Your Rig

[Ferrari Jones]

Since now many insane parts can be bought on the (sorta) cheap, I decided to build a new beast.

Mobo - ASUS M4A77TD Pro AM3 AMD 770

GPU - Ati Radeon 4870 HD 1gig

CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 945

RAM - 8 gigs

Little extras include a beastly case, a blue cold cathode kit, some blue LED case fans, Dual monitors (19 in and 24 in)

Since I used to be an IT major, I will be building it myself, so all told, everything hit $1,500, which wasn't bad, since that figure includes the monitors and a G19 keyboard, which is about $200. I built a rig with similar stats to compare, and it was a joke, well over $2,500. $800 for 8 gigs of RAM? Where do these guys get there figures from? haha

[cReslyn]

Desktop - Games, Development, Virtualization Format Conversion
CPU: Intel Core i7 920 O.C. @ 4.2GHz - HT / VT Enabled
CPU Cooler: Corsair H20 Closed-Loop Water
Disk Drives: 2x 1TB (2TB) Hitachi Deskstar SATA-II RAID-0 - OS, 2x 500GB Hitachi Desktar SATA-II - Storage
Mainboard: eVGA X58 SLi LE
Memory: Corsair 2GBx6 (12GB) XMS3 9-9-9-24 Timings
Monitor: 2x Dell 1440x900 19" Wide
Optical: None
Power Supply: 1000W Corsair - Non-module
Video: nVidia 8800 GT - 512MB Dedicated
Cost: $950 USD

Laptop - Games, Development
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4GHz Desktop CPU / VTx Enabled
Disk Drive: 1x 300GB Western Digital 7200 RPM Sata-II
Mainboard: Asus C90s
Memory: Corsair 2x 1GB (2GB)
Monitor: Laptop LCD - 1600x1200 Resolution - 17" Wide
Optical: DVD-R/W
Video: nVidia 8600 GS MXM-Type II 256MB Dedicated
Cost: $1,200 USD

Server 1 - Development / Backup Systems / Live VM Swap / Management
Chassis: Dell Power Edge 1950 III 1U Size
CPU: 2x Intel Xeon Quad Core @ 2.6 GHz
HDD: 2x 250GB Hitachi SCSI-ATA Hot Swap Interface Raid 1 (Mirror)
Memory: 16GB ECC
Cost: $2,500 USD

Server 2 - Virtualzation Production Server
Chassis: Dell Power Edge R610 1U Size
CPU: 2x Intel Xeon Quad Core @ 2.9 GHz + HT /VTx Enabled
HDD: 6x 300GB Hitachi SAS Hot Swap Interface Raid 5
Memory: 42GB ECC
Cost: $8,500 USD

Server 3 - Game Servers / Development
CPU: Intel C2Q Q6600 G0 Stepping Quad Core 2.6GHz
CPU Cooler: Tuniq Tower 120 Active Air
Disk Drive: 1x Western Digital 500Gb SATA-II
Mainboard: Abit IP35 Pro
Memory: 4GB Corsair DDR2-1333
Cost: $750

Internet: Home - 15Mbit down, 2Mbit upload, business class traffic prioritization. Ethernet / Wireless mixture.
Internet: Mobile - 5Mbit down, 756kb upload, Verizon Wireless.
Internet: Server1 - 1Gbit on 11 ISPs spanning Cisco Performance Routing & BGP
Internet: Server2 - 1Gbit on 11 ISPs spanning Cisco Performance Routing & BGP
Internet: Server3 - 15Mbit down, 2Mbit upload, business class traffic prioritization. Ethernet configuration.

[Ferrari Jones]

an i7 build eh? I'd like to hear what you think about them.

[cReslyn]

an i7 build eh? I'd like to hear what you think about them.

19%-28% SPECRate faster than comparive AMD components with a lower TDP. I like them.

[Ferrari Jones]

I've just never had any luck with intel chipsets, and I gave nVidia a go but the 7950gtx's in my laptop are on the fritz and only ran well for a few months. For this build I went back to Ati.

[cReslyn]

P4 line was pretty horrid. C2D and above has been outpacing AMD the past several years, and in terms of nV vs AMD/ATI, if you purchase anything from BFG in terms of nV cards, it's lifetime warranties, no questions asked when you RMA a bad board.

[Ferrari Jones]

Sadly, not when you buy from alienware.

[cReslyn]

Good companies to buy from are BFG, XFX, and eVGA. eVGA does things like free upgrade of your video card if a newer card ends up the same price as your current one within a few months time of purchase.

[Ferrari Jones]

All the parts I purchased have at least 5 year, if not lifetime warranties. I learned my lesson, do not buy it if you can build it.

[cReslyn]

All the parts I purchased have at least 5 year, if not lifetime warranties. I learned my lesson, do not buy it if you can build it.

Naturally. Cheaper too.

In pricewatch.com we trust.

[Unreal Warfare]

I'm not even going to bother embarrassing myself posting mine after reading some of those setups.

Very nice indeed.

[Ferrari Jones]

All the parts I purchased have at least 5 year, if not lifetime warranties. I learned my lesson, do not buy it if you can build it.

Naturally. Cheaper too.

In pricewatch.com we trust.

I just love get Windows 7 Pro for $30. College, good for cheap beer, easy girls and cheaper OS's

[cReslyn]

W7 Ultimate on CDW for $90.

[Ferrari Jones]

I went with Vista Ultimate and was ultimately disappointed with the lack of goodies.

[cReslyn]

I need it for filesystem encryption, etc. Needs vary, of course.

[Ferrari Jones]

I need it to work, I'm just going to be writing and play games, I would have went with Home Premium, but Pro was the same price.

[Unreal Warfare]

Got some new parts for my PC today so here's the current specs.

AMD Phenom 8250e Triple Core CPU (looking to overclock, or replace, this in the future).
ATI Radeon X1950 (512mb).
3gb DDR2 ram.
GF8100VM-M5 Hybrid SLI PCI-E Motherboard.
80gb Hard Drive for VIsta and other primary programs, with a 400gb Hard Drive for storage.
Black Icute case.
Razer Copperhead mouse (though this now needs replacing as my left button keeps double clicking).
Microsoft keyboard.
Acer widescreen monitor.
Running on Windows Vista 32bit home basic.

Certainly not the greatest PC in the world but it plays games well enough (Guild Wars runs so smoothly, much better than my last setup which had a weaker motherboard, processor, and ram) and I have a few optimisations to make yet aswell.

[Ferrari Jones]

You need moar rams!

[Unreal Warfare]

I can only fit 4gb on the board, lol. 3gb seems to be doing ok for me at the moment. According to windows, other than the

[Unreal Warfare]

Ugh dumb edit limit.

According to windows the RAM is the second strongest element in the system. Even though I'm running Vista I optimised Vista and turned alot of the unneccessary stuff off. I can run Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3 pretty flawlessly.

[cReslyn]

Since it's not DDR3, you would want your total RAM in multiples of 2 for better efficiency.

[Unreal Warfare]

Yeah I need another stick anyway because they work on different bus speeds. Not in any rush though as it's working fine for the time being and christmas is on the way.

I'm not sure if I would benefit from so much RAM though unless running something that really demands it (which at the moment I'm not).