Kanped
New member
Hey guys. Been hanging around for a little while. Basically, wanted some quick advice on a little, basic gaming build I was doing that has now snowballed into a proper build and a little side-build because I was having so much fun researching and planning, so it looks like I'll hang out here for a while. So, I figured I may as well do an introduction.
Strictly speaking, this is my first build but I've upgraded little bits and pieces before and I'm comfy with a soldering iron if it comes to that. Anyway, PC life story if anyone's interested (I won't be offended if you aren't
);
I was probably part of the first generation who learned to type before they could write, on some god-awful (even at the time) green-text based machine in 1990. I think it was from the 70s and I'm not even sure it was running DOS. It did, however, run King's Quest, which was nice.
I think the next PC I got after that was my cousin's old Atari ST520 (my Dad swears we had a Spectrum and I wrote really basic programs for it but I have no recollection of that at all). That was my first encounter with a GUI based operating system, which Atari fittingly called TOS (which it was a load of). I pretty much used it as a gaming system, and you had to boot games instead of the OS i.e. the disk was inserted before the machine powered on, so I never really even saw the OS. Although, I did learn the valuable lesson that deleting files from game disks won't let you just skip that bit but will, in fact ruin Monkey Island and you won't be able to finish it until you get the white label PC release many years later.
I was using PCs as gaming systems up to this point and then made the switch to the SNES up until 1997 when I got my first PC that was actually mine. 486 processor, 64 megabytes of RAM, onboard graphics and Windows 3.1 pre-installed. Well, it worked but it was already behind spec for a bunch of games. About a month later, Resident Evil came out and I upgraded to a Pentium CPU, Windows 95 and got an Orchid Righteous GPU and a while later, a 56k modem. Then my computer was awesome
After a brief flirt with a Toshiba Satellite, and selling it for about double what it was reasonably worth (somebody tried to scam me... they failed and I took their money :lol I decided to get a custom-built gaming rig in early 2006. I didn't know much about hardware and just went on the shop-owner's advice and price and IMO, ended up with a pretty decent machine for the time. AMD Athlon 64 (socket 939), 512MB OCZ RAM, 380GM HDD, Radeon X1800 GPU. Not bad; I still have this as my music production rig (not for much longer, though).
Then, when it was time for an upgrade, I figured I could get a decent laptop that could do gaming, plus I was starting Uni soon and it would be really useful to have. I couldn't have been more wrong. Went with Dell because you could customize what parts you wanted on their website... didn't take into account that you can't customize the case or general build quality. The components are decent enough; i5 M 430 @ 2.27 GHz, 4GB RAM, Mobility HD 5470 GPU. I mean, it should be fine BUT Dell are vindictive morons; the exhaust for the fan gets completely blocked off when the screen is open, so the system just overheats and eats dust. In order to clean the dust, you need to completely dismantle EVERYTHING; optical drive, screen, keyboard; the works. Many of these parts are poorly made and snap-on/off. Do that 3 or 4 times and now I'm left with a laptop that is still a crazy hotbox and is (very literally) held together with duct tape. Also, the chargers have a chip in them to verify they're 'official Dell' to stop you using 3rd party chargers. These chips break constantly, so the charger still works fine but the battery won't charge and the CPU is limited to 800MHz. I have (mad scientist*) plans for this machine but for now, it basically works for surfing the web and stuff, but naturally, I wanted a proper rig for gaming and stuff.
And that will bring you all nicely up to speed up until I started this thread;
http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=44656
So, hello everyone and thanks for having me.
*I'm thinking it could be cool to make a case so that the front is just the screen, like a TV, with enough space behind it for 2 140mm exhuast fans at the top and 2 more intake fans at the back, with USB ports for peripherals, making it still light and portable, just less so but gaining much better cooling. It'd be nice if I could flash the BIOS and use a different power supply but there's so many logistical nightmares with this concept that I haven't even considered and won't consider for a good while yet. It might actually be impossible but one day, we'll see.
Strictly speaking, this is my first build but I've upgraded little bits and pieces before and I'm comfy with a soldering iron if it comes to that. Anyway, PC life story if anyone's interested (I won't be offended if you aren't
);I was probably part of the first generation who learned to type before they could write, on some god-awful (even at the time) green-text based machine in 1990. I think it was from the 70s and I'm not even sure it was running DOS. It did, however, run King's Quest, which was nice.
I think the next PC I got after that was my cousin's old Atari ST520 (my Dad swears we had a Spectrum and I wrote really basic programs for it but I have no recollection of that at all). That was my first encounter with a GUI based operating system, which Atari fittingly called TOS (which it was a load of). I pretty much used it as a gaming system, and you had to boot games instead of the OS i.e. the disk was inserted before the machine powered on, so I never really even saw the OS. Although, I did learn the valuable lesson that deleting files from game disks won't let you just skip that bit but will, in fact ruin Monkey Island and you won't be able to finish it until you get the white label PC release many years later.
I was using PCs as gaming systems up to this point and then made the switch to the SNES up until 1997 when I got my first PC that was actually mine. 486 processor, 64 megabytes of RAM, onboard graphics and Windows 3.1 pre-installed. Well, it worked but it was already behind spec for a bunch of games. About a month later, Resident Evil came out and I upgraded to a Pentium CPU, Windows 95 and got an Orchid Righteous GPU and a while later, a 56k modem. Then my computer was awesome
After a brief flirt with a Toshiba Satellite, and selling it for about double what it was reasonably worth (somebody tried to scam me... they failed and I took their money :lol
I decided to get a custom-built gaming rig in early 2006. I didn't know much about hardware and just went on the shop-owner's advice and price and IMO, ended up with a pretty decent machine for the time. AMD Athlon 64 (socket 939), 512MB OCZ RAM, 380GM HDD, Radeon X1800 GPU. Not bad; I still have this as my music production rig (not for much longer, though).Then, when it was time for an upgrade, I figured I could get a decent laptop that could do gaming, plus I was starting Uni soon and it would be really useful to have. I couldn't have been more wrong. Went with Dell because you could customize what parts you wanted on their website... didn't take into account that you can't customize the case or general build quality. The components are decent enough; i5 M 430 @ 2.27 GHz, 4GB RAM, Mobility HD 5470 GPU. I mean, it should be fine BUT Dell are vindictive morons; the exhaust for the fan gets completely blocked off when the screen is open, so the system just overheats and eats dust. In order to clean the dust, you need to completely dismantle EVERYTHING; optical drive, screen, keyboard; the works. Many of these parts are poorly made and snap-on/off. Do that 3 or 4 times and now I'm left with a laptop that is still a crazy hotbox and is (very literally) held together with duct tape. Also, the chargers have a chip in them to verify they're 'official Dell' to stop you using 3rd party chargers. These chips break constantly, so the charger still works fine but the battery won't charge and the CPU is limited to 800MHz. I have (mad scientist*) plans for this machine but for now, it basically works for surfing the web and stuff, but naturally, I wanted a proper rig for gaming and stuff.
And that will bring you all nicely up to speed up until I started this thread;
http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=44656
So, hello everyone and thanks for having me.
*I'm thinking it could be cool to make a case so that the front is just the screen, like a TV, with enough space behind it for 2 140mm exhuast fans at the top and 2 more intake fans at the back, with USB ports for peripherals, making it still light and portable, just less so but gaining much better cooling. It'd be nice if I could flash the BIOS and use a different power supply but there's so many logistical nightmares with this concept that I haven't even considered and won't consider for a good while yet. It might actually be impossible but one day, we'll see.
Last edited:
c3d: 
