The New Goe-box

[enderzero]

Goemon and I built a pretty sweet system tonight. I'll save him the trouble of finding pics:

Sweet Coolermaster WaveMaster case w/ 400W Super Flower Power Supply (look at that fan!).






Bad Boy MSI 875P NeoFIS2R




P4 Prescott 3.0GHZ and Dual 512MB PC3200 dimms

Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB By PowerColor (400MHz/600MHz)




Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS bling-blingin Platinum




WD 160GB 8MB Cache HDD

Sony DRU530 8X +/- DVDRW




Pretty damn sweet system. I'm jealous.

Will post some lite benchmarks when we get the os installed.

[Goemon]

Thanks again for all the help holding the flashlight and the bucket of screws, ender

Mr. Goebox is now sitting in the corner of the room, mocking me with his brilliant facade and sexy lines. No OS indeed.

I'm now in the market for appropriate decals and vanity plates to really sex up this machine:

[R3C]

That should be lots of fun. Let us know when you're all set up. We'll have to organize a large online game or seven.

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

Go Goemon!

[Beeeph]

nice system! Leave it to ender to blow top dollar on brand names and looks.

Here are a few corners I would've cut that would have resulted in a faster system:

9600 Video Card: Save $50 and buy the 9500 pro, download and use the hacked Omega drivers to unlock 8 of the rendering pipelines and overclock the processor to a 9800 pro card. 9600 still ain't bad though...

Sound Card: Save over $50 and buy a Turtle beach 7.1 card, better and cheaper than creatives card.

CPU & Mobo: Save over $150 on the CPU and buy the 2.4C chip. Save $40 on the Mobo and buy the 865 version of the Neo. Put the two together and overclock it to a Dual DDR 3.7Ghz 800Mhz FSB machine. 3.0Ghz is still pretty fast though...

DVD Burner: Save at least $50 on a Polaroid 8X Dual format burner, sony costs too much.

Case and Fan: Save $100 and buy a standard case that no one will ever see. Save over $50 and buy a 300W PS that doesn't suck up as much electricity.

But the RAM is cool.

I'm just playin, I'm not knockin your system, it's pretty fuckin sweet! I'm just giving Ender a hard time.

[R3C]

... spare the expense on the video card... That's what I say. I'll overclock my CPU and RAM, but I'll take a high-end stock video card over a clocked up hack. The 9500 can really only be a 9700/Pro because it doesn't have the hardware pixel shader optimisations and cache that the 9800 Pro has. Subtle changes, but they do make a large difference in games that use PS.

That system is aesthetically pleasing, and there is a lot to be said for that.

I like the power supply I'm a big proponent of lights. Blinking LEDs everywhere imaginable is my motto. Even if you can't see them.

(On the other hand I have a standard ugly computer-cream InWin case)

I did swap out the LEDs with white and blue ones though.

The inside of my case looks cool enough to go into a clear case. I've got LEDs all over the place inside and nice round cables and all that. Nobody knows it looks all fancy like that though because they don't look inside I want to get the Corsair modules with the LED activity meters too. That way there would be even more lights inside that very few will ever see.

(I'm being completely serious.)

I like hidden lights.

[Beeeph]

You're right you little jerk, 9700 pro...still faster!

As far as the lights go, I suppose beauty lies within the eye of the beholder. You've all seen my case, or lack thereof, but the fucker pumps!

If I ever start a band, our name will be "The Fucker Pumps"

[R3C]

... do you play any form of instrument. I want to play keys for The Fucker Pumps.

You can see a couple LEDs if you look in the vent slots on the side of my case, but there are others that you can't. Someone needs to invent invisible LEDs. [TEE HEE HEE]

Hey, actually that would be pretty cool if you could project a light on to something of a given color, but couldn't see any sign of a light source. I call it the Photon Tosser. It tosses photons onto surfaces without you seeing them until they are hitting the surface.

Get the R and D boys to work.

[spidermonkey]

I don't care what anyone says. Four Vietnamese sandwiches for five dollars is still a good deal in my book.

[R3C]

... agree with that. Especially when they're that delicious. I want some more of them.

Hey, it's pretty warm outside right now. I wish I was out there.

[spidermonkey]

I went out there for a while to get some sandwiches and sake.
Now I'm back here eating them and drinking it.

[R3C]

This topic remind me of Globox from Rayman 2

[Goemon]

Hey, ender? It sounds like you ripped me off with your crap advice! Is that why you and that little sales guy were winking and giggling when I was at the register?!? And why were you two holding hands? Ai yai yai!

I was pretty bedazzled by all of the flashing LEDs myself. It really makes me consider getting a clear panel so everyone else can be equally bedazzled

Is it possible for me to cool the wires by encasing them in tubes filled with beer? 'cause I was thinking it would be pretty cool if I could put a little keg of beer inside derCoolerMeister, have the beer flow through the tubes (thereby cooling the system) and then exit through a spout just above the dvd/cup holder. Is this technically feasible? Come on, Science!

[Goemon]

You should try having some Monkey Wine with your sandwiches, Spidermonkey. It makes the crust go down much smoother.

And besides, check out those bongos!

[R3C]

Monkey wine!!!!

There's one flaw with the beer idea. The beer would start out cold from the cooled keg, but as it passes around all the hot components, the bi-product would be warm beer being expelled. There's also the problem of flow control. It would have to loop back in through the keg if it wasn't being used at the time from the tap on the front. I suppose a simple valve would handle that though. If you stuck a peltier cooler to the keg though, it might make it cold enough so that it was still cold when it reached the tap. Though if your thermostat broke, the beer would freeze, and the keg would expode all over your new bits and pieces. You don't want frozen beer on your new bits and pieces.

That reminds me...

[R3C]

I've figured it out. It is completely possible. You simply need two beer lines. One is pumped to the tap, the other circulates beer, which also keeps it running through the cooling keg. If you have two redundant pumps, that may be good enough to make sure no explosions occur. Then you could just run the peltier cooler on full with no thermostat. It would have to be connected to the power switch, so the cooler didn't run when the computer was off though, or the keg, and all the beer in the pipes would freeze. (That was an excellent example of a runon sentence. It tires my brain to read it.)

Or you could have a liquid cooling system, that also cooled a keg, and then you'd just need a tap, but that's not nearly as cool as circulating beer.

[mistasparkle*]

HAW flakes! HAW flakes! HAW flakes!

...there, I said it.

[mistasparkle*]

Sweet system g-mon..... I dig TEH COOLERMASTAR!

Gonna have to come by and hook up the g-box with some games and things...

I see some excellent multiplayer games going down in the near future...
I wonder what kind of speed we would get in games with seattle monkeys?

[enderzero]

I have been wondering that as well. We certainly have no bandwidth issues over here, but broadband in america is still not so broadband. And if someone has to host the server as well it may create some serious lag. We should experiment for sure though.

Beeeph, you little bitch. Is that what your little buddies at CompUSA recommended for the system?

All of those options were considered, except the sound card. We knew from the beginning we were going with an Audigy2. The platinum decision was executive, but I made no protests.

9500? bleh!... We got the 9600 Pro 256MB for $110. Beat that. Plus the 9500 is pretty much unavailable these days in Japan stores. We talked about goin with the 9800 but realized it was a place we could save money because $200 for the extra pipelines and a faster card was not going to be worth it for what goemon is mainly gonna be doing. The 9600 is a sweet card. It surely won't dissapoint.

MSI 875/3.0 Prescott was too sweet to pass up. We weren't goin for the budget route. We wanted a system that was gonna be rockin for a good while. Have fun with your overclocking butI left that behind with my P2 233. No need to put a lot of stress on someone elses system. Stability is way more important.

The Sony was the cheapest dual format 8X burner on the shelf at $135 and it is unarguably a sweet burner.

Case...This was over both of our heads. But maybe the coolest case I have ever seen.

[mistasparkle*]

did u guys come across these new G5-ppoi cases?

[spidermonkey]

Any case with a vent on top that allows you to try to make a raffle machine out of a cd spindle cover and some torn up paper, is good in my opinion. But it helps a lot if that case happens to belong to Ryland.

[enderzero]

Saw the G5 knock off and didn't like it any better than I like the G5. The wavemaster does have a vent on top - but it can be converted (and has) into an I/O panel.

[Goemon]

for what goemon is mainly gonna be doing

So far, that consists of using the USB port door on the top of the case as a catapult for my army men. It's spring loaded and ready for action. Some of my men have cleared the end of the HerrCoolerMeister already. It blows the doors off of Truck Dismount.

I'll try to get some video of that and the flashing LEDs of da innards.

I'm still running some other tests though like:
1. Does it float in the bathtub?
2. Can I get the front door to automatically open if I install The Clapper?
3. I need to try out J3RK's beer idea! The thing'll look like a Heineken Flux Capacitator.

[spidermonkey]

None of the monkeys on my monkey wine display {courtesy of J3rk (courtesy of F.G. Meyer)} have bongos, just lots of wine and one maracca.

[McNevin]

I have the sony dvd writer, and it aint no damn polaroid.

i would never buy polaroid anything, i know my dvd rom was more expensive then all the other brands, but i wanted it anyway.

I been drooling over the sony since it was the first to support both formats. ive waited this long, and im not going to settle.

anyway i heard that xbox iso are written backward, and the sony is the best at doing that.

ok im done.

[Beeeph]

i know my dvd rom was more expensive then all the other brands, but i wanted it anyway.

Nice Argument!

Is that what your little buddies at CompUSA recommended for the system?

Nice Comeback!

[Goemon]

ender: Despite my mail to the contrary, teh Goebox is still suffering from teh sickness. It was running fine for the past day while the missus was using it; however, last night it froze up again and wouldn't re-boot, with no post, no vid, no indicative sounds at all (other than the fan running and the MSI mobo lights bedazzling away). I tried disconnecting/reconnecting the HDD and the power and that got it to work...once. Then the same freeze-up problem happened again. Then nothing (even after doing the same disconnect/reconnects).

Finally, I was able to get it to post to the display with a message reading, "DRAM timing is too tightly so reload timing". But no WindowsXP or any such thing; it just went no-vid again with seemingly no signal going to the display. Searched around a bit on the MSI forums and elsewhere and found some advice here, here and a few other places (in various languages except Japanese).

Anyway, just wanted to give you an update since I have some more info now. I'll try the advice I found and see how that works. Strange thing was that everything was running fine for a day for the missus, but the problem occurred when I switched to my profile in XP last night. Maybe just a coincidence? I'll post again when it gets working. If you (or any other monkeys) have any other advice, I'd appreciate hearing it. Thanks for the advice you already gave me.

[enderzero]

Sounds like a beeeyatch of a problem. System is not posting most of the time but if you wiggle around the HDD power connector, sometimes it will boot. hmmmm... Any ideas here?

Try unplugging the hard drive from both the power and IDE and see if the PC will post. If you can get it to reliably boot to a "no boot device" error than you know the problem is the hdd (or mayyybe the hdd controller on the MB). This however seems unlikely since it would be very rare for a problematic hdd to stop a pc from posting. Regardless, this will quickly and concretely eliminate the hdd/OS/SW from the t-shooting process if it still has probs with the hdd unplugged.

RAM... "DRAM timing is too tightly" ?? uhhh... If you have two sticks of ram you could pull one out, swap, etc... but it seems unlikely.

It seem more likely that there is a problem with the Mutherboard.

Only other likely option would be some sort of power supply issue. Try unplugging the drives and see if more power can get to you devices and stop the prob... but that is again unlikely.

What do the other monkeys have to say?

[Goemon]

Thanks again for the ideas. From the other info I could find online, it does indeed seem to be a muther problem. I've found suggestions to reconfigure the BIOS settings for the RAM clocking which is supposed to solve the problem.

I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'll study on the support forums I found and the info that came with the mobo.

[enderzero]

Only problem with that solution is that it has been working fine for 18 months. Likely a HW malfunkshun if it just started happenin.