Legit Reviews

I haven't built a computer for myself in 6 years, and that's when then 9800 Pro came out. The only things keeping me alive in the gaming market were my two notebooks, but they're starting to age. My more recent one has a 7800 Go w/ a 2.0GHz Core Duo. Yea... old, right? The only super nice computers that I've touched were the ones that I've built for customers. It sucks seeing a powerhouse go through your hands and it's not yours to play with.

Well, here is what I decided on:

Case: Corsair Cosmos
Water Cooling: ThermalTake Big Water 760i <-- Undecided, I heard bad word about the water block
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
RAM: 4x 1GB Crucial Ballistix PC8500 DDR2
PSU: 750w PSU from Corsair
Motherboard: Asus P5E
Video Card: eVGA 8800GTX Superclocked (Upgrading to the 9xxx series when available)
OS: Vista Ultimate
Drives: 1 Western Digital Raptor (For now.. existing at my house and never used), 1 Seagate 7200.11 500GB HDD, 1 20x Samsung DVD Burner, 16x Asus DVD ROM
Sound: Included "sound card" that comes w/ the P5E


I'm up in the air w/ sound right now. On-board might be good enough for now. I'm also undecided what version of Vista I'm going to buy from my friend. 32-bit or 64-bit. I'm leaning towards 64-bit and have XP 32-bit installed if I need to do any 32-bit applications that bicker w/ 64-bit Operating Systems. I'm also up in the air w/ the water cooling. The reason being, what was recommended to me (TT BW 760i) by someone, I also heard from another party that the CPU block is not very good w/ the 760i. I don't really want to drop $150 on a kit and then spend another $50 on a new block that actually works.

Tell me what you think, opinions?

beware. the raptor is LOUD

i got it thinking that everything would be super fast on it, but the noise is a killer as it's the loudest component in my build.
at least consider the trade-off before you plunge in, those 7200 rpm drives are great, and way less noisy.

Just curious why you would need a DVD burner and a DVD rom...

what's noise? I'm still deaf after my 80mm delta screamers back in 2000-2002 that i slept next too in my dorm room.

Everything looks good. ^_^

Apoptosis wrote:what's noise? I'm still deaf after my 80mm delta screamers back in 2000-2002 that i slept next too in my dorm room.

Did you get a super tolerance to sleeping through noise after that then?

Dan

oh yeah... for real my ear started ringing after a few months and I went back to a normal fan.

Apoptosis wrote:what's noise? I'm still deaf after my 80mm delta screamers back in 2000-2002 that i slept next too in my dorm room.

Apoptosis wrote:oh yeah... for real my ear started ringing after a few months and I went back to a normal fan.

THAT'S noise

I honestly don't know if I'm going to be using the Raptor or not. I've been told that they're not the big performance gain w/ Vista like they are XP.

ibleet wrote:Just curious why you would need a DVD burner and a DVD rom...

Why not? Just think of the possibilities! DVD to DVD burning perhaps?

I did that, way before SATA. Remember they have to be on separate channels. So you need two IDE connectors, and on almost all new boards, that doesn't exist

Nate, dude, I can't stand the fan on my laptop that is barely audible.

NAiLs wrote: Why not? Just think of the possibilities! DVD to DVD burning perhaps?

I'm glad you enjoyed my question...No need to be wise about it though...

I find dvd to dvd mostly unreliable...I copy it to hard disk first....but thats just me.

And like Dicecca said, you need 2 IDE connectors:

Primary master = HDD w/operating system
Primary slave = DVD-ROM
Secondary master = DVD burner
Secondary slave = 2nd HDD

I really don't see the point in having multiple optical drives anymore. The tiny tiny difference in speeds is negligible, but to each their own.

The only reason for it now-a-days is for multiple games, or to save wear and tear on your burner.

ibleet wrote:

NAiLs wrote: Why not? Just think of the possibilities! DVD to DVD burning perhaps?

I'm glad you enjoyed my question...No need to be wise about it though...

I find dvd to dvd mostly unreliable...I copy it to hard disk first....but thats just me.

And like Dicecca said, you need 2 IDE connectors:

Primary master = HDD w/operating system
Primary slave = DVD-ROM
Secondary master = DVD burner
Secondary slave = 2nd HDD

I really don't see the point in having multiple optical drives anymore. The tiny tiny difference in speeds is negligible, but to each their own.

The only reason for it now-a-days is for multiple games, or to save wear and tear on your burner.

It's all good, I was just poking fun at the question. I'm sure you knew why I did, but you have a valid reason as to why you don't need 'em anymore. I guess it's more the lazy factor with having 2 optical drives so I can put the new media and source media in and forget it until it's done. The programs I use, temporarily store the data on the HDD and then burn it.

Regarding noise from the Raptor... I know exactly what noisy hard drives sound like! My server has three 10,000 RPM SCSI drives, and man, they sound like a jet engine when starting up and running. I'll probably just ditch it and get another one or three 500GB 7200.11 Seagate drive(s).

Hopefully I made the right choice w/ the optical drives. They're SATA, so I don't see a problem there... unless I didn't do my homework well enough?


My BIG question, Vista 64-bit or 32-bit? I'm guessing I'd be better off doing 64-bit for several reasons, and if I have any problems I can install my 32-bit XP on a different drive.

I have discovered those Raptors can be quietened down.
After installing mine in the CM Stacker 830 case, they are really unnoticeable.

If you don't use it ... PM me if you wanna sell it.

I've never used my opticals on separate channels? My old machine was master/slave hard drives on the primary, master/slave DVD drivers on the secondary. Behemoth is running hard drives from SATA, and my opticals are master/slave on the IDE connector.

Edit: he said his opticals are SATA, so never mind.

Well, I finally got most of my parts and built the system! While I wait on my 750w PSU to arrive, I found an old 680w PSU laying around. Yeah, why not use it? Because it's old and not mine!

I haven't had much time to play with it yet, but I installed Crysis and putzed around with that for a bit. Man, amazing! I had it set to 1280x1024 w/ the settings on the highest, and it still plays decent. I had to put all the settings to just "high" because it was unbearable in some scenes. I didn't know the console commands to check out my FPS, but I'm sure there are numbers out there already. I'm in the process of installing all of my games yet, and I wouldn't mind downloading Futuremark.

I also was going to use my Raptor to have Vista on it only, but yea... SMART said the drive sucks and it doesn't load. I rebooted the machine a couple times and heard wonderful clicking. It's amazing how a brand new drive that sat around for a year doesn't work. Thankfully it is still under warranty!


I can't wait to get this puppy hooked up to my 42" LCD and get off of this old 19" CRT!


More to come as soon as I get a chance to sit down!