My brand new system ... for under $2000 AUD

Zonix Mid-ATX Blower Case
Gigabyte Superb 720W PSU
PCIE Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro
4GB OCZ REAPER HPC DDR2 1066MHz
WD VelociRaptor 150GB 10,000 RPM
WD Caviar Black 2TB
NVidia GEforce 9800GX2 HDMI
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 rev.2 MB
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.66GHz 6MB Cache
ThermalTake DuOrb CPU Cooler
Samsung 2233SW HD 22" WSCREEN LCD

Almost finished building this system ... the VC and HDD should be coming this week ... then I'm done ... here are some photos so far ... I'll keep you posted ... once its complete I'll post a 3D Mark score ...

 

NOt getting any photos right now, and that PSU looks like an average-to good brand - be careful!

 

Woops forgot to attach the photos :-o

Outside Case - Off
Inside Case - Off
Big Case Fan - Off
Big Case Fan Against My Bigass Hand - Off
Inside Case - On
Big Case Fan - On
Outside Case - On

 

Oh Gigabytes alright ... better known for their MBs rather than their PSU's but it should be ok ...

 

I'm running a 3D Mark 06 test on my current system so everyone can see exactly how crap and outdated it is.

 

Wow, I knew my system was bad but not that bad! 2925 was my score :-o

Can't wait for the new one to be ready!

 

Something I noticed Drizzles, you'll have to move that X-Fi card down one of the last two slots as that GX2 is a dual slot card. Nice machine there but the case seems small to me, must be a big bed then as you have the normal amount of drive bays.

 

Halo;
Yes it is massive ... I was amazed when I first saw it ... I'm gonna stick another case fan at the rear and make the front and rear fans extract from the case so the big fan on the side can cool the components ... DuOrb is barely noticable ... case fan on the side is slightly louder but bareable ... loudest fan is the PSU fan believe it or not ... good thing about the DuOrb is that it cools the RAM as well as the Northbridge and other heated components ... although I had to pull the heatsinks off my RAM sticks otherwise they wouldn't fit ... will post temps as soon as I get a chance ...

Augie;
Thanks ... I wouldn't have realised until I went to fit it ... the beds a Queen Size ... It's a Mid ATX not Full ... a Full won't fit under my desk ... thus why I stuck with the Mid

 

nice bed you got there...

(oh and a nice system too)

 

Hmm, it's usually best to keep air moving in the same direction, front to back. I'm not familiar with such a large side intake fan but your idea of adding an outflow in the back is a good one and I'd keep the front one pulling air in to keep cooler air coming in over the drives.

 

You can play with the fan orientation to see what gives you the best temps. That thermaltake cooler concerns me a little- I've heard nothing but bad things about their coolers... but if the temps prove otherwise, it seems like a novel setup. 2TB's of data is a lot to loose if your drive crashes... you may want to consider going 2x1TB (one being a backup drive) or getting another 2TBer for backup. I like the case, very sleek

 

Speculant;
Lol thanks

Augie;
Hmm ... good point ... Ill keep that one in mind when I get to the final touches.

Gimpster;
Well I've actually had the TT Cooler for about 6 Months because I've been trialing it in this system ... brought the RAM temps down 4 -5 degrees ... but it was definitely better than the stock cooler on the CPU ... I used to get approx 47 idling and after being under load for 2 hours I used to get approx 72-75 ... thus why I bought the TT ... it didn't do to much for my idle temp ... approx 42 but the new load temp was approx 49-51 ... much better than the old temps so I've been really happy with it ... (mind you this was all in a permanently A/C room of 18 degrees Celsius, and the old temps were on a Dual Core P4 /w Hyper Threading)

Oh and about the 2TB of data ... I'll be extremely surprised if I can fill it ... I bought it more for my own amusment than anything to see if I can fill it ... It's going to be partitioned ... one of 150GB to back up the Raptor and the other being the remainder ... I always have one drive with everything installed on it but no downloads documents photos ec stored on it ... the other drive holds all the downloads, documents, photos etc etc ... that way If I have to reformat I don't lose a thing except my saved games most of which are backed up anyway ... and about it crashing well ... it is a WD Caviar Black ... but no I should be alright ... I keep a close eye on the health of my system ... I'm pretty obsessed about it ... maintenance once a month lol ... I've haven't lost data to a drive crashing yet and I don't plan to any time soon ...

 

That's what I said when I got my 640MB some 6 mths/ ago/ LOL

 

Just fixed up the X-Fi and also realised I hadn't plugged in the front jacks to it ... so that's done now too ... lol augie :-D

 

Grrrr still waiting for the HDD and VC ... but did some house keeping instead and neatened up the wires while also installing a rear case fan ...

 

Got my HDD ... just waiting on the VC.

 

It seems that Gigabyte power supplies are fairly well known in Australia... I did a quick Google and the main etailers were in Australia and Africa (???). At a US equivalent of $134 I think you could have purchased a much better unit, but that's one man's opinion....
More info on the PSU: http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products...+Supply&ProductID=2793&ProductName=Superb 720

Very interested to see what your 3DM06 score will be :confused

 

Yer ino but I only had a very tight budget so yer ... I'm STILL waiting on my graphics card but ...

 

Yay got my VC today finally looks AWESOME ran 3DMark 06 and got 10456 as my score ... 5 times better than my previous system lol ...wuttya rekon??

 

It should get alot better than that shouldn't it??

 

very nice PC, very good high spec parts

 

Yeah... I'm curious too!

benchmarks aren't always an accurate gauge of gaming or graphics performance. If it plays your games at high settings, and everything is smooth and fast, then I (personally) wouldn't put too much thought in to the bench scores. A friend of mine got a GTX260 and got 3DM06 scores around 11-12k, but my GTX260 scores at over 14k, but the games he plays are running WAY better than with his previous card, and all settings are at high, so he's happy! (and so am I )

 

Ok, using the ThermalTake DuOrb, the room temperature at reading is 18 degrees celsius, the computer has been idling for thirty minutes before reading, and the Idle Temp is 19 degrees celsius.

 

eekeek:eek

 

Give us a little bit to do the load temp ...

 

ok and .... Ok, using the ThermalTake DuOrb, the room temperature at reading is 17 degrees celsius, all four cores and 97% of the RAM were under load full load for thirty minutes before reading, and the Load Temp is 46 degrees celsius.

I used Intel Burn Test to test the load temp. The temp was taken with Speed Fan.

 

eekeekeek
eekeekeek

How the :*** did you manage that?

That must be one heck of a cooler!:-D

 

Lol, well it sure as hell has REALLY good front to back cooling ... but considering the DuOrb has six Heat Pipes and two fans with copper fins underneath and beside the fans, and the fact that it cost me $120 AUD it had wanna be!!!

other than that it looks awesome and it fits both AMD and Intel sockets ... not sure about exactly which ones but .......

The only issue I have ever had with it is fitting it ... its a tight fit in some cases lol ...

 

New 3D Mark score!!

OCd my Graphics card yesterday and did a little on my CPU as well

new score is 11723 as opposed to my previous 10456 or something ...

Standard clocks on the GC are
Core 600
Shader 1500
Memory 2000

OC is

Core 760
Shader 1800
Memory 2200

Standard clock on the CPU is 2.33 ... I could only get it to 2.44 :confused

I don't think the mobo is too good at OCing 45nm CPUs ... probably shoulda looked more into that ...

Happy with the result but