Hey guys,
Hope you are having a great Sunday, I definitely am, thanks to overclockers. Yes this is not a plaintive cry for help, I, relatively inexperienced at computer building have managed to do the impossible, select and purchase high-grade components and put them together without anything breaking or going wrong.
'Nothing?' you cry, yes, 'Nothing!' I shout back, 'But how are we supposed to laugh in our coffee break if you didn't break your graphics card by trying to force it into the ram slot,' you plead 'I don't know.' I intone. Perhaps it was the gods, or the alignment of the stars, maybe it was just luck, or possibly, I'm just winning. I don't know, all I know is that I now have a fantastic machine that is so good I have to share it with you.
All put together in a pleasant Saturday afternoon, no problems whatsoever, except a retarded pause with the mic mute button.
Runs metro 2033 at 1920 x 1080 all settings high, dx 11, perfectly, no slow down. The 5.1 has already provided a few oh god oh god moments.
Runs bf2 all settings high 1920x1080 4x aa or whatever, havn't tried upping this, runs perfectly, no slow down even on 32 man server, chopper crashing and levelling a building right in front of me, absolutely insane, I had no idea just how slow and choppy I was actually running this game before I got this computer! Will see how it runs with Gameclaw.
Still testing bf2 with the 5.1, seems great so far at picking out all the sounds and telling me exactly where everyone is, I knew it was a success when I got kicked from a server by it's raging 15 year old admin for 'wallhacking' , classic.
The Roccat headset is incredible quality, though isn't well grounded/shielded apparently ( I have no idea what that means ) so it picks up the motherboard working things out as audio faintly, sounds like faint white noise most of the time, working out how to fix this but it isn't an issue when sound is actually coming through, or really when sound isn't coming, its a sort of a curious background noise.
The system is very very quiet and cool, graphics card gets a vaguely hot sometimes but not really noticeable if you open the window a bit wider. Components run around 20-26 idle, graphics at 34, havn't checked during gaming but I don't notice it as... I'm gaming, and I have big ass headphones. I don't know specific dba, but I'd describe it as pleasant and quiet, much much quieter than anything I've had before. The only thing that makes any noise is the dvd player when it is working, which I only used to install windows 7.
Total cost £720, not including monitor I bought a few years ago ( also from overclockers ) , 24" tft, including quite a few deals overclockers were putting on.
Cost cutting;
The motherboard is micro atx, sata II and on offer, not interested in sata 3.
The quad core is marketed as phenom but is really athlon, and even comes with an athlon stock cooler, hence the price, also on offer, lacks l3 cache but I havn't noticed a problem with what I use the computer for, neither have benchmarks apparently.
Cheap case, turns out it is surprisingly high quality, winning there.
Hard Drive Sata II , 500GB
'Only' 4GB of ram
No Blu - Ray
Another reason for cheap motherboard and cpu is in case the new 8 cores from amd are incompatible or partially so with am3 and I won't have lost too much when I go to upgrade. As they already run games perfectly though....
Considering I havn't even started overclocking yet, which is probably only 'necessary' when BF3 comes out, I am incredibly pleased with this new rig, Cheers OCUK !
Coolermaster Silent Pro Modular 700W Power Supply
( Quiet, does the job, went for this for the 5 year warranty )
Roccat Kave 5.1 Surround Sound Headset
( Quality is so good )
Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) microATX DDR3 Motherboard
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
( Hate ocz and geil, very bad track record with them, these gave me no issues whatsoever, new corsair fan. )
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache
( Fast, super quiet, kept low on the space so that I keep it organised, if I give myself anymore I turn into a hoarder! )
Coolermaster Elite 370 Case
( Surprisingly good looking in reality, small, light, clean cut and shiny black, thought it looked terrible in photos but needed a cheap case with room for gtx 480
)
Asus Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card with built in Headphone Amp
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler
( Has sealed a stick of xms3 ram into slot 1, good thing I didn't get ram with a heatsink ! )
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter
( Noisy when in use )
Akasa AK-195-WH White Illumination 140mm Fan
( Silent, looks great )
Akasa AK-191-SM Smoke Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin
( Silent )
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 "Special Edition" 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
( So quiet , unbelievable power for £200 )
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 840 "95W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3)
( note - no l3 cache, doesn't seem to be an issue though )
Gigabyte M6900 3200DPI Gaming Mouse
( Hated it to begin with, only ever used logitech mx 500 previously, actually like it now though, now that I've put the normal setting to 400dpi, 3200dpi is good for a laugh when someone is about to c4 your tank, they do not expect the turret to do a 180 turn in under a second )
All ordered from overclockers.co.uk with dpd next day and saturday, great service and on time, OCUK actually shipped my friday order within 20 minutes of me ordering.
warning ; terrible iphone photos, note the fail cable tying, needs more led to be honest
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Hope you are having a great Sunday, I definitely am, thanks to overclockers. Yes this is not a plaintive cry for help, I, relatively inexperienced at computer building have managed to do the impossible, select and purchase high-grade components and put them together without anything breaking or going wrong.
'Nothing?' you cry, yes, 'Nothing!' I shout back, 'But how are we supposed to laugh in our coffee break if you didn't break your graphics card by trying to force it into the ram slot,' you plead 'I don't know.' I intone. Perhaps it was the gods, or the alignment of the stars, maybe it was just luck, or possibly, I'm just winning. I don't know, all I know is that I now have a fantastic machine that is so good I have to share it with you.
All put together in a pleasant Saturday afternoon, no problems whatsoever, except a retarded pause with the mic mute button.
Runs metro 2033 at 1920 x 1080 all settings high, dx 11, perfectly, no slow down. The 5.1 has already provided a few oh god oh god moments.
Runs bf2 all settings high 1920x1080 4x aa or whatever, havn't tried upping this, runs perfectly, no slow down even on 32 man server, chopper crashing and levelling a building right in front of me, absolutely insane, I had no idea just how slow and choppy I was actually running this game before I got this computer! Will see how it runs with Gameclaw.
Still testing bf2 with the 5.1, seems great so far at picking out all the sounds and telling me exactly where everyone is, I knew it was a success when I got kicked from a server by it's raging 15 year old admin for 'wallhacking' , classic.
The Roccat headset is incredible quality, though isn't well grounded/shielded apparently ( I have no idea what that means ) so it picks up the motherboard working things out as audio faintly, sounds like faint white noise most of the time, working out how to fix this but it isn't an issue when sound is actually coming through, or really when sound isn't coming, its a sort of a curious background noise.
The system is very very quiet and cool, graphics card gets a vaguely hot sometimes but not really noticeable if you open the window a bit wider. Components run around 20-26 idle, graphics at 34, havn't checked during gaming but I don't notice it as... I'm gaming, and I have big ass headphones. I don't know specific dba, but I'd describe it as pleasant and quiet, much much quieter than anything I've had before. The only thing that makes any noise is the dvd player when it is working, which I only used to install windows 7.
Total cost £720, not including monitor I bought a few years ago ( also from overclockers ) , 24" tft, including quite a few deals overclockers were putting on.
Cost cutting;
The motherboard is micro atx, sata II and on offer, not interested in sata 3.
The quad core is marketed as phenom but is really athlon, and even comes with an athlon stock cooler, hence the price, also on offer, lacks l3 cache but I havn't noticed a problem with what I use the computer for, neither have benchmarks apparently.
Cheap case, turns out it is surprisingly high quality, winning there.
Hard Drive Sata II , 500GB
'Only' 4GB of ram
No Blu - Ray
Another reason for cheap motherboard and cpu is in case the new 8 cores from amd are incompatible or partially so with am3 and I won't have lost too much when I go to upgrade. As they already run games perfectly though....
Considering I havn't even started overclocking yet, which is probably only 'necessary' when BF3 comes out, I am incredibly pleased with this new rig, Cheers OCUK !
Coolermaster Silent Pro Modular 700W Power Supply
( Quiet, does the job, went for this for the 5 year warranty )
Roccat Kave 5.1 Surround Sound Headset
( Quality is so good )
Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) microATX DDR3 Motherboard
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
( Hate ocz and geil, very bad track record with them, these gave me no issues whatsoever, new corsair fan. )
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache
( Fast, super quiet, kept low on the space so that I keep it organised, if I give myself anymore I turn into a hoarder! )
Coolermaster Elite 370 Case
( Surprisingly good looking in reality, small, light, clean cut and shiny black, thought it looked terrible in photos but needed a cheap case with room for gtx 480
)Asus Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card with built in Headphone Amp
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler
( Has sealed a stick of xms3 ram into slot 1, good thing I didn't get ram with a heatsink ! )
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter
( Noisy when in use )
Akasa AK-195-WH White Illumination 140mm Fan
( Silent, looks great )
Akasa AK-191-SM Smoke Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin
( Silent )
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 "Special Edition" 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
( So quiet , unbelievable power for £200 )
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 840 "95W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3)
( note - no l3 cache, doesn't seem to be an issue though )
Gigabyte M6900 3200DPI Gaming Mouse
( Hated it to begin with, only ever used logitech mx 500 previously, actually like it now though, now that I've put the normal setting to 400dpi
, 3200dpi is good for a laugh when someone is about to c4 your tank, they do not expect the turret to do a 180 turn in under a second )All ordered from overclockers.co.uk with dpd next day and saturday, great service and on time, OCUK actually shipped my friday order within 20 minutes of me ordering.
warning ; terrible iphone photos, note the fail cable tying, needs more led to be honest
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Congratz.
