The Best Rig

Right, I live in a world, surrounded by geeks, tards, and boffins. We all have pcs, we all have phat lan partys, and we're constantly trying to better each other. oh, and we're all poor.

Meh Rig :

512 ddr ( dunno the clock speeds )
2.6 Intel
80 gb hdd
radeon 9600
Fedora Linux

Now, the problem I put forward is, what shall I do next ?

--- None of us yet have a gig of ram, I'd like to throw in two 512 chips, ( I currently have two, 256 chips ) but that would be expensive.

--- I've seen a server tower, I very much like, dual mobo, 6 drive bays, redundent psus, etc. Which would look well cool, and it has room for underlighting.

--- I've seen on a few rigs, fridges for bawls, etc -- I was thinking about that.

--- oh, and Im keen on having an embeded keyboard -- embeded into the case.

--- I was going to make a case soley out of four psu's and about 80 case fans.. but someone beat me two it with 16 fans tied up with cable ties, on 3 psu splitters. damn.

--- I was going to get the biggest hdd, but someone already has a rig with a phat raid array - 400 gigs of hdd.

Rather random ideas, yah, but if it gives you those hours of fame at a lan party, wicked. So, if you would give me your ideas, i'd most appreciate it. cheers.

Oh, I have a collection of linuxes - 19 cd's in total. I was thinking about installing all of them.

I once saw a rig with 41 opperating systems :-d

so which am i ?

a geek, boffin or a tard?

hehe

EDIT: im guessing philli comes into the 'tard catagory eh ?

maybe a HUGE monitor ?

maybe a "PHAT" sound system - 7.1 surround sound with one of those scarily expensive sound cards?

maybe 10 neon light packs worth of lighting inside your case (i've seen it, it's -awesome- great for night lan parties)

maybe stick fans around your monitor (i've seen this done, but then again i live in australia where it's hot, it's not as good in uk)

maybe have 2 monitors ? have a game on one and something else on the other.

maybe strip your case to the frame? this is quite popular but it's cool to have in conjunction with other things... just remember to vacuum out the dust afterwards :wink:

also definately get one of those side panels with a window in the side...

that's my 2 cents ... some of them are what i came up with on the spot, some are what i've seen before and what i thought looked really cool... a conjunction of some of the above would be REALLY cool imo :smile:

EDIT: my friend is workin on the fridge idea himself ... he's going to have a fridge in built into the spare space inside his case, and put coke and stuff inside it :wink:

I've always wanted to build a computer inside of one of those aluminum breif cases, so that it would have all the power of a tower, but give excelent mobility for LAN parties. if you had a bluetooth mouse and keyboard, you could hide everything away inside the case, and only have to plug in the power, and some LCD display.

How about striping your case down and using perspex instead of metal so you can see alaround it and have a water cooling system and a ton of lights?

and a 21" monitor

I've been wanting to try something like that, Tracer, for my next little project.

I've wanted to esentially gut a relatively decent laptop, and try to fit it into a relatively nice briefcase. Relatively.

I think it would be pretty swank to pull off, myself.

Some other ideas for you (these were all tossed around by me and my friends whilst trying to decide what I should waste my money on making next) (1st waste of money, 2nd waste of money (Still working on the proper page for this one).

All are cheap, don't require any aditional hardware to pull off, and most keep cool like none other.

Just go uber-minimalist. You know, buy a length of decent gauge PVC pipe, and just build the frame work to mount the mobo and PSU into, then just tack a HD on.

Or...

You know those AOL CD's you have laying around the house (I have > 100 last I counted..)? You know that you can melt a CD with a normal cigarette lighter? You know how well those things bond materials together? Have some fun with that.

Or...

This is probably what my next b0x will be- take an ordinary paper shopping sack, line the inside seams with some sturdy wire to esentially create a framework inside of the sack. Mount everything onto that framework, cutting holes in the side of the bag for ports. I think that would be pretty nifty walking in with a sack and setting that up. But then again, I'm odd.

If you currently have 2*256megs, why scrap these and replace with 2*512? Why not just get another 2*256 (half the price)? Also, what chip is that 2.6? If it's P4C surely you can overclock it to at least 3ghz?

Im not too keen on side panels, they look messy imo, I prefur inner lighting, etc, which creates a glow from various orepheses of the case...

I really hate the idea of over clocking, it decreases the life span of cpu's, doesnt it ?

/ me looks at ram sockets, one sec

Yah, I only have two, and they are both taken. s**t.

Did I say about the redundent power - im using a rather dodgy psu ( see another post of mine ) just for lights / fans.

Monqui, I love the idea about the aol cd's, melting one onto the side of my case would f**king own...

Running a CPU at too high a temperature decreases lifespan, but even with overclocking, a CPU will be bsolete before it just 'wears out'. a p4 2.4 and a p4 3.0 are an identical chip with a different multiplier. Running the 2.4 at 3.0 puts no more strain on it than is on a 3.0 anyway as far as I know.

other than bragging rights, can someone tell me what the difference is between a 2.4 and a 3.0 in gaming terms?

i always hear about people overclocking, but no one has said exactly why.

i mean this is not the old pre-pentium days, you don't need 5 or 10 extras MHz anymore, can 600 additional ones really make a difference?

this is a genuine question, i really would like to hear the responses from peep's who have succeeded in doing this, and the real results incurred.

If you are doing things like DVD rips then it may make a worthwhile difference, but P4 2.6 and up can encode to divx in less than the time it takes to play the movie anyway... In a game you will see no difference, as at 2.4GHz, the only bottleneck is going to be the graphics card - i.e. getting a faster CPU won't increase FPS by anything noticable (/me waits for somebody jump in with a benchmark getting 3 frames per second more when already running at 150 fps). Oh making mp3s will be faster. Look at some celeron reviews and you will see the extra L2 cache going from celeron 2.4 to p4 2.4 makes allot more difference than going from 2.4 to 3.0 on either chip.

Monqui, I love the idea about the aol cd's, melting one onto the side of my case would f**king own...

I was thinking on a more grander scale... Either make your own case outta them or COMPLETELY cover the case. Major pwnage.

Just one on the side? Thats a bit weird...

And that extra L2 Cache will pretty much speed up the execution of nearly every single program that you run. The more data/instructions that can be stored in there means much, much faster access times for the CPU. Meaning that you don't need to fetch the data from the slower memory areas (RAM, HDD's, etc) nearly as often.

An extra 600MHz? I wouldn't mind adding it to my current total of 500MHz! :crash:

because, I dont want to ruin a whole ?47 worth for 4 foot high tower case, besides, one old cd would kick ass. I had a wicked idea. If I mount the cd on the case, with say, er, stuff, so its raised, I could drill a hole beind the cd, and put a light behind it, that way I get an underlighed aol cd, on the side of my case. now that is major pwnage...

I think the only usefull reason I can think of for overclocking & burning your pc to death would be to run a large server on it.

Monqui, how do you deal with static electric issues for instance on your PVC case? it seems like you'd have to cover everything with aluminum foil, or build some sort of faarady cage around the actual computer to avoid serious damage.

KoRnFlakes said:
I think the only usefull reason I can think of for overclocking & burning your pc to death would be to run a large server on it.

That's the one application I wouldn't risk an overclock on...since stability is the key.

Thats the main reason why I mostly use crappy old parts from gutted PC's to make stuff with. That way, I really don't care if it eplodes in a fiery ball of death.

I know I've seen PVC cases built before though... Don't know if they addressed that issue though.

Korn... most people don't burn their PC to death by overclocking... Unless you give the chip a stupid voltage, all it will do if you overclock it too much is crash, or not boot up, in which case you can either reset the bios, or most new ones automatically restore defaults after a failed boot. Intel CPUs automatically turn themselves off if they get too hot... maybe AMD do too now. It really isn't as risky a process as most people seem to think, provided you read up on what you are doing.

Meh Rig :

512 ddr ( dunno the clock speeds )
2.6 Intel
80 gb hdd
radeon 9600
Fedora Linux

If you have a PC like that you can't really be poor. Or, if you are poor, you must be dumb too :biggrin:

Meh Trophy Rig: (it pwns j00 all):

• Motorola MC680000 7.16Mhz
• Video coprocessor ('Denise'), Memory manager, blitter and copper coprocessor ('Angus'), sound and disk access coprocessor ('Paula').
• 512kb RAM (I got an upgrade from 256kb for free!)
• 8kb ROM (loaded from the Kickstart disk at boot)
• Capable of a blistering 640x400 16 colours
• Sound card supports 8 bit PCM voices at 9 octaves (pwnage)
• 90 Watt PSU (ph34r)
• Running AmigaDOS 1.2

Dude, I get 24fps in Lemmings. My Amiga 1000 rocks.

i saw an 8088 once, functional, with dual 5.25 floppies :eek:

i think it was running on about 7.5 too :biggrin:

man, those we the days.. :biggrin:

I learned to program on my trusty Amiga. I think I'll try and get it working this week, just to use AmigaBASIC again :biggrin:

We are currently building a system using 6502 - predecessor to 68000 - using chips and wires and a little wire-wrap board :smile: Gonna make a reactions testing game thing, might do sound effects to.

scary_jeff said:
Korn... most people don't burn their PC to death by overclocking... Unless you give the chip a stupid voltage, all it will do if you overclock it too much is crash, or not boot up, in which case you can either reset the bios, or most new ones automatically restore defaults after a failed boot. Intel CPUs automatically turn themselves off if they get too hot... maybe AMD do too now. It really isn't as risky a process as most people seem to think, provided you read up on what you are doing.

AMD chips don't turn themselves off yet so far as I know, unless the 64 does it. But most Motherboards have temperature sensors that do it for you.

one of these days ill get the gumption to clean out my computer "closet" (its a small room that doubles as a bedroom)...and show you guys what a real "stack o' sheit" looks like...

Doc Brass... :dodgy:

Bewbi's Rig...

p4 2.8ghz

1024ddr (3200)

Radeon 9700 pro (ditched the geforceFX)

two 80gb maxtor HDs

52x Burner

two expansion slot Hurricane fans

Antec full tower case with 300w PSU

$1100 spent on an a machine that will be obsolete in 6 months

If you build it right it'll last a few years no problem. My 1.3 T-Bird with a GeForce 2 Ti runs todays games smoothly at 1024. My next rig will last me at least 2 years.

scary_jeff said:
a p4 2.4 and a p4 3.0 are an identical chip with a different multiplier. Running the 2.4 at 3.0 puts no more strain on it than is on a 3.0 anyway as far as I know.

WTF ?! that would mean the 3.06 ghz ones (as well as having hyperthreading, unlike the 2.4's) would have to have a chunky fan on top. . . lol that's the first i've heard . . . + for the 3.06 to have hyperthreading they had to restructure the chip, so it's not identical to a 2.4 . . . :rolleyes:

*EDIT: 2dmin's rig:

p4 2.6 ghz + hyperthreading

2 * 256mb kingston ddr (2700)

p4p800 deluxe (800mhz fsb, agp 8x, up to 3.6 ghz unoverclocked, gigabit lan, etc ... all teh good stuff :biggrin: )

45 gb hdd

48x burner

only poor thing is the geforce 4 mx 440, but it does the job for all my games, but i'm getting a radeon soon :smile:

http://www.snarkpit.com/pits/2dmin/hyper.JPG

err oops it's 1280x1024 soz 56k :biggrin:

cringes from orpheus, scary_jeff, and kornflakes who will bash me for having a huge image

lmao, do you have two cpu's, or is that spinkee hyperthreading ?

Where the hell do you get all your bits from ? I can get mice, keyboards, all that stuff easily, but to find motherboards, arg, and hdd's are impossible to get hold of - where do you get them ?!

BASIC - its not proper programming

hyperthreading mimics the way 2 cpus work- hence I have 2 2.6 ghz cpus. This doesn't -quite- equal 5.2 ghz unfortunately, but it is up to 50% faster than just normal 2.6ghz . :smile:

I get my parts from Technolgy Warehouse Australia (they sell at 2% above cost price -ahahah too bad UK boy :razz: ). Look at the website of the motherboard/cpu manufacturer for distributor details . . . but often the distributors only supply vendors, so you'll have to ask them for a list of people they sell the products to who can then sell it to you.

Xcon just nip down to you friendly rip off merchant aka PCWorld.

I actually got a good deal from them (and then I nrearly died from a heat attack) it was a 40GB HDD it only cost about ?60 it had noname on the box but there was a maxtor 20GB HDD for about ?40.

Althou this is getting on for nrealy 2 years ago now so I don't know what the prices are like over there now.

[edit]
Oh and you call your self poor when you have that rig??? I'd kill for that rig

try mine.
128MB SDRAM
P2 Xeon 450Mhz
8.6GB HDD
Diamond Viper 550 16MB RAM (Using drivers for a TNT so I can get opengl)
Floppy
CDRW
CD

and the only thing that boots the PC is the HDD so I carnt f**kin format even though its set Floppy, CDRW, HDD it just skips the floppy and CDRW.

yah, the parentals brought me that rig, then ive just added to it. It came with a radeon 7500 that I gave to my mate, and a lame 32x cd drive, I threw a 52x in :biggrin:

But I have no income, im going to try and work as pc world,... sorry :

dum da dum dum, rip offf world.

My dad brought that one and Ive added the vid card which I got free of a mate and I payed 1/2 for tha a sound card my brother payed the other 1/2.

I don't have any problem with the people that work at pcworld its the company I hate cos they also own comet and another big store like comet that also begins with a c and for the life of me I carn't remember the name of the shop. It will probably come to me in a coupple of hours and I wont remember why I wanted to know the name of the shop.

[edit]

I remember the name of the shop now its curry's it only took me about 1/2 hour to remember that.

Me and my mate like to go there and mess around with the pc's cos you can get access to run so we change stuff in the registry, or we will turn the volume up on ones that have dvd's running on them. We also crashed one pc by loading the who wants to be a millionaire game when it already had it running on the taskbar.

Then we'd go and see what people were buying onle bloke brought a history cleaner so we think hed been looking at porn at work and didn't want them to find out.

ahh thems were the days.

I don't care about big images that aren't actually in the forum thread. But I don't care about those anymore either now because I finally got broadband and screen res is 1280*1024, so most people's screenshots fit on.

And 2dmin, I was talking about the HT version 2.4... Even if I wasn't, apparently earlier chips did have the HT technology on them, it just wasn't enabled because they hadn't got the fab process right - it seems they use earlier chips to experiment with new features and then not enable them, so that when they make a chip that is supposed to have the features, they get it right.

2.67 ghz Pentium 4 overclocked 3.06 ghz
768 megs ddr ram
GeForce 4 TI-4400
Sound Blaster Audigy (2? Not sure, going to have to check.)
60 gb hard drive
ASUS P4PE motherboard

Oh come on, be adventureous with display cases. Open up reg edit, and delete the window xp serial, on the next bootup, well, it wont bootup :smile:

I spent 15 minutes of joy, watching from afar, when I put in a little floppy disk, and rebooted, the floppy only deletes teh registry archive and uninstalls all hardware :biggrin:

A mate of mine, whent in with a portable hdd, and copied over 3 movies once, we sat there for about 45 minutes watching a tmd version of the matrix ( first one ), until goons realised.

Most pc world computers have partitions now, go format them.

Oh, and pull some stuff out the back, mice and keyboards are fun, can take people a while to realise why ' the computer froze '

The only time ih?ve had an hours of fame at a lan party, was when I changed all buttons, links and the background in Halflife, looks totally w00t IMO.

But that fame lasted for about 5 minutes.....

xconspirisist, who exactly did you go to pc world with ?

I love going to pcworld and just looking at the sales staff cos most of them don't know s**t about pc's but they really try and usually get it wrong yet people still buy the pc's off them.

I love their new advert saying they have experts in every store, yet you can't go into a PC world without eharing at least 3 things that are complete nonsense being said to customers.

oh. soz jeff, my bad :biggrin:

didnt know they had 2.4 with HT now