My Fresh off the Block PC

We have a laptop, well two really, but one was built by dell at the tune of 2400 dollars to be a gaming laptop, yeah... been in the shop 7 times in the last 2 years, mostly for motherboard failures and now the HD has failed AGAIN. Furstrated with this annoying laptop, and not wanting to play with the subpar machine as my main one (I will state teh toshiba has worked flawlessly, cost 1000 less then the dell, but doesn't have a graphics card to run my games with any measure of detail) I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands.

Time to build me a machine.

Now I haven't even bought a new desktop since 2003 when I got my dell desktop which has been a flawless member of my tech household. She still works, never had much issue with it, but it did cost 4550. Previously I had an Alienware that amounted to a giant 5200 paperweight, alienware refused to honor their warrenty and fix the #### thing so I replaced it with teh dell. This was all during a time I made obscene money and throwing that kind of cash around was not something I worried about, I could make it back in 2 weeks.

I have not built a computer, I've taken many apart and added and replaced things, but never built from the ground up. But I checked the pricing and found that for around 2000 I could build the machine of my dreams. So thats what I've set out to do. I've got 1600 invested so far, give or take.

Currently:

Lian Li Lanacool K58 Dragonlord case

I liked the case, I've got a thermaltake case but its heavy (32 lbs), this case is much lighter and airy. Yet still has the window on the side I do love.

GTX 260

Looked at alot of cards, read alot of reviews, got advised by many gamer friends, finally decided on the Nvidia GTX card. While Nvidia doesn't currently support Direct X 11, neither does anyone have a Direct X 11 game out. That wasn't important enough to me to go with an ATI which I've never been a fan off, and I am a fan of PhysX. I didn't want to go top grade, as these cards tend to be the first thing you replace. The GTX 260 has great performance stacked against ATI, what remains to be seen is how well it preforms under heavy Lightwave/Eduis use but I suspect it will do well.

I7 920

I got a lot of flack from this choice from my gamer friends whom thought a Phenom or Extreme Quad would be a better choice. Though they were speaking from an upgrade cost prospective. I am unconcerned that it might cost me more later to upgrade my 1366 socket, the fact is the i7 cards are #### good, though I have reason to believe mine might be defective.

12 Gigs Kingston HyperX 1600 Ram

Went into Frys for 6 gigs, turned out they were having a sale and 12 gigs cost the same as I was going to spend for 6 so I got 12.

Hitachi 2 TB 7200/32 MB Cache

This one is a redirect, I went into the store for a Seagate 1.5 7200/32 Cache but was told by the sales person that they had a flaw that caused many to fail. They were the same price anyway so I got the Hitachi instead. Seems windows doesn't like it, but oh well.

N3XT LCD Fan Controller

Love the look, and utility of 5 fan controls and temp sensors.

HP Lightscribe 22x DVD RW

Needed a CD Drive, this one was there, got it, not much into this one.

Future plans:

1 more GTX 260
1 SSD HD
1 Bluray drive
1 HDTV tuner
Some LED lights
2 x 22" Monitors

 

LoL... well I was considering building a case out of that useless Igloo Refrigerator I have but my gaming buddies assured me that unless I wanted to spend 600 bucks on some weird gel gunk to stop condensation I shouldn't...

I am thinking I got a bad apple 920 chip, I am going to do some tweaks and see if I can figure out whats up, its severally under preforming according to benchmarks.