Your Dream/Ultimate PC?

superscaper

Leopard wrote: »

It's wiser to surf the wave behind and modify one's strategy when one's seen what results in a wipeout. :cool:

I want to be very high end but not right at the front finding the bugs for people to fix. Ultimately defeats the purpose as far as I'm concerned to have extremely expensive hardware that doesn't actually work!! And the trends of course as your metaphor indicates. No point going for some brand new high end socket, for example, brought out almost as an experiment and then decided by Intel/AMD's marketing it's no longer viable to be developed further. You'd then be stuck with changing motherboard AGAIN! Kind of hypothetical example but I suppose it lends itself to why I'm not too eager on the Intel Skulltrail chipset. All just a bit too "proprietary" if you know what I mean.

[Deleted User]

Leopard wrote: »

It's wiser to surf the wave behind and modify one's strategy when one's seen what results in a wipeout. :cool:

I usually just wait until others find out how much extra something can be overclocked before I make my purchases, being stock is no fun

tomsolomon

2 to 3 year old technology is usually a good bet, it usually been well bench tested, and will last a good five years before you need to look at buying a new system. The prices seem to stabilize around that age aswell so you can pick up some realy good bargains.......

Leopard

be_alright wrote: »

I usually just wait until others find out how much extra something can be overclocked before I make my purchases, being stock is no fun

Sometimes it's wiser to under-clock.

In 2001, I bought an Apple Mac G4 Cube. (I've got a lot of Macs. )

Two years later, I upgraded it from its stock 450 MHz CPU to 1.2 GHz (and its hard drive from the original 40 GB, 5400 rpm to a 120 GB, 7200 rpm, while I had the thing in bits - not a task lightly undertaken with a Cube). Also maxxed its RAM (to 1.5 GB).

That all generated more heat, but the CPU upgrade came with an almost silent fan.

So far, so good - just.

But I also wanted to upgrade its graphics card. The most elegant (if expensive) solution, at least at that time, was to put in a dedicated Apple GeForce 3, pulled from a new Quicksilver G4 Power Mac. That was the only 64 GB graphics card that could slot straight in.

Now, those do generate heat. :eek:

So, I bought one from an Apple techie in America who under-clocked it by 15% for me. That tamed its heat production significantly. Usefully this only reduced 2-D graphics speed by 2% or 3%: it was 3-D graphics that took the full 15% loss.

But the card was so greatly more powerful than the original that (for my use) it was a huge improvement and more than adequate.

The Cube world is full of stories of woe from people who put unmodified GF3 cards into Cubes and fried them both, after a few months of use.

Whereas, five years on, my own, 1.2 GHz, Cube with its 15% under-clocked GF3 graphics card still runs happily (on the current Mac OS 10.5.4, no less!) and supports an Apple 23" HD cinema display. It's not my main machine any more, of course - I have a couple of Intel MacBook Pros for when I need to kick serious butt - but I am very fond of it and still use it for a lot of things that are not demanding of raw power.

I'm writing this on it now.

[Deleted User]

You shouldn't attempt overclocking unless you have a good cooling system in your case and you bother to replace stock coolers with something more effective.

My graphics cards were torn apart and I replaced the stock heatsinks and fitted a good aftermarket cooler that has actually taken the temperatures well below what the stock coolers were doing by 15 degrees and that's overclocked to just the right side of stability.

With the graphics cards I've got the gpu cores at 125mhz more than stock and the memory up about 200mhz.

I could only clock my Q6600 up to 3.3ghz, because at 3.4ghz it was bailing.

My PC is far beyond quiet at load, but it's ok and good clocked products attract a decent price on ebay when you come to get rid of them. The fans in my case can shift 88CFM @ 2200rpm, but connecting them to a controller means when I'm just using my pc for nothing intensive I can roll the voltage back and slow them right down.

tomsolomon

Ive had an Athlon xp 2400 running stable with a 333FSB, water cooled.................:D Very good CPU for overclocking...

DatabaseError

i generally agree with be_alright, if you can get 20-30% extra performance for no money...

Leopard

But what on earth are you using all this computer power for, B_A?

Are you running a strategic missile defence system in your back bedroom?

Or do you just get a buzz from composing your abusive postings on something that glows in the dark and heats your whole house?

banger9365

i have a few questions for you are you going to SLI the gpu cards ???
if not why a 790i why not a x48 better with one card (DFI)
are you going for nvidia cards or the new ati ones that are just round the corner 4870x2

iviv

Indeed, if you want high-end graphics, then avoid Nvidia for the moment. Sure, the 280 is currently the most powerful graphics card out there. However, two ATI 4850s in crossfire will easily outperform it, and they would actually be cheaper than just one 280. And the 4870 is even better.

Nvidia have always made powerful cards at the top of the price range, ATI have just completely undermined this with powerful cards at mid-range prices.

As for my PC, its currently an E6600 (Overclocked to 3.4Ghz), 4Gb ram, X1950XT graphics (Planning to upgrade to a 4870 soon), and too many hard drives