Um.. holy crap! (Warning: computer nerd content inside!)
 

So I *finally* got my new computer up and running. I started building it last Thursday after the meet, and I've been having all kinds of problems with it. A hard-core memory test finally showed me that one of my RAM sticks was bad. :(

So anyway, I was able to get the system up and running on half the memory, and DAAAAAMMMM!! This thing is a beast! Think EGJ22T with a disco-potato running 1.8bar of boost!

Here's the specs for anyone nerdy enough to care/understand:

AMD Athlon64 3500+ (2.2GHz)
ASUS A8V Motherboard
1GB DDR400 2-2-2-5 RAM (2x512 dual channel... once I get them replaced)
Seagate Barracuda 160GB SATA Hard Drive
Plextor DVD+-RW Optical Drive
GeForce 6800 GT 256MB (Factory Overclocked)
Antec Sonata Quiet Case (and it really is quiet!!)

I spent way more money than I really should have... but g-damn this rig screams! I finally installed Half-Life 2... cranked it to high detail everything at 1280x1024 and I'm getting ~160 fps indoors, and ~70 fps outdoors, with only occational spikes down around 30 to 40 fps during really intense action. Pretty impressive! And I can't believe the image quality of that game with the textures cranked up!

I can't wait to get home and get all my drivers installed for my Logitech wheel and get Richard Burns Rally running! :twisted:

Only one last thing is to get in touch with NewEgg and see if they'll cross-ship me some new RAM. I'd hate to have to be down another few days doing an RMA exchange... I gots me some video games to play!!

sounds like a nice system :D

Re: Um.. holy crap! (Warning: computer nerd content inside!
 

Rig :lol:

Yep definately a geek. :lol:
Congratulations with getting your computer working. All your cursing, grumbling and anger finally paid off. Now you get to enjoy it.

I can't believe you didn't melt that thing down. :lol: Good job dude.

Well, figuring out the issue required finding a linux based boot disk w/ a memory test tool built in to it. Then I had to run the test over 1GB of RAM... it took a long ass time. Finally after about 20 minutes of testing the memory, it started throwing errors for one of the chips on one of the RAM sticks. I was able to narrow down the test and get the errors totally repeatable.

I tried bumping up the voltage to the RAM and it reduced the problem from about 11,000 errors down to like 12 per test... but it still wasn't stable. I called newegg.com and got an RMA number, so I'll be sending the bad RAM back today. Luckily my roommate Matt's got some spare RAM that he's not yet using for a secondary computer he's building, so my system will still be useable while I wait for the RMA shipping to be handled.

It'll be outdated in 6 months :lol:

god damn you (and HL2) making me update my computer for newer games :p

AMD strikes again!!! That is a sweet setup, Scott. What power supply you running? I had RAM problems once, and had to run some utility off of a 3.5" that took like all night to complete the tests. I forget the name, now --- I suppose I still have the floppy somewhere.

No RAID 0????



Almost as cool as duallies....... :P

The PSU I've got is the 380W one that comes in the Antec case. It's got a single fan for noise reduction. Plus, it's got "fan only" power headers that are controlled by the PSU to automatically throttle down when power usage (and therefore heat generation) is low. There's a single 120mm case fan that's controlled by the PSU. When the system is idle, the case fan and the PSU fan are damn near silent.

The CPU cooler is a heat-pipe with a GIANT cooling tower. It's got a big fan (which means lower RPMs, which means quieter operation) and the fan speed is controlled by the motherboard. Since the Athlon64 is a "Cool-n-Quiet" processor it steps down voltage when it's not being taxed to run cooler. This all means the CPU cooler can also run at very low noise levels when you're not taxing the system.

All in all, this system is actually quieter than my old P100! And it'd be twice as quiet if I could replace the two little bastard fans on the GeForce card! those things aren't throttleable, and they're tiny, which means high rpms. I'm thinking about pulling the fans off and putting my own large, low rpm fan on there and letting it throttle off the PSU. When the vid-card draws a lot of power for rendering, the PSU should throttle up all the fans, providing the necessary cooling. And since the video card monitors it's own heat, it will shut down before damaging itself if my cooling isn't adiquate.

I'll bet the RAM test you ran is the same one (or the old version) I just used: MemTest86+. It's a bootable floppy that goes right into the test application. I believe it's based on a small Linux distro.

And no RAID... 160GB is plenty of space (considering my server's got 260GB of space on it), and SATA is plenty fast. RAID 0 won't actually make the drive twice as fast... Plus I've run RAID drives in the past on servers and it's really a hassle to manage all those drives. Not to mention the heat and noise of more drives.

Re: Um.. holy crap! (Warning: computer nerd content inside!
 

Dizam... that must have left a smoking hole in your wallet. I am jealous...

Re: Um.. holy crap! (Warning: computer nerd content inside!
 

Well, I figured I'd spend about $700 to $800 on the system... I was just gonna get a new MB, CPU and RAM. Then I decided I wanted a quiet case. And the GeForce4 I was going to borrow from Matt was only DX8.0, so I picket up the DX9.0 card... and I figured since I was out of drive space in the server, I should grab some hard drives.... and pretty soon I spent about $1200! :shock: Thank god we just had cash sharing... course I probably should have put that money towards my credit cards... oh well, money's going to be useless once the New Civil War starts next year. All I need is enough to buy some guns before the shit hits the fan, right? :lol:

Re: Um.. holy crap! (Warning: computer nerd content inside!
 

Well, you're in the right state to do it - be sure to pick up a couple of AR-15's for me while you're at it since I can't get them here. :lol:

Re: Um.. holy crap! (Warning: computer nerd content inside!
 

Guns may be more legal here... but that doesn't make them much cheaper. :(

Hardly any activity, then boom someone posts about there computer. :P What a bunch of nerds. Sounds like a sweet setup though Scott.

Hey, cut some slack- they're talking about guns now. :P

It'll come back to something nerdy, just wait.

Um, I picked up some round ribbon cables at lunch. That's pretty nerdy.

I thought ribbon cables were flat? (more nerdiness)

Not if they're round. :P

Ends are flat, cable between ends is round, and often shielded.

I beleive they start out flat to make sure all the conductors are the same length, and then they "frray" the ends so the ribon will roll and then put them in shrink wrap to keep them round.

I think that's the deal. They're much nicer than the flat cables for airflow... something that's pretty important when you're trying to do what I'm doing... have a very quiet, high-power machine. You need to flow a lot of air at low speeds, and having all those wide obstructions in there sucks for cooling.

FAST AND FURIOUS (in sperry's world..)

Id be surprised if the extra 2 gig shot of porn didnt blow the weld on the hard drive

You almost had that download? You never had the download, you never had 1487KB

Alt-Tabbing, not double clicking or matching the interface like you should..

Now me and the mad scientist have to rip apart the tower and replace the memory stick and ecu fan you fried.

From now on, you go to the net cafe down the street faggot and get cable for $2.50 an hour... I like the dial up here......b***sh*t, no one likes the dial up here!

Its not how you stand by your PC, its how you use the keyboard over the net

Cordless mouse, flat screen LCD screen and a stand alone keyboard management system, not a bad way to spend 10g's

Whoa, P4 ECU running XP, no shit, you know, this thing would download all with 15-20g's thrown at it if we had too, overnight parts from DELL...

I got that XP, ME something.... There's somthing about the internet that calms me down...

I live my life one mpeg. at a time... For those 5 minutes of download, Im free.

Virus came through my firewall, someone narked me out, disrespected my harddrive, it was YOU!

Amateurs dont use XP, Ive seen the way you reboot.

Matt, did you come up with this? It's golden...

First off :lol: :lol:

Secondly, see back to nerdness.

I'd like to take a listen to your case, I hate how loud mine is. my low power system "should" be able to get much quieter.

The video card is as loud as the rest of the computer.

It is not my own...I "imported" it though...

it's awesome... :lol:

JC is right though...straight back to serious computer talk. :?

I installed Richard Burns Rally last night. That game is HARD!

Turn 1 of my driver's test: rolled it. 3 times. :lol:

Change your user name to M. Gronholm. :lol:

Yeah, I yanked the loud fan on my Fire GL X1 and put my own on there...plus my NB didn't have a fan (??!), so I put a 24v fan running on the 12v rail ---- nice and slow. Both CPU fans, the chassis fans, the power supply fans, and the graphics fan are on a fan controller, so I can manually dial the RPMS. On my server at work I placed a 12v 120mm fan on the 5v rail for low-speed action sucking air from the side. It's almost like hearing each individual blade go sweeping by, but not quite. I'm running RAID 0 for video editing, and its a bit faster even though its software RAID. With duals I do have some calc time to spare. I really want a 3-Ware card or something for full hardware RAID, though....

memtest86+ that's the one!

Now to mix in some less-geeky stuff, even if it sounds like it:

I decided to kick up the gun reinvestment lately, so my computer is not being regularly updated with new hardware :oops:. With the expiration of the Clinton AWB, I did some F&F stuff to my Colt MT Lightweight AR15. Now it's all non-PC and stuff! Also, my wife is getting interested, so I'm building her a 9mm CAR-15. I'm redoing my 308 precision rifle too, just picked up the barreled-action this morning after getting an action swap. I'm dropping a heavy BR-style Rem 700 short-action into an Accuracy International Chassis. TOO HOT!!!

:shock: I need to go up to Reno again to shoot some real weapons, not the wussy crap they limit us to here.

My brother just bought a Dell :shock:

I am actually surprised that he was able to get such a good deal on a pretty damn good computer.

To echo the title of the thread... Holy Crap! I just started playing HL-2 last night and damn... that is a sweet game. The environment definitely has an eastern-bloc decrepit industrial area feel to it... really well done. I can't wait until I get the gravity gun so I can start throwing garbage at people. :lol:

You don't need the gravity gun. :twisted: Pick up a bottle (or whatever) with 'e' and then use the primary mouse button to throw it at people.

Throwing bottles at NPCs never got old :p

I know, but you can't throw anything very fast & hard... I wanna be able to really fire 'em at people. 8)

At the end of the game you get a souped up gravity gun, you can grab and throw anything with that <drool>

There's nothing like chucking cars at zombies. :lol:

And as far as the "feel" of the game... (except for RavenHohm which is scary as hell) I can't get the feeling that I'm walking around in an alien invasion version of 1984 out of my head. Big Brother on the TVs. The proles holed up in their apartments trying to stay out from under the foot of the Overwatch. The constant feeling that there are higher-ups controlling your actions. Fear of the unknown around every corner.

HL2 is easily as good as the original was in '98. And IMO it's *the best* FPS in the history of video games. I think I'll end up beating it tonight. Then I'm cranking up the difficulty and looking for codes for all weapons and unlimited ammo and seeing if I can't just blaze through the game a second time. :lol:

I have to admit I do miss the "secret government lab" environment/feel from the first HL a little, only because.. I've actually worked in one. :lol: I am glad that they didn't try to just do the same thing over though...

Later in the game, you do some sneaking around in a big lab. But you have to fight your way throught Dawn of the Dead and Road Warrior 1th. :lol:

Most Excellent. :twisted:

For shits and giggles I overclocked my system.

2.2GHz -> 2.4GHz (7% increase)

370/1.0 -> 420/1.1 on the vid card (that's fast than the top of the line GeForce 6800 Ultra!?!)

...and everything seems stable!! :shock:

I just got through "We don't go there anymore.." Ravenholm last night.. that was some creepy shit. I hate those fast moving zombies..

I smell smoke... :twisted:

oH nOs!!!11!1! oVercLockErZ!!!1!!1

Pretty soon we'll be talking about back in the day when you could get a P2 333mhz and clock it to 500+ (week 37).

You gonna mount your MB in the freezer and run the cables out for your drives?

Dude, I'm an OCer from way back.

Remember the days of the Celeron 300-A? 450's in disguise! :twisted:

Or searching for that PII-300 that was made in the Malaysia factory that was really a 450 in disguise? I had one of them running that's been running at 450MHz from 1998 till 2 weaks ago when it was finally replaced by my Athlon 1600. That was a trooper!

I knew it. Wow --- was it like a 24/7 fileserver or something? The Celerons were definitely all that... What about the SlotA K7's? I always wanted a dually with Coppermine 500's to run up around 700. When I built my current system I went with stable (Tyan) rather than the OC (IWill) board because of the frequent issues with the AMD 760mpx chipset. So, no OC for me now :(
I did use regular XP2100's and modded a bridge to make them MP's, though :twisted:

I can;t see shit

"Sir the radar appears to be........jammed"
"rasberry, I hate rasberry. There is only one man who would dare give me the rasberry!"