Posting from my new system - Installation AAR

Well, I ended up ordering pretty much the system you guys recommended. So far, so good - after about 4 hours of setup, which was much longer than needed, due to some annoyances.

Big annoyance - no mention of a driver disk in the quick mobo install. This is a Gigabyte K8NS Pro. The drivers for the two RAID chips and the hot-swap functions for the disks are on it, also the driver for the network chip, USB hub and the like. I was able to bring the system up without it, but it was flakey in the extreme. I finally resorted to rooting through the mobo box, and came across the cd. Now, the only issue is that it does not like to reboot without a minute or so wait. If I don't let it sit with power off for a minute or so, Windows won't come up. No error message, just a blank screen. Odd. Hopefully this will go away.

Big plus - the AMD cpu cooling frame came with heat sink tape already in place and just had to be cranked onto the cpu. What a relief! I was expecting grease, which is a pain all around.

Small annoyance - the case is a Raidmax one. It came with 10 drive bays, and a bunch of purple plastic rails with holes pre-drilled in them. These are to be attached to the sides of a disk drive, which can then be easily inserted and removed. You need these - the disks don't come to the side of the bays, so you have to use these rails to get flush.

They don't have the correct holes for my SATA drive. Luckily, I've got a drill and can be depended upon to put holes in nearly anything at the drop of a hat. Computer parts seem to be no exception.

Everything else about the case is a dream - easy-open doors, top mount sound and USB ports (which I still have to figure out how to hook up), 6 case fans, LED lighting inside and in front, 10 drive bays, only one type of actual screw used everywhere, removable mobo mounting tray and 420w ps.

As usual, fighting system weirdness and the failure of the system to even *see* the Ethernet chip ate up hours when it should not have. I'm not sure exactly how early to get the system drivers onto the system, and I think it would be a pain up till that point, but in the future I'm gonna search for the darn mobo drivers disk.

Anyway, system screams. I got a 3200+ with an X800 Pro. Very nice indeed. Thanks everyone for the suggestions and help!

Where did you get the parts from? What did it set you back?

Yeah what was the cost of the setup?

Nice setup, time to preorder Doom 3.

Erm, let''s see...

Gigabyte X800 Pro - $439 (couldn''t get XT)
RAIDMAX case - $86
Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro mobo - $115, on sale I think?
Athlon 64 ""Newcastle"" 3200+ - $282
1GB Corsair Valueselect RAM (2x512MB) - $170
HDS 160GB drive - $85?
Audigy 2 ZS - $99
Logitech MX-510 - $60?
ViewSonic A90f+ - $229

So around $1600, a bit more after shipping. I ended up replacing more than I had originally planned to.

Nice rig, robear.

I was about to create a new topic, but it kinda fits in here
My main hdd just crashed, which pisses me off. It''s a three year-old IBM. So, I said ""enough of this poppycock"" and just ordered 2 Samsung 160GB''s and an IDE Raid card. Going RAID1 so I never have to worry about this again. I know, backup your data, blah blah, but that''s really just too much effort. I want something backing up my data *every* time it writes to disk. Huzzah!

Yeah it''s nice when it works

"Unforseen_Power" wrote:

Yeah it''s nice when it works :)

Mehhh?

Raid can be a pain sometimes... not so much with internal raid compaonents such as HDs now adays... I''ve just had issues in the past (like 5 years ago)...

just me being cynical...

OK, you scared me. All of the newegg reviews for the RAID card I bought were very positive, so I hope this will pan out as a good decision. If not, I''ll have a 160GB Samsung drive for sale

ViewSonic A90f+ - $229

Same one I got, the UltraBrite mode is great for games.

All in all, a sexy machine good sir!

All in all, a sexy machine good sir!

Yeah but the sad thing is no matter what we all buy, it will be like rubbish compared to GameGuru''s worst computer.

Quit harshing his buzz Zed.

Hey, I''m set for life man! Or the next 18 months, whichever. I did feed JO to the X800 with basically everything turned all the way up except for the water, which was left at high. And 4x AA. Smoooooth and fast. I''ve never had a Radeon card before. This one does well, so far.

I just kept looking at stuff and finding reasons to upgrade. Oh, my monitor is old and too dark. I *really* *need* the extra 512MB to do, ah, digital pics, yeah! My mouse left button membrane is dying - get an MX-510! And the sound card, well, might as well keep the old one in the old rig, my father-in-law will need it...

I''m sure you are all familiar with the process.