Tricking the rig

[HTM|3base]

3base here, been busy like a B! anywho, the farther along i go with IS/IT and information management and design (IMD) the more i get to know RE *the rig*.

The farther i go, the more i know...so while i haven't been playing hard, i have been working hard!

i thought i'd start this stream for any and all of us to share the proudest (or worst) moments of TRICKING THE RIG.

For instance, i just installed two new little fans inside the casing, one a PCI card and the other a dual fan setup for cooling the hard disk. Setup was a snap, actually just a 4-pin connection to the power supply in both cases and the temperature inside the unit is at least 25% cooler (ballpark estimate). Both fans cost me $10 each at CompUSA's brick-and-mortar site here in Lexxx.

It's all nice and cool, graphics are crunchier, crispier, just got Doom 3: Resurrection of E-ville, and, wowsers, what freakin' awesome graphics. My minitower's performance is better since i've installed the fans and other than one of the little fans on the dual setup for the HD i've had no problems (one of the fans died while leaning against a ribbon cable connected to the hard disk, sounded like a mouse squeaking in terror), but two out of three ain't bad, right?

My next tweak? Just got a brand-new Hercules 450w power supply which also has two fans (however one will blow straight up into the casing, the other out the back end). My current power supply is the 250w that came with the Dell and after i tried to install my brother's hand-me-down nVid 5700 w/ 256Mb vram, my machine politely informed me that i didn't have the power to take advantage of the new card capabilities.

If you all don't hear from me sooner something bad may have happened, however, my comp class is over next Monday so you all should be seeing me on the field much more often starting next week! God, i miss playing!

Wish me luck!

[frogger]

was wondering what you were up to... this should be an interesting thread..

[Freak]

I have a Tru 250 watt power supply and it runs my 6600GT card fine and have another 1 running a FX 5900.On the fan issue we had a bad fan in Brando's machine it took out everything except the Ti 4200 video card.Everything except the mother board was still under warranty.Just a warning on what the fans can cause.I try to keep an eye on them now,but had no idea that the fan could be that destructive.We have 4 desktops and they keep me busy on the maintanance end.{kiddo's cpu's mainly) Hope ta see ya up and going soon. Freak :shock:

[HTM|Minion]

Sounds like you found a class that will come in real handy in the future 3base :)

Best of luck....see you in the game ( hopefully) :shock:

[HTM|H_Mishima]

Hmmm....been taking pictures on the progress of my new server I'm building for home vids and pics. I'll post pics tonight but here's the lowdown on parts so far.

ABIT KV7 Motherboard
Aspire 500 WATT PS (Clear top, blue fans and UV reactive paint inside, green UV loomed wires and UV connectors)
AMD Athlon XP 1800
GeForce2 something or other (Had it laying around)
1 GB Corsair PC3200
4X Coolermaster CoolDrive 4
4X 200GB WD Caviar HD's
1 20GB WD HD
1 20GB Maxtor HD
CoolerMaster Jet 7+ CPU Cooler w/ front panel speed controller
Pioneer 106D Slot Load DVD-Rom
Highpoint RocketRaid 454
Green fans in bottom half of case
Blue fans in top
Green Light in bottom
UV Light in bottom
Powersupply powerstrip inside case (very cool...lets you turn one standard connection into four)

Still need to cut the windows, one on the upper right, then one in the standard place on the left. Pics tonight.

Oh, and if I still have them, I'll post the pics of my gaming rig but here's the stats on that one:

P4 2.8 Ghz 800Mhz FSB
ASUS P4P800 MB
1 GB Corsair XMS PC3200 Ram
GeForce FX5800 128MB
1 WD 120 GB HD
1 Maxtor 120 GB HD
2x Highpoint Rocket Heads (allows use of IDE drive on SATA chanels)
Soundblaster Audigy 2 6.1 Soundcard and 6.1 Speakers
SuperFlower Fan speed controller/temp monitor
Soyo BayOne UFO Flash Memory reader/USB/Firewire 3.5" breakout box
Antec Tru 480W PS
Plextor 712 A DVD-R
Plextor Premium CD-R
Sony DVD Rom
Blue Light
4x Enermax Whisper thermo-sensing fans
Slot exaust cooler

[HTM|Minion]

Sounds like a sweet file server to me. I need to replace my old IBM "netfinity" server ( currently running Ventrilo, RoM's TS and RoM's clan server) with something more current. I have a P4-1.8 that I may use. This old Netfinity runs dual P3-800's and is bulletproof, but it's so loud I have to keep in the garage. :(

[HTM~qooter]

Uh...
2600 Athlon
9800 Pro Vid card
1 Gig of Ram
LG DvD Player
LG CD Burner
80GB Seagate Harddrive
60GB Harddrive(I think its A Maxtor)

[HTM|JaK_5quat]

My gaming machine:

1. Antec Sonata Piano Black case w/ Antec TruePower 380W power supply.
2. MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum Socket 939 motherboard. (nForce 3 Ultra)
3. AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 939pin processor
4. 1gb Memory (2x512 DDR400) Super Talent with Heat Spreaders
5. Raptor 74gb 10,000rpm hard drive
6. Samsung 52x24x52/16x Combo CDRW/DVD drive
7. Sony floppy drive
8. XFX GeForce FX 6800 GT AGP 8x video card 256mb DDR3 TV/DVI
9. Logitech MX 510 mouse
10. Viewsonic Pro Series PT813 21 inch CRT

The reason I didn't get a DVD-R is I burn on either my desktop Mac or my Mac 17inch Powerbook (or my wife's 12inch Powerbook, or my daughter's eMac).

I also have a little Shuttle Spacewalker case I built a while back, running Windoze 2000 - I do all my GPS route mapping for my boat on this one and upload it to a Garmin eTrex Legend GPS unit.

I crawled under my house a few years back and wired up Cat 5 everywhere - and of course I have wireless for those computers that are so equiped.

So that's 4 Macs (not counting the 4 or 5 boat anchors in the closet) and 2 Windoze (not counting more closet crap). :lol: So I know what you mean by being kept busy maintaining everything on the your network Freak!

[HTM|3base]

done, done and done, well sorta...the primary challenge has been fulfilled: folks, got me a new Hercules 450w power supply installed in my Dell minitower!

really easy to install too. super quiet, and, wow, every thing springs to life! overall speed has improved although i have yet to really see how things are really oncest in the throes of battle (got a date later tonight) but you all will definitely be seeing me in action again real soon!

the first major obstacle i encountered while switching out the power supply was the exhaust fan for the processor/heat sink, was literally a snap to remove.

also while snooping under the hood i got BOTH my new harddrive fans working, all i did was nudge 'em with my fingers like starting the propellors of an old-timey aeroplane, and voila, life sturred!

However, i was sad yet happy that the hand-me-down nVid 5700 Ultra when installed DIDN'T improve graphics but made them worse! had to run on 600x400 for Doom3! frame rate was well off from 30fps! so i reinstalled the original card, a nVid 5200 Ultra albeit w/ 128Mb (which is still nothing to sneeze at), things ran better than perfect.

So, i'm not concerned anymore (for the time being...) with upgrading the vid card.

i am, however, next concerned with upgrading the processor. currently i'm using the original socket 478 p4 3.0Ghz (actually, it's 2.99 acc. to the system profiler) with hyper-threading (a technology i gather 'tricks' the processor into thinking it's two processors?).

Anyone care to muse on Hyper-Threading?

anywho, i'm jonesing for this p4 3.40e socket 478 with a 1024 L2 cache! like the one i saw at newegg, pa! and for under 300 too...yes, precious, precious...

i digress.

i'm acquainted now with how processors work and the four-part machine cycle: fetch, decode, execute, and store. and i know now that L2 cache size means a great deal in how processors deal with memory.

Anyone care to muse on L2 cacheing?

My current system specs are this:

Dell 4600i
p4 3.0Ghz 800FSB 512 L2 cache w/ HyperThreading
1.5 Gb PC3200 DDR 400 RAM
nVidia 5200 Ultra 128VRAM
80Gb 7200rpm HD
Hercules 450w power supply
a shitload of fans
19" Mitsubishi CRT
Logitech surround sound w/ massive subwoofer

my wish list now includes:
another 512 of RAM, although i can go to 4, i would like to take it to 2 gigs
processor, of course
another harddrive, at least another 80giger
and then once i have the case made with some windows...
lights, lights, lights!

but i've been rambling, thoughts?

[HTM|Minion]

Sounds good 3base. I have a P4 3.2 with 1Mb cache...these cpu's are fast...but run consideralbly hotter than the 512 L2 models. Keep that in mind if you upgrade...you'll need a real efficient heatsink/fan combo.

[HTM|YellowDog]

Ummmmmm


I thought this was an English forum

[frogger]

need a new video card 3base ..;)

[HTM|H_Mishima]

Hyperthreading divides the FSB in 4. Actually, your FSB is only 200, but because of HT, it's 800. Anyway, you're probably better off taking that extra 512 out, because HT works in pairs. Use one chip each in each color coded set of banks (mine are blue and black - if your are gonna use 1GB, put a 512 chip in each blue slot. Get it?) You need to buy a matched set of RAM (2x512)to up your's to 2GB. Do not mix brands in matching the set and do not mix timings over all. If you can help it, don't mix brands at all. You can find your timings like CAS, RAS, and CL by running SiSoftware's Sandra. You must match your timings exactly.

[HTM|JaK_5quat]

Use one chip each in each color coded set of banks (mine are blue and black - if your are gonna use 1GB, put a 512 chip in each blue slot. Get it?) You need to buy a matched set of RAM (2x512)to up your's to 2GB. Do not mix brands in matching the set and do not mix timings over all. If you can help it, don't mix brands at all.

Which is exactly what I did with my low latency ram (1gb Memory (2x512 DDR400) Super Talent with Heat Spreaders). 1 gb of fast/matched RAM will outperform 2 gb's of mixed/brand/speed ram. IMHO

[HTM|Minion]

Don't forget when you run dual channel mode you effectively trade memory size for speed. for instance I had 512 of dual channel ocz in my work machine...it wouldn't play assault until i put it in single channel mode because the speed was increased...but the storage area was reduced to 256. ( i know what you're thinking...why the hell would you play assault with 512 anyway? It is my work pc...not my gamer.)

[HTM|3base]

k, gonna take mishiman's advice and firstly go for another matching pair of RAM + heat spreaders too, which i noted @ CompUSA's were only $10/pair, however schoo is taking precedence again and i gotta buckle down on some paperwork again for a little while (tie up some loose ends from summer too real quick). This will 'max' out my minitower @ 2 gigs DDR400 pc3200.

so schoo then RAM then me venting out that workaday stress on the battlefield again, but you'll see me in-and-out in the meantime.

ideally this year i'll be learning how to write more succinctly, concisely and economically, and around this time next year hope to be sending off happy little submits everywhere so you can read random ramblings on tech issues in a mag/blog near you! :wink: