[BUILD] microATX

[skribetm]

i absolutely love the antec mini p180. just got finished removing the hdd bays to maximize intake airflow.
this beats any and all the other cases (or none/caseless/tech bench) that i have owned! i highly recommend it!

amd phenom ii 955be
ocz3 platinum ddr3-1600 cl6
gigabyte ma785gmt-ud2h
wd caviar green 500gb/32mb
ati radeon 4870x2
pc power & cooling 750w

next project is either megashadow or heatkiller rev. 3 block. 

[Noir]

well I would have passed on the green edition HDD...more expensive and slower

What's the power supply brand ?

[MrRiplEy[H]]

The green edition does have one virtue, it's quiet. That's about the only virtue it has though.

[skribetm]

well I would have passed on the green edition HDD...more expensive and slower

What's the power supply brand ?

the brand is pc power & cooling "silencer" series (750watts)
the better, higher quality ones(but more expensive) is their "turbo cool" edition.

[skribetm]

The green edition does have one virtue, it's quiet. That's about the only virtue it has though.

as long as it doesn't end up like my previous hdd, a seagate 7200.11 500gb/32mb, that quit without any symptoms- i'll be content.
took all my AH2 .ahf films with it, skins, sights & custom sounds.  this green ed. actually runs a lot cooler too.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

as long as it doesn't end up like my previous hdd, a seagate 7200.11 500gb/32mb, that quit without any symptoms- i'll be content.
took all my AH2 .ahf films with it, skins, sights & custom sounds.  this green ed. actually runs a lot cooler too.

I noticed long time ago that my harddrives were running pretty hot. And the hottest ones seemed to fail first too. The problem was multiplied with me having typically 2-4 harddrives at once in the cage. After I started installing a 90-120mm fan in front of the harddrive cage I haven't had a single hd failure to date. That coincided with switching to WD drives so I don't know which one is to thank.

[Noir]

the brand is pc power & cooling "silencer" series (750watts)
the better, higher quality ones(but more expensive) is their "turbo cool" edition.

alright I don't think they sell that brand on my side of the pond

[Noir]

I noticed long time ago that my harddrives were running pretty hot. And the hottest ones seemed to fail first too. The problem was multiplied with me having typically 2-4 harddrives at once in the cage. After I started installing a 90-120mm fan in front of the harddrive cage I haven't had a single hd failure to date. That coincided with switching to WD drives so I don't know which one is to thank.

yeah that's why they include temperature probes in HDD now, come to think of it I always had nicely ventilated cases, and didn't get a single HDD fail since my 300mb in the 90's Always had quantum/maxtor then seagate HDD's

[Spikes]

Nice build, how much did all that run you?

[skribetm]

Nice build, how much did all that run you?

a little over $900, all on cpu/tower only. almost half of the expense on the gpu. 

[Spikes]

a little over $900, all on cpu/tower only. almost half of the expense on the gpu. 

Jebus, nice computer though! I only see one gpu in there, though, are you waiting on another one?

Also did you not use a CD rom? If so I did the same thing, so much can be put on thumb drives nowadays, and I've got an external CD drive I can use if I ever need one.

[Noir]

Jebus, nice computer though! I only see one gpu in there, though, are you waiting on another one?

that videocard is dual GPU already so 2 of them.... and I doubt any microATX motherboard has 2 PCI Express 16X slots. Ho and I wouldn't try overclocking the CPU as well 

[1701E]

that videocard is dual GPU already so 2 of them.... and I doubt any microATX motherboard has 2 PCI Express 16X slots. Ho and I wouldn't try overclocking the CPU as well 

There are a select few Micro-ATX boards that have SLI support.  I don't remember, but I think the EVGA P55 (Think it's the one) Micro-ATX has SLI, but I haven't looked in a while.

[Noir]

SLI doesn't help much with Radeon's 

[skribetm]

Jebus, nice computer though! I only see one gpu in there, though, are you waiting on another one?

Also did you not use a CD rom? If so I did the same thing, so much can be put on thumb drives nowadays, and I've got an external CD drive I can use if I ever need one.

thanks! yes noir is right, its a dual-gpu card and costs like two 4870's. also, the mobo is a single slot pcie 2.0x16 so no crossfire(ati's version of sli) for me.
when not gaming, i disable the pcie slot and use the onboard HD4200 for energy saving. re: optical disk drive/cd-rom, i also just use a usb-pluggable slim drive.

i found this interesting pci-e tool to test system bottlenecks between the cpu -> gpu and gpu -> cpu.
http://developer.amd.com/GPU/ATISTREAMPOWERTOY/Pages/default.aspx

file: http://developer.amd.com/Downloads/PCIeSpeedTest_v0.2.zip

for well balanced-systems, the throughput between cpu/gpu should be about equal.



the testing program will* crash so use the msdos prompt/command line within windows to test it.
only the program will crash, not windows. so you can still see your results. very useful synthetic benchmark.
although being "synthetic" it only is a rather marginally good representation of real world application data transfer bandwidth.