VeeshanVault

Get 2 10,000 RPM ATA Drives and stripe them.

I've got 3, 10k RPM , 48Gb, 8Mb buffer SCSI drives striped on a hardware RAID controller. It really screams along, cost me about $200 total.

*Edit - It's a bit flakey during install with Win 2k, XP is perfectly happy with it though.

I still don't like IDE, though it has gotten much better.

Lohrno wrote:Speaking of Cock...I wonder if someone ever got a giant phallic object from a sex shop and made it into a case mod.

-=Lohrno

Look, I really don't think we need Pilsburry posting to this thread...

Har!

maybe realdoll could help you with that

i wouldnt overclock now.

it is diminishing returns. i agree with you aranuil from that standpoint.

but back in the day, i did what marb did, i bought a celeron 300A and jammed it to 450. My next box was then a 533 that i still run at 800.

When you can jump the clockspeed up that much, i say it is worth the risk.

But fuck, with how fast shit is now, its not really worth it. And the processors aren't $125 either if you cook em

Yea, I agre the 16x12 LCD's are still fairly expensive (well over $1000 for the Sony and Viewsonic ones), but I was basing it on that fact that I play EQ at 1280x1024, and there are LCD's on the market that are 19+" with this resolution and 75+ Hz refresh rates in the $500 range.

Hmm I dont need help with anything, and I'm not so interested that I'm going to try, it was just a random thought that came into my head. I know there is a toilet mod, and there is a female doll(non sex toy) mod someone hand crafted...

One thing I do think would be cool would be like a casemod to make a computer/aquarium. Get like a clear computer, and open the side. Then make an aquarium like enclosure for it entirely of plexiglass. Put some sand in the bottom of the enclosure, some plants, and some fish! Then put a filter on the top of the enclosure somewhere, and you have a computer enclosed in a fishtank. A nice side effect of it might be that since water is flowing around it it may have a slight cooling effect. You could also do the same, and use fake fish/plants/bubbles I guess.

-=Lohrno

i beleive thats already been done

Aranuil wrote: Personally, I think overclocking is fucking stupid. When you overclock, you invalidate the warranty of your product and open yourself up to heat damage issues (yay!).

I have never in my life used a warranty to return anything. That said, I haven't invalidated anything. A bios setting is all that needs to be changed to have a 2.4GHz CPU run at 3.2GHz.

As for price:

Intel Pentium 4 / 2.4CGHz 512k socket 478 Hyper Threading Technology 800 MHz FSB - RETAIL 171.00

Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz 512k 800MHz FSB | socket 478 w/ Hyper Threading Technology - RETAIL 665.00

Those are newegg.com prices.

171.00 vs 665.00 and the 171.00 is faster because my FSB is faster...are you out of your fucking mind? a 800-1GHz increase in speed for 494.00 less. No wonder you bought nVidia if you can't see that shit. I'll take that 494.00 and...lets see...buy you a clue : ) BTW, no special equipment required for cooling etc...zero extra costs.

Buy your prebuilt machine. It will work great : )

doesnt alienware have its on special cooling system? can you buy it seperatly and use it on other boxes?

Winnow wrote:

Aranuil wrote: Personally, I think overclocking is fucking stupid. When you overclock, you invalidate the warranty of your product and open yourself up to heat damage issues (yay!).

I have never in my life used a warranty to return anything. That said, I haven't invalidated anything. A bios setting is all that needs to be changed to have a 2.4GHz CPU run at 3.2GHz.

As for price:

Intel Pentium 4 / 2.4CGHz 512k socket 478 Hyper Threading Technology 800 MHz FSB - RETAIL 171.00

Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz 512k 800MHz FSB | socket 478 w/ Hyper Threading Technology - RETAIL 665.00

Those are newegg.com prices.

171.00 vs 665.00 and the 171.00 is faster because my FSB is faster...are you out of your fucking mind? a 800-1GHz increase in speed for 494.00 less. No wonder you bought nVidia if you can't see that shit. I'll take that 494.00 and...lets see...buy you a clue : ) BTW, no special equipement required for cooling etc. zero extra costs.

Buy your prebuilt machine. It will work great : )

1. I don't have a prebuilt machine that isn't a laptop. When I can build my own laptop, I'll do that to.

2. This thread isn't about your religious war between ATI and NVIDIA. I don't get into religious wars over technology because they're fucking stupid. My technology decisions are made based on price, performance and reliability, PERIOD. For the 100th time, both cards are good, and either is an excellent choice based on what is on the market today. Until there's a REAL reason to choose one over the other, just know that I'm getting IDENTICAL performance to your card (if not better), and don't worry about the GPU manufacturer. Maybe I'll go build a fucking PC tonight with a 9800 just so I can sit it next to my current PC and wave the impartial flag, and maybe then you'll shut the fuck up about ATI vs. NVIDIA.

3. You ARE invalidating the warranty on your processor if you overclock it and it stops functioning due to heat. I've have several friends that overclock all the time, who know what the fuck they're doing, and every once in a while they'll have odd issues of flakiness that I don't have. There's a reason why Intel Motherboards (note I didn't say motherboards with an Intel chipset) don't support overclocking. Considering that the 3.2 will be $171 in less than 6 months when the P5s come out, I still don't think it's worth the risk of permanently fucking up your chip.

Don't insult my intelligence. Maybe it's because I work in an industry where uptime is everything, but generally speaking, my main PC is up 24/7 and I don't have stupid bullshit problems that I cannot directly attribute to a specific application. The manner in which heat will affect a processor is varied, and difficult to predict/pinpoint. I can do PC upgrades/troubleshooting in my sleep. I have no desire when troubleshooting an issue (not that I have many) to have to first remove my overclocking setup, determine the manner in which it runs for a week or so to verify that my overclocked configuration isn't the root cause of a problem. My PC works just fine, and I expect it will continue to do so until I upgrade my box in a year or so.

Sionistic wrote:doesnt alienware have its on special cooling system? can you buy it seperatly and use it on other boxes?

It's nothing you couldn't buy on the open market in a slightly different form factor.

how much do they cost? and are they worth it?

It really depends on whether or not you're having cooling problems.

Most decent cases now have several places to mount fans internally, or actually include fans on the case. For most use, this is fine. It really depends on how much you're trying to cram into the case, and the ambient temperature in the room the PC will be in. Antec makes excellent cases, and there are many other vendors that make good cases. If you want, you can get a water cooling system for inside your PC. I've seen several different kinds some have an external component, others take up a DVD-ROM sized drive bay.

My current system has a digital thermometer on the front of it that monitors the temperature inside the case.

The Alienware system does not differentiate itself with a cooling system. Having said that, buying an Alienware system, means you don't have to worry about cooling/power supply size (not that it's difficult)

Aranuil wrote: 3. You ARE invalidating the warranty on your processor if you overclock it and it stops functioning due to heat. I've have several friends that overclock all the time, who know what the fuck they're doing, and every once in a while they'll have odd issues of flakiness that I don't have. There's a reason why Intel Motherboards (note I didn't say motherboards with an Intel chipset) don't support overclocking. Considering that the 3.2 will be $171 in less than 6 months when the P5s come out, I still don't think it's worth the risk of permanently fucking up your chip.

Warranty? I can buy four 2.4Cs for the price of one 3.2GHz chip...I could fry 3 chips and still go buy a case of beer and be ahead of you...funny thing is chips rarely fry at all. Read the OCing boards. Unless someone has OC'd to insane levels, the chance of hardware burning out is next to nil. The OCing im talking about previously in this thread is simple bio changes and knowing enough to buy the right parts that perform well. There is a phobia about OCing. CPUs have built in temperature throttles and shit doesnt burn out if you over OC like on a video card for instance..it either just doesnt work and you reduce the MHz or you get artifacts and you reduce the MHz. You don't burn things out. Your system doesnt boot if something is wrong, it doesnt burn out.

I will insult your intelligence. OCing is nothing more than tuning up your PC. You can do the same to your car. In many cases CPUs are EXACTLY the same..for example, the 2.4C and 3.2 Intel CPUs are basically EXACTLY the same chip with different clock settings. Intel will make these chips and then test them for certain MHz levels. if there is more of a demand for 2.4 chips, they will set the clock at that level and sell them....SAME chip.

ATI 9500 video cards are EXACTLY the same as 9700s. the 9500 has 4 pipelines disabled. More demand for cheaper cards is all and possibly not testing those 4 pipelins not in use...there's nothing wrong with softmodding a card to test out those inactive 4 pipelines.

Knowledge is power! I may want to buy a nice car but dont have a clue about them so I certainly wouldn't start telling people how to fix their cars or what to buy...in this case, it seems you don't know what you're talking about so suggesting Alienware as a good brand and STFU'ing would have been ideal.

The fact that you could buy 4 chips for the price of the 3.2 doesn't mean that I or anyone wants to go through the hassle of having to replace a CPU if something happens. Chips rarely fry at all? Rarely? Maybe I don't want to take that fucking chance. Yes there are successful OCing stories. Guess what, there are also huge fucking failures, and there are also situations where the computer runs, but is flakey as fuck. No fucking thank you. I know what the fuck I'm talking about, I just don't want to put MY system at risk, nor would I ever recommend anyone else do the same.

This is "set and forget" OC'ing btw. There's no praying the machine won't fail. No worrying each time that something will change. Once you set the speed and it works, you do zero maintenance and temperatures are all nominal.

If you are using your computer for work then by all means buy a prebuilt computer with warranty.

If you're building a home computer and want a kick-ass gaming experience for much less than a pre-built computer and even better than a more expensive computer, then look into OCing. It's a hobby but basic OCing doesn't have to take much time or worry...in fact, the 2.4C and 875P chipset motherboard is an excellent combo without OCing at all...if you choose to type 275 in the little FBS box in the bios and reboot and get 3+GHz then you're getting a big time performance increase...if not, you still have outstanding equipment. There's no risk as it will always work at the standard settings which aren't bad.

Some of you act as if OCing is like shoving a hot poker up a horses ass to get it to run faster : ) I didnt want to excite kyoukan but that was the first thing that came to my mind.

yeah lets talk about who is getting excited while you stroke your tiny cock and talk about overclocking your PC. I'll get you an account at [T]ard OCP and you can head on over there and masturbate over 100's pages of posts about overclocking your "box" and case mods and other things stupid people like you with no fucking lives like to babble about.

Where is this hostility for people who do nothing wrong besides maybe voiding their warranty comming from? Is it jealousy, or a desire to be accepted?

-=Lohrno

My hostility is coming from some jackass calling me an idiot because I won't overclock and don't recommend it.

I have no hostility for those that want to do it.

Aranuil wrote:My hostility is coming from some jackass calling me an idiot because I won't overclock and don't recommend it.

I have no hostility for those that want to do it.

Actually that was mostly directed at Kyoukan...

-=Lohrno

Lohrno wrote:Actually that was mostly directed at Kyoukan...

-=Lohrno

Yessir I understand that, but I just wanted to be clear.

kyoukan wrote: I'll get you an account at [T]ard OCP and you can head on over there and masturbate over 100's pages of posts about overclocking your "box" and case mods and other stupid people like you with no fucking lives babble about.

I've got an account there already wench! It's better than cyber!

Beware or the mean OC monster is going to get you!



I wasn't calling you a jackass because you won't...I was implying that you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to OCing. The safe path is always an option.

Winnow wrote:I wasn't calling you a jackass because you won't...I was implying that you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to OCing. The safe path is always an option.

While I agree I am not up on all the latest overclocking techniques because I choose not to be, for reasons I've already stated, I don't think that's a sign of intelligence or lack thereof, just something I'm choosing not to spend any time on... for reasons I've already stated.

Last I checked, both of our PCs are running flawlessly. I'm basing this on the fact that I just checked connectivity to mine, and that you're still posting so your computer hasn't exploded in a ball of flame. That said, there is really nothing here worth arguing about. I'm simply making a recommendation. I'm very happy that you're successfully overclocking, and I think anyone who, like yourself, understands the risks can do whatever they like to their PC.

Given that this thread is primarily directed to individuals who are unfamiliar with building PCs and considering purchasing a pre-integrated PC, I don't really feel that overclocking is something they should be concerned with.

Again, this is my personal opinion, and again, if your PC performs well overclocked, I congratulate you. I respect your opinion with regards to PCs in general Winnow, moreso than the majority of the posters on this board (I was fairly certain I'd made that clear in the past), but I don't appreciate veiled and direct insults with regards to PC integration/graphics card choice.

As an addendum: I have always used and purchased Intel processors, and I'm assuming you have one now based on your posts on this thread. I'm curious why not an AMD since you seem to be very concerned about price and the ability to overclock. I was under the impression, and again I have spent minimal time investigating overclocking, that the AMD had more overclocking potential. Is this not the case? I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

OMGSHUTUP ARANUIL YUO GHEY LOL U DONT OVERCOLCK!11



This is all over my head, so disgregard^^

Hi Teeny, I you.

Aranuil wrote:
As an addendum: I have always used and purchased Intel processors, and I'm assuming you have one now based on your posts on this thread. I'm curious why not an AMD since you seem to be very concerned about price and the ability to overclock. I was under the impression, and again I have spent minimal time investigating overclocking, that the AMD had more overclocking potential. Is this not the case? I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

AMD processors performed well in the past but right now, AMD can't compete in price/performance with Intel for OCd CPUs. AMD processors are huge and heat up more than the new Intel chips as well so you're looking at having to buy additional cooling. That's subject to change but it appears Intel will hold the lead for awhile.

C a k e, but pie more.

There is no real need to OC anymore unless you just like looking at big numbers.

The Alienware system that pretty much matches the sytem I built is 3400 The one I built was less than 1g. If you have any exp at all building computers you can built a compairable sytem for much cheaper.

Denadeb wrote:There is no real need to OC anymore unless you just like looking at big numbers.

There never was a need to OC. Speed is all relative but there are real life substantial gains. 1GHz OC isn't insignificant.

3GHz-3.2GHz or something along those lines I would agree. When you can easily get 3-3.2GHz out of a 171.00 processor and not have to buy a 665.00 processor than there is a reason. There's no need if you don't mind 2.4 performance which isnt bad but again, why not crank it up? It will speed up everything you do on your computer.

You also don't need a raptor hard drive or a faster video card or more memory but all of those things help a bunch...and yes, you can OC video cards and memory. If you don't like waiting, you buy faster parts or speed up the ones you have.

Three options you have if you're using a computer for home use:

1. buy a prebuilt computer (most expensive)
2. build your own computer with same speed parts as prebuilt for less money.
3. build your own computer, do some research, and OC it to higher performance levels than the most expensive option and spend the least amount of money for the best perfoming computer.

There's no wrong answer really.

Winnow wrote:

Denadeb wrote:There never was a need to OC. Speed is all relative but there are real life substantial gains. 1GHz OC isn't insignificant.

Not really. In the 90s you had to overclock because a lot of the bottleneck in game performance was on the processor. These days the bottleneck is usually on your 3D card.

I could throw a faster chip into my PC (or 0v3rcl0ck it) and I would only see a marginal performance gain. Or I could throw in a new 3D card and see a substantial one.

PS. ATI still sucks and they still make shitty drivers.

kyoukan wrote:

Winnow wrote:

Denadeb wrote:There never was a need to OC. Speed is all relative but there are real life substantial gains. 1GHz OC isn't insignificant.

Not really. In the 90s you had to overclock because a lot of the bottleneck in game performance was on the processor. These days the bottleneck is usually on your 3D card.

I could throw a faster chip into my PC (or 0v3rcl0ck it) and I would only see a marginal performance gain. Or I could throw in a new 3D card and see a substantial one.

PS. ATI still sucks and they still make shitty drivers.

Yes, there is much more performance gain by improving your graphics card. You could use the 494.00 you just saved OCing your computer to buy an ATI9800 256MB card. Video Cards happen to be OCable for substantial performance gains as well. A lot of times these days, the bottleneck in speed is your hard drive though.

How do you overclock? hehe

Hey Cool, someone else had an idea to make an aquariumPC...Clicky!

-=Lohrno

build your own for way cheaper

Taly wrote:build your own for way cheaper

Probably I'm just glad someone else thought of it and did it.

(It means I had a good idea! )


-=Lohrno

Winnow are you OverCocking again?

Cartalas wrote:Winnow are you OverCocking again?

Hell no, I dont want to fry my system!

Yes, I have been the past 5 years. When my celeron 300A finally burns out in the year 2069 from being OC'd to 450, I'm going to be sure to inform the OC police as that sucker could have made it to the new millenium if I hadn't stressed it so much : )

Winnow wrote:

Cartalas wrote:Winnow are you OverCocking again?

Hell no, I dont want to fry my system!

Yes, I have been the past 5 years. When my celeron 300A finally burns out in the year 2069 from being OC'd to 450, I'm going to be sure to inform the OC police as that sucker could have made it to the new millenium if I hadn't stressed it so much : )

Winnow... I have to ask. I have the same setup as you, but I can't grasp the fact that If I OC my MB, I will get even fucking close to that 800 FSB. I'm so damn tempted to try it now after reading this so let me know.


Side note: The new OMEGA drivers for Nvidea cards has a built in OC/Artirfact testing utility that fucking pwns.... It will let you know right away if your about to fuck something up.

winnow's MB and CPU have the 800Mhz FSB out of the box.

he is overclocking the CPU via changing its multiplier which can be done in the BIOS.

I've never put together a computer myself, but I learn fast for the most part. Does anyone have a few tips on stuff to buy to begin?

Rivera Bladestrike wrote:I've never put together a computer myself, but I learn fast for the most part. Does anyone have a few tips on stuff to buy to begin?

A Warranty!

Antec Case with 350-400watt power supply
Intel CPU
Intel Chipset Motherboard - Any manufacturer will do. I generally buy Intel boards currently have the D865PERL
Creative Labs EAX - whatever you can afford
ATI or NVIDIA based AGP Vid card
Ultra ATA Harddrive - I like Seagate and Maxtor, but anyone will do.
Floppy - I think ummm Sony, Hitachi, Teac all make them, doesn't really matter unless you need a specific color
CD-R/RW/DVD - Depends on what you want to spend Sony is a good brand, but most will do.
1GB PC3200 Memory - Either (1) 1GB piece, or (2) 512MB pieces.

Grab all that, plug shit in to the correct holes, call it a day.

I would not recommend doing this without a friend who's done it before. Your mileage may vary.

Let me add to the above post...

USE Antec for the case or at least an Antec TruePower power supply (the 1080 SOHO File server with 430W powersupply is $116 at NewEgg and will last you for years)

Second, 3 months ago I would say only go with Intel... I always have. However I picked up a very cheap MB (Shuttle AK35GTR) from a friend running the VIA KT333 Chipset. I though well I'll try it to get me by for a couple of months. The board is like $50 at NewEgg, I dropped in 1GB of DDR333 and 3000+ Barton (AMD Athlon XP) for very little cash. It's been rebooted a couple of times to install new hardware but otherwise has been running constatnly for over a month now with NO HICUPS and it SCREAMS! No driver issues with XP nor any other equipment (I disabled the onboard RAID and Sound though). You can get this board with a 2400+ and 512MB of RAM for less that $200 for all of it, can't be that for the price/performance considering you can upgrade to a faster processor later.

However if building a system to last I would pickup one of the Asus Intel boards that will run the 800MHz FSB and a 2.4GHz P4. It will still be VERY fast. Then when the 3.2GHz come down next year, pop one in for a nice speed boost.

SB Live! Value is only like $35 and works well, OEM Audagy is pretty cheap too though.

Video - Screw ATI, stick with NVidia... (Phhhttttt Winnow)

Marb

I was looking into it, it'd be a little cheaper, but I'd rather just buy an Alienware and not have to worry about it, I was looking at the 10,000 RPM hard drives, someone said thats the biggest improvement for speed. What do you guys think?

well not just the RPM of the HDD.

also its transfer speed to the motherboard. Serial ATA is fast in that reguard, and you want a big buffer on it, 8mb works.

I wanted to add to the list of parts that if you go with an Intel motherboard over Asus/Iwill/MSI, I believe that limits your ability to OC. Winnow's the guy to talk to about this as I don't OC.

As far as harddrive speed goes, make sure you have a gig of RAM, and don't worry about the HD speed. I have yet to be in a situation where *anything* slowed down due to slow disk access. This can actually be monitored in XP if you care to do so.

CPU/Motherboard/Processor/Memory are the most important components in fast gaming performance. With a gig of ram, once the game loads (this is the harddrive dependent part most of the time) the majority of the game is going to be running straight from memory anyway, so as long as you have a reasonably fast HD Ultra-ATA is fine, that will not be a bottleneck for you during actual gameplay.

If there are any specific questions you have regarding choosing one component over another for the Alienware, feel free to ask.

There are several diff systems you can build. I don't feel like arguing about AMD vs. Intel but you can built an AMD system that performs just as good as an Intel. It all depends on your pref mostly.

Asus A7N8X mother board - I have this one currently and I have nothing bad to say about it.
Any Athlon XP 2500+ or higher will do fine as far as performance.
DDR 3200 - I currently have 3 sticks of 512 from Samsung and have no complaints.
DVD burner- I personally like the Pioneer 106 series but sony also has a nice duel format drive.
Hard Drive- just depends on how much storage you need anything 7200+ will be fine.
Case- Make sure it has an AMD or Intel approved power supply 350 or higher is your best bet.
Video card- this is mostly preffrence so buy what you like they all work fine.


When building a computer as far as AMD or Intel it comes down to preffrence mostly. Same with the video cards Nvidia or ATI.

I was going to ask Marbus to help build my PC, but his support is lacking. I expect my Pc's to last three years. My present one has lasted 3.5.

Going to spend too much money for my new system, but having support will be worth it. Too busy to build it myself or burden Marb.

What I'm getting:

BOARD: ABIT IC7-G MAXII i875 CHIP 800FSB DDR400 8X AGP MB W/ LAN/5.1 SOUND/IEEE-1394/USB 2.0

ENERMAX EG465P-VE 430 WATT POWER SUPPLY

CPU: Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 3.0 GHZ CPU 800MHz FSB, Hyper Threading Ready

HDD: MAXTOR 160 GB 7200 RPM ULTRA ATA-133 8MB CACHE BUFFER

MEMORY: 1024 MB DUAL CHANNEL DDR-400 [512MB X 2] PC3200 MHZ buying another stick for 1.5

Monitor: PERFECT-FLAT VIEWSONIC 19-INCHES E90FB .21 DPI HORIZONTAL SVGA MONITOR

OS: MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL EDITION

VIDEO: ** 8X AGP ** NVIDIA GEFORCE-FX 5900-ULTRA 256MB W/ DVI + TV OUT 8X AGP VIDEO

That should keep me on EQII for a while. And keep marbus away from my wife.

Seeber

Seebs you know I'll be happy to build that for ya, just order the parts or or I could put the list together from NewEgg on a wishlist and you can order from there, that is what I did for Doug recently...

And I'll do my best not to take any long lunches <wink> with your wife anymore... but I'm not promising anything...

Cheers!
Marb