Build to tide me over, and perhaps build apon... - Page 3

Ordered one of these today.



It's msrp is $399.99, but I've seen it several places for around $230. I then found it at Overstock.com for $125.

Woot!

It can handle an 80 lb monitor/tv, so it can be used in the future for 40+ inch tv's, the 26" widescreen lcd I bought is about 25 lbs. It tilts, and can rotate side to side, and fully extended is 20" from the wall. I'll be able to mount my steering wheel on the table, and have the monitor right over it for driving games...

The monitor, and the ALX Klipsch speakers will be mounted on the wall over the table I use as a desk, so the table can be used for other things. The computer will be in a bookshelf in an archway on the other side of the wall with the cables passing through the wall to the monitor. The monitor I bought has four usb 2.0's so I can plug my keyboard/mouse/nostromo controller/gamepad into the monitor. That way, I can just unplug the input devices, and the table will be cleared for other uses. We can then use the monitor as a tv if/when I get an internal tv tuner, or use the monitor for movies. There's a couch set up behind the table, so it's all good.

Cool, thanks Buck47... The only overclocking I've done was auto overclock on my p4 3.2. Just did the auto 10% in the bios.

I OC'ed my m9700 to get 11,000 points in 3dMark05, but it was all done with coolbits and fsb adjustments with systool. The X48 will be in a much different league. I've seen reviews of the board with screenshots of bios settings, and they're very confusing and voluminous, so I'll appreciate the help.

If the ATi cards are good, I can get those in crossfire, and get a quad processor when the prices come down. That would extend the life of this platform a while, perhaps until the Nehalem prices become reasonable, and the DDR3 comes down some more.

Cool... I'll have to wait and see about the ATi cards, I haven't had much luck with them in the past...

I plan on starting a new string for the build. I'll include lots o'pics, and opinions on the hardware. Unfortunately, I've got some surgery scheduled for this month, so it may take me a while to get everything done. Surgery isn't anything major, I had major surgery a few years ago, and the inciscion didn't heal completely right, so I have to go in for some repair work.

Best part about that is I'll have a bottle full of percocets, and a new computer to play games with while recovering...

I still love the old hydraulic cases. I'll have the two hydraulics, the dragon, and both of the versions of the predator. I have no idea what I'll do with them all... I was working with a plastics place up in Seattle to build a custom acrylic desk with one of each predator case in each leg encased in acrylic. Might have to finish working that up...

Memory, processor and vid card arrived today. Everything else is supposed to be here tomorrow...

Hey Buck47,

Did you do a dual boot setup on your machine? I've got some older games I'd like to mess with, so I might go the dual boot route with XP/Vista...

I have lots of older driving games, like the Colin McCrae rally series, F1 EA series, grand prix legends (pretty old)... I've also got lots of older games I like to revisit like MOH, and call of duty series.

I've got a desktop with Win 98 still on it, and another with XP, but it would be best if I could play anything on the new setup.

I also have some old games on backup discs or ISO images that I'm worried Vista won't let me play... I never did get Duke Nukem 3d to work right on XP either...

I did find a program that will allow old 16bit games to play on Vista, supposedly...

I think I'll just load Vista and see how it goes. If I don't like it, I can always set up the dual boot later.

Got it up and running... Had some issues with an initial CPU init error so it wouldn't boot, but funnily enough once I remembered I had to use the 24 pin power plug AND the 8 pin ATX 12V plug, it booted right up.

Vista loaded no problem with 2x2g OCZ PC 1066 modules, so I think the Vista issue is just when you're using four dimms.

I'll post my worklog soon.

Only problem I'm having so far is the fan controller I'm using uses the little power plug the floppy drive also uses, so to get the floppied drivers I had to mess about a bit... Also, though my belkin Nostromo gamepad is supposed to have Vista drivers now, Vista installs it's own driver package as an HID device, so when I load the belkin software, it's not seeing the device... Found lots of info on this, but so far no luck with any of the solutions...

3dMark 06, stock first run 11,576.

Don't know why, but windows reports the E8400 is running @ 3005Mhz, while cpu-z reports it at 2005Mhz...

Thing runs like a champ on stock settings...

Pics on the way.