Exited to be back! My first build in 3 years!

Exited to be back! My first build in 3 years! [PICS INSIDE]

Well I'm finally back in the game! I used to be really into the case modding, overclocking and tweaking game from 1996 - 2006 and I ended up selling my last PC in favor of going with high end desktop replacement laptops (Mainly stuck with Dell's XPS line due to warranties and such). The reason being my need to be mobile, giving service everywhere, traveling and basically barely ever being home enough to enjoy the PC.

Now things have changed and I've climbed the ranks a bit and now hold an office centric job where I don't really move around that much and gamed alot at home with the XPS (an M1730 with a lowly 8700GT SLI but a good 2.5Ghz C2D, 4GBs of RAM and a RAID-0). Not that I'm really rich or anything, far from it, everyone knows how tight everything is but now I finally had an opportunity to build myself a PC like back in the days.

Long story short, one of the graphic designers in the office had his out-of-warranty workstation burn-out and I jumped the gun and sold him my M1730 for $1,700, wich still has 2 1/2 years of Complete Care warranty and more than enough specs for his work load.

Not wanting to go overboard on the first hit I did some research and tried to stay as budget minded as possible but without making to many sacrifices and I ended up fetching the following build through NewEgg for about $1,300:

C2D E8400 Wolfdale E0 (3.0Ghz)
2 x 2GB Mushkin HP DDR3 DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) 7-7-7-20
EVGA GTX 285 1Gb
Asus Striker II Extreme nForce 790i SLI
2 x 500Gb Wester Digital WD5000AAKS in RAID-0 (128K Stripe)
Corsair 850W TX
Coolermaster CM690
Coolermaster Hyper N 520
4 x Schythe 140mm SY1425SL12H (MAX: 1900 RPM, 104.54 CFM, 41.13 dBA) (yes they are loud, but I got the next item to tame them)
Schythe Kaze Master Fan Controller
LG Super Multi DVD/RW

Out of all that I already owned the two Hard Drives so I saved about $200 there and I bought the case locally at one of the only remaining CompUSA stores (now Tiger Direct) to save $100 on shipping.

With the remaining $400 I bought an MSI Wind U100 Netbook and invested $120 towards buying 2Gb of RAM for it, a 7,200 160Gb HD, a decent backpack and an external slim usb-powered DVD-RW for work purposes. Now I no longer have to lug around a 30lb back pack, the Netbook is PERFECT for my work purposes as I mainly just use Office applications, networking tools and such, and even the odd Virtual machine runs decently on it with 2Gb of RAM.

As for the PC, I got everything from NewEgg yesterday and spent all night meticulously building it with proper cable management for EVERYTHING, not a single loose hanging wire anywhere to be found (except for the top left most corner of the motherboard, no space to manouver in there with the Coolermaster CPU Cooler in there.

Its FINALLY really good to be back to the crack that is PC tweaking, moding, money burning, etc etc etc. Tonight I shall get back home from the office to mount the RAID-0 array, boot for the first time and install both Vista Home Premium and Windows 7 on it and I'll oficially be back!! I intend to be running 4Ghz stable once everything is set and done but I think I'm gonna start burning in everything at stock clocks for a few days, maybe leave some stress testing loops going overnight and such to prepare it for whats to come.

I'll try and take some pics of the build tonight once I get home, I didn't want to mod a window with CCFL lights this time around (kind of grew out of the whole flashy gaming PC case phase) but I think I might end up cutting a window into it, everything just looks so good!!

/RANT OVER

WOOT! good luck with the build hope everything goes great. Back

If you have DDR3 and a $300 motherboard, why not go i7? Just curious.

Quigsby said:

If you have DDR3 and a $300 motherboard, why not go i7? Just curious.

Click to expand...

I couldn't fork over another $100 - $120 that the cheapest i7 CPU would cost unfortunately over the E8400, I was on a really strict $1,700 budget and even then I went over by about $120 getting necessary accesories for the Netbook.

Furthermore the Mobo was going for $280 and the cheapest i7 Mobo I would've bought was over $350 and also a 6Gb Tripple Channel DDR3 kit was also a bit more. So it was just a matter of economics. I consider this setup to have at least a good 1 or 2 years of life, going quad core down the road and adding more video cards I should be fine. My next build will be i7 for sure though.

Just got back home and I'm almost done replicating the data of the 2nd HD in RAID-0 array into another drive so that I can mount the RAID-0 volume and start installing.

Here's some pics I took of it. It sure as hell was a pain to manage that power supply, thats the price to pay for saving some $$ over getting the 1000HX which is modular. I think it turned out decently enough for it having so many harnesses. Notice in the back how I tucked away the remaining PCI-E connectors in the back to make it much easier to pop them out of their hiding spot and into the second card which will be coming soon, (hence the reason I got the 850W Corsair PSU instead of something of lower rating that was modular.











Cheers to all! I'll report back after I install, update and start benching and testing in the other specific harware forums!