helping you stay protected in the digital age

I promised pics and details so here they are. Most items are USED that are going into this gaming machine. The only NEW items are fans, heatsinks, and… uh, the case. In my experience there is no difference in used PC parts and new PC parts aside from maybe a manufacturer’s warranty. YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary). I know one or two folks that every time they hit the “bid” button on eBay their product is sure to fail them.
Some guys get all the girls; other guys get all the good deals.

Here goes:

I’m not sure what this graph is portraying, something to do with memory. But it sure does look cool, and we ALL KNOW that if your graphs look cool and you case has LEDs than you are DEFINATELY going to get at least 5mhz more out of your processor!
A full review with all the benchmarks and tests can be found at http://techreport.com/articles.x/7134/1, and yes, the cool graph is there.

This motherboard was recommended by Blaize and from a couple guys on Dslreports.com. I have seen this board in action and really enjoy the potential for tweaking the CPU and RAM.

nVidia is my best friend in the graphics card industry. Always a happy camper (Halo Franklin – Bloodgultch snipes. I’m coming to pwn you son! [inside joke]) when it comes to nVidia graphics cards.

Generic ECC RAM for servers is decent. Generic NON-ECC RAM for gaming? Definately a No-No. I don’t care if your best friend Billy sales you “no-name” RAM he just pulled from his grandma’s PC for 5 bucks, there are some thing you just do not skimp out on. I like Corsair for their warranty, reviews, and low prices. I have always been satisfied with Corsair RAM.

A review of this nice looking PSU can be found at http://www.modders-inc.com/reviews-story–1.html. I only intend on keeping this for a short time, at which I will re-sell this PSU and buy a XION PSU. I love XIONs, I just can’t buy one right now.

This will be the first gaming machine that I have built that uses strictly SATA technology for the HDD. I chose the SATAII standard for faster data transfer speeds, and a 16mb cache at 7200RPM isn’t shabby at all.

What is a gaming PC without the ability to burn your in-game videos to DVD so you can play and re-play to your pwnd noob friends?

This thing screams “Epileptic seizure”.

I simply asked myself “Why Not” and couldn’t come up with a reason to not spend more money. Aside from the fact that I don’t have more money to spend I still couldn’t dissuade myself from getting these heat sinks. I mean, might as well, right?

My first rig I built I used an Arctic Cooling CPU cooler and was surprisingly impressed. There are many nice looking CPU coolers on the market that will dazzle the crowd, but the Arctic Cooler isn’t a head turner off the bat. I like it for two reasons; 1) To me I like the look. Something shouts “industrial, artsy, efficient” when I look at it. Maybe I need to lay off the caffeine. 2) I’ve never, ever, been displeased with Arctic Cooler CPU heatsinks and fans. Never had a failure, never had a bad install, and EVERY time it does what is is supposed to do: stabilize, or in my case, lower the CPU temps.

Another “WTH why not?” purchase. I think that my PC is going to hover over my living room floor due to the amount of fans in this machine. That, or its going to be so darn loud I’m going to need ear plugs.

Everybody loves case lights. But what about UV lights? If the massive amounts of blue light pouring from every angle of this case doesn’t blind you, then you might be able to see the UV sensitive SATA and IDE cables. I just hope your retina hasn’t been permanently burned from the blue light.

All of the parts will be coming in this week and I hope to put it together Friday night. I’ll post a final price breakdown and install pictures once everything comes in.

Have a great weekend!

~ by johndball on October 7, 2007.