Specifications

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad, q6600, 3ghz overclocked
RAM: 2x 2GB Corasair XMS2 DDR 800
Motherboard: Gigabyte EP45-DS4
GPU: XFX 8800GS, 386mb
Harddrives: 3x 250gb drives (one external, one for recording with my TV tuner, and the 7200.12 drive for OS), 2x seagate 500gb 7200.11 (one main drive for all my files, I havnt put the other to use yet.), 400gb (external), 750gb (bakup for main files and some TV shows and movies). I also have a 74gb raptor and 160gb drive that dont have a permanent use.
DVD burners: LG SATA DVD burner, Lite On light scribe SATA DVD burner. (lite-on wont work properly)
Audio: Sound Blaster Audigy 4, 5.1 Logitech surround sound
Power Supply: OCZ GamexStream 700 watts
Heatsink: Zalaman cnps9500
Case: Sunbeam Transformer
Operating System: Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.7 retail install with very few modifications .

Peripherals

Keyboard/Mouse Logitech wireless MX1000 and included keyboard (no longer used), and a logitech wireless WAVE keyboard.
Monitor Acer 22" glossy widescreen, Samsung 22" HDTV. Both run at 1680x1050. The samsung serves as a TV, Xbox 360 monitor, and a second screen for my computer.

Accessories and Miscellaneous

Hauppauge WinTV PVR 950q USB TV tuner (can capture over the air 1080i)
2X 10" Blue cold cathodes
Thermaltake 4 fan speed controller
Rosewill PCIx1 network card
Rosewill PCIx1 SATA card (which is shitty) (sitting in a drawer, unused, might use it if I need any more SATA ports).

Benchmarks

Note: I'm not sure how reliable these are, as I havnt updated them in a while. But since I havnt done many major hardware changes, I trust the results are still pretty accurate.

Super PI:



512k digits ran in 9 seconds, 1M ran in 20 seconds, and 32m ran in 18m, 7 seconds. I ran the 16 and 32k tests, but I guess they compleated too fast to register. 256k ran in 3 seconds.

HD Tune:



An average of 155 is pretty good. I wish it would stay a bit more level, and not dip off at the end though.

Pictures

Side Window

Cover removed

All SATA drives

CPU cooling

My state of the art temperature monitoring system.

Behind the motherboard tray

Rear of the case

Front door open my 4 fan speed controller on top, even though I only have 3 fans connected to it (the front/rear and top).

Tape to hide the fan wires

Right side of my desk

Center, with 22" monitor and xbox 360

Left side with my laptop

my 3.2GB door stop

Task manager and CPUz. For some reason the quality turned really crappy when I saved it from a .bmp to .jpg.

Comments

Not all of the following is still applicable, but I'll keep it anyway.

I think my computer is cursed. First, my motherboard wasnt working right. I bought an Asus (forgot the exact model), with an "EZ" raid feature. After about 3 days, I determined that this so called "EZ RAID" was in fact, not EZ. Since I'm doing a RAID, and it wasnt working, I decided to send it back and get my current board. I also successfully fried my old motherboard (which was going to my sisters computer), and had to order a replacement. I have no idea what happened to it, I just know that I have a $150 door stop. I might hang it on my wall.

I finally got my replacement motherboard in today, and after successfully setting up my raid (took about 2 minutes this time!), I discovered I failed to backup about 160GB of videos, and instead backed up everything else twice. I'm in the process of trying to recover the data now.

I dont play video games on my computer (as you can probably tell by the video card), but I like to do video and photo editing. I have my xbox 360 connected to my TV to play games on. So far I'm pretty impressed with this build, but I have yet to use it to its full potential.

Right now I just have the mac operating system Leopard (10.5.7) installed on my computer. It was a challenge and took a few days to get running right, but so far its about 99% functional. I'm planning on redoing my fan setup as I discovered that two of my side fans are hardly moving any air at all.

Future Upgrades

So far my system runs as well as I want it too. I dont see any need to do any major upgrades to it. The most I may do is add a blu-ray rom drive when Macs support it (possibly in snow leopard). I may add 2gb of ram to it if I happen to find a great deal on some, but I dont really need it.

My Laptop

I decided to throw in a quick spot on my new laptop. Nothing as detailed as my computer, but a general over view.

Specs:

Brand/Model/Size: HP Pavilion dv9000, 17 inch
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, 4MB L2 cache, 2.2GHZ, 800mhz FSB
RAM: 3GB DDR2 677 I think, of some random brand I've never heard of.
Video: 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS
Screen: 1650x1050 Bright View
Hard Drives: 120GB 7200RPM SATA Hitachi drive, 320gb 7200rpm Seagate drive
Optical: 8x DVD RW with Light Scribe.
Operating System: Windows 7 RC1, OS X Leopard
Wireless: Wireless A,B,G, and N networking, and blue-tooth
Peripherals: 2 mega pixel built in webcam, stereo mics, glossy-like finish, 3 USB ports, HDMI, Firewire, SD card reader, a small media player remote that will fit in the expansion bay (they accidentally sent me two of them) and my favorite, a finger print reader.

I'm really impressed with it. I got all of that, and a 1 year accidental damage warranty, for just $1,306 after taxes, and with a $400 off coupon (thanks to Master of the VG for finding that for me!). It runs a whole lot better then my old laptop (1.8ghz semperon, and 1.5gb of DDR, and the worst onboard video I've ever seen). Its as close to my desktop as I can get it. I'm moving out of state over the summer, and living on campus at my next university, so I have to keep my desktop at one place, and carry around my laptop everywhere else. since I dont have much hard drive space (there both almost full already), I will put my 400GB hard drive in my external enclosure and carry it around with me. I like the finger print reader; makes loging into windows a lot easier; instead of typing my password at the log-in screen, I just swipe one of my fingers (have 6 of them programed for it), and it signs me into windows.


Pictures:

On my desk
A close up of the screen
keyboard
the back finish.
(its impossible to see all the finger prints, and dust and junk until the flash goes off)


Benchmark:

HD Tune:


Not as great as my RAID0, but 46.8mb/s isnt too bad.






Nov. 25th:
I decided to try out my 74gb Raptor drive as my windows Vista drive, so far it seems fine. The drive is pretty noisy (if anyone else has that drive, does it seem noisy too?). I got tired of the noise, and it was a bit slower, so I went back to my RAID.
I also bought a 400GB WD drive for backing up all my files too. My two 160GB drives were filling up on me, and at least this way I have it all in one location. I got a great deal on it to; $60 after rebates.
I also have a great ram/processor over clock. I have my processor running at 3ghz stable and cool, on default voltages and a 9 mulitplyer, and my ram is running at around 1,000mhz.

For a future upgrade, I'm thinking about going to 4GB of ram, and possibly a better video card, probably something like the 8600 range.

January 10th, 08:
Updated the page a bit

February 2nd, 08:
Added my laptop.

May 20th, 08:
Updated the specs with a recent upgrade.

July 1st, 09:
Wow, over a year since my last update. Changed the hardware slightly to reflect what I have in it now and added some comments. I also added a few minor things here and there.

This message was edited by The Slayer on Apr 10 2008.

This message was edited by The Slayer on May 20 2008.

This message was edited by The Slayer on Jun 30 2009.

This message was edited by The Slayer on Jul 17 2009.

how so?

Where did I say I was gaming? I run adobe premiere pro, photoshop, and lots of other programs at once. A quad core will work great for this.

Nice rig! Shame about the videocard, but seeing as you don't game, it shouldn't matter. I'm looking forward to seeing some pics.

At least he is Crysis ready though too bad about the gpu killing that all together but at least your multi-core ready.
Nice rig though man since your not gaming it will be multi-task heaven for your arse.

actually yours is about 8x better than mine

I might consider upgrading my video card later on if I find enough games to play on my computer, but so far I'll stick to xbox live. I prefer talking/yelling at my team mates then typing to them (yeah, theirs some games that have have VOIP, but not everyone uses it).

I havnt had a chance to do some major multitasking, but task manager has shown me a 50% load on all 4 cores a few times when I was running some recovery scans on one of my harddrives.

I should be getting my camera back on Friday or Saturday, and I'll try and take some pictures then, and run a few benchmarks.

brillinat.... well done mate...

and rofl... the 2nd post in a thread about the awesomeness of the quad core is saying 'wasted money'.... awesome...


I want ur PC...


and finally i know the realy use of a quad core...

So you can run 2 copies of oblivion and still playing battlefield 2142 WHILST THEY LOAd.....


abhaahahaha.... and yes, i know.. u don't playu games... nor do i really....

I just wish I could better optimize the 4 cores I now have. I check task manager randomly, and it shows that most of the load is on the first core, and theres only a little on the other 3. I have Folding @ Home running, and its on the first core. It also seems that every other single core app likes to stay on the first core also. I'll try and work on it later. My main task right now is some major data recovery of my videos.

When you run a program, manually set its affinity.

You can also do like Prime95 and set different programs to always run on a certain core. i.e take photoshops shortcut, right click>properties> in the target box, at the end of the stuff type

*space*-Ax

replace the x with 0 for first core, 1 for second, 2 for third, and 3 for fourth. example

"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Photoshop.exe" -A1

that will force it to run on the second core. So, if you know a bunch of programs you run at the same time, set each one for a specific core.

I just uploaded a bunch of pictures. I'm still working on over clocking, I havnt done much yet; trying to work out a few other bugs. Otherwise its going great. I'm loving my 22" monitor; its awesome playing xbox on.

Very nice...

hehe... HDD door stop...

You have just seen the big flor in the windows experience index...

It works brilliantly if you it is counting CPU and stuff.. but as you have seen, a quady, 2 gig of ram and such aren't good enough when you have a lower GPU...

and i'n ashamed of u... You have a non-usb (can't remember what the purple dovalcky is called)... analogue keyboard.,....

shame...

The keyboard is USB, with a USB to PS/2 adapter on it. I can have it plugged in with just USB, or with the mouse/keyboard connection. I couldn't tell a difference with either, so I just stuck it on the PS/2 ports to save a USB.