Re: The hardware thread!

[Iggy]

It's working now. The new memory I just installed is properly recognized by the motherboard as well as all connected devices. I'm studying the BIOS setup menu while keeping an eye on the temperatures. CPU and motherboard is stable at 34 degrees (all CPU cores unlocked). Even that Scythe Server fan controller is doing his job. I would prefer if the display of the fan controller was better visible like a bright blue colour for normal save values and a bright red colour for dangerous values.

[Willis]

That's a pretty decent video card for a laptop

I'm a desktop man myself, and been building my own for quite some time now.

I'm currently running:
Intel i7 920 @ 4.0 Ghz CPU
Foxconn Renaissance x58 Motherboard
12GB DDR3 PC-1600 Ram in Triple Channel
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
80GB Intel SSD OS Drive
2x 1.5TB Seagate 7200RPM Storage
ATI 5850 1GB GDDR5 Video Card
Antec 1200 Case w/ 700W Power Supply (all case/fan LEDs removed)
Primary Display: Dell Ultrasharp 2709W 27" LCD
Secondary Display: Dell Ultrasharp 2405WFP 24" LCD
Tertiary Display: 42" Panasonic Plasma TV

Laptop (not used terribly often):
Dell Studio 14m (1440) 14" 16:9 1366x768
Nvidia 9400m Graphics (with HDMI and DisplayPort output)
Intel T6500 2.1 Ghz CPU
3GB DDR3 Ram
64GB OCZ Vertex SSD
Wireless B/G/N
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
No optical drive
8-Cell battery (gets great battery life).

[Iggy]

Well I'm an enormous desktop lover myself as well, my current rig is something I build myself in February 2007 and is running awesomely since day 1. Thing is that it produces a lot of heat during warm days that's why I decided to get a laptop.

Here's my current rig;
- AMD Athlon X2 (64 bits)
- GeForce 8800GTS 640Mb
- 4096 Mb RAM DDR2
- HD1 = WD Caviar S-ATA 120Gb
- HD2 = WD Caviar S-ATA 300Gb
- HD3 = WD Caviar S-ATA 300Gb
- HD4 = WD Caviar S-ATA 400Gb
- HD5 = WD Caviar S-ATA 480Gb
- Creative Soundblaster X-Fi
- DVD-ROM reader
- DVD-ROM burner
- 20,5" FTF screen

Can't really remember all the details.

[Remmke]

I have the following

Retro PC (Loki)
Build to play Build (Blood mainly), Doom and other DOS games in non-emulated state.

If my memory hasn't failed me:

CPU: Intel P4 3.0 Ghz
MOBO: Asus PT600 (Battery broken, doesn't remember my BIOS settings ;( )
PSU: 430W
GFX: ATi 9800 pro
Soundcard (most important piece - Creative SB PCI)



Game PC (Poseidon)
To play the newer games on.

CPU: i7 920
RAM 6 GB
MOBO: P6T-SE
GFX: HIS HD5850
PSU: 600 W
1x 80 Intel SSD
2x 500 GB disks JBOD



Laptop (Ares)
For school and stuff, can go the distant when stressed (5 hours on battery )
Model: UL-30A - Thin and Light Noteboox



Fileserver (Hestia)
Mainly used just to store movies and tv-series for my version of video on demand.

CPU: Q9550
RAM: 6 GB
PSU: 600W
MOBO: P5Q-E
RAID: Dell Perc 5/i
3x1.5 TB disks
4x1 TB disks
1x 80 GB disk for OS
all packed in a Lian Li PC-A70

Retro Console Corner
To play some olden oldies when I'm bored.



TV

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

This one, that is powered by AMD & NVIDIA only:

Blue Leader SMP 2009


Dual Quad Core AMD OpteronDP 2380 C2 Shanghai HT1.1 8x 2500Mhz, 8x 512KB L2, 2x 6144KB L3
4x 4096MB PC2-6400 ECC Reg Kingston Value Ram in Quad Channel DDR2-800 mode [Two Dual Channel DDR2-800 Pools in system one per Quad Core CPU, hence two CPU's, thus Quad Channel DDR2-800]
Supermicro H8DAE-2 NVIDIA NFORCE 3600 Professional + MCP55 Pro + IO55
1x Supermicro SIM LP-B IPMI 2.0 Card 16MB SDRAM
1x EVGA GeForce GTX 295 Red Edition PCI-E 1792MB 896Bit GDDR3 [in practical 2x 896MB 448Bit GDDR3]
In 32 Lane Quad SLI with
1x EVGA GeForce GTX 295 Red Edition Golden Sample PCI-E 1792MB 896Bit GDDR3 [in practical 2x 896MB 448Bit GDDR3] 1 of 20 known worldwide, of all 103 GTX 295 RE's made]
Onboard Realtek HD Audio
2x Broadcom 1Gigabit Ethernet Adapters
4x Western Digital Caviar 500GB RE3 24/7 series 32MB Cache RAID0
Antec True Power Quattro Series 1000Watt EPS12V + 2.3V
Lian Li PC-A7010 Black Server Tower
iiyama ProLite B2403WS-B1 24" TFT

And then I have this system as AMD, ATi & 3dfx system, also a test system for all PCI,AGP x4 & AGP x8 cards in my VGA Card collection:

Sveta SMP 2004



Dual AMD OpteronMP 850 CG Sledgehammer HT1.0, 2x 2405Mhz , 2x 1024KB L2
2x 1024MB PC-3200 ECC Reg Kingston Value Ram in Dual DDR-400 mode, on one ram pool for the main CPU with this system]
Micro-Star International MS-9130 K8T Master2-FAR VIA K8T800 chipset
Hightech Industry Systems ATi Radeon HD 3850 ICEQ3 Turbo AGP 512MB 256Bit GDDR3 aka HIS HD 3870 AGP as Main VGA
3dfx Interactive Voodoo5 5500 PCI Macintosh 64MB 256Bit SDR [in practical 2x 32MB 128Bit SDR] PC Flashed to Bios 1.18_LCD as Secondary VGA
Onboard Realtek AC'97 2.1 sound
1x Broadcom 1Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
1x Intel Pro 100/S Desktop Adapter as secondary network device
1x 250GB Western Digital Caviar SE 16MB Cache UATA 133 Main HDD
1x 320GB Western Digital Caviar RE2 16MB Cache SATA II 300 @ SATA I 150 Secondary HDD
Enermax Modu82+ 525Watt PSU EPS12V + 2.3V
Addtronics 6896-A Entry Level Server Tower aka High Tower
Compaq S710 17" CRT

And this is my lanbox and test system for all my PCI-Express cards in my VGA card collection, it's Intel / ATi based :

Firefox X58



Intel Core i7 930 D0 Bloomfield Land Grid Array 1366
3x 2048MB PC3-12800 Corsair Dominator in Tri Channel DDR3-1333 mode at the moment.
EVGA E758 X58 3x SLI Motherboard with the Intel X58 Tylersburg Chipset
1x Hightech Industry Systems ATi Radeon HD 4870 ICEQ4+ PCI-E 1024MB GDDR5
in 32 Lane 2-Way CFX with:
1x Pine XFX ATi Radeon HD 4870 XXX Edition PCI-E 1024MB GDDR5 [Limited 12Layer PCB Variant, "Card 019" of 032 made in the world]
2x 500GB Western Digital Caviar RE3 24/7 series HDD's in Raid 0
Antec True Power Quattro Series 850Watt EPS12V + 2.3V
Lian Li PC-60 MK II + PC-65USD Side window
Gold Leader's Hangar Bay Mod + Gold Leader's Koensayr BTL-S3 Y-Wing Starfighter
2x 30CM Sharkoon Blue CCFL's
2x 30CM Sharkoon Yellow CCFL's
2x 80mm x 80mm x 25mm Antec Tri Cool Red / Green / Blue Tri-Led Fans, 1 in rear & 1 in ceiling
1x 120mm x 120mm x 25mm Antec tri-Cool Green ledded fan in front as intake.
EIZO FlexScan T662-T 20″ CRT *

* it has been replaced with a Samsung SyncMaster 943-BW 19"TFT : 1440 x 900 x32 @ 75 Herz, 5ms, 720p HDTV support, it's also backwards compliant with older aspect ratio's like 4:3, 5:4, 16:9 and the newer 16:10.

Then there is te Emergency system, just if all goes wrong I can always fall back on this system, it's powered by NVIDIA & 3dfx

Gradinko SMP 2000


Dual Pentium!!!/EB 1000Mhz Coppermine
ABiT VP6 Raid Ver 1.0
4x 256MB PC-133 Micron Crucial
Leadtek GeForce 6800 AGP 128MB 256Bit DDR1 @ AGP x4
3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI 64MB 256Bit SDR Rev.A1 2900 [in practical 2x 32MB 128Bit SDR]
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 Platinum eX
Intel Pro/1000 MT Fast Ethernet Adapter
ASUS NEC 4 ported USB 2.0 PCI 32 bit card
1x Maxtor Diamondmax 10+ 160 GB 7200 rpm Ultra ATA 133 HDD @ Ultra ATA 100
1x Seagate Barracuda V 10+ 80 GB 7200 rpm Ultra ATA 133 HDD @ Ultra ATA 100
1x NEC DVD-RW ND 1300A Ultra ATA 100
Addtronics 7896A Server Tower
Enermax EG365VE 350 Watt PSU
EIZO FlexScan T662-T 20″ CRT

WinXP Pro USA + SP3
DirectX9 August 2009 Release
Forceware 81.24 WHQL for GF 6800 AGP
SFFT Alpha 41 Modified by ps47 for V5 5500 PCI

And for on the go I have this one which is powered by Intel & ATi:

Yoda


Dell Inspiron 9100 Xtreme Limited Edition [1 of 2000 Made Worldwide]

Intel Pentium4/E 3400 HT @ 3400Mhz 1x 1024KB L2, 800Mhz FSB
Intel i865 GE Mobile Chipset based Motherboard
2x 512MB PC-3200 CL3 Infineon in Dual Channel DDR-400 Mode
ATi M18 Mobility Radeon 9800 AGP 256MB 256Bit DDRII
1x Hitatchi 100GB ATA 100 4200 rpm HDD
15,4" WUXGA TFT Max Reso: 1920 x 1200 x32 @ 60 Herz, most usable Reso: 1280 x 800 x32 @ 60 Herz

The Laptop isn't in the beta testing shot but it's surely being used for DXX-rebirth as well and it works fine, the Dual Pentium3 is an emergency system, if all hell breaks loose, well that is the system that can fix any issues, it has all the important backups.

So ith so many different systems  I can go all ways, I built most from money I saved up since I was 16 years old, some how I knew that my work labour days would not last long and they didn't. 6 years ago I got disabled, work wasn't possible anymore and it's still hard to accept this, my Asperger Syndrome has alot to do with it, work presure , working in group, the noise on the work floor things like that timing everything has to be done ina ccertain time that are things my brain can't have it overloads and I see nothing but walls around me only way is toget the hell out as soon as possible and flee.

Anyways it took a while for the work people to find this out after like 8 years or something, I can't really remember, so no I am not rich even if some might think that, the only things I am rich of are them damn memories of the past.

So during my work days I collected alot of 3dfx VGA cards where many were Engineering Samples Omega_SUpremem knows this also since I got him into that hobby via Gathering of Tweakers.net and now he has a wonderful collection of Voodoo5 6000's which he probably shown you people.

anyways hwo I afforded the Dual OpteronDP 2380 and the i7 I sold my collections, ut also some of these collections were sold due to the high amounts stress and traumattic depressive syndromes I had over the past 5 years.

the communites were all falling apprt it seemed and all I wanted is to get out of there sell all the cards which I did and use the money wisely, this did not effect my Descent collection , maybe Iwas not part of any community back then, or they were not aound? I dunno.

Anyways now after selling all them VGA cards I wanted to start anew but with some different things Descent and Freespace games and two wonderful PC's that will last long very long, so that is how the Dual Shanghai and the Uni Bloomfield came to place

So in short I came from a hellhole fought myself out of it and now I am recharging my strength by collecting Descent & Freespace games, Various VGA cards and Beta testing for Zico's DXX-rebirth that keeps me busy at most of the times.

[Iggy]

Another person with autism like me huh? What you say about working pressure and the like is totally recognizable and applies to myself as well. I work as a software tester in a special environment so I can keep working without being bothered much.

Anyway, the first rig you post about is just a complete monster! And the case is Lian Li with AMD and Nvidia stuff which I personally prefer. Seriously cool rigs you have.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Yeah thanks man But yeah it's a true monster it eats the i7 for breakfast too when it comes to real time flight sims, that one is mainly used for Flight Simulator X Deluxe Edition + Real Enviroment Xtreme 1.2 + Ultimate Terrain X Europe and some manually installed aircraft including a Koensayr BTL-A4 Y-Wing for the fun haha, main aircraft I fly is the B744 or the B738 and if I want to get somewhere very quickly I use the North American XB-70 Valkyrie, flying at Mach 3.4 is simply heart pounding with that setup.

Here some pics I took of my last flight with a B744 from Minneapollis, Saint Paul International, Minnesota USA to Amsterdam, Schiphol International, The Netherlands




Flight time was exactly 10 hours and 2 minutes real time of course
I used these settings:

DX 10 mode
1920 x 1200 x32
all settings maxxed out
Super Sampled FSAA x16 + AF x16
Quad SLI Enabled

I got about 57 to 74 fps, it really depended on the terrain and such, for the upgrade this system will get a pair of OpteronDP 2439 SE CPU's these are the 6 core 2800Mhz Istanbul Sun Edition CPU's the fastest possible for my setup, with a 2-Way Opterons it's the more cores for more speed, FSX supports up to 32 cores , so with this monster going from 8x 2500Mhz to 12x 2800Mhz will be avery nice and worthy upgrade, with this I hope to get a frame rate around the 70 to 80 fps which is perfect.

VGA wise these GTX 295 Red Editions will do I guess, since DX11 plays no role with FSX, but the more details my GPU's have to render the heavieer it can get so I might go GTX 490 later on next year, but first the CPU upgrade, after flashing to Bios 3.5 I got Dual Istanbul Support so that makes this motherboard a very good move.

[Iggy]

My videocard died today, I replaced it with a Asus GeForce GT240. I'm currently updating the drivers for it while I still got my laptop as back-up device. My new card has no active cooling so this should last a bit longer I hope, the GeForce 8800GTS it replaces lasted for 4 years. There's a big case fan right above it that blows air to the videocard so it shouldn't have cooling problems.

I'm also thinking for getting a big upgrade at the end of May, somewhere along the lines of this;

- Motherboard: Asus Crosshair IV Formula (Not too keen on this one as it's been reported that several motherboards of this type have a faulty northbride cooling)
- CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
- CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 (it's ridiculous large so maybe a smaller will have to.)
- Video: MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC (GeForce 560GTX-Ti)
- Memory: Corsair 12 GB DDR3-1600 Tri-Kit
- PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro M 850W ATX2

I'm not fully sure of my choices so feedback is welcome. I'm not replacing my HD's as their SSD counterparts are extremely expensive. Maybe for the next update.

[Iggy]

I could use a little advice here. I just finished assembling my new PC and booted it up for the first time. Fans are running, fan controller shows life, light on the motherboard goes on, CPU fans are running, DVD-ROM drive is working, HD's show a sign of life but there's no image on the screen and no POST beep. What gives? All cables seem to be properly connected.

[MrBlackCat]

I could use a little advice here. I just finished assembling my new PC and booted it up for the first time. Fans are running, fan controller shows life, light on the motherboard goes on, CPU fans are running, DVD-ROM drive is working, HD's show a sign of life but there's no image on the screen and no POST beep. What gives? All cables seem to be properly connected.

Sounds like a memory issue to me... but I don't know much about modern boards.
I suggest memory though because in older boards, if the memory could not be accessed, no function would go active.

Try removing the memory completely and see if anything changes.  If not, swap the memory for some other if you have have it, just to see if you can get a change in boot.

If that doesn't do it, removed the video card and try to boot and see if anything changes.  Eventually you should find something that causes a change.

MrBlackCat

[Iggy]

I just consulted the motherboard's manual. In case of a hardware component failure there should be a continuous beep followed by four short beeps. In case of no memory detected there should be one continuous beep followed by two short beeps. No beeps are heard when starting the system and I just tried without a video card which gave similar results. When there's no VGA there should be  beeps as well and I didn't heard those too. I'm gonna try switching the memory now.

Edit;
I know for sure it's the RAM. There's a LED that lights up red when there are issues with the memory on the motherboard. Which it does. I'm sending it back for a refund.

Edit (2);
Finally found RAM that's on the QVL (Qualified Vendor List) ánd should fit underneath that damn big Noctua cooler, two Kingston HyperX 8Gb DDR3-1600 (GET316GB1600C9QC) memory modules should be compatible. (That's 4 modules of 4Gb each)

[MrBlackCat]

I am glad you found it.

Memory is so complex these days... years ago, there was like two different speeds and parity or non-parity! 

MrBlackCat

[Iggy]

It's working now. The new memory I just installed is properly recognized by the motherboard as well as all connected devices. I'm studying the BIOS setup menu while keeping an eye on the temperatures. CPU and motherboard is stable at 34 degrees (all CPU cores unlocked). Even that Scythe Server fan controller is doing his job. I would prefer if the display of the fan controller was better visible like a bright blue colour for normal save values and a bright red colour for dangerous values.



I'm not done with cable management though.

[MrBlackCat]

Good to see you got it running and it is cooling as desired.

MrBlackCat

[MrBlackCat]

Hey Iggy...
Did you every get it up and running DNF?  I am really curious as to how well this video card runs DNF because I am thinking of buying 4 of this set to get all my copies of Duke Nukem Forever for multiplayer and get extra stuff for my Duke Collection.

MrBlackCat