Computers

[Captain Tylor]

Well, GameBoxII has been running since October of 2008, can you believe its been that long since I built a gaming machine? I guess in my defense I rebuilt my server in April of last year, and that was a pretty penny with the dual quadcore Xeons and 16 Drive Areca controller and its battery backup (those were the most expensive parts at least, excluding the 15TB RAID array (12 1.5TB HDD) and 32GB FBDIMM of memory), but the whole thing was several grand; at least it should be future proof for me, honestly can't see how I can even begin to utilize the full potential of the machine now). But it is time for an upgrade, so here are GameBoxIII's parts I just ordered:


Thermaltake Xaser VI
i7 920 Retail
Cooler Master V8 Premium
ASUS P6X58D Premium
12GB (2x6) Corsair Dominator DD3 RAM
Sapphire Vapor-X 5870 (x2)
Corsair 950W PSU


For reference, these are the stats on GameBoxII as it is right now:
XCLIO Full Tower Wind Tunnel
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield (OCed to 3.5)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
ASUS Maximus II Formula LGA 775 Intel P45
8GB (2x4) Kingston DDR2 RAM
ASUS 4870 Dark Knight (x2)
Silverstone 1000W PSU


Also buying Windows 7 with this machine. I've been running Vista since the original beta on GameBoxI (x64)/GameBoxII (x64) and MediaBox (x32) without issue. I'll keep Vista on GameBox II after its replacement, intend on using it as a backup RAID solution for my media library on the server until I can afford/develop a better backup solution. Was thinking about Windows Home Server, but that's extra money and AFAIK WHS isn't x64 yet. Plus its a pretty dumbed down server OS, fairly certain you can get more use out of Vista Ultimate based on what I've read. Might also put a backup DNS on it. Have a nice King case to upgrade GBII into (originally was using it for ServerBox's rebuild, then went for a Thermaltake ArmorPlus instead for SB so I could use all the server's expansion slots), the XCLIO has had it's side fans unstable for almost a year now, so they're not even running. I really need a tape library for the backup solution though, if I'm being honest with myself. There just isn't any real way to backup several TB of data that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.




Anyone else been upgrading their tech lately? Hard to stay uptodate nowadays and not also be broke though.

[Captain Tylor]

Speaking of upgrading tech, ran across this lovely bit of news yesterday:


Fake i7 Cores from Newegg

Links on the first post to Slashdot and OC.


TL;DR Basically 300 i7s were either fakes or molds that got mixed in with a production shipment from a supplier and have made their way to consumers. And I learn this right after I order an i7 from Newegg.

[Inigo]

Ahahaha, nice.. That's interesting someone put the time into even bothering putting the intel sticker on the obvious fakesxD

[Captain Tylor]

Picture Here


4.2Ghz, Air Cooled, Stable >48 hrs. Hoorah.


Right now underclocking the video card, probably will change that soon. Since it's a VaporX it has custom voltage setpoints so right now using RBE doesn't show the volts like it should. There are supposedly ways to work around this but I haven't had the time to investigate them fully. I also removed the second 5870 card, temperatures dropped 10C when I did that. MB layout isn't really optimal for CF setup. Haven't really seen a performance hit dropping down to just one card so I guess now I have a spare just in case.


Edit: Didn't realize that the forums actually resized pictures to prevent table breaking. Changed picture to link.

[Captain Tylor]

Picture here


New shot of the entertainment center, showcasing GameBoxIII to the right of my TV. And the general messy appearance of my living room.


Also, Aelanna, if you read this - give some thought to a board update. No spoiler tags, no ability to resize images using the [img] tag - definitely some stuff we could use.

[Harbinger]

Eh, phpBB hasn't changed terribly much since 3.0 proper. Not that it matters, plugins for all the stuff you want exist and (should) work on this version too.

[Captain Tylor]

So. I managed to get my hands on this nice ITX box to turn into a NAS, and then real life intervenes before I can do anything else.


Specifically, a few months ago the military once again lost control over privacy documents, and this time, I felt it. Just yesterday my banking stuff was all compromised. Right now the bank and the companies that were used have been informed and are doing the fraud investigations, but in the meantime I've lost access to my entire credit line.


Anyways, here's a link to the case. It is rather nice, I ordered it prior to anything else to see how the mounting was setup for the drives. The SSD is mounted beneath the main harddrive carriage, so it wasn't visible from the pictures here. Rather well setup for the size, even if it is a bit cramped. Going to throw in one of the Intel Atom/Ion motherboard combos and an Areca controller. Use a small SSD for the FreeNAS OS and then 6 1.5TB drives.