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Post by Jaxx Skraxis on Jan 20, 2007 8:09:56 GMT
Looks like it will be a good computer for quite some time Towel.
I've been thinking of getting a new computer one of these days but I think I'll hold off on a desktop and be getting a laptop. Mainly because Vista's reqs look nuts (I would need a brand new system just to run it) and I have no interest in any of the DX10 games I've seen previewed. I'm in the same boat as you Jane so my good 'ol computer will have to chug along in GW for awhile longer. ;D
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Post by hadus on Jan 20, 2007 14:21:55 GMT
I love my laptop Jaxx....it's nice to take your games on the road with you...hehe ;D The computer is about 2 years old already and still runs most games just fine. I'd guess (haven't looked in awhile) that you could find a laptop that will handle all but the most demanding games around. Here's what my Gateway has: Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (w/ SP2) Processor: Mobile AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3400+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.2GHz Memory: 1022MB RAM DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c Video Card: ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9600/9700 Series Onboard Display Memory: 64.0 MB Ultrabright Widescreen display (15") Sound device: Realtek AC97 Audio Not exactly what you can get from a desktop but more than adequate for $1350 (US) 2 years ago.
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Post by Pass The Towel on Jan 20, 2007 14:35:43 GMT
I'd be careful if you want your laptop to last 3+ years (even as just a "second" machine) if you want to play games. Remember the reason I started this thread is because the graphics card on my laptop died. My guess is that they're not designed for long periods of play that games like GW produce because they generate too much heat and the components are so crammed together. I got the card replaced (which cost the same as buying a new card even though by now the card was quite old) and six months later it died again.
So.. they're good while they last, but be careful if you are planning to make it your main machine. My laptop lasted 3 years, which is good, but now it's unusable.
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Post by Pass The Towel on Jan 20, 2007 20:17:40 GMT
Well, it's all ordered now so no going back! It feels like I've just bought new armour, hehe. Thanks for the help all, and I'll check back here when it's all put together (or if I get stuck.... ).
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Post by hadus on Jan 20, 2007 20:47:15 GMT
Like the first program you load won't be "Guild Wars"...hehe See you in game Towel!! Well....they will ;D
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Post by Jaxx Skraxis on Jan 21, 2007 0:29:52 GMT
Well, it's all ordered now so no going back! It feels like I've just bought new armour, hehe. Thanks for the help all, and I'll check back here when it's all put together (or if I get stuck.... ). In a way you have, +3 extra armor against the upgrade demons. And the laptop would only really be for those occasions when there is no computer around that could play anything (like when I visit the folks back home), the main gaming would still be done on the 'ol reliable desktop. ;D
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Post by Pass The Towel on Feb 8, 2007 14:45:55 GMT
Hopefully it arrives tomorrow
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Post by Pass The Towel on Feb 14, 2007 21:14:19 GMT
Well, I finally got everything delivered and put together a few days ago. I still need to fix a couple of things but they're not urgent so that will happen when I have more time. When I woke up, it had already been delivered. It felt like Christmas sitting there in my PJs opening all these boxes (I was sad enough to line them up and take a photo for you). Putting it together was common sense - here's the obligatory inside pic: Warning: technical details follow for anyone who cares for these things The biggest problem I had was with fans. I wanted to change the case fans (it came with two attached, but I got better ones). To change the front one though I had to take off the cowling and front panel. The cowling was very stiff to remove and it took a long time of groping awkwardly while being scared of scratching the paint work (this is a very sleek case - the pictures below don't do it justice). Once I'd got it installed and put back together - the fan didn't work! So had to do the whole thing again. I'd put the protective metal grid on backwards and it was putting too much pressure on the fan motor so it couldn't spin. A note about this case - all the documentation says it's got room for optional 80 / 100 / 120mm fans which go over not so efficient punched holes in the case (like the ones you can see in the bottom left of the pic). The one I got had two 120mm holes with only screw holes for 120mm fans - which was fine as the case came with those fans anyway and it lets more air through. Those fans didn't have motherboard connectors, they connected straight to the PSU. Everything else went fairly smoothly. The sound card I got has a connector for the front-panel audio so I can use the headphone/microphone sockets on the front of the case with the sound card (rather than only the disabled motherboard sound being able to do this). As you can see the sound card is installed in the bottom PCI slot because the graphics card heatsink is so huge it covers the other PCI port. As a result the analog audio cable is stretched to its limits - although I don't need it anyway so will probably take it out (I could always lower the DVD drive but I like it at the top ;D). I'm getting a WiFi card soon anyway so It's going to be fun squeezing it into that slot. I hardly had to set any BIOS settings - all was detected automatically. The CPU fan is quite noisy, which it shouldn't be. The motherboard I got is supposed to have an intelligent fan control mechanism but it doesn't seem to do anything worthwhile. I plan to upgrade the BIOS and see if anything improves. Failing that, the CPU fan came with a manual speed dial which I didn't connect, so failing a software solution I'll just attach the manual controller and force the speed down with the hardware switch. The fan also has a blue LED which I turned off as it's not much use inside this black box ). The DVD drive came with Nero burning software, and the sound card came with PowerDVD player - so I didn't have to shell out for those. I also got Windows XP pro free through the University's MSDN Academic Alliance subscription, so got to save some pennies! I put Kubuntu linux on it too but won't venture into that until I have more spare time. Guild Wars is all installed but I'm still not allowing myself to play. Here are a couple of pics of the case, although they didn't turn out too well. Anyway, it's up and running and I'm making this post from it! Big thanks to everyone who gave advice and helped me research and put this together - helped get me started in the PC-building world. If anyone has any questions about any of the components or anything else, I'm happy to answer!
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Post by hadus on Feb 14, 2007 21:44:08 GMT
Like a proud new father....complete with pics and all.... ;D
I just have one question....
Where's the remote?
That's a nice looking setup and I'm sure it'll give you loads of fun. Take care of it Towel.
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Post by Jaxx Skraxis on Feb 14, 2007 23:43:31 GMT
Man, I bet that was fun to wake up to. ;D Boxes full of things to be put together, what fun. Looks like a good setup you have there. Glad to hear it all went rather smooth.
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Post by Radicc Tyranntt on Feb 15, 2007 3:11:13 GMT
Looks good to me.
Wait is that a floppy drive?
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Post by Pass The Towel on Feb 15, 2007 15:45:07 GMT
Nothing wrong with a bit of legacy support
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Post by Zalis on Feb 15, 2007 18:35:21 GMT
It's okay, I've got one. (not that I've used it since building my PC tho)
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Post by Twisted Sister Jane on Feb 16, 2007 7:52:53 GMT
I used to never feel safe without a floppy drive, until suddenly the Linux boot image no longer fit on a floppy anyway, heh heh. Congrats on your new machine, Towel! Always nice (and a bit scary) to have new hardware. Let us know about your difficulties and how you solve them! And your good and bad experiences. I am sure a lot of us may be considering a new box in the near future, and your experiences certainly will help all of us. I am surprised that you say your CPU fan is noisy. You are using a NorthQ instead of the standard made by the CPU manufacturer, so this should be relatively quiet. What happened? As for DVD burning software, I am very very very wary of using commercial products after a bout with Roxio and whatever that software is called. It was version 7 or something, I installed it, and it seemed to take over my entire operating system. Right clicking on anything seemed to then want to open up menus. And then I could not uninstall it completely. Simply would not allow me to, and I was left with error messages appearing each time I right clicked to get a context menu up in the explorer windows. So now I use a very simple and excellant open source software for my DVD burning needs. It is called imgburn and available from www.imgburn.com. This is a free, no-frills yet easy to use software that will not take over your operating system. It runs when asked to run, sits on your hardisk in a totally dormant inactive state when not, and basically is "installed" when it is placed on your machine without needing to make major changes in your registry. (I love programs like this!). I haven't used all the various options with imgburn yet, but as I use it, it is a two part operation: first in the "build" mode to create an iso image and then the "write" mode to write the iso image to the DVD. It also works well with iso images created with other softwares like dvddecriptor. Anyway, good luck with your new toy!
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Post by Pass The Towel on Feb 16, 2007 10:06:22 GMT
Thanks for that burning software Jane. I'm happy with Nero at the moment but will definitely keep note of that for the future. I am surprised that you say your CPU fan is noisy. You are using a NorthQ instead of the standard made by the CPU manufacturer, so this should be relatively quiet. What happened? The fan is designed to be speed regulated. At full speed it is very noisy, as it's not a large width fan (I see I could have got larger but I wasn't sure if it would fit). My motherboard has a 4-pin PWM connector, but the fan only has 3 pins. The motherboard doesn't seem to be able to regulate the fan speed, so it just runs at maximum speed. I installed the manual hardware switch and turned it right down. The fan is now very quiet which is much more like what I expected. My CPU is at 41C/104F and motherboard at 37C/98F just web browsing. Looks like I'm going to have to manually crank it up if I want to play a game or something. Hopefully Asus will sort this out in a future BIOS release.
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Post by Pass The Towel on Feb 17, 2007 1:08:06 GMT
Well I have discovered another fan problem Actually it's more an airflow problem. I noticed my CPU runs 15 degrees (C) cooler when I take the side of the case off! Normal airflow should go: Front intake > over HDD > Over GPU, motherboard and CPU, out rear exhaust and PSU. However, the graphics card stretches right up to the edge of the hard disk bay, preventing any air from reaching the CPU cooler as it all just goes under the graphics card. To make things worse, it also radiates heat upwards directly at the CPU . I'm starting to think there is something worthwhile with those BTX cases I didn't really look at. I might just have the case cover off if the temps get too high if I ever get time to play games again!
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Post by Radicc Tyranntt on Feb 17, 2007 1:17:09 GMT
Well you can always bust out a dremel and put a couple of vents on the side panel.
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Post by Pass The Towel on Feb 17, 2007 1:29:53 GMT
But it's so shiny Hehe, actually I can't see that side so if it causes me problems I might think about it.
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Post by Radicc Tyranntt on Feb 17, 2007 5:35:02 GMT
Well if you do it the right way it will look just fine. You need to layout everything before hand. You don't just hop in there and hack away.
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Post by Twisted Sister Jane on Feb 17, 2007 11:19:28 GMT
Hmm, trying to compare the size of your case to the one I used for Kara's new machine and the one I have. I was surprised/dissappointed with ours at first because they are monstrous in size, but now I think the extra space is nice to have. If for no other reason than to allow things to be spaced out a bit for improved air flow.
Do you have a fan in the side door? One that can maybe blow directly at your graphic card? That could maybe help push some hot air away.
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