Gaming PC Build!!!

I'm bored @ work and don't want to do anything lol. It's humpday and I'm off at midnight

 

It's my only (remaining) home desktop (at one time I had 3, my machine, the BBS, and a spare off-network for software testing and virus verification). First machine I built was a '286-12 with a whole meg of RAM and a whole 80 meg hard drive!
Wife's got a new HP Pavillion notebook that I got her for Christmas last year (fucking Windows 8!), and I have a notebook that was gifted to me by my last employer when I was laid off (it's a vintage 2006 Dell).

The tower runs 24/7... never shut it down. Current hard drives are a Maxtor 250 and Maxtor 160... the 160 was my original "C" drive, which replaced my 80 gig original "D" drive. The 250 became my new "C" drive.
The old drives were fine, but I was forced to upgrade when Windows shut off support for the old corporate XP id when they released SP3, so I bought a legit copy of XP and did a fresh install on the new 250, then swapped the 160 and the 80 back and forth until I had my programs and data migrated. This case has been through three CRTs and is on it's 2nd flat panel.

Video card is old... doesn't support the new DirectX, so when I load Google Earth it appears in wireframe. Only PCI and AGP, so pretty much no options to upgrade the video other than a Geforce 6200 that I bought a year or so ago and never got around to installing.


Now that MS is dropping support for XP next year and the haxorez are stockpiling exploits to release them after support is dropped, I'm just going to have to build a new machine to replace this one. I'm not gaming anymore, so it still does everything I need, but it's slow, and modern apps really bog it down.

The other thing is I'm stuck with this POS here at home..... Here's my office systems....

8-core i7, 4 gig of ram (might be 8), dual 4-output displayport video cards (the three wall monitors are connected to the workstation on the right, there's another wall monitor connected to Intern John's workstation)
The 4th machine against the wall with one monitor is identical, it's going to the Emergency Operations Center to replace a 6 year old Dell.

We only spec'd them out with 500gb drives since all of our data is stored on the 2tb server mirrored pair. In retrospect, a 160gb SSD would have been plenty of space.

These things smoke.

 

Do you work 911 dispatch?

 

Nope.

Traffic Management Center
I'm the Traffic Signal Operations Specialist.

Used to be a field tech until the guys upstairs found out that I knew how to work a mouse.

Now I'm getting fat again.

 

Curious as how you are liking your new computer build?

 

Still no pics? Common man, show us!

 

Sorry to leave you guys hanging! I got pretty busy over the weekend and since I built it. Since putting it together I downloaded team fortress 2 from the free to play section on steam, no lagging or glitching whatsoever. My girlfriend also made me install Sims 3 for her to play, also no glitching or lagging. One issue I have ran into is the fan on the GPU running waaay too loud when I start any games. Then when I go to afterburner to turn it don, it only shows them running at 30-40%!!! My motherboard has two slots for the gpu to go into, and I put it in the lower one. I think this was my mistake because the clearance between the fans and the psu is less than an inch, and it may be heating up easily. I could move it up to the higher slot, but then I can't replace the expansion slot covers in the back that I already took out. I will post pics of the whole setup and my gpu issue in awhile.

Also, this monitor is for sale on newegg for 110 with promo code. What do you guys think? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...EMC-081613-Index-_-LCDMonitors-_-24113038-L0A

Everyone I have seen likes ones with 1ms response times, but I figured 5 wasn't that terrible. I saw an LG with 14ms response time. I wasn't sure if gateway was a good monitor brand or not. But its LED and 1080 so I thought it may be worth it.

 

Yeah move it up. Possibly more airflow, and I think you're using the x4 pci-e slot.

 

What is the difference? I know they were different but they look the same and I wasn't sure what one to use. If I move it up will I have to reconfigure a bunch of stuff or reinstall the drivers?

Also, any idea how I can patch teh expansion slot covers? I had to break off the two covers for the card and they both got bent.

 

Guy on cl is selling this monitor http://www.viewsonic.com/us/vx2250wm-led.html for $50 bucks. Says it works 100% with no issues, I was gonig to see if I can test it first. Is it worth it or should I just buy one new? 22" is probably the smallest I would wanna go. I would love a 27" but I will never to be able to bring myself to spend that much just for a monitor. This one is LED with full 1080 resolution and 5ms response time. It's a $150 monitor he is selling for a third of retail price. Either he got it on sale cheap and just doesn't need it or something is wrong with it.

 

A Gateway 22" was my first flatscreen. It crapped out after less than 2 years. I've been running an LG 23" for around 6 years now.
All of our traffic management center desktop monitors were LG 22" that were purchased in 2007. ONE of the 7 crapped out about 6 months ago.

Those in the picture a couple of pages back are the new HP 24" that we just installed. The old LGs went to our backup facility at the signal maintenance shop.

1080 is standard rez for 22-23" monitors. It's nothing special.
We're running over 1300 on our 24's.

That $50 monitor might hold you for a while, but keep in mind that modern consumer electronics are disposable. A good part of it's life has been used up. It's 1/4th the price of a decent new monitor, so it may be worth it, just budget for a replacement.

 

Pretty much just speed, but I'm not sure if your 7870 would make use of the bandwidth from an x16 slot. Pretty sure your 7870 is faster than my GTX480's, so might as well be done with it. Or you can benchmark it on both slots and see if there's a difference. The Unigine benchmarks are quite nice. And yes, you will have to reinstall drivers, I would recommend a clean install with driversweeper.

 

I have never used or heard of driversweeper, but I imagine it is probably pretty simple. By doing that will I screw up any of the settings or anything I currently have setup now?

Also, what can I do to patch the rear expansion bay covers? I had to knock out two for the card, and would need to knock out two more. BUt I don't want to just leave the first two wide open for dusk and whatnot.

 

Well guys here are some shots of the finished product. I was too excited and forget to take much of anything during the build itself or before it got hooked up.

First off you can see where the card is, I definitely need to move it up.


And here is the system all together, as you can see their are basically no wires visible.


Here it is all buttoned up.


And here is the windows score. The overall score is so low because the data transfer rate is in need of an SSD.




Also, I had to buy a new adaptor, and best buy didn't have any pci cards in stock, so I got this guy for $50. Now, I have roughly 11 days tor eturn it if I choose to. Is it worth it to buy a pci card online for cheaper and then return this? Or just keep this and take the hit. This is a dual band adaptor but it only reachs up to 300mbps



Sorry for the small low quality shots, these are from my crap phone.

 

Hit up a computer swap meet or computer store that's been around for a LONG time.

Cases didn't used to have knock-out space covers... they were stamped just like the part on the back of the card.

 

Aftermarket GPU fans are notoriously noisy and don't last very long. Aftermarket meaning any fan not installed by NVIDIA or ATI. Honestly, until you are really dialed in on your hardware and overclocking/temps etc. I would put your fans all on auto and let them do their thing. 30-40% is about where most GPU fans spin during times of low to medium stress. If it get's hot they should step themselves up incrementally to 60-70% or 80%. The more they spin above 60% the sooner it will fail, and it will fail.

As for the startup noise, that's normal when you use a 3rd party tool to monitor and control fan speeds. Essentially the fan starts up and 80%-100% and it takes a few seconds for Afterburner to turn them back down.

 

Interesting. In all honesty it's not THAT bad. I just thought it was odd. In order to get all the power needed to my GPU I had to unplug two of my 120mm fans and hijack their molex plugs. The whole system is fairly quiet now. It just gets loud when I start up a game or something. I think I am going to move it to the other pci express slot and see if it helps it stay a little lower in speed. I will just patch up the empty slots with some black electrical tape or something.

 

All mine and built by me:




My main rig:
Intel i5 Sandy Bridge 2500K OC'd to 4.0 GHz on air
ASRock P67 Pro3
8GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 1600
64GB Crucial M4 SSD boot drive
1TB Western Digital Caviar Black storage drive
MSI Twin Frozr II OC GTX560 Ti
XFX 750W PSU
Corsair 600T white
LG Blu-ray burner
Corsair A70 cooler w/ Zalman Shark push/pull fans
NZXT Mesh fan controller
Window 7 Professional 64-bit
Sound Blaster Audigy

And these are my backup rigs:
Intel i5-2400:


AMD Phenom II X4 945:


AMD Phenom II X4 945:

 

I'm totally going to make a build thread for my computer when I start putting it together! thanks for the idea haha

 

No problem! I haven't even done a truck build yet. Mostly because the very few upgrades I have done to my truck aren't a whole lot to be proud of. But honestly I was more excited for the build itself then playing games and using the pc haha. Not saying I don't love the thing!