Daaaamn. I think my videocard would collapse in on itself and disappear if it tried to run anything a that rez!|
Originally Posted by ChristopherRobin
You could say that... funnily enough they are using CoX to advertise their ultimate panel (5th image if you scroll down or hit the design tab and choose "display") I just added another slightly smaller one recently too.
So you are saying the lines are out of whack on your screen Foo? Dang I thought by cutting my paragraphs even they would look better on a smaller screen? What kind of monitor do you have Foo? And does anyone else have that problem with my text? |
Anyway, when you manually put the breaks in, the forum wraps the lines around and then wherever you put a break, it adds another.
So it ends up looking like this:
I will give it until Monday evening to arrive and if it's not here I will drive out and pick it
up. Can't use
a 32bit one
for Pyro's rig as he has waaay more than the 3.5GB cumulative of total
memory in his computer addressable by a 32bit OS.
Anything more than 4GB would be going to waste so make note of that
anyone building/buying
/ordering a PC built
if you have more than 3.5GB total (including the memory that comes on your
Videocard) in your system make sure you get
a 64bit operating system or you are needlessly bottlenecking yourself.
Probably easiest for you to just type and add breaks at the end of a paragraph and save yourself some grief!
Holy crap, 2560px...
I run 1440x900 too! Although i'm trying to find something in the 30" range that'll do full 1080p, but those are expensive...and i'll need a bigger desk. I think a 22" screen is the biggest screen i can fit on it. however, as a TV replacement which i'm also considering a 32-40 would be hella awesome. I totally drifted here...sorry.
here is a external LC kit.
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/88...html?tl=g30c83
I think thermaltake used to have a big external radiator (like 3ft tall) but surprisingly that wasn't very popular so it looks like they stopped making it, i can't find it anywhere.
Roxy On DA...Finally!
This is shaping up to be a dream rig for sure, great work CR, I like what I see so far. Thanks again to you and Pyro for sharing this with us, I have enjoyed the trip and the knowledge you have shared with us. I don't know much about building computers and their parts so following this has taught me a lot. Makes me want a custom computer badly so I can reap the benefits of the upcoming graphics upgrade.
Member of the Hyperion Force
I'd like to know what kind of price range this thing is in the end, just so I know how broke and how far from affording something like this I actually am.
They work fantastically for every other type of game though, and I doubt that Pyro is the kind of person that is OCD about needing to be able to juggle with an SDM on a wire attack. :3
and butt fugly but there is no lag of any kind... f> df> f> fp> SHORIYUKEN!
You're welcome.
deep into it... socket 1366 is currently only for core i7 and supposedly (unconfirmed by intel) has
an problems with an air gap and some coolers not seating correctly. Socket 1156 is
currently for both for core i5 and core i7 chips and is problem free.
Intel generally follows a tick/tock strategy, ticks being little bumps in speed and occasional new features
or instruction sets, tocks being large steps forward in processing power or die "shrinks" (reducing the
scale of the fabbing for increasingly smaller chips) so a good time to buy is right after a tock in that if
you buy before one your chip becomes the "old generation" when the tock hits.
The last tock was called the Nehalem (45nm) micro-architecture and that covers all the "core iX" current chips.
The next tock will be the Westmere micro-architecture ( a die shrink to 32nm) and will start with clarksdale and
lead up to Gulftown which will be the first of the 6core processors (we have dual 2core and quad 4core currently).
Assuming their roadmap holds (they have been known to change it) Gulftown will premiere on socket 1366 and be
called "core i9" which is what Arcanaville is referring to.
That said I don't see too many people rushing to drop their quad cores to pick up a 6 core chip as it won't be
that much different until more apps and games are multi-threaded and able to make use of all those cores.
The best candidate for upgrading to 6core will be people with single core and dual core setups who really
need more power or had their pc die on them. People with quad cores can hang out until at least octo-cores
are released the first of which is to be called Becton and will be based on the Nehalem (45nm) micro-architecture
(ya bass ackwards I know) socket 1567.
Phew. Still with me?
Ok long story short anyone needing a new comp in the near future should (in my humble opinion) grab a quad-core nehalem
(or a dual core if on a strict budget, or not needing much processing power i.e. light duty websurfing and email machines) because...
A. They are plenty fast for now and anything coming up in the next few years
B. Have gotten fast enough that even single threaded apps run comparable on them
C. 6core is probably overkill for 95% of people and will not be out until 2010 anyway
D. When hex 6core chips are released they will be expensive and quad will be an even better value.
E. Even after hex-core and octo-core are out a quad-core won't feel "slow" by comparison and it will be many years before they are "obsolete."
F. While 4 cores show a nice bump in performance I believe 6 will be getting into diminishing returns until software makes several big strides forward.
etc. etc.
There is more but you get the idea. Oh and lest I neglect it AMD is still a perfectly viable chipmaker as
well and they have a series of Tri-core that make for a good buy and hold position as well and unlike
Intel their last 3 sockets have all been backwards compatible. Meaning you don't need to buy a new
motherboard (and new ram) to get a newer faster processor just buy the one you want and drop it
into your old setup (may need an update of the BIOS for some motherboards).
So strategy in a nutshell: Get off single-core and grab a Quad or Tri-core and then hold out until Octo or Deca-cores become mainstream.
Hope that wasn't overly confusing or that at least the end summary gives people some good info to plan their future upgrades.
P.S. the one big gotcha now as far as sockets go is the BS marketing practice of keeping a name just
because people are familiar with it rather than giving a new retail name to every series of chips.
You can right now but a core-i7 in a socket 1156 and in a socket 1366 and they are NOT compatible.
Yes that means your brand new core i7 processor may not fit into your equally
brand new core-i7 motherboard if you are not careful to look at the specs.
Buyer beware.
If my case has a side window, it's because I liked everything *else* on the case and couldn't find it without.
For instance - Current gaming system case: Antec Sonata II
Work system case - Ultra X-Blaster. Mostly for price.
Cases for my upcoming build - Likely this, still potentially this whenever it comes available again..
Solid cases, good to build in... and as non-flashy-lit-scrolling-bright as I can find.
Now, aside from that - it's still "B" (I actually considered the case at one point.) I just like the look better.
It looks like the overwhelming consensus is B the CoolerMaster then.
I notice both the links you provide Memphis are CoolerMasters too and I have built in both the Cosmos
and several variants of the ATCS models however both of those are the very high end and each cost more
than triple of both case A and B.
Antec's are really popular as well especially the p180 series and the Sonata's and more recently the
"hundreds" cases (though I personally don't care for the hundreds as there are better cases in that price range).
While I have not built in that Ultra I have built in cases that are essentially the same type.
The flashing and blinking and fancy effects is really a personal choice some love the light show some hate it.
I can build as much or as little bling as the customer wants... that is one of the nice things about going custom... choice.
When you buy a dell... your dell looks like your neighbors dell and everyone else's dell too... with literally
hundreds of case styles to choose from it makes no sense (to me) to go with a dull clone.
P.S. Ok enough "work posting" for me it's my birthday and I'm going out (again) to celebrate. Cheers all!
One --> Artz Giveaway <-- To Rule Them ALL!
I will settle this. ORANGE FTW! - Ex Libris