C
Clint
First off, my reason for writing this is to document what I went through on
my last build. As you'll see if you stay awake through the following tome
is that I went through quite a few options, hit some lemons, but ended up
with lemonade (i.e. something I'm happy with). If I can help anyone not hit
the same snags I did, I'll be happy.
Ok, so I think I'm almost done my last (well, most recent) build. It all
started when I got a decent contract gig, so I figured I'd pump some money
into upgrading my computer. My initial budget was $500 + whatever I could
get for my old parts. My old parts consisted of a P4 2.4GHz (533MHz FSB),
1GB of PC2700 memory, ATI 9800Pro, Seagate 200GB ATA hard drive, Asus P4PE
motherboard, Coolermaster Wave Master case.
So I started off with my processor. I got a decent auction on an Intel 830D
processor ($180, all prices in CAD). That's less than half what it would
cost locally, so I was happy. I figured I'd get a motherboard, some memory,
an LCD monitor, and I'd be set.
Step two, while I was waiting for the processor to show up on my door, was
to get a motherboard. I figured I'd use my old ATI 9800Pro till I needed to
upgrade it, and it was AGP. But I figured I'd want to upgrade to a PCIe
board eventually, so my best bang for buck would be an AGP/PCI-E board. So
I ordered an Asus
P5VDC-MX(http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=814&l1=3&l2=11&l3=0).
It had both slots (or so I thought), took both DDR and DDR2 memory, and had
pretty much all the other things I needed.
While I was waiting, I put my other pieces up for sale on a local newsgroup.
Well, to my surprise, I had offers on everything within 2 days, so I no
longer had to do my upgrades piece-meal. I also found out that the selected
motherboard had PCI-E x1, not 16. That does NOT support PCIe video cards!
Whoops. So when I went to pick up the rest of the pieces of my build, this
is what I got:
Asus P5LD2-VM motherboard
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=5848&SID=)
Mushkin 1GB (2x512 MB) EM2-5300 DDR2 memory
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=7341&SID=)
Seagate 320GB SATA HD
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=8113&SID=
Aspire Aria mATX case
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=4540&SID=)
My reason for this case in particular is because I decided I wanted a
desktop case, and this seemed to be a nice little unit. The reviews weren't
too bad aside from a few comments on the PSU and the noise. Well, any
negative comments about the case sure held true in my experience. The case
looked sharp, but it was made of very cheap/thin aluminum. Nothing like my
aluminum Coolermaster! The PSU was the worst I've ever monitored. Very
inconsistent 3.3V rail, like +20%. The noise was like running a vacuum
cleaner on your desk. I used it for 2 days, and then couldn't stand it any
more. Oh yeah, and the fan on this unit blew air from the PSU INTO the
case, instead of the usual out. First one I'd ever seen that did that.
My first solution was to replace the PSU. So I went and got an Enermax
Liberty 400W PSU
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=6815&SID=).
Now, the reviews I'd read said you COULD put in a standard PSU, but it would
be really tight, and only possible if you had a short optical drive. Since
I had one of those, I figured I couldn't go too far wrong. I also picked up
an Antec TriCool fan, to see if I could reduce the fan noise.
The new PSU did a fine job of providing power after I shoe-horned it in, and
the modular cabling was almost required for a case this size, especially
because the cables were designed to work in a tower case (so they were much
longer than I needed). But the noise was still a problem. So I dropped in
the Antec fan, stuck it on low, and fired it up again. The noise level was
a little better, but it turns out a lot of the noise is from the air
whistling through the holes provided for ventilation. And in such a small
environment, the CPU fan would kick in often, trying to cool things off.
All in all, a fairly un-satisfying situation, and I ended up pulling out all
the parts and sticking them into my old case. I figured I tell the guy that
was waiting for it that I was sorry, but I wasn't going to be selling it.
Well, if you've stayed awake this far, you may have noticed that I didn't
get a video card with the initial build. I was waiting for my contract
money to come in. While I was waiting, I was using the on-board video of
the card, while I got things set up. So a few days later, when the cash
came in, it was back to the local shop for more goodies. This run, I got
eVGA 7600GT KO PCI-E video card
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=8412&SID=)
Viewsonic VX2025wm 20" widescreen LCD
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=7470&SID=)
I took back the Aria case, and got talked into this one:
Antec Sonata II w/450W SmartPower PSU
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=5869&SID=)
Now THIS was more like it. The new case, even though it was exactly the
same price, was light-years ahead of it in quality. The PSU was quiet and
stable, the provided fans and HD/optical drive rails all had rubber noise
insulators, and it had a tool-less design. The monitor was soooo sexy, I
think I made a little wet spot in my pants when I first powered it up. I
finished setting things up, and started playing around.
The new configuration was, all in all, a sweet upgrade from my old system.
I started ripping some DVD's, and it took 1/3 the time of my old system.
The dual core processor meant I could be doing multiple things at once,
without feeling things bog down, even when running at 90%+ utilization.
But one issue I had consistently was Oblivion (my main game) would
constantly freeze. It wouldn't crash, but would just lock up for 30 seconds
at a time, then run again for anywhere from 1 minute to 10, then do it
again. Sometimes the audio would stutter, sometimes it would just stop. I
blew away the old drivers, ran the DriverCleaner, and re-installed. I went
through about 4 sets of NVidia drivers, 2 sets of MB drivers, 3 sets of
sound drivers. Everything I could think of. I monitored the temperatures
of the video card, the processor, and the case, and all were normal (<70C
for the GPU, <62C for the processor, and <40 for the case under full load).
Eventually, I found a number of threads in the eVGA user forums that went
something like this one
(http://www.evga.com/community/messageboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16540). To
their credit, they keep these threads around. A less honorable vendor
probably would lock and purge them, but not eVGA. Seems that many people
are having issues with the 7600/7900 cards overheating. It's not the GPU,
but possibly some other components on the card. Since I was coming up to
the limit of my return period for the local vendor (7 days), I said screw
it; I'd go back to ATI. So I ponied up the extra bucks for a Sapphire
X1800GTO card
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=7870&SID=).
Within 15 minutes of getting home, I had the new card installed, and haven't
looked back.
One problem with the new card was the noise, however. It was quiet when I
wasn't running a game, but I found I had to turn up the sound on my system
to compete with the fan on the video card when it was getting used hard. So
back to the local vendor, and picked up an Arctic Cooling Accelero X2
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=7715&SID=).
Even though it would void my warranty, I was annoyed enough by the sound to
go ahead. Well, the thing works as advertised. It dropped my GPU temps by
10 degrees, and the fan only gets up to 50% at those temps. So that made me
happy.
My next toy was to quiet down the CPU. Under most circumstances, the unit
was pretty quiet, but when pushed hard, the CPU fan would kick in, and was
now the loud piece in the system. So I picked up a Scythe Ninja Plus
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=7713&SID=).
One thing I noticed with the motherboard/case combination I've got is that
the CPU is right in front of the 120mm case fan, which happened to be the
same size as the fan on the cooler and was only about an inch away from the
cooler, which is advertised as being a "fanless" unit under low-use
situations. So my first setup was to turn my case fan around so it was
blowing air into the case. Fired it up, ran two instances of Prime95 (one
for each core), and monitored the temps. First observation was how quiet it
was (of course). The CPU temp stayed in the low 60's at peak, which was
about the same as with the stock cooler. But the case temp went up by about
5C. I tried pushing the fan up to high speed (it's a Antec TriCool unit
which came with the case), which helped with the temps, but then the noise
was annoying again. Since the case fan wasn't controlled by the MB, it was
always noisy, not just under load.
But then today (as my story nears it's end), I picked up a 2GB kit in
exchange for my 1GB kit and some cash. So while I was mucking around in my
system, I turned the case fan back around, turned it on low, and put the fan
that came with the Scythe to blow through the heat sync towards the case
fan. This setup turns out to be the cat's pyjama's. The CPU temp stays
under 55C even under extended full load (like 1.5 hours of transcoding video
files), the case temp stays low (37C), and both fans are running at their
lowest speed even under full load. The loud point in the system is now the
access noise of the Seagate HD, which I never had a chance to hear until I
got rid of all the fan noise.
One last thing I was fighting recently (like since Monday/Tuesday) was
lockups of Windows Explorer. I'd try to open up a particular folder (my
Oblivion game folder), and it would just lock up my system, with Explorer
running at 50%. It would do that for several minutes, and then let me
continue. It would also do this when I ran Oblivion. Once it got running,
it was fine. I un-installed and re-installed Oblivion multiple times,
figuring I must have some sort of virus in it, but no luck.
I figured I must have got some sort of virus, but I ran through multiple AV
solutions, through multiple mal-ware apps, and nothing came up beyond some
tracking cookies. I was ALMOST to the point of re-installing windows when I
stumbed across a link that pointed me to www.sysinternals.com, and their
tools for monitoring what's running at any given time. With that, I was
able to determine that the problem could very well be my anti-virus
software, F-Prot. So I turned off the real-time protection (just for
testing, mind you), and it solved the problem! I couldn't think of what I
had done to cause the problem, but now I'm figuring that F-Prot probably
pushed out a buggy upgrade on their software. We use the same solution in
our office, and this week, we've spent multiple hours trying to diagnose
this same issue. For most people at work, the solution was to un-install
MSN Messenger, but that didn't work on my home unit. I've since swapped out
F-Prot, and there's smooth sailing again.
Anyway, this is the end of my story. I'm a very happy camper right now,
with the system I ended up with. In hindsight, the Intel 930D processor is
now only marginally more expensive than I ended up paying for my 830D
processor, and it runs cooler (with twice the cache), so I probably would
have got that one, or waited for a Conroe processor. And I might still see
about getting some form of HD noise reduction, so long as I can do it
without affecting their reliability. I ended up being closer to $1000 than
500, I think, but what the heck, I'm worth it! The Viewsonic monitor
still makes me smile almost every time I look at it. I happened to pick up
a Dell P991 19" Trinitron monitor for $20 at a garage sale (I still feel a
little guilty abou that), so I've got a pretty sweet dual monitor setup
right now.
Here's my report card, on the pieces I tried:
Antec Sonata II case: A
Aspire Aria case: F (crappy PSU, noisy)
Seagate 320GB SATA HD: B (fast, but a little loud)
eVGA 7600GT KO PCI-E card: D (decent support, still has
overheating/reliability problems)
Sapphire X1800GTO PCI-E card: B (fast, but they shouldn't even sell it with
the stock HS/fan)
Intel 830D processor: A (dual core rocks!)
Mushkin EM2-5300 memory: C (does what it's supposed to, nothing more,
nothing less)
Asus P5LD2-VM motherboard: C (see comment above)
Viewsonic VX2025wm 20" widescreen LCD: A (beautiful display, multiple
inputs, makes me smile)
I hope this helps someone!
Clint
my last build. As you'll see if you stay awake through the following tome
is that I went through quite a few options, hit some lemons, but ended up
with lemonade (i.e. something I'm happy with). If I can help anyone not hit
the same snags I did, I'll be happy.
Ok, so I think I'm almost done my last (well, most recent) build. It all
started when I got a decent contract gig, so I figured I'd pump some money
into upgrading my computer. My initial budget was $500 + whatever I could
get for my old parts. My old parts consisted of a P4 2.4GHz (533MHz FSB),
1GB of PC2700 memory, ATI 9800Pro, Seagate 200GB ATA hard drive, Asus P4PE
motherboard, Coolermaster Wave Master case.
So I started off with my processor. I got a decent auction on an Intel 830D
processor ($180, all prices in CAD). That's less than half what it would
cost locally, so I was happy. I figured I'd get a motherboard, some memory,
an LCD monitor, and I'd be set.
Step two, while I was waiting for the processor to show up on my door, was
to get a motherboard. I figured I'd use my old ATI 9800Pro till I needed to
upgrade it, and it was AGP. But I figured I'd want to upgrade to a PCIe
board eventually, so my best bang for buck would be an AGP/PCI-E board. So
I ordered an Asus
P5VDC-MX(http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=814&l1=3&l2=11&l3=0).
It had both slots (or so I thought), took both DDR and DDR2 memory, and had
pretty much all the other things I needed.
While I was waiting, I put my other pieces up for sale on a local newsgroup.
Well, to my surprise, I had offers on everything within 2 days, so I no
longer had to do my upgrades piece-meal. I also found out that the selected
motherboard had PCI-E x1, not 16. That does NOT support PCIe video cards!
Whoops. So when I went to pick up the rest of the pieces of my build, this
is what I got:
Asus P5LD2-VM motherboard
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=5848&SID=)
Mushkin 1GB (2x512 MB) EM2-5300 DDR2 memory
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=7341&SID=)
Seagate 320GB SATA HD
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=8113&SID=
Aspire Aria mATX case
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=4540&SID=)
My reason for this case in particular is because I decided I wanted a
desktop case, and this seemed to be a nice little unit. The reviews weren't
too bad aside from a few comments on the PSU and the noise. Well, any
negative comments about the case sure held true in my experience. The case
looked sharp, but it was made of very cheap/thin aluminum. Nothing like my
aluminum Coolermaster! The PSU was the worst I've ever monitored. Very
inconsistent 3.3V rail, like +20%. The noise was like running a vacuum
cleaner on your desk. I used it for 2 days, and then couldn't stand it any
more. Oh yeah, and the fan on this unit blew air from the PSU INTO the
case, instead of the usual out. First one I'd ever seen that did that.
My first solution was to replace the PSU. So I went and got an Enermax
Liberty 400W PSU
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=6815&SID=).
Now, the reviews I'd read said you COULD put in a standard PSU, but it would
be really tight, and only possible if you had a short optical drive. Since
I had one of those, I figured I couldn't go too far wrong. I also picked up
an Antec TriCool fan, to see if I could reduce the fan noise.
The new PSU did a fine job of providing power after I shoe-horned it in, and
the modular cabling was almost required for a case this size, especially
because the cables were designed to work in a tower case (so they were much
longer than I needed). But the noise was still a problem. So I dropped in
the Antec fan, stuck it on low, and fired it up again. The noise level was
a little better, but it turns out a lot of the noise is from the air
whistling through the holes provided for ventilation. And in such a small
environment, the CPU fan would kick in often, trying to cool things off.
All in all, a fairly un-satisfying situation, and I ended up pulling out all
the parts and sticking them into my old case. I figured I tell the guy that
was waiting for it that I was sorry, but I wasn't going to be selling it.
Well, if you've stayed awake this far, you may have noticed that I didn't
get a video card with the initial build. I was waiting for my contract
money to come in. While I was waiting, I was using the on-board video of
the card, while I got things set up. So a few days later, when the cash
came in, it was back to the local shop for more goodies. This run, I got
eVGA 7600GT KO PCI-E video card
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=8412&SID=)
Viewsonic VX2025wm 20" widescreen LCD
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=7470&SID=)
I took back the Aria case, and got talked into this one:
Antec Sonata II w/450W SmartPower PSU
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=5869&SID=)
Now THIS was more like it. The new case, even though it was exactly the
same price, was light-years ahead of it in quality. The PSU was quiet and
stable, the provided fans and HD/optical drive rails all had rubber noise
insulators, and it had a tool-less design. The monitor was soooo sexy, I
think I made a little wet spot in my pants when I first powered it up. I
finished setting things up, and started playing around.
The new configuration was, all in all, a sweet upgrade from my old system.
I started ripping some DVD's, and it took 1/3 the time of my old system.
The dual core processor meant I could be doing multiple things at once,
without feeling things bog down, even when running at 90%+ utilization.
But one issue I had consistently was Oblivion (my main game) would
constantly freeze. It wouldn't crash, but would just lock up for 30 seconds
at a time, then run again for anywhere from 1 minute to 10, then do it
again. Sometimes the audio would stutter, sometimes it would just stop. I
blew away the old drivers, ran the DriverCleaner, and re-installed. I went
through about 4 sets of NVidia drivers, 2 sets of MB drivers, 3 sets of
sound drivers. Everything I could think of. I monitored the temperatures
of the video card, the processor, and the case, and all were normal (<70C
for the GPU, <62C for the processor, and <40 for the case under full load).
Eventually, I found a number of threads in the eVGA user forums that went
something like this one
(http://www.evga.com/community/messageboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16540). To
their credit, they keep these threads around. A less honorable vendor
probably would lock and purge them, but not eVGA. Seems that many people
are having issues with the 7600/7900 cards overheating. It's not the GPU,
but possibly some other components on the card. Since I was coming up to
the limit of my return period for the local vendor (7 days), I said screw
it; I'd go back to ATI. So I ponied up the extra bucks for a Sapphire
X1800GTO card
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=7870&SID=).
Within 15 minutes of getting home, I had the new card installed, and haven't
looked back.
One problem with the new card was the noise, however. It was quiet when I
wasn't running a game, but I found I had to turn up the sound on my system
to compete with the fan on the video card when it was getting used hard. So
back to the local vendor, and picked up an Arctic Cooling Accelero X2
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=7715&SID=).
Even though it would void my warranty, I was annoyed enough by the sound to
go ahead. Well, the thing works as advertised. It dropped my GPU temps by
10 degrees, and the fan only gets up to 50% at those temps. So that made me
happy.
My next toy was to quiet down the CPU. Under most circumstances, the unit
was pretty quiet, but when pushed hard, the CPU fan would kick in, and was
now the loud piece in the system. So I picked up a Scythe Ninja Plus
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/index....dProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=7713&SID=).
One thing I noticed with the motherboard/case combination I've got is that
the CPU is right in front of the 120mm case fan, which happened to be the
same size as the fan on the cooler and was only about an inch away from the
cooler, which is advertised as being a "fanless" unit under low-use
situations. So my first setup was to turn my case fan around so it was
blowing air into the case. Fired it up, ran two instances of Prime95 (one
for each core), and monitored the temps. First observation was how quiet it
was (of course). The CPU temp stayed in the low 60's at peak, which was
about the same as with the stock cooler. But the case temp went up by about
5C. I tried pushing the fan up to high speed (it's a Antec TriCool unit
which came with the case), which helped with the temps, but then the noise
was annoying again. Since the case fan wasn't controlled by the MB, it was
always noisy, not just under load.
But then today (as my story nears it's end), I picked up a 2GB kit in
exchange for my 1GB kit and some cash. So while I was mucking around in my
system, I turned the case fan back around, turned it on low, and put the fan
that came with the Scythe to blow through the heat sync towards the case
fan. This setup turns out to be the cat's pyjama's. The CPU temp stays
under 55C even under extended full load (like 1.5 hours of transcoding video
files), the case temp stays low (37C), and both fans are running at their
lowest speed even under full load. The loud point in the system is now the
access noise of the Seagate HD, which I never had a chance to hear until I
got rid of all the fan noise.
One last thing I was fighting recently (like since Monday/Tuesday) was
lockups of Windows Explorer. I'd try to open up a particular folder (my
Oblivion game folder), and it would just lock up my system, with Explorer
running at 50%. It would do that for several minutes, and then let me
continue. It would also do this when I ran Oblivion. Once it got running,
it was fine. I un-installed and re-installed Oblivion multiple times,
figuring I must have some sort of virus in it, but no luck.
I figured I must have got some sort of virus, but I ran through multiple AV
solutions, through multiple mal-ware apps, and nothing came up beyond some
tracking cookies. I was ALMOST to the point of re-installing windows when I
stumbed across a link that pointed me to www.sysinternals.com, and their
tools for monitoring what's running at any given time. With that, I was
able to determine that the problem could very well be my anti-virus
software, F-Prot. So I turned off the real-time protection (just for
testing, mind you), and it solved the problem! I couldn't think of what I
had done to cause the problem, but now I'm figuring that F-Prot probably
pushed out a buggy upgrade on their software. We use the same solution in
our office, and this week, we've spent multiple hours trying to diagnose
this same issue. For most people at work, the solution was to un-install
MSN Messenger, but that didn't work on my home unit. I've since swapped out
F-Prot, and there's smooth sailing again.
Anyway, this is the end of my story. I'm a very happy camper right now,
with the system I ended up with. In hindsight, the Intel 930D processor is
now only marginally more expensive than I ended up paying for my 830D
processor, and it runs cooler (with twice the cache), so I probably would
have got that one, or waited for a Conroe processor. And I might still see
about getting some form of HD noise reduction, so long as I can do it
without affecting their reliability. I ended up being closer to $1000 than
500, I think, but what the heck, I'm worth it!
The Viewsonic monitorstill makes me smile almost every time I look at it. I happened to pick up
a Dell P991 19" Trinitron monitor for $20 at a garage sale (I still feel a
little guilty abou that), so I've got a pretty sweet dual monitor setup
right now.
Here's my report card, on the pieces I tried:
Antec Sonata II case: A
Aspire Aria case: F (crappy PSU, noisy)
Seagate 320GB SATA HD: B (fast, but a little loud)
eVGA 7600GT KO PCI-E card: D (decent support, still has
overheating/reliability problems)
Sapphire X1800GTO PCI-E card: B (fast, but they shouldn't even sell it with
the stock HS/fan)
Intel 830D processor: A (dual core rocks!)
Mushkin EM2-5300 memory: C (does what it's supposed to, nothing more,
nothing less)
Asus P5LD2-VM motherboard: C (see comment above)
Viewsonic VX2025wm 20" widescreen LCD: A (beautiful display, multiple
inputs, makes me smile)
I hope this helps someone!
Clint