Computer Thread

[EvilAsPie]

I'm a level three PC Tech at Wright Express in Sopo. There are three of us supporting over 700 employees with over 1000 computers.

I build gaming machines on the side for fun. Huge fan of the Intel E8400 - E8600 CPUs. Can't beat the speed for $$!

I'm still waiting to build a Core i7 box. A buddy of mine who's machine i built a while ago is going to have to upgrade sooner or later!

All my computers at home suck cause after working on them all day i don't care what mine are as long as they work. But i do have about 5 running all the time including my server with 1TB Raid. I keep all my music, movies, pictures, etc on there. It's almost full!

 

[2point5RS_Dan]

Desktop: AMD 1.8ghz socket 939 Opteron 165. 2 gigs of ram. 8800gt. Raptor drive. Some other drives. XP

Laptop: HP 2710p. 1.06ghz core2duo ULV. 4 gigs of ram. Intel GMA. Painfully slow 4200rpm 80gig drive. Vista (its fine, the haters read too many digg articles)

Server box thing: Emachines guts. 2.6 p4 celeron. 2 gigs of ram. Ingergrated graphics. 2x 40gig drives and 4x 500gig drives in a software raid 5 for 1.5tb of storage. Ubuntu.

 

[Stein]

Desktop: AMD 1.8ghz socket 939 Opteron 165. 2 gigs of ram. 8800gt. Raptor drive. Some other drives. XP

Pleeeease tell me the opty isn't at stock!

What motherboard? I may be interested in buying the proc, ram, and 8800

.

 

[STInate]

Wow its been awhile since ive been into this scene. The last computer I built that was any good was a p4 3.4 (yea, yea) with 4 gb of 533ddr2, 2 7800gtx's 512mb, dual raptor 74gb+500gb samsung or something cant even remember, thermaltake liquid cooling, in a stainless steel asus case if I remember correctly. God it makes me sad how hard I had to think to remember all this. This was maybe 3-4 years ago. I was hardcore into gaming and computers for a very long time. To long and way to addicted. I built my first pc when I was 12 from parts off of pricewatch.com haha. One day I finally decided I needed to give up gaming and that's when I dumped the entire hobby including working in the IT field. I did work for several hospitals, cbe valcom, and the dmv office in augusta. Im proud to say im talking to you guys on a very modest toshiba laptop with a turion x2 running vista and a integrated radeon 3100. Ive turned one passion into another though and my car is my new addiction.

 

[Stein]

oh my god, you did not say thermaltake water cooling...

edit: my dad's got a p4 3.4...

 

[Pedro]

what's wrong with that?

 

[Chris]

what's wrong with that?

+1

I don't see any hug problem with it

And right now I'm talking on my smallest computer, a nokia 810

400MHz ARMEL v6, 128MB ram, 256MB for root partition, 2GB for data and /usr partition. running debian linux

 

[2point5RS_Dan]

Pleeeease tell me the opty isn't at stock!What motherboard? I may be interested in buying the proc, ram, and 8800

.

DFI NF4 Ultra D

Built this rig 4 years ago. Tried overclocking but I couldn't be bothered to figure it out. Probably had to up the voltage or something. Whatever it plays games just fine.

If we're both at the meet tomorrow feel free to make me an offer on stuff.

 

[Stein]

+1I don't see any hug problem with it

And right now I'm talking on my smallest computer, a nokia 810

400MHz ARMEL v6, 128MB ram, 256MB for root partition, 2GB for data and /usr partition. running debian linux

The real problem is that, compared to the s939 systems at the time, the P4s were power hogs, which means they ran hotter, and a lot less performance too. AMD used to rock, but Intels Core 2 Duo line whooped AM2's butt.

DFI NF4 Ultra D
Built this rig 4 years ago. Tried overclocking but I couldn't be bothered to figure it out. Probably had to up the voltage or something. Whatever it plays games just fine.

If we're both at the meet tomorrow feel free to make me an offer on stuff.

:lol:

That's the exact motherboard I have! In fact, I have two, but one of them came dead from fleabay

. It cost me $60, but the working one I won in an online contest

.

I'm working on an all-custom acrylic case right now. I finally got a tap and I'm going to drill+tap holes for the motherboard standoffs soon. I need a system to fill the case

(I have a PSU and HDDs already).

edit: if you don't want to sell it, I can help overclock it. With the stock cooler, you should be able to get to at least 2.6GHz. The Opty165s are the best overclocking 939 processors. The DFI boards are also the best overclocking 939 motherboards. The only problem is that the bios is probably the most complicated.

 

[2point5RS_Dan]

The real problem is that, compared to the s939 systems at the time, the P4s were power hogs, which means they ran hotter, and a lot less performance too. AMD used to rock, but Intels Core 2 Duo line whooped AM2's butt.
I'm working on an all-custom acrylic case right now. I finally got a tap and I'm going to drill+tap holes for the motherboard standoffs soon. I need a system to fill the case

(I have a PSU and HDDs already).

edit: if you don't want to sell it, I can help overclock it. With the stock cooler, you should be able to get to at least 2.6GHz. The Opty165s are the best overclocking 939 processors. The DFI boards are also the best overclocking 939 motherboards. The only problem is that the bios is probably the most complicated.

Prescott.... more like PRESSHOT. Those P4's were space heaters.

Cool stuff with the case. I always wanted to figure out how to make a case because there are no good small cases that hold a ton of hard drives.

 

[Chris]

What's a computer case? My computer works just fine without one

I have the Gigabyte EP45-UD3P. And it is an amazing motherboard. Has just about every option in the BIOS you would ever want, heat pipes between the heatsinks on the northbridge and southbridge. And all sorts of crazy awesomeness. They are around $150 new, but I got mine as an openbox on newegg fore $65, which was pretty sweet.

Currently I'm on my macbook pro, which is my best free laptop yet... It is actually the conglomeration of 2 macbook pros and a dell... but hey, it works and was free. And looks like I have a $2000 laptop

 

[Carter]

Dell XPS 420...done...cept I added 2 WD Raptors in a Raid 0 setup.

 

[STInate]

The model is a "420"? Hahaha

 

[Chris]

Must be one smokin' fast computer, eh?

 

[rsalomon13]

Got 3 rigs, it is funny how computers can lose some of their intrigue when they are your job. I am a C/C++/Java software engineer although currently unemployed and writing PHP/MySql stuff as a freelancer.

 

[Chris]

I don't have a lot of systems that are currently operating.... but I have what I refer to as the computer grave yard. When ever I get a system that doesn't work I tear it down, put GPUs in one pile, hard drives in the HD stack, etc. And when I need a part I take what's on top and see if it works. If it does, great. If it doesn't work it goes to the broken computer part pile. First I test those parts to make sure they are really broken, then if they are I save them for bits, or throw them out. Like I'll save broken audio cards for the plugs, VGA cards because the ports are useful, I can steal capacitors and transistors of stuff, etc.

But if I wanted a system I could probably build upwards of 10 from the grave yard. I also donate systems. The other day I was talking to someone saying how their office would be more productive with a system or 2 and a printer. Next week, 3 computers, a printer, and some networking hardware showed up.

 

[Carter]

Must be one smokin' fast computer, eh?

eh, it does its job, I only bought it when my 8300 died.

Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad (Kentsfield) 2.4 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 8 MB L2 cache blah blah, PC2-5300 (333MHz) 3GB DDR, 150GBx2 WD Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA RAID 0, XFX GeForce 8600GTS. The slow memory is the only thing that keeps my Vista score down at 5.6, everything else is rated 5.9

I was thinking about connecting the 2 pins on the CPU to bring it up to 3 GHz but its doing fine as it is...its always throttled down to about 1.5 GHz since I dont run too much.

 

[Chris]

Why would you hardware overclock? My bios takes care of overclocking my 2.4 (or is it a 2.5, I can't remember...) to 3.0 for me.

I have done enough hardware overclocking, I even had an overclock knob on my P3 box to give it more or less voltage.... I blew up a bunch of P3s and had to give it up when my supply started to get to low...

I also hardware overclocked a clamshell iBook G3... 300MHz to 466MHz... w00t

that system was killed by lightning though

 

[Carter]

Why would you hardware overclock? My bios takes care of overclocking my 2.4 (or is it a 2.5, I can't remember...) to 3.0 for me.
I have done enough hardware overclocking, I even had an overclock knob on my P3 box to give it more or less voltage.... I blew up a bunch of P3s and had to give it up when my supply started to get to low...

Dude...Dell XPS 420 there is no bios setting to overclock. Only the XPS 7xx series allowed you to overclock, and it wasn't much.

 

[Chris]

Dude...Dell XPS 420 there is no bios setting to overclock. Only the XPS 7xx series allowed you to overclock, and it wasn't much.

Oh right... DELL = second crappiest computer... Second to eMachines. Although compaq isn't far behind.

I dunno, maybe gateway is worse... it is hard to say. They have the weird round trackpads on their laptops that drive me nuts...