"Rate my Rig" thread

[Terralthra]

Looks fairly similar to the one I currently have on my (overclocked) Q6600, phonqn, the Thermalright u120e. Doesn't look like New Egg stocks the u120e yet, only the u120.

A pic of it installed:

[Darth Mall]

Looking to upgrade, thinking these parts:

E3500
ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

and for the video card I am thinking either a MSI R4850-512M Radeon HD 4850 512MB or a VisionTek 900244 Radeon HD 4870 512MB

I already have a 500w power supply, which I think should be good and all my drives, etc.

Currently I have a 3800+ and an 8800 gt on an asus board.

Good, bad, recommendations?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

In theory, you could hang on to your 8800GT for a little longer, until the next generation comes out.

If you are inpatient, by all means.

Are you running 64bit Vista? OTherwise, it's meaningless to get 4GB worth of RAM.

[Rye]

Looking to upgrade, thinking these parts:

E3500
ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

and for the video card I am thinking either a MSI R4850-512M Radeon HD 4850 512MB or a VisionTek 900244 Radeon HD 4870 512MB

I already have a 500w power supply, which I think should be good and all my drives, etc.

Currently I have a 3800+ and an 8800 gt on an asus board.

Good, bad, recommendations?

If I were you, I'd get a heftier power supply. The alienware ones with similar specs tend to have 750W PSUs, so that's what I am aiming for when I build my next PC (going to wait for the 8-cores to come out first).

Anyway, my new laptop:

Sony Vaio AR71 M

Processor: Core 2 Duo T8100 2.1 GHz
Memory: 4GB
HD Capacity: 300GB
Display: 17" WXGA+
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT GPU 256MB
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
Optical Drive: Blu-Ray BD-ROM/ DVD+-RW/+-R DL/RAM Drive

[General Zod]

Anyway, my new laptop:

Sony Vaio AR71 M

Processor: Core 2 Duo T8100 2.1 GHz
Memory: 4GB
HD Capacity: 300GB
Display: 17" WXGA+
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT GPU 256MB
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
Optical Drive: Blu-Ray BD-ROM/ DVD+-RW/+-R DL/RAM Drive

Have you noticed any particular sluggishness or heating issues? I'm actually looking at the Vaio as a possible laptop model to get in another 2 months and I was curious how they actually handled.

[phongn]

Currently I have a 3800+ and an 8800 gt on an asus board.

The 8800GT will probably be fine for now.

If I were you, I'd get a heftier power supply. The alienware ones with similar specs tend to have 750W PSUs, so that's what I am aiming for when I build my next PC (going to wait for the 8-cores to come out first).

What do you need a 750W PSU for? For that matter, what do you need an eight-core machine for?

[Rye]

Anyway, my new laptop:

Sony Vaio AR71 M

Processor: Core 2 Duo T8100 2.1 GHz
Memory: 4GB
HD Capacity: 300GB
Display: 17" WXGA+
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT GPU 256MB
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
Optical Drive: Blu-Ray BD-ROM/ DVD+-RW/+-R DL/RAM Drive

Have you noticed any particular sluggishness or heating issues? I'm actually looking at the Vaio as a possible laptop model to get in another 2 months and I was curious how they actually handled.

This one's not arrived yet, I'll let you know when it does (should be Monday, when I'll give it a good workout with games and stuff before I go to uni and use it for work). My previous laptop was a second hand vaio and is still going strong and does heat up rather noticeably; in fact it's great for warming the bed up on cold nights. That said, with that one, I never noticed it slow down despite the stream of hot air, and it's never crashed on me in a good 2 or 3 years. The reviews I've read for this model haven't said they've had any heating/slowdown issues, so I'm guessing it's okay.

What do you need a 750W PSU for? For that matter, what do you need an eight-core machine for?

I probably won't get an 8-core (octocore?), I'm just hoping it'll drive down the cost of the dualcores and quadcores. As for the PSU, I was going by alienware specs which is what my new one is going to be built by, my idea being if they're selling them like that, they obviously work properly. At any rate, I plan on using it to do some HD video editing, music production and gaming as the uni editing suites are usually in high demand.

[General Zod]

This one's not arrived yet, I'll let you know when it does (should be Monday, when I'll give it a good workout with games and stuff before I go to uni and use it for work). My previous laptop was a second hand vaio and is still going strong and does heat up rather noticeably; in fact it's great for warming the bed up on cold nights. That said, with that one, I never noticed it slow down despite the stream of hot air, and it's never crashed on me in a good 2 or 3 years. The reviews I've read for this model haven't said they've had any heating/slowdown issues, so I'm guessing it's okay.

Well, my main concern is that I've heard nightmare stories about Vaios getting bogged down with pre-loaded crapware, so I'm rather concerned about initial performance out of the box. Of course I've also heard it's a customer to customer thing, so I'm not really sure who to believe on this.

[Darth Mall]

Oops, forgot about this thread. I actually had a 7800gt, not a 8800gt.

I ended up getting the ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP and the E8500.

For RAM i got some from OCZ, having heard issues with corsair ram and asus motherboards.

I got the 4870.

I also got the U120e for my cpu and the T-Rad2. The 4870 ran absurdly hot (to me atleast) on the stock cooler, at around 50-60*C idle and up to 70*C load, and with the T-rad2 I get upper 30's to lower 40's idle, and maybe 45*C load, and thats with it overclocked as much as the control centre will let me.

I also overclocked the E8500 up to 3.91 Ghz, and will probably boost it up over 4Ghz shortly. With the U120e I am at about 40*C idle and 55*C load.

Overall the thing feels leaps and bounds better than my old setup. Running Crysis at max (in XP 32 bit) I get about 25-30 FPS with fairly heavy action on screen.

Is it worth upgrading to XP64 or Vista 32 or 64 bit?

Currently I have a 3800+ and an 8800 gt on an asus board.

The 8800GT will probably be fine for now.

I actually meant 7800gt, per above. Sorry

If I were you, I'd get a heftier power supply. The alienware ones with similar specs tend to have 750W PSUs, so that's what I am aiming for when I build my next PC (going to wait for the 8-cores to come out first).

Its running fine on my 520 ish watt supply. As phongn said, theres no need for such a large power supply.

[phongn]

What do you need a 750W PSU for? For that matter, what do you need an eight-core machine for?

I probably won't get an 8-core (octocore?), I'm just hoping it'll drive down the cost of the dualcores and quadcores. As for the PSU, I was going by alienware specs which is what my new one is going to be built by, my idea being if they're selling them like that, they obviously work properly. At any rate, I plan on using it to do some HD video editing, music production and gaming as the uni editing suites are usually in high demand.

750W is rank overkill. Alienware is simply putting in an over-specified and over-expensive PSU into the system to pad their profit margin and impress people who don't know better.

Is it worth upgrading to XP64 or Vista 32 or 64 bit?

If you want to use more than ~3.25-3.5 GiB of RAM, yes.

[Rye]

750W is rank overkill. Alienware is simply putting in an over-specified and over-expensive PSU into the system to pad their profit margin and impress people who don't know better.

Duly noted. It's not like I've much idea how much the rest of the machine will be sucking down, I just know my current 400W one is having issues with my modern setup and wanted to err on the side of bigger numbers.

[Uraniun235]

Wattage isn't really a reliable indicator of power supply quality or suitability. It's entirely possible for a 500W power supply to be worse than a 350W power supply, due to supplying inadequate amperage at 12V while supplying superfluous amperage at 3.3V and 5V. I mean, 500 watts is a lot of power for a personal computer.

The Corsair VX450 (or an equivalent PSU) is more than ample for that configuration.

[Darth Nostril]

For that matter, what do you need an eight-core machine for?

Rendering.
Vue 6 Infinite x64 edition would utilise all eight cores, seriously reducing render times.
This took 26 hours to render on my current X2 dual core, 4 gig Ram, XP64 system (what with all the reflections, transparencies & above mid level render settings - it would look better with higher settings above 60% but that could easily double the render time). The last animation I did, a 2 second 30 frame loop, took three fricken days, admittedly that was rendered in Shade not Vue.
Ideally I'd need to up the memory from four gigs to at least eight, minimum one gig per core during rendering, already got a terabyte of HD space but it couldn't hurt to put the external jacks to use with a pair of 500 gig SATA drives to double up storage (saved files weigh in at up to two gigs, doesn't take long to fill a 400 gig HD, not to mention all the content I've purchased ove the years).

[phongn]

For that matter, what do you need an eight-core machine for?

Rendering.
Vue 6 Infinite x64 edition would utilise all eight cores, seriously reducing render times.

Sure, for your purposes it might be useful, but I doubt Zuul is doing anything that requires eight cores (or, for that matter, four).

[Darth Nostril]

For that matter, what do you need an eight-core machine for?

Rendering.
Vue 6 Infinite x64 edition would utilise all eight cores, seriously reducing render times.

Sure, for your purposes it might be useful, but I doubt Zuul is doing anything that requires eight cores (or, for that matter, four).

Point, Set and Match to phongn.
Good point there, I can take a bleeding edge system to it's limits and make it scream for uncle, doubt there are many others here on this board can say the same.

[Enigma]

I'm planning either before I move to Ohio or after to replace my motherboard because the USB ports are going bonkers. I'm thinking of replacing it with the same model but was wondering is my current setup ok for current gen of games? I'm wondering because my computer is choking on HoI2 when it should be running in circles. If it falls short of the current standards then what should I do to bringing it up to scale.

2.40 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Board: KN9(NF-MCP55P) 1.x
Bus Clock: 201 megahertz
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG 05/30/2006

Drives Memory Modules c,d
NVIDIA JBOD 232.88G [Hard drive] (250.06 GB) -- drive 0
NVIDIA JBOD 298.09G [Hard drive] (320.07 GB) -- drive 1

2048 Megabytes Installed Memory
Slot 'A0' has 1024 MB
Slot 'A1' has 1024 MB
Slot 'A2' is Empty
Slot 'A3' is Empty

NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT [Display adapter]
ACR AL2223W [Monitor] (22.3"vis, October 2006) (2x)

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Do you really want a ... 8500GT dongle that is quite useless? I would think that there's 9600GTs around that are pretty cheap as they are.

[Enigma]

Do you really want a ... 8500GT dongle that is quite useless? I would think that there's 9600GTs around that are pretty cheap as they are.

It is what I have already. What do you mean dongle?

How much of a step up is a 9600GT compared to a 8500GT?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Do you really want a ... 8500GT dongle that is quite useless? I would think that there's 9600GTs around that are pretty cheap as they are.

It is what I have already. What do you mean dongle?

How much of a step up is a 9600GT compared to a 8500GT?

I meant dongle as in, it's quite useless. Its performance is pretty comparable to the 7300.

A 9600GT is a downclocked 8800GT and maybe some other differences. But essentially, you could probably find some around 100 bucks or less (or maybe even a 4850) and maybe some overclocked editions.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Alright, so I've been accepted to the school of Mechanical and Materials Science Engineering at WSU, allowing me to transfer out of Olympic College and go on to complete my four-year engineering degree with nuclear focus. However the school requires specific PC-laptop stats, which my old 1.67ghz 17in powerbook PPC was of course completely unable to meet--and its LCD screen was in the process of progressive failure after 3.5 years of extremely hard use anyway.

The requirements are to operate SolidWorks, Catia V5, and Pro/Engineer, along with Matlab and Maple, more or less (NOT AutoCAD). This rules out a Linux-only computer and running Linux as the main operating system on a laptop sucks shit, mostly, from everything I've learned. And they specifically demand on the department website that you use Windows XP anyway, and I'm too mature to start throwing a fit over operating systems (well, for real--I whined a bit for effect). After consulting mostly with Phong I finally gave in and went for a IBM (err, Lenovo!) T61, which I got with the aide of a 5% off discount code and a sale for a price which my friends were willing to help out with for a bit.

The cost for a replacement Apple of minimum suitable specifications (and that's with 1 gig less RAM) would have been $550.00 more and the protection plan would have still had 1 year less than the damage protection plan I got from Lenovo, so sadly a new MacBook was indeed truly impossible, and that would have cost even more to dual-boot windows and so on and all that other crap it would have required to meet the university specifications and run the programmes required.

The final specifications selected included a 15.4in widescreen WSXGA+, 3 gigabytes of RAM, 2.1ghz core duo, and an 80 gig hard drive--I have about 10 gigabytes of music files, do not acquire more illegally, and have never downloaded a movie in my life; my only games are abandonware from 1997. So the hard drive is devoted more or less entirely to engineering projects of the future, and I have an 80-gig external as well, so paying more for a larger hard drive simply made no sense at all for me. The chip is an Nvidia Quattro, so the necessary discrete graphics for what really matters (engineering work) are present. And of course it's a Lenovo T-series, so the magnesium honeycomb makes it rather excellent.

The computer was ordered on Sunday, and delivered Weds, with STANDARD SHIPPING RATE. They literally did the requested modifications in a factory in Hong Kong on Monday, got it on an air-freight that left monday night, arrived here tuesday morning at SeaTac, got it to Bremerton by Tuesday evening, and delivered it Wednesday. Now that's service!

At any rate, I got it with Windows XP installed because Vista still has Issues with some of the above engineering programmes so listed, and I've since happily switched it over to performance mode (i.e., the old style desktop of 98 - 2000, not the stupid XP junk), installed three different anti-spyware programmes and symantec, gotten office on it and a TeX programme. Maple is next, and photoshop for my ship drawing habit of doom, and then we'll see what else is required--probably not all three of Catia, Pro/Engineer, and SolidWorks (WSU engineering hates AutoCAD for whatever reason, we're guaranteed to never use it, just those three) but possibly, and also Matlab. Deleted some of the other unnecessary bloatware crap it came with (mercifully not all that much) and got the proper level of firewalls and password security (insane by average browser standards in otherwords) set up, and enabled and initialized the fingerprint recognition security system it came with.

Altogether, I am quite satisfied, though I'll continue tweaking and transfering things over and so on for the next month and a half until school's over at OC before porting my life over completely in preparation for going to WSU in January. The old Powerbook will be cleaned of my data and handed over to Amy, who can use it to replace her elderly desktop in a desktop role where the LCD's slow failure is an utter irrelevance.

I figure I'll use it until I have some shit-hot engineering job three years from now in the nuclear sector (*crosses fingers*) and then I can feel quite content to blow an extra thousand dollars or so on getting the most powerful Apple laptop available at that time. Or maybe not.

The computer's name is Dhirisma, by the way--named in honour of a Computational Intelligence who is the brain of a starship in one of my TGG-universe fiction stories.

[Steve]

Well, it is sweet of you to name it after Dhirisma.

[JCady]

I just upgraded my desktop for the first time in a few years...

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard (AMD 780G chipset)

AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5 GHz processor (45 watts, whee!)

4 GB Corsair XMS2 800 MHz DDR-2 memory (no sense paying more for 1066 MHz memory, it's not supported unless I upgrade to a Phenom processor)

Radeon HD3850 512 MB video card (was going to get an HD 4850, but decided the 3850 was more cost effective for driving a mere 1440x900 flatscreen)


So pretty modest, but a solid and cost-effective upgrade over what I had before.

[phongn]

That's a pretty nice system. Are you going to get one of those nice tower heatsinks to quiet down your machine?

[Chardok]

So....since my compy died, I'm thinking of just dude....getting a Dell. Nothing fancy, I just want a middle-of-the-roady rig that will last me a few years. what say you all to this setup:


Dell Inspiron 530 Intel® Core™2 Quad processor Q6600 (8MB L2, 2.4GHz, 1066FSB)
Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit
4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz- 4DIMMs
USB Keyboard and Dell Optical USB Mouse
Video Cards ATI Radeon HD3650 256MB
320GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
19 in 1 Media Card Reader
Network Interface Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
Optical Drive 16X DVD+/-RW Drive
Sound Cards Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
Microsoft Works 9.0
McAfee SecurityCenter with anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, 30-Days
Datasafe Dell Online Backup 2GB for 1 year

[darkjedi521]

I'm thinking of putting together a custom gaming rig for the first time. Probably going to be building from components to keep costs down. I've got most of the system figured out, but and stuck on the processor. I'm debating between a 3.33 GHz Core 2 Duo and a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Quad, both 45nm chips, both the same price on Newegg at the moment. Assuming a reasonably high end GPU (probably an upper end Geforce 9800), which would give me more bang for the buck? I'm more used to spec'ing number crunchers for renderfarms and molecular dynamic simulations than gaming unfortunately.

Thanks