I spent several days in the middle of January (the winter of our discontent) assembling a serious gaming machine. It's the first computer I've built--my previous computer, a serviceable Dell, died at the end of December. Before leaving for NH (Operation Live Free or Die!), I ordered all my stuff. When I got back from Yankee Hell (not really, Nate. You're thinking of MA, CT, RI, or NYC) there was a big box with lots of little boxes inside! So I went to work and after many hours over several days, my baby was born.
The Case:
It's a great case: APEVIA X-Cruiser, Black. With a side window!
3 case fans: back, front, and top.
LED gauges and lights.
Lots of room for expansion.
The CPU:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600.
2.4 GHz.
Quad Core, baby.
The Mainboard:
MSI P6N SLI Platinum.
This is a great board, expandability for more RAM and another vid card.
The Video Card:
XFX GeForce 8600GT
512 MB, DDR3, 1.4GHz
I love this vid card.
It can run everything I can throw at it, and then some.
Yes, I know there are better cards, but I'm a college student.
I also have a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio sound card, two 160GB Hitachi Hard Drives (with a RAID array), and 4GB of DDR2 RAM.
OS is just regular Windows XP, nothing fancy. You'd think I'd soil this machine with Vista? Yeah, right! I am planning on installing Ubuntu as well, sometime in the future. I've got 300 GB of HD space, why not?
Thus far, this is a great machine. The only problem I've had so far was when my vid card got a little hot because I had my sound card a little too close. It's all about airflow, mates. So, I moved the sound card, and everything's fine now.
I'll take some pictures of the machine in action in a few days, hopefully, so everyone out there in the various tubes of the internets can appreciate it in it's full glory and majesty.
In the meantime, I'm gonna go play some Civ4
The Case:
It's a great case: APEVIA X-Cruiser, Black. With a side window!
3 case fans: back, front, and top.
LED gauges and lights.
Lots of room for expansion.
The CPU:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600.
2.4 GHz.
Quad Core, baby.
The Mainboard:
MSI P6N SLI Platinum.
This is a great board, expandability for more RAM and another vid card.
The Video Card:
XFX GeForce 8600GT
512 MB, DDR3, 1.4GHz
I love this vid card.
It can run everything I can throw at it, and then some.
Yes, I know there are better cards, but I'm a college student.
I also have a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio sound card, two 160GB Hitachi Hard Drives (with a RAID array), and 4GB of DDR2 RAM.
OS is just regular Windows XP, nothing fancy. You'd think I'd soil this machine with Vista? Yeah, right! I am planning on installing Ubuntu as well, sometime in the future. I've got 300 GB of HD space, why not?
Thus far, this is a great machine. The only problem I've had so far was when my vid card got a little hot because I had my sound card a little too close. It's all about airflow, mates. So, I moved the sound card, and everything's fine now.
I'll take some pictures of the machine in action in a few days, hopefully, so everyone out there in the various tubes of the internets can appreciate it in it's full glory and majesty.
In the meantime, I'm gonna go play some Civ4
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