New computer!

[Superfoxy]

Yeah, I mulled over the 850W power supply, and think I would've gone with it if I'd ended up getting an NVIDIA graphics card since they're a lot more power-hungry than the ATI equivalents. The 750W will support CrossFireX with 6950s and still have some expansion room, though, which is nice. I probably would've gone for the 850W if it'd been, like, a $20 upgrade instead of a $50 upgrade (though I suppose I could've bumped down from the whizbang Corsair HX PSU).

It was on sale so I decided to go for it. Regular price is around $180, it was on sale for about $110. I wanted something that could handle two heavy-duty video cards plus a lot of other stuff with no problems. This seemed good for that.

How do you feel about the Antec DF-85? I like how the Dark Fleet cases look and was considering the DF-35 for mine, but it ended up being a moot point since they got the 902 in and wouldn't let me change it.

It really is a fantastic case and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a ridiculous amount of cooling or extra storage room. But wear a sweater near it, lol, it gets cold near the case cause of how much air it moves. Also, for the amount and size of the fans on it, it's very quiet, staying at a low whirr at full settings. Almost silent on low. I just wish right now I had better parts to put in it, this mobo and cpu are about 10 years old.

I have a Razer Mamba mouse, which is basically the wireless version of the DeathAdder, if I'm not mistaken. I can't really recommend it, though, because I'm on my second one already and for that price I don't think that kind of QC slippage is acceptable (I didn't pay full price for mine, mind, and don't think I could ever have brought myself to pay $160 for a freakin' mouse).

I just wanted a good mouse for comfortable normal use. Some of the razer mice are extremely expensive. And even some very good products have qc issues, just look at the occasional bad review of a generally well-rated product. It's just Murphy's law and percentages. I can only go by what I've heard and experienced, but I like mine so far, even though it seems Razer has the occasional bad item shipped.

I pastebinned a parts list a while ago: http://pastebin.com/mn3uMQFH

Next batch of parts I'm buying will be the Motherboard, CPU, RAM, Heatsink, Side fan, and Thermal Compound.
Tax included that bunch comes to $1284.10.

Holy RAM, Batman! I decided to go with 6GB for mine but might upgrade to 12GB in the future if I feel like it's warranted. After a year or two I'll probably do a bit of analysis and see if I can figure out where the bottlenecks are.

I wanted to get the RAM out of the way all at once, so I wouldn't have to bother with upgrading it later. If I have the money later maybe I'd get 16 gb of a higher speed RAM and drop it in.

After that I'll be buying the SSD and the 2 2tb drives for RAID 1. Past that I'll top it off with a new monitor, a copy of Windows 7 professional edition 64-bit, and maybe a twin of the video card for Crossfire. After that I'll just buy more HD's and put them in RAID 5, then transfer the data over. If I had the cash to burn I'd buy 9 3tb internal drives for it, and maybe even the best i7.

But still, a Thuban 1100T OC'ed to about 4.5 Ghz with 16 gb of memory is nothing to sneeze at, hehehe.

I've got all my data on a RAID 1 NAS so I didn't worry about having drives for data, but if I were I'd probably do RAID 1 or RAID 5 as well. After a hard drive crash a few years back that resulted in me losing several years' worth of irreplaceable stuff, I've been very paranoid about my data. I don't really download videos or anything to any great extent and so don't really need a ton of space (our NAS is only 300GB and it's only half full).

I usually buy my processors at the base of the curve where the price really starts shooting up, because after that you really start paying more and more for less and less. I considered the Thuban but decided to stick with Intel since I've been doing well with them lately (though I admit the fact that the top-end Thuban is still $70 less than the i7 I chose did give me pause).

I just haven't had good hardware before, so I wanted to buy the best CPU I could. Was originally going to buy the 1090T, but when I heard about the 1100T, I decided I'd get that instead. Some people buy mid-range chips and OC them, but the good thing about OC'ing top-range chips is you can push them even faster than the mid-range ones. I didn't really consider the Intel chips because I wanted a 6-core and the Intel ones were about 4 times as much for something that's the same clock speed.

[Silvermink]

I just haven't had good hardware before, so I wanted to buy the best CPU I could.

Yeah, I hear that - my computers keep getting closer and closer to bleeding-edge because I haven't adjusted my computer budget amount from like 12 years ago and computers keep getting cheaper and cheaper, so my money buys more and more. :)

[Silvermink]

Picked the new system up yesterday and it is glorious. There are a few (not-very-good) pictures in my recent tweets - just wanted to take some quick phone snaps to show it off. Maybe I'll actually take a few with the real camera, too.

I've got 3DMark06 so I'll see if I can't get some stats here soon. WoW is running at 55-60 fps on Ultra in Orgrimmar (though admittedly not right in the middle of Orgrimmar - I didn't have my bar addon set up which was making getting around a little more difficult than necessary due to my flying mount being buried somewhere), which makes me happy.

[Tony Greyfox]

Do you require clearance from the YVR tower before starting up? That case looks like it could lift off any second.

[Superfoxy]

Picked the new system up yesterday and it is glorious. There are a few (not-very-good) pictures in my recent tweets - just wanted to take some quick phone snaps to show it off. Maybe I'll actually take a few with the real camera, too.

I've got 3DMark06 so I'll see if I can't get some stats here soon. WoW is running at 55-60 fps on Ultra in Orgrimmar (though admittedly not right in the middle of Orgrimmar - I didn't have my bar addon set up which was making getting around a little more difficult than necessary due to my flying mount being buried somewhere), which makes me happy.

I'm very happy for you :)

Let us know how it goes. Are you going to OC it at all?

[Silvermink]

Do you require clearance from the YVR tower before starting up? That case looks like it could lift off any second.

*snicker* Yeah, it's a little crazy-looking, but I can't argue with the airflow. It's got a massive 200mm exhaust fan on the top that moves a ridiculous amount of air along with two intakes on the front and one more exhaust on the back.

I'm very happy for you :)

Let us know how it goes. Are you going to OC it at all?

I tried 3DMarking it yesterday but realized afterward that I still had some stuff downloading, so I want to mark it when I have absolutely nothing else running - probably within the next couple of days.

I'm not sure, on the OCing. I've been thinking about it, and certainly the parts I chose would support it pretty nicely. It's a possibility.

[Superfoxy]

My current PSU and case for those who may be interested:

PSU: http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=24765&vpn=TPQ-850&manufacture=Antec

Case: http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=54030&vpn=DF-85&manufacture=Antec

[Tony Greyfox]

I've got the Antec Three Hundred mini tower - it's got a bigass fan on top and a bunch of other airflow options. I think it actually cools for about a five-foot radius around the case.

[Silvermink]

Okay, I benchmarked it with 3DMark11 and here are the results: http://3dmark.com/3dm11/460993

It honestly seems to be a little on the low side for similar systems, so I could probably do some tweaking to improve performance. I didn't do anything major, just ended all the tasks I could and disabled my second monitor and let 'er rip.

In a way I wish I'd been able to get the nVIDIA card I was after as its performance is better, but it's also much, much more power-hungry, so maybe it's better this way.

[Silvermink]

Had to manually configure my RAM in my BIOS to get the rated speed out of it, which gave me another 100 marks or so: http://3dmark.com/3dm11/469024