Not having a half-way decent computer parts shop here in town is pretty much what started a little idea. That being, ordering every last bit, piece, and wire from Newegg.com. Well, the new rig is running! And while it isn't a real hotrod AMD 64, it does push AH2 (and everything else) along at a fair clip. Here's the rig...
Thermaltake Tsunami DreamTower w/ sidewall fan
Antec TruePower 430w
AMD XP 3000+ (333MHz FSB, 2.167GHz) w/ stock HSF
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe mobo
1GB (2x 512mb sticks) Crucial DDR400 RAM
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb AGP8x
2x Seagate Barracuda 80GB IDE HDD
Lite-On DVD-ROM
NEC DVD burner
Win XP SP2
Logitec 'net Pro KB w/ mouse
Onboard audio, LAN enabled. SATA disabled
Samsung 915N 19" LCD monitor
Temps: 43C idle, 48C under load (room temp being 87F)
Running AH2 with conservative video (1280x1024, FSAA 2x, vis range 2 miles, medium detail) results in about 45FPS (locked at 45) in most situations. If I turn anything else up I start loosing frames in big fights or around a lot of smoke. The lowest FR I've had is 23, after blasting a refinery in an IL-2.
I found out some interesting info while putting it all together, and I thought I'd share some (hopefully) useful info. First, the case!
Thermaltake put some real thought into this bugger. Twin 120mm case fans, one 90mm sidewall fan, and some blue LED lights a ricer-type might like. There's a few points that make it an above average buy. First and foremost is the mounting system for the guts. The 5 1/4" drives (DVD/CD ROM, etc...) don't use screws to mount, they use snap-in rails. Which means no gutting of the 5 1/4" drive cage to get the darn things stable! Snap the rails on the drive, and the whole works slide through the hole in the front of the case. The floppy cage doubles as a HDD cage, and slides out with a little throw lever. HDD mounts? The 5-bay HDD cage slides out sideways, and the bag of nuts n' such has a mess of thumbscrews to use for HDD mounting. Motherboard mounting is a breeze; they replaced the center stand-off with a single positioning stud. PIC/AGP cards don't mount with a screw, they mount with a little snap-down lever that secures the card tab in place. Getting the filler panels out can be hazardous, though! The filler panels for up front that cover the floppy/CD drive holes come off after removing the screws. A note: the top-most CD bay cover has a screw right behind the hinge for the front door. It's a pain to get out. Oh, did I mention the dust filter directly in front of the intake fan? Unfortunately the fan sensor plugs are wired wrong, so the Asus BIOS can't pick up the fan speed. Although I did find out that if you flip the sidewall fan around, it creates a slight amount of negative pressure inside the case.
There is a down-side to this case, well two actually. The AGP slot on the Asus is far enough that you can't mount a HDD right in front of it. There simply isn't any room for the cable runs. Especially with a monster ATi 9800 sitting there. The second is the rear panel all the mobo connections fit through; the Asus bits didn't fit. Removing two screws let me swap out the stock one with the rear panel that came in the mobo box. It took just a moment, and fixed the glitch.
Antec did their usual bang-up job on a power supply... with a catch. The fan-only connections don't supply enough juice to really get those 120mm monsters to turn. So, having plenty of actual 5v rails to tap from... Daisy-chaining all three fans off a single 5v plug makes for some serious ventilation! Note that there is nothing else chained with the fans. They are tapping off one 5v plug I set aside just for the fans to run from. Doing this and terminating the last plug in another device (like a DVD/CD ROM, HDD) is a BAD IDEA.
Asus A7N8X-E Mobo... nuff said. This thing is top notch. It auto-detected everything, literally talked while the system booted up the first time, even let me know the floppy cable was connected backwards. Of course, my neighbor wonders why he hears "SHUT UP, BETTY!" at strange moments. I'm thinking about painting a little bit of nose art on the solid side of the case. "*****in' Betty" maybe? The onboard Marvel ethernet works great for transfering files between my WinME box and this rig. I haven't tried the Gigabit yet. nVidia's sound system is pretty nice considering I don't have a 6.1 speaker setup. Still, it's nice to have speakers and headphones plugged in at the same time and not have to swap plugs!
Believe it or not, I don't have much to say about the twin 80GB Seagates humming under the hood. Why? Even when I moved a 9 gig folder from the old rig to this one, I couldn't hear them! Both 120mm case fans are louder than my hard drives!
Lite-On DVD-Rom? I'll let you know if/when it craps out. My luck with CD drives of any sort has been absolutely horrid. Newegg had it for $22 with shipping, so I figured what the heck.
NEC DVD burner/Nero Express combo makes for a wicked combination. I've yet to have a disc not write, or read for that matter.
Samsung 915N... this was the sleeper. I'd heard it was a nice LCD monitor, that the response time (8ms, if you're wondering) was fantastic, and it had a distinct lack of ghosting. Well, that's all true! The colors are a bit more rich than my old CRT, and the blacks are true blacks. I actually had to go back over some graphics I'd made in the past and correct the color! Not bad at all for $327 plus shipping. The dead pixel warranty limit is 8 or more; mine had one that went away with a little pressure on the screen.
All told, it ran me $1,380 to build this little hum-dinger, not including the 915N LCD. A simple (read: cheap) monitor around 17" in size can be had for $110 or so. Yes, this $1,380 does include a full-house copy (no upgrade!) of Win XP SP2 Home, keyboard, mouse, pretty much everything. Right down to the NIC card for the old box, 25 feet of CAT6 cable for my LAN, and shipping!
PS: Thanks to Roscoroo for nForce drivers; the international set works great!
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Flakbait [Delta6]
