Birthday rig successfully built!

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laurieny

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Had to let all of you who helped me spec out the gaming rig for my son's birthday know that it was a huge success! He turned 14 and so I wrapped each component up separately and he was speechless just seeing the stack of 14 boxes waiting for him on Saturday morning. Normal birthdays are 2-3 presents so I think he thinks he won the lottery this year. He didn't really have an inkling what it was all about as we had him open the gaming mouse and the memory first- which he assumed were for his existing computer. But when the third present was a hard drive his jaw dropped as he got the idea, and quickly proceeded to rip through the rest of the packages.

I had never built a computer completely from scratch, and I mostly let him put it together with some oversight and direction, but it was really pretty easy. Various other commitments caused us not to completely finish it on Saturday, and it did take two tries to get it to post when we first powered it up on Sunday, but we are both extremely pleased with ourselves. I came close once or twice to posting a question on here, but we worked the issues. We have now actually spent more time installing the OS, adding 35 wonderful MS patches, AV, assorted important utilities and apps and oh yeh-a bunch of games. CoD 2 has 6 CD's alone!

But this thing rocks! It is so quiet and fast. And as I posted in another thread the CM Stacker 830 is totally awesome-I am so glad I dropped the $300 for that case. If any of you ever have the bucks to spend on a top-of-the line case-get this one! I am also in love with the Enermax Liberty PSU-those modular cables are fabulous. We still need to do some wire management as towards the end we just wanted to get the beast turned on, but considering all the stuff inside it looks pretty good.

The only semi-regret I have is going with the Zalman 9500 instead of the the Big Typhoon as was recommended on the thread I started. I was worried that space would be an issue (and the weight of the thing worried me a bit too) but the layout of the board and the room in the case would not have been an problem with that monster. Not that our temps look bad at all, but all the metrics I saw on the Extreme forum make me wish I had gone with the TT instead.

Next weekend we are going to spend some time "experimenting" by getting some metrics on temps etc and then play with overclocking it. I will post some pics and our results.

Thanks again for all the help!
Laurie
 
Cool, I remember the building post being one of the first I read on this forum. Glad to see it worked out for you, I will start building mine in a couple to a few days *joy*!
 
Modular PSU's while they can do wonders for the neatness of your case are not very good. They add a lot of resistance due to the cables being plugged in on both sides. What are the full specs? BTW, if you arn't overclocking and the PSU has enough power, it will be perfectly fine, but when you start overclocking and adjusting voltages thats when you will probably notice some lower than desired voltages.
 
003 said:
Modular PSU's while they can do wonders for the neatness of your case are not very good. They add a lot of resistance due to the cables being plugged in on both sides. What are the full specs? BTW, if you arn't overclocking and the PSU has enough power, it will be perfectly fine, but when you start overclocking and adjusting voltages thats when you will probably notice some lower than desired voltages.

I had a modular PSU that only lasted me about 2 months, and when it went out, it took my motherboard with it. I strongly suggest against getting a modular PSU.
 
OCZ Modstream PSU's are good. I have only heard of a couple dying (and those are when the user forgot to switch from 110 to 220V input)

anyway. the CM stacker is a nice case. one of my friends has one. although the one thing I really don't like is that it is so heavy! it's about 3-4 times the weight of my Lian-Li case (I have a PC-V1000)

but anyway, nice to see you've got it all finished. what parts did you end up getting?
 
I've been ranting and raving about the downfalls of modular PSU's for ever now. It's nice to see others finally agreeing with me.

Modular PSU's due to their "Plug" nature, become interupted power supplies. "003" hit the nail on the head when he refered to "resistance".

A buddy of mine found out the hard way as did beedubaya. Two of the plugs where the wire meets the PSU actually burnt. Black char marks and everything. Needless to say the components that were connected to those wires no longer work. "1 6800GT" & "1 Optical Drive" - Suprisingly those were the only things that were damaged. Lucky for him.

UNINTERUPTED PSU'S ARE THE WAY TO GO.
Most highend gaming systems use all the wires from the PSU anyway. So there really isn't any need to unplug any that aren't being used.
 
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