My new system

Buck

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He may have picked the RC-830 Evo from Cooler Master since it is only one of two daul-8800GTX certified cases. It isn't that bad; he could've picked something from Therm*ltake. :)
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Whoops. Crap. Wasn't thinking about Intel SLI support.
Grr.

Maybe I'll password protect the BIOS...

The case he wants is this one, which is basically the most hideous thing I've ever seen.
 

P5-133XL

Xmas '97
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If he's that interested in fantasy-land performance, What about 15K SCSI/SAS drive for booting and then extra SATA drives, if he needs more space. He obviously doesn't care about the cost ...
 

Sol

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Surely he wants water cooling and a 1000watt PSU just for the purposes of over clocking... It seems such a shame to disappoint, especially when the video cards he wants can be obtained factory fitted with water blocks... Add say 4GB of low latency OCZ or similar RAM and you'd be onto a winner... Of sorts...

It may sound elitist but if you can't build a system like that by yourself I don't like the chances that your going to make the most of it...
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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My first experiments with the BFGTech 8800GTSes are a bust. I either don't have a power supply that's beefy enough to power one on, or I have two broken cards.

I'm using an Antec 550W SLI Certified PSU and an X2/4600 at the moment. 1 hard disk and 1 stick of DDR2 - a pretty minimal system. An X1650 works fine, as does the onboard video. I'm only trying one card at the moment, not SLI.

Typical nVidia quality.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Er, GTXes...

And I will say, in their defense (y'all might want to write this down), that the cooling solution on those cards is a lot nicer than the 7900GTSes I handled. The fan in those things, at full bore - as they are at boot time - is audible but not disagreeable.
8800-series cards look similar to tip-magnetic fans.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Try #2:

My gaming PC has a GA-K8N Pro-SLI and is installed in a P180 enclosure with a 700W Enermax SLI certified PSU.
I find that an 8800GTX collides with even a low-profile SATA cable on port #2, preventing the card's installation.
When I removed that cable, I still couldn't get either card to initialize and actually display something.
 

ddrueding

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Definatly sounds like bad cards Merc. I have that same motherboard in the same case with a larger gaming card installed (X1800 IceQ). I switched to SATA cables with right-angle ends on them.
 

Adcadet

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Anyone see a problem with this PS? The gang atSPCR thinks highly of it. My current PS is flaking out on me, and I need a new PS for my next build anyway so I thought I'd give the 300W model a shot. Does anybody have concerns about using a good 300W PS for a typical system? My current computer is:
- Athlon 64 3000+
- 1 stick RAM, may eventually go to 2
- separate sound car, separate video card
- two HDs currently
- one DVD burner, one DVD reader

Using this power supply calculator it looks like my they recommend about 290W, and 330W if I add in 2 HDs. For the sytem I'm building (Core 2 Duo, two sticks of RAM) I'm guessing my power requirements will be slightly less.
 

mubs

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As has been said before by several people, Fortran Source makes quality power supplies; they used to be a bit noiser, but if SPCR is recommending them they've probably addressed the noise issue. I would not buy a 300W in this day and age; you don't want to be borderline maxed out. A 400W or 450W would have enough headroom.
 

ddrueding

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A 300W good power supply is good enough for most users. I'm sure it's more than I need. I'm running a 380W in my current system, and that is more than enough. Unless you are putting more than one video card or more than 4 hard drives, I can't imagine needing more than a 300W PS.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Turns out my issue with the 8800s was the power supplies. A 700W Seasonic has both cards running fine in SLI. Maybe the umpty-billion 12V rails help a bit. The cards I use are evidently picky about these things.

Also, I think I hate modular PSUs. Stuff sticks out more.

And it is quiet, even with stock cooling on everything, even with the video cards doing Quake 4 at 1920x1280.

All in all, it was pretty much the biggest PITA build I've done since the first time I assembled a P180. But now I just have to figure how much money I spent so I can charge him for it all.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Oh yeah...

Remember how nVidia used to have a really nice unified driver?
That was the thing the pro-nVidia camp used to point to whenever they started their rambling and incoherent bitching about ATI.

8800s need a non-standard driver which is NOT the same one as the driver used by discrete 7x00-series cards, which is also not the same one as is used in 61x0 integrated graphics. I need three different graphics drivers to make my display go nowadays.

I'll take Catalysts any day.
 

Sol

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Much the same I imagine, last I heard nVidia were still making most of the 8800 cards for their supply partners, so there's a fairly good chance they came out of the same factory and had (slightly) different heat sinks stuck on them...
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Does anyone know of a good, cheap overclocking board for a Core 2 Duo? All I buy are Gigabyte and Intel, and neither of those really let me play.

In my experience, every E6300 and E4300 I've tried seem to be able to do 50% overclocking without issue, even more reliably than the old Celeron 300As. I really wonder how far I could go with one.
 

Adcadet

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I hear the Biostar TForce something-or-other 965 mentioned as a solid overclocker at a reasonable price.
 

CougTek

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I noticed that our junior California boy has upgraded its home system. Now with a 6000+ Athlon 64 X2 and (yuck!) Windows Vista Ultimate. I vaguely remember Ddrueding mentionning the unfortunate move to Vista, but I missed the CPU upgrade news.
 

ddrueding

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Good catch Coug! The CPU swap was done 2 days ago; I couldn't resist after the prices went down. My old 4200+ 65W will likely end up in a 1U server somewhere, unless someone here is interested...
 

ddrueding

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Something that does annoy me. In Vista's "experience index", every component of my system scores a 5.9 (the maximum) except for my 6000+ CPU! (5.4) My old 4200+ scored a 5.0. The only AMD system I have heard of that got a 5.9 was a 4x4 quad-core system. I wonder how Merc's super-overclocked C2D is performing on that scale?
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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OK, new record:
GA-P965-DS3 + E6320 (1.5V) + 2GB OCZ DDR2/1066 RAM + Coolermaster Gemini II + 2x 1200rpm SilenX fans = 4112MHz.

It wasn't stable but it got all the way through a Windows install before it crapped out.

Just never saw a four in the thousands place before. :D
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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No.
Temps are good OK-ish. I'm guessing it's memory that's the issue, but the DS3 links RAM and FSB speeds so I can't do much more about that.
However, it's been stable @ 3.8 so I don't really have any reason to complain.
 

ddrueding

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I guess not...I couldn't complain with a 104% overclock. Well I could, and I probably would; but it would really be bragging, wouldn't it ;)
 
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