8 - 16 - 08:

Its been kind of a while since i said i would make another blog post. I figured a new PC build would deserve as much.

Just to give my readers of why i'm so excited here is the specs of my previous machine:
Standard SysteMax Mid-Tower with Asus F8V-X motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 2.4Ghz
1 GB (2 x 512 Corsair DDR2)
128MB GeForce 5700LE
120GB + 250GB Seagate Barracudas
19" Acer Flat Screen
Windows XP / Fedora Core 8


However once the hard drive capacity had seen better days, and DVI port fried on my 5700LE I started looking into a new PC. It really pushed me over the edge when my single-core processor wasn't even considered the newest and most entertaining games like Assasins Creed, Crysis, Need For Speed: ProStreet, and so many more.

The first thing that came to mind when building a new PC was money, the question was what would cost the least but give me the most for my money. I do consider myself a PC gamer, and I really wanted to have some beefed up graphics for the new build. I was also aware of how much the beefed up video cards costed. But did they really offer me more?

Being the physics genius I am, I realized no human can really see past 37 - 40 frames per second, so as far as the PC gaming went, i knew i would be going with the lower end 512MB ATI Radeon 4850 graphics card rather than the 4870, or god forbid the 1GB 4870 X2. So I was set on graphics, but I didnt want to feel like i was completely giving up the idea of a gaming rig, so i decided that i should have two 4850s in CrossFireX. The 4850 really offered me what i needed, it had only a little less than the 4870 was packing and much less in price. I was also aware of the heat these things gave up, being only a single expansion bay, with no direct exhaust, some i purchased a Vantec expansion bay cooler for each of the cards.

        

This of course after video, i had to make the big decision, who i would be siding with, AMD or Intel. I've always been loyal to AMD, they've always struck as a company that cared about their product, but that mentality had been thrown out the window for the recent Phenom X3 and X4 series, they were just fighting to keep up now. I had heard multiple stories of how much the Core 2 Quad QX9770 3.2 was so much better than the Phenom X4 9950 2.6Ghz.

  VS.  

Besides the obvious mathematical difference i saw in that arguement, my first question would be "How much faster is it?" Which would immediately be followed by "How much more the is QX9770 than the 9950?" My answers usually didn't bring joy to the oppressors with something similar to 25% faster (which i will admit is a substantial difference between processors) compared to $1100+ or around 450% more than the 9950. My response was usually mathematically reasoned, and if that failed which normally was what happened the rest of the time, it for them to "Fuck Right Off." So i was set, i knew AMD would be the way to fly, though i would be flying with a 9850 since the 9950's sold out too quick, and had a unreasonable price jump.

Winner!

With AMD chosen as the processor of choice, I knew i could trust two motherboard manufacturers with my money, Gigabyte and Asus. As a technician, I have worked on hundreds of computers in my past years, and most manufacturers will re-brand a Gigabyte or MSI motherboard as their own by purchasing rights to it. A good duration of the time these motherboards have surprisingly held up. However, I have always owned a PC (store-bought and custom-built) powered by a Asus motherboard (even when i had a CyrixInside processor before Intel swallow them whole).
My main concern was under 3 areas:
- support for AM2+ 140W processors
- 2 PCI-Express TRUE x16 slots (not that x8 and x16 combo bullshit)
- DDR2/DDR3 slots that could support up to 8GB RAM minimum

Like most new PC build, this one comes with it's own horror story, for the sake of brevity, I will admit I initially went with a Gigabyte motherboard, however the motherboard on the website, and even surprisingly on the outside of the box, incorrect information had been printed stating that it was TRUE 2 x16 slots, which of course was a lie. I quickly returned it and got all my money back (rock on customer support). I then, in a fit of rage, ended up paying $70 more for the best rated Asus motherboard at the time, the M3A32-MVP (not the wi-fi edition, it was useless to me) which met all my standards in shining glory.

    

With my graphics, CPU and motherboard all settled, I still needed memory, hard drives, optical bay & peripherals, a power supply, and most importantly a CASE!

I wanted to go with a full-tower, mainly for air flow reasons and storage consistency (really because they looked cooler with a gaming setup). After shopping around, i eventually settled down with a Ultra M923 Full Tower, which had a inverse design, where the power supply would be placed at the bottom, and the expansions would be at the top. After scratching my head for a while, i realized for gaming rigs this is perfect (the GPUs will generally generate more heat than the CPU) and with a top exhaust and a front lcd screen i was sold. Next, of course would be a Power Supply Unit or PSU.

    

My two main concerns for the PSU was its wattage rating, and I wanted something with removable cable. I knew I would need at least 700W for 2 GPUs and a Quad Core, so i naturally went with a 1000 Watt (1kW) Ultra PSU with removable cable management. Despite its monstrous power rating, it doesn't ever reach that much consumption, since i only use about 1/5 of the available cable slots. My readers may be wondering why i didn't just get a smaller power supply that didnt have as much cables. Excellent point, but no power supply in existence offers the minimalistic amount of cables with the power rating i require, also i like the insurance that if i had like 6 hard drives, and 4 graphics cards and some extras that i could faciliate all of it without blowing the power supply.

    

With all the major components out of the way, I only had to choose my memory (which i know seems like a big decision), hard drives, optical drive, and accessories. Since my motherboard requirement was to be capable of 8GB, of course i went with 8GB, i decided to go with my good friend Corsair again with 4 sets of 2GB XMS2 Dominator DD2 memory (all being dual channel of course). For my hard drives, i chose Seagate, a brand i've always been kosher to, though i also have appreciation for their main competior Western Digital. I bought two mainly because I wanted to install Windows Vista - 64bit on one(which i will discuss in a upcoming post), and Fedora Core 9 on the other.

    

As far as my optical drive was concerned I just wanted a simple DVD-burner, so i purchased one from LightScribe, a brand i trust just enough to get the job done. Of course as mentioned before, I also installed 2 Vantec coolers for each ATI Radeon 4850.As for my speakers, keyboard, and mouse, I just purchased standard equipment, since i don't do most of my gaming by board & mouse, i do it via game controller. Before the design was laid to rest, I was considerate of my former custom build is also known as the family PC, i didnt want to take away their 19" flat screen that they had all gotten so attached to. So by that logic I also got a 22" Acer Widescreen, and i couldn't be happier.

    

At the end of everything my final build was: Ultra M923 with Asus M3A-32-MVP motherboard
AMD Phenom X4 9850 2.5Ghz Quad-Core
8GB (2x 2x2GB Dual Channel XMS2 Corsair DDR2)
1GB CrossFireX ATI Radeon 4850 (512MB x 2)
500GB (2x 250GB Seagate Barracudas)
22" Acer Widescreen
Windows Vista / Fedora Core 9