Planning on a build in December

[myrmaad]

...I also don't remember what might be on these drives...

 

USB 3.5 IDE/SATA adapter My local PC shop sold me mine for about $5.

 

 

 

What size PSU did you finally go with?

[Vagrant0]

What size PSU did you finally go with?

 

This one

 

Antec TruePower New TP-750 750W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.3 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE ... - Retail

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?...N82E16817371025

 

The only significant changes between my list a few pages back, and what I ended up using were a slightly better videocard, 2 caviar black 500gb sata drives, and windows professional version. I also ended up buying a coolmax case fan to replace the stock 120mm fan (variable speed, 90cfm), and a PCI slot case fan. Where I have it now, the motherboard has a higher temp than the processor when on idle :). Was planning on mounting the stock fan in the front of the case, but the mounting point turned out to be useless since the front cover doesn't come off, and would need some long screws otherwise.

[Pronam]

You might want to re-think this stance on the protection of your data. If it were not for the high cost, ALL of my data would be stored on solid state technology.

Lol, I will. I've heard someone saying it and read it somewhere. It might have been some bad sorts of them as it's from a while ago.

Yep reread it, it's old stuff apparently..lol, the newest are even more reliable as the regular disks.

[LHammonds]

Lol, I will. I've heard someone saying it and read it somewhere. It might have been some bad sorts of them as it's from a while ago.

Yep reread it, it's old stuff apparently..lol, the newest are even more reliable as the regular disks.

There is also a big difference in quality between the Intel versions and all the others...which is why I strongly recommend going with the Intel version if you buy any SSD.

 

I need to hurry up and finalize my part list and get my PC parts ordered...the end of the year is fast approaching!!!

 

LHammonds

[Vagrant0]

I'm looking forward to the specs and how high you'll be able to turn the sliders of games!

I managed to install Oblivion, updated to 1.1, and copied over the data folder I had used before *kisses external harddrive*. I turned up the sliders all the way, all shadows, all reflections, HDR, maximum resolution, and even changed igridstoload to 6. I then went to some of the areas which were previously in the 1 frame a second range under minimal settings, and wow, what a difference. Those areas which were a virtual standstill were as smooth as butter. It's actually, almost too fast for my reaction ability.

 

To see how well I could handle many NPCs and creatures in a complex scene I went to a town, durring a storm, duplicated a creature about 10 times, duplicated 3 different NPCs about 3 times each, and still, smooth as butter. Other than the game's limit on the number of actors in a fight being reached, the only other issue I noticed was that all the hits weren't being registered. The actors however were still using spells, reacting to where they are, pathing, and otherwise behaving as they should.

 

Given that I also happened to be running Folding@home in the background with a forced higher priority, I'm almost curious to see just what the system can handle.

 

*update* Installed 3dsmax 8 on the new system. Imported in an autocad project which contained roughly 1.4 million triangles (literally every brick was a separate object). Although the display window controls were a bit slow to respond and buggy, it still rendered rather quickly. On the old computer, 3dsmax would crap out about midway through importing just one portion of that model (200k triangles give or take).

 

*update2* Installed the CS and loaded Oblivion.esm and ColoredRooms.esm. Took longer to initialize windows to load the data. I'm officially impressed.

 

*update3* Played around with excessive gridstoload counts in Oblivion. Took a shot with it set to 15 (with 15-30fps): http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/image.php?id=47325. Tried it at 31 just for the sake of obscenity, although it was only playing at 6 fps, it ended up capping out my 4gb of RAM. I could see clear to Cheydinhal from diverock, but moving beyond that one cell caused the game to crash. I still have not been able to max out the processor.

 

*update4* Finally managed to keep the processor at roughly 100% usage for a prolonged period of time by running several distributed processing tasks. During the roughly 2 hours, temperatures never went above 50c, or atleast that's what speedfan tells me. So far, havn't really noticed anywhere that this system is lacking.

Edited December 13, 2009 by Vagrant0