[Adam]

I'm not sure how many other people on here are interested in hardware/computers, but for those are here's my newest build. I've built a gaming system every year, for the past five years. Have to keep up with the latest!

This is my most expensive build yet, at $1304.89. <-- All hardware, not including OS, because I....uh...get that from somewhere else Running Windows 7 x64 with a mild (stable) overclock from 3.3 to 3.6 Ghz
I just finished putting everything together a couple days ago. I've running it right now on a 1 Terabyte 5200rpm SATA II drive, but later today my last order arrives with a 60Gb SATA III Solid State drive. Then I'll be running fast. This time I wandered away from my long-time nVida SLI relationship and went with ATI. So far, I haven't been disappointed while gaming. After some research, I read if you have a AMD FX chip, AMD FX 990 series mobo and ATI Radeon HD cards, the whole system is then considered AMD's Scorpius platform, "for an astounding gaming and HD entertainment experience. As part of the "Scorpius" platform, AMD FX CPUs also support AMD CrossFireX™ technology, which allows the combination of multiple graphics cards in a PC for stunning visual experiences, and AMD Eyefinity technology support for super resolution on up to six monitors." This is also the reason I stuck with AMD, otherwise I would have tried out Intel. Maybe next year.

Specs:

>Corsair Special Edition White Graphite Series 600T Tower
>Gigabyte AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s ATX Motherboard
>(x2) XFX Radeon HD 6790 1Gb 256-bit GDDR5 vid cards in Crossfire
>Cougar CMx 1000w ATX 12v/EPS12v power supply
>AMD Zambezi 6100 3.3GHz Socket AM3+ 95w Six-Core Processor
>G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16Gb (4 x 4Gb) DDR3 1600 RAM
>Zalman 135mm CPU heatsink
>OCZ Vertex 3 60Gb SATA III 6Gb/s Solid State Drive
>Wester Digital Caviar Green 1Tb 5200rpm 3Gb/s Drive
>Sony Optiarc 24x bruner/optical drive (free with CPU)
>LG 22x super-multi burner/optical drive



Picture Time!












Fan lights are actually a bright white, they just appear kinda blue. Also, I wish I had a third display so I could take advantage of the AMD EyeFinity feature on the vid cards. Dual screens will do though

Here are some pictures of past builds..

This post has been edited by Adam: 14 December 2011 - 04:38 AM

[dykzeulb]

Drool

[Cully77]

looks f*cking intense

[Adam]

Cully77, on 15 December 2011 - 12:05 AM, said:

looks f*cking intense

Very, it's been handling everything I throw at it. My SSD and Battlefield 3 arrived earlier today. I'm finishing up the install of win7 again and then I'm off to battle!

[Dave96Z34]

Its a good build only thing that worries me is the SSD having errors to frequent.

[Adam]

Yea, I was on the fence about going with a SSD or a HDD. I had a few picked out, and did my home work on each of them. This one yielded the best results for overall price, speed, capacity and good reviews. It was only $99.00, less then what I would have spent ($150.00) for another terabyte HDD. So if there is problems, I wouldn't see it as that big of a loss.

[Dave96Z34]

Id make a clone of the drive once a month just in case. With that Id be happy. That's relay low how many gigs?

This post has been edited by Dave96Z34: 18 December 2011 - 03:08 PM

[Dave96Z34]

60 gig hmm id buy 2 and put them in raid 0 not only would it be faster it be 120gig that's manageable for a c drive.

[nitehawkjcb]

Just save most of your ish to an external drive

Real iffy though, had a 1 TB external Western Digital fail on me after less than a year of service

This post has been edited by nitehawkjcb: 18 December 2011 - 04:53 PM

[Dave96Z34]

id never use externals to easy to steal and easy to damage

[mrclean]

not an amd fan at all, but looks so sick man.

[Dave96Z34]

delete...

This post has been edited by Dave96Z34: 19 December 2011 - 06:56 PM

[Adam]

mrclean, on 19 December 2011 - 08:51 AM, said:

not an amd fan at all, but looks so sick man.

Thanks!

I'm wanted to tryout the new bulldozer cpu, otherwise I would have done an intel build.


I have that same 1Tb Western Digital external, I've had it for a couple years now. I throw a lot of extra stuff there. Also have a 320gb external for backups.

[Tackle]

That should be able to handle any game you can find. As for the SSD, I have had my Vertex 2 for just over a year and it is still awesome, I'm sure you will agree that it performs quite a bit better than your 5200rpm.

For all you non-believers or think it will fail right away and haven't tried one, you don't know what you're missing! The slim chance of it failing is not enough to stop me from recommend them. I replace failed HDD's daily at work, they aren't built to last with an average lifespan of 5 years. I'll take my chances on a SSD and enjoy the big performance boost.

This post has been edited by Tackle: 22 December 2011 - 06:23 PM

[mstrjon32]

nitehawkjcb, on 18 December 2011 - 04:52 PM, said:

Real iffy though, had a 1 TB external Western Digital fail on me after less than a year of service

Try taking it out of the WD case and put it in something else/hook it up internally. I've had a few WD external cases go bad, but the drive inside still worked. It was making a clicking noise and everything...I think the voltage regulators go bad and then they don't supply clean power to the drives.

I've got a 10 year old 120GB WD drive in my desktop machine that's still kicking.

[Dave96Z34]

mstrjon32, on 24 December 2011 - 06:03 AM, said:

I've got a 10 year old 120GB WD drive in my desktop machine that's still kicking.

Same hear I love my 2 old school raptors 36 gig drives in raid 0 flawless running for 8 years.

This post has been edited by Dave96Z34: 24 December 2011 - 12:05 PM

[nitehawkjcb]

mstrjon32, on 24 December 2011 - 07:03 AM, said:

nitehawkjcb, on 18 December 2011 - 04:52 PM, said:

Real iffy though, had a 1 TB external Western Digital fail on me after less than a year of service

Try taking it out of the WD case and put it in something else/hook it up internally. I've had a few WD external cases go bad, but the drive inside still worked. It was making a clicking noise and everything...I think the voltage regulators go bad and then they don't supply clean power to the drives.

I've got a 10 year old 120GB WD drive in my desktop machine that's still kicking.

Thanks for the advice, the drive did have bad sectors in it however, so it definitely is failing, already pulled off all the info I could... Good thing it was still under warranty

[Adam]

Tackle, on 22 December 2011 - 05:22 PM, said:

That should be able to handle any game you can find. As for the SSD, I have had my Vertex 2 for just over a year and it is still awesome, I'm sure you will agree that it performs quite a bit better than your 5200rpm.

For all you non-believers or think it will fail right away and haven't tried one, you don't know what you're missing! The slim chance of it failing is not enough to stop me from recommend them. I replace failed HDD's daily at work, they aren't built to last with an average lifespan of 5 years. I'll take my chances on a SSD and enjoy the big performance boost.

Has proven itself so far, I went to a LAN party on new years. Handled everything flawlessly. I'm loving the SSD too, boot time blows me away and everything is zippy.

Quick update, Finally picked up a third monitor. I can now run Eyefinity while playing games.