Andre's Z77 Personal Rig

[CPMFW]

also here is a thread i have that i was working on posting all my various computers through the years i dont know how up to date it is but some of the older stuff is there if you want to have a look http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=45894

some nice old hardware... i´ve got an old 8800gtx lying around somewhere

 

[SeekaX]

a lot of things are really beautiful about this rig. it has probably my favorite sleeving of all time. i don't like the cpu cooler though, it looks to big and bumpy, but that might just be me since i put a watercooling unit in nearly every build. but everything besides that is just gorgeous.

 

[dragoonk]

I took the time to read that thread. You had quite the hardware history. I also had the nVidia 6150SE integrated graphics that i overclocked to 700MHz, and it was a disaster... I wonder what had happend if my friend wasn't kind to give me this graphics card. I would of been stuck with this HD3000 Integrated graphics which is horrible, even overclocked...

 

[andrevautour]

I took the time to read that thread. You had quite the hardware history. I also had the nVidia 6150SE integrated graphics that i overclocked to 700MHz, and it was a disaster... I wonder what had happend if my friend wasn't kind to give me this graphics card. I would of been stuck with this HD3000 Integrated graphics which is horrible, even overclocked...

Thanks man! I will reply to the other messages in a second but I'll reply to this first.

yeah the 6150se was abysmal i didnt even bother trying it i ordered a geforce 8800 gts when those came out and i used that with it


Thanks for reading the thread! It's not entirely complete as there are some things before the 1995 laptop that my dad had, his Apple II in 1980 for example and then stuff after (i'm working on individual threads for each build, i'm going to get back to that and then i can link to those.


Laptop wise I had a few really bad acer/dell laptops but ever since the first unibody macbook pro in oct 2008 i've had mac book pros.

desktop wise i got my first one in 2002 and started messing around with it right away. that one had an athlon 2000+ and Geforce TI4200

in 2004 i had an amd athlon 2900+ and radeon 9800 pro with a zalman heatpipe cooler

2005 - i had my dads used amd 64 3200+ cpu and geforce 6800 ultra

2006 - i had that hp prebuilt which had a amd x2 5200+ and i added the geforce 8800gts within a week of getting it

2007 i had my dads used nforce 680i motherborad, intel q6600 cpu and the 8800 gts still

2008 i mainly used my macbook pro which was the first gen unibody it had an intel core 2 duo 2.5ghz and geforce 9600 gt

2009 - near the end of 2009 i got the intel i7 920 cpu my dad used that year and dual radon 4980's and i used those for a long time until i got an AMD 6950 and i used that with the intel i7 920 cpu

my sister used to have a amd phenom 965 black edition for a bit and a gigabyte 990fx ud7 motherboard plus those 2 radon 4890s but i sold all her amd stuff a couple months ago and she got my used i7 920 and radeon 6950

and then currently i have a macbook pro i use for some stuff and my desktop is what you see here in this thread its ongoing im having fun playing around and changing things etc

back in march of this year i build my dad's current system which is



Case: Cooler Master HAF X
Motherborad: Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Processor: Intel Core i7-3930K
Graphics: 2 Nvidia GTX580 SLI
Memory: 32GB G.Skill RipjawsZ 2133MHz
SSD: Crucial M4 256GB
HDD: 2 Seagate Barracuda 3TB (Raid 1)
PSU: Enermax Platimax 1200W
Cooler: Corasir H100 with Noctua NF-F12 fans

Monitor: Asus VG27H 27" 3D 120Mz
Keyboard: Monix Zibal 60 Black
Mouse: Razer Mamba Elite


You can see my thread for that build here if you want: http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=46825




i saw your other message i will respond to that shortly im just getting something to eat quicl then i'll be back.

 

[andrevautour]

some nice old hardware... i´ve got an old 8800gtx lying around somewhere

thanks! we had two of them i used both of them in that build i did as a gift for my dad's friend's son a few months back along with the q6600 cpu and nforce 680iLT board

 

[CPMFW]

thanks! we had two of them i used both of them in that build i did as a gift for my dad's friend's son a few months back along with the q6600 cpu and nforce 680iLT board

nice... i still got my q6600 running on a 780i sli board. i used to have two of the 8800's too, but one of them stopped working thats when i moved to a gtx 285 that stopped working for a strange reason so i went for the gtx295

 

[dragoonk]

Your dad's system is powerful. Looking strong with that 3930k and those 580's SLI. You gotta love the Noctua fan look ( I would spread Noctua fans troughout the whole computer if I had a black interior like that) . The thing I don't like about that case is the plastick top, but if you can mount fans up there, atleast it's functional, it kills the uglyness.
I'll probably make a history about my "relationship" with computers, which ones "left" me and which ones I "dumped", and post it here if you don't mind. I don't want to open up a thread for cheap computing and a short history... not many people want to see that.

 

[andrevautour]

Your dad's system is powerful. Looking strong with that 3930k and those 580's SLI. You gotta love the Noctua fan look ( I would spread Noctua fans troughout the whole computer if I had a black interior like that) . The thing I don't like about that case is the plastick top, but if you can mount fans up there, atleast it's functional, it kills the uglyness.
I'll probably make a history about my "relationship" with computers, which ones "left" me and which ones I "dumped", and post it here if you don't mind. I don't want to open up a thread for cheap computing and a short history... not many people want to see that.

it's definitely got some great hardware (those gtx580s are getting a bit old at this point) my single 7950 with an overclock gets almost as high as score and the two of those in sli.

i hate the case too, but it's something my dad picked. to me it makes no sense to have a system that cost that much is a cheesy plastic case, but like you said it still works just as fast so i guess its not the worst thing that could happen. i talk about my opinions on cases earlier in this thread i belive but yes basically i hate plastic and i hate cheesy over designed stuff i like good materials like aluminum and steel

cases i like:
most stuff from lian li
some stuff from silverstone
caselabs stuff, mainly the m8
cooler master cosmos ii (not my favorite but i think its ok)

cases i dont like:
mostly anything else that's not mentioned above with a few exceptions


my next case will almost certainly be either Lian Li PC X2000FN, Caselabs Magnum M8 with only the main chamber so it's like a cube, or something from silverstone that is high end like the tj11, but even that i dont like the look of it as much as the lian li or caselabs m8 so more likely one of those two.


i LOVE the look of noctua stuff as well and i love all earth tones. my previous motherboard was a sabertooth x58 and i nerly went for a sabertooth z77 here but i still have mixed feelings about the thermal armor look. i dont like the fake steel grip pattern on it. i do like the sabertooth x79 a lot and i would use that if i was doing an x79 build for myself or someone who has letting me have free reign over the hardware selection.

as you can see i currently have a noctua nh-d14 and all noctua nf-p12 case fans in this build and they are just amazing you can literally not hear any of it at all in most cases and they move loads of air.



please do! i am always interested in seeing people's hardware no matter the price range

i still have some more old pictures to upload im going to get a thread for each of my more relavent builds over the years i still have a few left to do and i will like to them here after i finish

 

[andrevautour]

I totally understand that, I don't like flashy things myself... especially flashy colors.. like those green/blue/orange water cooling themes with the colored liquid. I have seen a Rig and the case was black and simple looking , something very similar to yours, and he had two white 120mm ( if i am not mistaking ) in the front that gave the whole case this powerful look like they were two turbines... and inside it had also white fans and carbon fibre touches on the CPU waterblock and the rad... I am not a big fan of carbon fibre being combined with computers cause it's a material that has more to do with aircraft and cars then it has to do with computers, but this one looked really good, the whole black and white combo. I love that.

My memory is HyperX Blu. I bought this cheap... this build, if you can call it that, was short of a graphics card. I got the 3870 X2 from a friend in Australia for free. He was upgrading at that time to a 6990 and before that he was running two of these Sapphire 3870 X2 in Crossfire. When replacing them he gave me one of them. this is the only high-end graphics card I have ever had. I had a few in the AGP days, but since PCI-E became more popular, I ran an integrated graphics on an AM2 GIGABYTE motherboard with an Athlon64 at 1.8 GHZ which then later I OC'd to 2.5GHz... the integrated chip also... it was running at 425MHz if I remember exactly, and I managed to get it to 700MHz.. lol that was a bit of a suicide move, but it worked, and later I got this.
The 3870 X2 is still prooving to do a decent job... I have experienced games at max setting with it, but not the latest names like, Crysis2, BF3, Far Cry 3 , but it handles medium settings The most stable OC on it is 857/1062, for whatever reason I can't find a stable OC above 900 forthe core and even a bit under 900, even if stabil during gameplay, it locks up my computer when alt-tabbing or quitting the game. BF3 it can go on Ultra decently, but without AA on. And the gameplay is sometimes brutalized by this massive stutter... Now I am not sure if it's the graphic card's fault, the lack of VRAM, or my hard drive ( an old 160Gb Excelstor that I have ever since I switched from IDE to SATA, haven't upgraded ever since ) but it's there and annoying.
At the same time, during BF3 I see almost 98% CPU usage on my Athon X3 and looking at the GPU and CPU working at the same time, it might be a bit of a bottleneck there, I am not sure.

I heard good things about the Patriot memory but honestly, the only high profile RAM I like are the Corsair Dominator , They looks shiny but futuristic, if you populate all of your RAM slots with them they all like form this giant Memory module, you can't tell it's 4 modules next to eachother, it looks powerful, I like that.

I watched those two vids reviewing your case, and it didn't take a brain surgeon to figure that you're not the happiest with it. I like the way it looked, I like that it doesn't have all sorts of plastic shapes and stuff... it's black, it has that front pannel aluminium look/feel to it if my eyes have not mistaken, plus that power button and that fan conntroler fitted perfectly with that black. But it's prolly gonna be a long time untill I will have to choose a case like that.

i also prefer minimal and understated over anything flashy. i still ahve mixed feelings about a lot of custom builds no matter how good they look, because honestly there is still something about how everything goes together in a custom build that just isn't as perfect as i would like.



in my opinion the all time pinnacle of case quality and how everything on the inside fites together is the mac pro tower. i know the hardware selection is not usually up to date with the pc side of things but that's not what i'm talking about, jus the pure quality of the case and how everything goes together in there perfectly.




there definitely are custom pc builds that i do like and think are extremely well done, but in the back of my head i always have that in mind because it's just not possible to put something together as well as the mac pro is and that kind of bothers me to this day.


i completely agree with you are carbon fiber wrap! glad to find someone of like mind because it seems like a lot of people are into it these days


that being said i generally dislike LED's, carbon fiber wrap, red is getting a bit old for me, some blues i like better like on gigabyte boards. i dont like trim inlays on fans like the corsair fans i think that looks like something from a cheap car like the peugeot 1007. i dont really like white but there are some exceptions where it can be done well like on the caselabs m8 IMO. i like indivudally braided cables if they are routed really tightly and neat, but one thing i often see with those is people tend to route big huge messy loops with those i guess so you can see them more? i dont know really but i dont like big messy loops no matter the cable, i always like it to be tight and clean with the cables.

i mainly like all black for interior or black and earth tones like the noctua stuff and asus sabertooth stuff, but there are some exceptions where i think colors works well.



the hyper x blue looks really nice to me. i think the version you ahve looks similar to the hyper x genesis, but when i looked there seems to be a new heatsink design for the blu version.


does you friend still have the 6990? that is a noisy brute of a think, about one day with that and i would be looking for switch it for something else

that is great that you were able to get the 3870 X2 for free though!


im surprised you are able to run battlefield 2 on ultra with that because the gigabyte 6950 i had previously would not even run on ultra very smoothly at 1080p and it was paired with an i7-920 at the time. that is very impressive because other things might prove to be a limiting factor there like the cpu. i have heard of someone who had all high end hardware for the most part like a geforce gtx680 good memory etc etc but he had an amd board with a phenom 1060T and it didn't perform very well for the latest games until he upgraded to a 3770K i believe and then the grahics card and memory were able to perform at their full potential and everything ran well.



i definitely think that an athlon x3 could be a limiting factor with a game like bf3 on high settings esp if you notice it using 98% of the cpu resources. with the 3770k and even the much older i7-920 games like bf3 only use between 25% and at the very most 40% or 45% of the cpu but its usually more like 35 or 30% plus all of the bandwidth and things like that will likely be a limiting factor for something like bf3. like i said even my 6950 with the i7 920 couldn't play bf3 on ultra very smoothly at 1080p during multiplayer sessions.


the single 7950 pretty much can handle any game on ultra settings at 2560x1440, most games you can have AA on as well except for the most demanding like you mentioned, but ive found with 2560x1440 AA doesn't even do that much different so having it off and everything on ultra looks really sharp anyway.



there are some memory that i like the look of. what i mainly dont like is memory or anythign that looks like a knife, gun etc like the MSI x79 big bang board with the minigun and the clip of ammo as the heatsink and the gigabyte g1 assassin stuff. so gskill stuff isn't my favorite, but it does perform well, we have had a couple kits of sniper stuff and a couple kits of ripjawsz 2133 mhz here and it all performs nicely.

looks wise i like mushkin blackline ridgeback the best , the dominator platinum i like alright but im not a big fan of corsair at the moment so im not rushing out to buy their stuff right now (not to mention for the moment i am using the nh-d14 cooler and their heatsinks wont even fit under there so iud have to switch to a h100i style cooler if i wanted to use dominator platinum) i like patriot stuff i think it looks nice and performs well. i like the look of the kingston hyper x predator a lot recently but the same story with that it's too tall for the nhd14 cooler.

i settled on the patriot intel masters stuff but cause i think it looks nice and ive heard they use the better chips for that stuff vs the black mamba stuff which has the black cooler (i cant confirm that i just heard one person say it) and the heatsinks are medium sized but they will fit under the d14.


i may switch to soemthing like a h100i in the future because i would like a bit more space around the cpu area inside the case if im honest.

i didn't like the h100's at all because all the ones i worked with had a noisy annoying pump, but ive heard from some people that the pump rattle is fixed with the h100i. id have to look into it future to make sure this is the case but if it is quiet i can see myself switching to that in the future.



i completely agree with you again on the plastic designs seen on a lot of cases , i like your style

the 650d is pretty good for the money it's only $149 now at local stores and its probably one of the nicest cases for that price. there are a few issues with it like i mentioned in those videos but they are not that big of a deal really.

the front panel has a few milometers of brushed aluminum on it which looks good and so does the lamptron fc6 so it does match.


for around $150-$200 i doublt you will find much better than the 650D really, because all of the cases i've seen in that price range have had some quality issues and annoying quibbles with them, but that is to be expected.

i am just really really fussy though so i like it to be perfect but i am going to be paying between $400 and $600 for my next case probably because all the cases im looking at around around that price

As you may have gathered since i like the caselabs magnum m8 so much i really like the cube form factor a lot and lian li has a new case out called the D8000 which i really like the look of as well..


The Lian Li D8000 is $369 on newegg

Caselabs Magnum M8 is $399 base but will be more once you get it configured

Lian Li F2000FN is $499 on newegg but its not even in stock they do have 1 in stock at amazon though

The Silverstone TJ11 is even more expensive it is $599 at amazon




Lian Li X2000FN

Lian Li D8000

Caselabs M8

Silverstone TJ11

As of right now the Lian Li X2000FN is my favorite looking of them all so that will probably be my next case if i can get my hands on one. I can't say anything for sure obviously but it is just so minimal and gorgeous I am loving it so much.

 

[andrevautour]

This was my desktop and desk area in 2003.

 

[andrevautour]

My desk now.

 

[dragoonk]

Beautiful beautiful cases. I love these, CaseLabs, Lian li and Silverstone are some of my favorites as well. My favorite Silverstone case is an ITX form factor case FT03B-MINI
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/...LeCTGEp-nlZE-q0NX-PqLE852TchCOrSQlnGTglX4RDhA

It's a beauty, and my next build, (if I have the necesary resources) will be in this case ( I love to dream, but that's all I got for now ). I always loved ITX form factor builds. I love the idea of "small and powerful".

I also love the Cube case from CaseLabs, I have seen a couple reviews about CaseLabs cases and they are rewarding, huge, practical... perfect for the hardcore enthusiast. ( worth every penny ). That tall Lian Li case looks fantastic, I'd buy one of those without a second thought.

Yes my memory is HyperX Blu, 1600MHz CL9 and I love these. I was looking to get kingmax when I was picking stuff for this computer, but when I saw these, and after I got my CPU I used it on an older AM2 board ( with an updated bios... or downgraded.. can't remember exactly ) with DDR2 RAM till I got an AM3 ASUS board and the HyperX Blu a bit later. The ASUS board broke down ( it had the exact same chipset as the MSI I am using right now, it was basicly the same only with ASUS heatsinks ) and I sent it back and they couldn't sent an ASUS back so I got this instead. I don't know about others, but I love this board, the way it looks , the way it performs... and I've seen bad reviews scattered all across the net about it... it worked perfectly for me since the first time I booted it till this moment.

The graphics card... well I have an Issue with it on Battlefield... it doesn't run smoothly cause I get massive stutter... it may be the VRAM, or the HDD.. but when it doesn't stutter... it is surprisingly playable without Antialiasing on which kills it. it also may be the fault of the Athlon X3... It was as much as I could afford and it'll have to do till one day when I get a better one even if it's a cheap Bulldozer.
But I got 3.31 in Cinebench 11.5 with it.. better than the FX-4100 lol... that was something. This kind of CPU is actually a Phenom X4 with a locked core and no L3 Cache... for some reason if you look closer at my Mobo's chipset... it's able to unlock these kind of CPU's... so this being the main reason why I bought these... unfortunately... my other core was not unlockable, and it didn't turn into a 4 core Phenom... but I think that by overclocking it I gained more performance than I would of if it was unlockable and stable. I am not sorry I bought it, it was the best choice for the money and the unlockable core was a lotery, and you don't pay for even if it's unlockable or not.

Anyway back to the 3870X2... this card was the fastest back in 2007... Also a monster... it sucks about 200W. When I first got it... i had this ... I dunno.. the right word.. pathetic power supply ( it said 400W on it... I will never belive that till the day I die ) and it couldn't handle it ALONE at max... so I bought an Inter-tech Energon ( it said "Gaming Power Supply".. or something like that, on the box ). At first look... I think I have some pics of the power supply and the ASUS Board.. I'll put the at the end of the post. This power supply was a 550W quad 12V rail 18A each... it couldn't cope with the 3870 X2's hunger for amps and power. 18A were not enough. Cons for that PSU were... well the lack of a second 6+2 pin PCI-E and low A. it came with a power cable, zipties, screwes... a sleeved 20+4 pin. So I decided to send it back and pay add the difference to get an Inter-tech SL-700 dual 12V Rail at, this time, 25A each which is more than enough. So this one ran the 3870X2 beautifully and still does... but... it came with no power cable, no screwes no zipties.. ... short cables... I was devastated when I opened the box. But I am over that... ( I bet you never heard of these products on any market you know ).


Plastic on Cases makes them look cheap and crazy designs too. it's like.. someone knows the things they make/sale are cheap and trying to catch your attention , or fool you with so called crazy designs... well.. ummm I don't like those. There are a few case that have those and I kinda appreciate them trying to make them look good and high quality.

This is the Inter-tech Energon 550W PSU I was talking about... not much to see, it's the only picture I have with this PSU.

This is the 3870X2 a little after I got it ( on my dirty old carpet ), I took the paper lable off when I last cleaned it... it was coming off cause of heat.

This is the ASUS Board I was talking about

This is my computer with the ASUS Board, with the Energon 550W and the Athlon's silly stock cooler. Ahh and 2 Gigs of Kingmax 1333MHz.

And Finally The whole Asus setup but this time, with the SL-700 Power Supply. ( Look at that "cable management" lol )

 

[andrevautour]

Beautiful beautiful cases. I love these, CaseLabs, Lian li and Silverstone are some of my favorites as well. My favorite Silverstone case is an ITX form factor case FT03B-MINI
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/...LeCTGEp-nlZE-q0NX-PqLE852TchCOrSQlnGTglX4RDhA

It's a beauty, and my next build, (if I have the necesary resources) will be in this case ( I love to dream, but that's all I got for now ). I always loved ITX form factor builds. I love the idea of "small and powerful".

I also love the Cube case from CaseLabs, I have seen a couple reviews about CaseLabs cases and they are rewarding, huge, practical... perfect for the hardcore enthusiast. ( worth every penny ). That tall Lian Li case looks fantastic, I'd buy one of those without a second thought.

Yes my memory is HyperX Blu, 1600MHz CL9 and I love these. I was looking to get kingmax when I was picking stuff for this computer, but when I saw these, and after I got my CPU I used it on an older AM2 board ( with an updated bios... or downgraded.. can't remember exactly ) with DDR2 RAM till I got an AM3 ASUS board and the HyperX Blu a bit later. The ASUS board broke down ( it had the exact same chipset as the MSI I am using right now, it was basicly the same only with ASUS heatsinks ) and I sent it back and they couldn't sent an ASUS back so I got this instead. I don't know about others, but I love this board, the way it looks , the way it performs... and I've seen bad reviews scattered all across the net about it... it worked perfectly for me since the first time I booted it till this moment.

The graphics card... well I have an Issue with it on Battlefield... it doesn't run smoothly cause I get massive stutter... it may be the VRAM, or the HDD.. but when it doesn't stutter... it is surprisingly playable without Antialiasing on which kills it. it also may be the fault of the Athlon X3... It was as much as I could afford and it'll have to do till one day when I get a better one even if it's a cheap Bulldozer.
But I got 3.31 in Cinebench 11.5 with it.. better than the FX-4100 lol... that was something. This kind of CPU is actually a Phenom X4 with a locked core and no L3 Cache... for some reason if you look closer at my Mobo's chipset... it's able to unlock these kind of CPU's... so this being the main reason why I bought these... unfortunately... my other core was not unlockable, and it didn't turn into a 4 core Phenom... but I think that by overclocking it I gained more performance than I would of if it was unlockable and stable. I am not sorry I bought it, it was the best choice for the money and the unlockable core was a lotery, and you don't pay for even if it's unlockable or not.

Anyway back to the 3870X2... this card was the fastest back in 2007... Also a monster... it sucks about 200W. When I first got it... i had this ... I dunno.. the right word.. pathetic power supply ( it said 400W on it... I will never belive that till the day I die ) and it couldn't handle it ALONE at max... so I bought an Inter-tech Energon ( it said "Gaming Power Supply".. or something like that, on the box ). At first look... I think I have some pics of the power supply and the ASUS Board.. I'll put the at the end of the post. This power supply was a 550W quad 12V rail 18A each... it couldn't cope with the 3870 X2's hunger for amps and power. 18A were not enough. Cons for that PSU were... well the lack of a second 6+2 pin PCI-E and low A. it came with a power cable, zipties, screwes... a sleeved 20+4 pin. So I decided to send it back and pay add the difference to get an Inter-tech SL-700 dual 12V Rail at, this time, 25A each which is more than enough. So this one ran the 3870X2 beautifully and still does... but... it came with no power cable, no screwes no zipties.. ... short cables... I was devastated when I opened the box. But I am over that... ( I bet you never heard of these products on any market you know ).


Plastic on Cases makes them look cheap and crazy designs too. it's like.. someone knows the things they make/sale are cheap and trying to catch your attention , or fool you with so called crazy designs... well.. ummm I don't like those. There are a few case that have those and I kinda appreciate them trying to make them look good and high quality.

This is the Inter-tech Energon 550W PSU I was talking about... not much to see, it's the only picture I have with this PSU.

This is the 3870X2 a little after I got it ( on my dirty old carpet ), I took the paper lable off when I last cleaned it... it was coming off cause of heat.

This is the ASUS Board I was talking about

This is my computer with the ASUS Board, with the Energon 550W and the Athlon's silly stock cooler. Ahh and 2 Gigs of Kingmax 1333MHz.

And Finally The whole Asus setup but this time, with the SL-700 Power Supply. ( Look at that "cable management" lol )

hey -- happy new year

i think there is definitely something interesting about very small cases. i know they are some limiting factors when you get too small with the case, but it is different and a bit exciting to see whats possible with a very small case...

one of my favorite very small cases that i've seen recently is the silverstone sg08. i think it looks really nice and it would be perfect for a media pc on a home theater shelf with some stereo equipment for example.

it was reviewed here on OC3D: http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cases_cooling/silverstone_sg08_review/1

another case i like that is a bit smaller than average , but not too small is the Lian Li V700. i think this is very pretty but it does have a non convectional layout with the psu at the front because it's too small to have it under the graphics card at the bottom

the hyper x blu looks really nice! im glad you like it. these days im really loving the hyper x predator 2400mhz stuff and i can see myself using that stuff in the future when i get a suitable water cooling solution.

i think its some of the nicest looking stuff i've seen in a while

i like msi boards as well. this is the first one i've had in a bit and it's performed well except for the mine wake up issue but i leave it on most of the time anyway so not that big of deal. the other board i was looking at was the z77 sabertooth which i like too but i ended up going for this because i liked the look of the exposed pcb of the board a bit better than the thermal armor.

honestly it's not a surprise that it doesn't run battlefield very smmothly because battlefield is massively demanding and even newer hardware has trouble with it. AA is always a big thing i find it can be up to 20fps extra with AA turned off versus it turned on. when i had the radeon 6950 i would turn aa off for some of the newer games to get it to fun more smoothly.

the last setup my sister used before i sold all the AMD stuff a few months ago was a phenom X4 965 black edition and 2X 4890 gpus in crossfire. the 965 only got like 4.3 in cinebench i believe at stock speeds and with those 2 4890 cards it would get good scores in 3dmark vantage, but it would have a lot of trouble with some of the newer games like skyrim and , witcher 2, etc. i even tried the phenom 965 with the radeon 6950 and it was a bit better but still had issues with the same games. it was only when i paired up the radeon 6950 with the i7 920 that it started to perform much better, which suggests that the amd phenom cpu was the limiting factor in that setup.

the board we had was a very nice gigabyte 990fx ud7 which has every feature you can imagine, but the cpu just wasn't very good, so lukcily i was able to sell all the amd stuff as a package to someone i knew who was looking to put together a cheap gaming rig. that was right around the time i was buying my z77 stuff so my sister moved from the amd stuff to the x58 i7 920 and my old sabertooth x58 bard which was a very nice board that i still love.

i did overclock the 965 to about 4.2ghz, but the performance gain was very little in cinebench and not noticeable at all during games. i think it went for 4.3 cinebench to about 4.8, which is the stock speed score of the i7 920 at 2.6ghz. so at 4.2ghz the phenom 965 was roughly comparable to the stock 920 at 2.6ghz. the i7 920 we have is highly overclockable and get easily do 7.3 in cinebench at 4.2ghz


that asus board looks nice to me -- a lot of people dont like the brown pcb sort of like the old green ones but i actually think its very nice and it sort of ties into my love of earthy tones. that one is the pictures is the am3 board that died and was replaced by the msi one you have now, right?


the msi board in the other picture looks nice too , its hard to tell exactly in the picture but it looks like a bit of an off black maybe with a ting of dark purple or dark brown in it? the 7950 from msi that i have now has a dark brown pcb and it think its really pretty i love it

i need to take a better picture in natural light because when i took the card out of the box and put it in it was at night and didn't feel like messing around with the tripod for these pictures and getting proper white balance so i just turned the flash on and ive not taken any better pictures of it out of the build in natural light since but i am planning on it . anyway for now this is the picture of the pcb that i have it is a nice dark brown that i like a lot

i remember that i skipped the 3000 series because in 2007 i had a 8800gts from evga the SSC one and then in 2009 i got a pair of sapphire 4890s

as far as crappy power supplies i have had my share of them as well and seen plenty .. i do like the gold fan grille on the one in the picture i had an old grey one that had a 92mm fan and a gold fan grille and i had it in my old sunbeam acrylic case and i love the look of the build even tho it was messy.


you can see the thread for that here if you want

http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=47774

other bad power supllies we've had were all of the ultra xconnect 1 2 and 3 series. these were a in house brand from a local compute rstore here called tiger direct. they had very good looks for the time i suppose , metallic paint, cables that where enclosed in rubber and fully modular, but the quality of the actual units wwere terrible and i think we had at least 6 of them total that all died if you combine the 1st 2ndd and 3rd gen ones. one of the 2nd gen ones blew up and killed all the hardware in my dads build at the time which was 2006, and the 3rd gen xconnect he had actually killed a couple 4980s and a couple of gtx 580s and we didnt know what the issue was until later but the power supply it turned out had killed a bunch of different hardware and we just didnt connect the dots until much later.

so since then it's been only good power supplies we have a corsair ax1200 here my dad uses the enermax platimax 1200W now and i use a ax 850 and weve had not trouble with any of those. the corsairs are made by seasonic which is one of the top psu OEMs and the enermax ones are one of the top manufacturers too.



i have heard of the Inter-tech Energon and i looked up the Inter-tech SL-700. i like the look of it actually i know a lot of people don't like grey anymore but i still think its nice like i said before i actually like that unsleeved cable retro sort of look. seasonic has some nice lower powered grey power supplies with unsleeved cables and i like the look of those too.

its called seasonic ss 400 et and it looks like a solid little unit to me, for a lower powered moderate system

or something a little more powerful like the seasonic m12ii it is black so a bit more modern looking but very subtle but handsome IMO and well priced

i completely agree about plastic i really dislike it no matter how many nice features a case has i wouldn't use a case with a lot of plastic on the outside because there are always other good options that dont have plastic on them.. some people just like stuff that looks "different" i guess but if it has a really cheap feel then it just isn't nice to use in my opinion.




i do like things that have a very aggressive modern design, but using good quality materials like aluminum. a good example of that that ive seen recently is the in win h frame


http://www.inwin-style.com/pd_info.php?id=271&iw_lanid=0



http://www.gdm.or.jp/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/004_04_1024x768.jpg

 

[andrevautour]

here's a picture of the 4890's that i had, they looks fairly similar to your card.

 

[andrevautour]

Patriot Memory Intel Extreme Masters 2133 MHz

Hello everyone,

This update was planned for a few days ago but I got distracted a bit with some other stuff. I do have a few more updates planned and I will space those out a little.

This is my new memory that I picked up a few days ago and I am really pleased with it.

I think it's nice looking, it's metallic blue and I like it a bit more than the Patriot black mamba stuff that it's based on.

I have heard one person say that patriot is cherry picking the best chips to use with the Intel Extreme Masters branded stuff, but I have no idea if that is true or not.

I am potentially thinking of a cooler change in the future at some point, and some of my favorite looking taller memory right now is the Kingston HyperX Predator stuff.

This patriot is right at the maximum height that will fit under the NH-D14 and even then it depends on if your board has latches on the top and bottom of the memory slits because that allows it to go in at a bit more of an angle before straightening it out , otherwise if you have the slot at the bottom and latch at the top it will bit but you might need to put it in before you fit the NH-D14 and then just leave it in.


The quality of the DIMMs is very nice, they are a little bit lighter than the Patriot Viper Xtreme stuff I had before, but I assume it's just because the aluminum used in the heatsink on these is a little bit thinner, nothing to worry about though.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_5ERHNkIWY


IMG_0099 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



IMG_0101 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0102 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0103 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0104 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0105 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0106 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0107 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0108 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0109 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0110 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0111 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0112 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr




Installation

I took a few shots as I was getting the system ready to install the memory. These are a bit older now and I have some newer updates coming but here are the pictures from the night I installed the memory.


IMG_0117 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0118 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

i have since moved the HDD cage and this USB 3 header. I will talk about this in my next update.


IMG_0119 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0121 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0122 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0123 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


You can see the red Gskill RipjawsZ that I had in there temporarily


IMG_0124 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


Very bad white balance here I apologize


IMG_0125 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


Here is a better shot of the Gskill kit from before


IMG_1827 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1826 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



IMG_0126 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



First stick installed, you can see that the heatsink does cover the first slot so you have the install this stick by putting the base of the dimm onto the slot at an angle, then straighten it out and press down. It's a bit fussy to do, but it is possible


IMG_0127 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



There is about 1 cm of space above the DIMM once it is clicked into place


IMG_0128 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0129 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0130 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0131 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0132 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0133 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

I think the blue heatsinks are very nice looking


IMG_0134 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0135 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0136 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


Second kit


IMG_0137 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0138 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0139 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0140 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0141 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0142 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0143 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0144 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0146 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0147 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0148 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



View from the front with the motherboard LED on


IMG_0149 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


And the view with the LED off


IMG_0154 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



IMG_0156 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0173 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0175 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0176 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr




Okay, if you're made it this far then you probably want to know know what the performance is like. Well here is a few benchmarks





Here is the Cinebench score with the CPU at 4.4 GHz




and wPrime with the same settings

 

[CPMFW]

the ram looks well good mate

 

[dragoonk]

Happy New Year!

Yes, there definitely is something very interesting about small cases. The small Silverstone I linked at the top of the post is one of the most beautiful and well built ITX form factor I have seen. Things get very tight in there but surprisingly the temps are good and it looks fantastic. I don't know if you watch Linus building a powerful gaming rig in that case... If you didn't, here's the clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWAeZYB9DGg

i think that is so cool... powerful processor, and graphics and watercooling kit inside that case? just beautiful. Plus the pannels are made of massive aluminium.

Also, the two cases you posted pictures of

... I don't know which one I would buy if I had to choose between the two... they are beautiful.

Also the HyperX Predator has one of the finest looking heat spreaders on the market, I think.

When I first bought my HyperX Blu, i remember being very surprised by the quality and looks of the heat spreader, i couldn't belive that i got that pretty cheap. Also the reviews were impressive, peole reporting very good overclocking figures on these. Only thing I regret is not having the resources to get an 8GB kit.

My MSI board is a looker in my opinion. It doesn't look cheap at all, it's very well built. I wish it had a VRM heatsink although I was pleasently surprised to notice that it has mounting holes for one ( the ASUS didn't from what I remember ) so I decided to make one , but about that in another post ( I should of documented the build, I only have pics with it installed ).
And yes, that is the Asus that was replaced by the MSI board. It had some some weird problem, it booted, sometime it froze, in the BIOS, it made these lines on the screen and eventually freeze. I sent it back and they made me wait 2 weeks before I started to become impacient and sent them an email. Then they told me that the board can't be fixed or replaced cause they don't have one just like it anymore, so I ordered the MSI and ( I did do alot of research before ) and I am loving it ever since.
if you noticed Both the ASUS and the MSI have 6 audio jack ports, and 4 slots of memory so I picked the best boards for that price ( I know what I like and need )
The boards color is similar to the ASUS board but a bit darker, it's a dark brown just like this

I have absolutely nothing against that color, on the contrary...

Battlefield 3 is a demanding game, but the lack of smoothness doesn't come from the graphics card or the CPU... I have seen people playing battlefield on lower end stuff ( AthlonII x2 250, HD3870 ) and it was running smoother. Now I know my computer is faaaar less powerful than yours and most of the people here, but it can still handle games pretty nicely.
Now the problem with BF3 could lie in my hard drive... Because every time stuttering happens I notice HDD activity. It's loaing textures into the RAM from the HDD now... I only have 4 gigs but it doesn't use nowhere near to the max ( about 3 gigs total RAM usage when BF3 is on ). I've searched for this problem... one guy was experiencing this exact same symptom and he had a system similar to yours in terms of components. So he changed his HDD and the problem was solved. I belive that the problem lies in my hard drive which is small and old and slow ( 5.7 points in windows 7 when everything else is at atleast 7. ) and it's bottlenecking. BF3 also uses big data pakets for the transfer and the hard drive isn't fast enough. Other than that ... you would be surprised that the game is perfectly playable on my "rig". ( Also the stuttering doesn't happen all the time so I did have the chance to play BF3 smoothly on this computer. )

I forgot to mention that when the stutter/freezes happen CPU and GPU usage go down and HDD LED is on.

The Phenom 965 was/is still a decent chip... and it's priced a bit above an Athlon like mine. But now that the big boys are out ( 3570K, 3770k ) and more demanding games come out too, and... sadly it falls further behind.
I feels sorry for AMD, I do want them to do better, I want to see some competition, like it is with nVidia and Radeon.

Honestly I liked the looks of the nergon PSU better than I like this one, AND it had longer cables, too bad it wasn't enough for that power hungry card. But the SL-700 is the btter PSu. Although... I think that the one 12V rail poweres all the connectors except the CPU 4+4 pin which is powered by the other 12V rail. Now... I don't know, I wish that the 2 2X6+2 pin PCI-E connectors were powered by separate rails. If this turns out to be true then one 12V rail is enough to power the card and the other stuff.

I think this

looks really really nice. It reminds me of a kid that built a custom water cooling kit for a 800MHz Pentium 3 I belive, and the rad was from a car and it had this transparent small blue LED fan smack in the middle of it ( was cute ). In other wrds it reminds me of that time when you're young and you;re learning and you are passionate but you still have alot to learn. Besides there was no place to hide the cables in that case lol.

the seasonic PSU's you posted pics of are good quality PSU's. I think I see a 80 Silver on one of them. There is no such thing on mine, but Inter-tech does have a few 80+ Silver certified PSU's showing that they may not be so bad.
In the future, if I have the right resources, I want a Corsair AX850 if I decide not to build a small form factor rig.

My PSU is gray because I didn't hve the money to worry about color or looks, I wanted my computer to work properly. You see a set of mixed colors in there like the red graphics card ( which I got for free and I couldn't even think of daring to complain about that lol ) and the gray PSU and the blue RAM and the brown Motherboard but I didn't have the resources to be picky. Hell, I even accepted that the PSU has short cables. That's how tight budgets are. And mine was very... VERY tight.
I agree with you on the Win H frame case, it's a fantastic looking case. Very well built, high quality materials, just hardcore enthyziast look, all shapes are in aluminium , there is no cheap plastic feel/look. The hyper X Blu would go perfect with that case lol.

look at those things together hehe. They do look like my card, but... quite a bit smaller. I think I am pretty lucky to have this one for free and being able to run the latest games at decent framerates at medium settings... when you think about it this card is 5 years old!
The only thing I hate about it is that I just cannot overclock it abpove 860MHz on the core... it just isn't stable.. and when it is, it always freezes or the driver stops responding when I alt-tab out of a game, when I quit a game or sometimes when I start it. I this is cause by the PLL VCO divider bug.. a limit made by ATI so that people can't overclock their cards.. which I think it is damn stupid ( the PLL VCO divider bug was first reported in the single 3870, then in the X2's ) so I belive mine has it. I tried everything. I flashed the card with so many bioses as much as.. hundred of times ( no exageration ) without any positive results. So now it runs at 857/1008.

BTW, did I tell you I think that Predator looks a bit better than Patriot?

 

[andrevautour]

This morning I got a package - update on this coming soon

 

[CPMFW]

This morning I got a package - update on this coming soon

looking forward to the update

 

[andrevautour]

I also got a reply from MSI about the memory wake from sleep issue and they send me a BIOs to try. Not sure what version it is though I can't tell by the file name but I will try that. It's a .H64 file I guess it needs to be placed on a flash drive and flashed I'll have to read how to do that and then I will report back if it works or not.