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Flitterkill's Slow Build - Half Built

Flitterkill

By Flitterkill, GC Board Member
in Tech Reviews, Support and PC Builds

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Flitterkill Contributor

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Getting down to the wire and time for the big dime to drop.

 

Quad at $280 shipped now, but gonna go 6750 and use the "savings" for the vid card which I still am not happy spending money for.

 

WD HD 500b just pinched at $106 shipped. This is at Fry's right now and if you are in the states that do not charge tax, $100 with free shipping isn't bad at all...

 

Damn system is coming in at a $1000, and I was really trying to get it in the ball park of $800. Video card is teh suck and that's really all there is to it.

 

-Fk

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Tek-Almighty Newbie

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Looks good, you bargain hunter. Where'd you score the quad core 6600?

 

Did you buy vid card yet?

 

 

 

I have decided to get the mobo, ram, and cpu first...then do vid card last. I'm luck cuz I get used same case and power supply.

 

I guess I will wait til launch of NVidia 9000 series, and hopefully catch a deal on prices. I've never had a top shelf vid card in my rig, always one step down...

 

Upon further checking in the evga exchange program. They give you current market cost for your old card (90 days) towards current market (read: "their retail") cost of new card.

 

So If I buy 8800GTX for $500...and in 1 month, 9000 series ships and prices drop on 8800GTX to say $350. Then they will give me $350 towards cost of the new $550 card. Heh...that means that I get to pay $750 for the new top of the line card.

 

ON...second thought...maybe I won't do that.

 

:shrug03:

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bushwack Newbie

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Damn system is coming in at a $1000, and I was really trying to get it in the ball park of $800. Video card is teh suck and that's really all there is to it.

 

-Fk

A grand isn't all that bad considering what your getting. You could hit the 800 dollar mark no probs, jet get a 8500 GT. :yuck:

 

$100 for a 500gig drive? Wow seemes I spent that much on a 250gig not so long ago...hmmm guess its nearly been 2 years.

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Flitterkill Contributor

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No quad bought for me Tek but if you are looking for that price, ClubIt and ZipZoomFly are the low guys on that one right now (ClubIt promises G0 step, ZZZ says nothing)

 

$194 shipped for the 6750 - yeah, $85 for two more cores but on this one I think I'll save the dime and upgrade if needed in a year.

 

I'll pick up some money "back" moving some of the old systems I've got around here right now but still - yeah.

 

Feel slightly better about missing the Dell deal on the 8800gts - that one would have been at 500mhz, couple places have the MSI OC version at 576mhz for $350 after rebate - that's worth $30.

 

-Fk

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Flitterkill Contributor

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Sorry, went with the MSI OC'd version - saves about $30 over the Evga version. Frankly, I won't be doing the upgrade thing in the next 90 days, and although the lifetime warranty is nice, the stock warranty will cover it for as long as I realistically have it.

 

What is nice about these OC versions of the 8800gts is how remarkably close they get to 800gtx speeds.

 

Final kit was:

 

Intel 6750 Dual core

Samsung SATA/Lightscribe dvd burner, etc.

MCI 8800gts 640 meg, 575(?)mhz vid

 

I'll drop the pictures and the price break out in the main thread later. Came to around $612 or something all told. Shipping blew chunks all around. No one seemed to have the dvd burners for less than $35, either $30 plus five shipping, or $35 free shipping elsewhere. Same thing with the vid card, either one or the other so that the price was the same free shipping or otherwise. So from the required $12-ish shipping I dropped another $10 to make sure it gets here by Friday.

 

Overall I did ok I think. I might have been able to squeze another $10 off the HD if I was more patient, maybe another $20 to $30 on these last three parts with same patience, and the extra $10 for 3 day didn't have to be spent. Solid on cost but not great. $900 would have been great. Less then that and I'd be gloating.

 

Now to see how the build out goes and what the benchmarks come in at. Hello weekend project.

 

-Fk

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Flitterkill Contributor

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Started at 11pm, done for the nite at 215am and will pick up in the morning.

 

1) Saving those bread twist ties and using them for cable management = good idea (if one does not have velcro or real plastic secure ties)

 

2) Antec 900 case may not have a removable MB tray but everything else is top notch.

 

3) Spot the most important item on my desk...

 

IMG_0713.JPG

 

IMG_0714.JPG

 

First power up after Noon tomorrow hopefully...

 

-Fk

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Flitterkill Contributor

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The case was nailed on sale, plus rebate, *plus* $10 paypal coupon. So the case was probably the steal of this build. The powersupply being a close second.

 

First boot and all is well, no smoke (ahh the memories of my first AthlonXP build...).

 

Each of the fans on the Antec 900 have little switches for lo-med-hi settings. The case, with all those fans on low, is for all practical intents and purposes, whisper quiet. Even one fan on medium and you will hear it though. Seems the stock Intel fan under no load keeps the chip in this case with fans on low right at about 37c, case at 39c. Put another way, the spinning dvd installing the op system right now is the loudest component.

 

I got pics I'll throw up here as I get this thing up to spec. For fun, I'm going Vista Ultimate - we'll see how long I can stand it.

 

500 gig drive partitioned out into three more or less equal 160gig partitions.

 

FWIW, Vista install on a fresh system is a couple clicks and done. The bar says I'm 2/3 done.

 

-Fk

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Flitterkill Contributor

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Vista Ultimate = $20 bucks

 

XP SP2 = $10

 

I picked up both. Bushwack pointed out that the original XP probably did not support SATA out of the box so I upgraded my disc media for the hell of it.

 

Vid Card drivers just finished, now for the hell of it and to possibly cause problems, lets do the Gigabyte drivers. The Vista disc is a May 2007 build and I have not connected to the internet yet for updates - one step at a time... I'll need new drivers on the vid card as well.

 

You'll love the before and after Windows experience rating re: no vid card drivers vs. vid card drivers :)

 

-Fk

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Unclean Newbie

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Vista Ultimate = $20 bucks

 

XP SP2 = $10

 

I picked up both. Bushwack pointed out that the original XP probably did not support SATA out of the box so I upgraded my disc media for the hell of it.

 

Vid Card drivers just finished, now for the hell of it and to possibly cause problems, lets do the Gigabyte drivers. The Vista disc is a May 2007 build and I have not connected to the internet yet for updates - one step at a time... I'll need new drivers on the vid card as well.

 

You'll love the before and after Windows experience rating re: no vid card drivers vs. vid card drivers :)

 

-Fk

Awesome prices!

 

And I say you rock that computer @ 640x480, 256 colors. Who needs fancy colors and lots of pixels?

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Flitterkill Contributor

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Puttering for the last hour or two to avoid the inevitable - the moving of all the old stuff off the IDE drives and software reinstalls.

 

Lots of room for tweaking but I'm going to do the pcmark (and maybe the 3dmark) runs before hand to get a baseline. Memory is currently at 5-5-5-15, I should be able to get 4's out of it.

 

Handy Util:

 

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

 

PCMARK05 = 7665 (stock settings)

 

-Fk

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Flitterkill Contributor

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3DMARK06 = 9066 (stock settings), mid 30's to low 40's for frame rates (except for the cpu nonsense)

 

Time to get to work now...

 

Scratch that, Vista Nvidia hotfixes plus latest beta Nvidia Geforce drivers, then another run at 3DMARK06.

 

Huzzah! 9167 with the newer drivers.

 

-Fk

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