Forum Overview :: American McGee's Honda Civic
 
One year later by Ray of Light 06/03/2007, 7:59pm PDT
  • Case: Lian-Li PC-V2100.
    • Aluminum is a nice exterior material (easy to cut and drill) and the fit is good. It's a poor interior material though, and leads to a number of design problems. The airflow in the drive bay is insufficient for 12 drives. Not terrible but not worth $400. The Antec P190 or Lian-Li 201 (both new) look much better. Negative.

  • CPU: Athlon X2, at whatever speed.
    • I got a model 939, works fine. Needs "driver" installed. Positive.

  • CPU cooling: what a baffling fucking ordeal.
    • I went stock, on Fussbett's recommendation. Temps are a little high (55 idle / 59 one core loaded) but it works fine. Positive.

  • Motherboard:
    • Asus A8N-SLI-Deluxe. Heatpipe chipset cooler doesn't work when inverted as in the Lian-Li 2100 case; I added a heatsink-fan. RAID performance (NForce and Silicon Image) is extremely lacking but this seems standard for onboard RAID. I wish it had more PCIe slots and more clearance for the second video card. Overall, it is the motherboard it claims to be but not the motherboard I want. Slightly Positive.

  • Memory: 2GB ECC,
    • Kingston was cheapest so I bought them. Have had only one "memory could not be 'read'" error in a year. Is ECC the reason why? Dunno! Positive.

  • Power: Antec 500w fanless
    • Could only run 8-9 drives on its own, I had to add a second power supply to run them all. Only has 2 power rails. This fanless power supply also features a fan (configured to not run most of the time). Replaced by Seasonic S12 650W during Q3 framerate troubleshooting. Negative.

  • Video: Undecided.
    • Bought the cheapest NVidia 7100 part, which could not run Q3 at all. Negative. Eventually replaced by 8800GTS and 7300 fanless.

  • Storage: WD Raptor SATA 74GB (x2). This is for the system disk, pagefile, and my poker handhistory database.
    • Noticeable (though not amazing) improvement in system disk access. Decent value for the money. Positive.

    Also, all the 120mm fans are using 7V instead of 12V, per this guide, this cuts down a lot on noise. Positive.
    PREVIOUS NEXT REPLY QUOTE
     
    Build My Computer: Summer 2006 Edition by Ray of Light 05/18/2006, 12:59pm PDT NEW
        and just one more thing by Ray of Light 05/18/2006, 1:04pm PDT NEW
            You are insane by McMoo The Anti-Drug Cow 05/18/2006, 5:06pm PDT NEW
                Re: You are insane by Ray of Light 05/18/2006, 5:40pm PDT NEW
                    "read" and "write" errors by laudablepuss 05/18/2006, 5:52pm PDT NEW
                        I get those all the time, too. It can be a software issue. by Fullofkittens 05/18/2006, 7:07pm PDT NEW
                            0xDEADBEEF by corax 05/18/2006, 11:29pm PDT NEW
        Sound by Fussbett 05/18/2006, 9:36pm PDT NEW
        One year later by Ray of Light 06/03/2007, 7:59pm PDT NEW
            Re: One year later by jeep 06/11/2007, 10:05pm PDT NEW
     
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