[???] Some Random Hardware Questions

Thansk for your help guys,

Looks like this project has a provisional go ahead now :D so rSync looks good but I will check others.

I would have thought the file transfers wouldn't need extensive firewall changes if any. I will have to investigate.
 
I find Dropbox brilliant. They finally added support for LAN detection, so if you hook your laptop up to your home network after time at uni, rather than syncing to the online server and back to your desktop, it will do it direct over the lan connection first. Very handy, and free!
 
By month end I should be buying my new setup, I just need a budget and a few hints/tips on what to get.

Just a few quickies:

  • Is there a point buying a gfx card or any parts now or is there going to be a massive change by next month end?
  • I'm coming from a small silverstone pc and a laptop, what's the in thingy for small cases these days? £60 would be my budget for this.
  • I'm heavily considering a dual monitor set-up how does this affect gaming, it wouldn't span across will it?

Apologies for the typos etc, I;m in a hurry.
 
Well there's still all the speculation about if the Fermi release will drop the price of the high end ATI cards or not, if you're waiting a month anyway you might as well see if this comes true. Case wise I'll give the same advice as usual, find one you like the looks/features of and make sure it has decent reviews, cases are too much of a personal design preference to be worth giving advice on usually. In terms of Dual monitor setups you can make it so games will just run on 1 of the screens so it doesn't really affect things too much.
 
JonJ678 said:
At a guess you want an i5 750, 4gb of 1333mhz ram, m-atx board of your choice and the Antec mini p180 with a corsair h50. Basically copy the arrangement Hotwired has done, the Antec is beautifully designed and as quiet as a case can be. PSU is dictated by the graphics card, which is dictated by how much you care about games.
Click to expand...
Epyon said:
Hotwired? Who that?
Click to expand...
That would be me :p

This is how my case is laid out:
ultimateh50.jpg


I did add some shrouds the other day so it now looks like this:

tmpm.jpg


But that's more than needed, the top picture is the basic layout of the best way to fit it.
 
im thinking thats what i would call "a fan too far" man do you need all those fans?

Your fans probably draw more power than the graphics card like that!

Now the million dollar question how cool is that keeping the CPU?
 
Needs more fans. :p I'm guessing they're all ultra quiet fans but even so, must make a bit of a noise with that many?
 
It's the same number of fans :D

Top picture has four 120mm fans.

Bottom picture has four 120mm fans but now they are spaced from the intake grilles and the radiator by "shrouds" which are the same size fans but with the actual fan blades/motor cut out so all that's left is the fan frame, a very short wind tunnel if you want.
 
I'm pleased to see you've done that. Quite like that you shrouded the case fans too: in for a penny, in for a pound :)

I'm almost reluctant to ask, but have you noticed a change in noise? Temperatures will be better, hopefully measurably so but perhaps obscured by changes in ambient.
 
Noise is better, temps are possibly better, idling at 3.4 and 25 degrees (18 ambient) right now with fans turned down to 1000rpm.

But I'm now noticing how much noise is created by airflow through the rear fan grille on anything higher than low. On balance I think I'll keep the rear fan on low over cutting the grille out :p
 
Everything has near enough been confirmed for the next 2 weeks :). I can't wait, new PC at last.

My XPS is better now after a compressed air clean out, saw some big fluff balls.
 
It's about 2 weeks off but I need help now :D.


  • My proposed budget is £900 for the base unit and an additional £150-200 for a monitor.
  • I will at some point be looking towards a dual monitor setup so that needs to be taken into account
  • This will be used for 30% gaming (finished Force Unleashed so moving to Prototype possibly)/ 30% website development, coding, graphic design work, etc/30% general browsing activities, media, etc. I convert video quite a lot for my Zune so the quicker it can do that the better. My XPS 1530 with 2 GHz takes almost the full length of a TV series episode to convert one ...
  • The system will be in my bed room so it needs to be silent! If it has lights I may turn them off ...
  • I don't see myself overclocking at this moment in time so don't take that into account.
  • No need for an OS as I have MSDN access (speaking of which, is Windows 7 Chinese the same as Windows 7 normal is regards to serial keys?)
  • I was considering budgeting a SSD but they appear to be far too expensive so might let it good :(.
  • The system will likely need to last till I finish uni (Jun 11) so please the budget needs to be pushed please advise.
  • Lastly, I am not a super techy like I used to so the budget for monitor/base-unit can be moved around and made smaller to accomodate for a better monitor or case, etc. Just propose something to me :D.

Forgot to mention, but I am buying in 2 weeks so if there is a need to hold out then please state!

Anything I have missed?
 
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