Brag About Your Computer

[VidenTheColdOne]

Go ahead, I'll start.

I am the super proud parent of a computer i built myself (with some help from my brother)

I picked the components by hand, and i find myself still adding onto it's, already massive capacity.

The Specs:

CPU: Intel Pentium D 3.34GHZ Dual Core LGA 775

Why: I chose this instead of some of the Core 2 Duo options out there for 2 reasons. I liked the high operating frequency since i do a lot of gaming, and secondly, i will admit, it was cheaper at the time. This was upgraded from the original Intel Celeron D 3.3ghz Dual Core.

MOBO: I started out with a 775 Dual VSTA board, but after trying to rig a power supply, i blew out some of the circuits, and had to replace it with an NForce 570 SLIT-A. This gave me options with 4 DDR2 memory slots (total capable of 16gb) SATA II, gb lan, and a host of other features my board lacked, so it would have been replaced sooner or later (sooner because i blew up the old one lowl)

Why: As i said, i blew out my old one, and it came with better options than my old one.

RAM: I had to give up my old DDR ram for some newer DDR2, before i had 2x512mb sticks of DDR, and switched to 2 sticks of 1gb DDR2 ram. I have another 2gb stick on the way.

Why: I need a ton of ram since i run quite a few background programs, and i play online games quite a bit. 4gb may seem a bit much, but i assure you, i will use every last bit.

HDD: So far i have 2x250 GB SATA Hard drives. I also have another 500gb coming since i have almost completely run out of storage space

Why: Coming close to a terrabyte of information is kinda scary when looking at a home desktop, but i have a lot of movies, games, and whatnot, so i need all the space i can get. HD's are getting much cheaper, so its getting more common to store more data.

Optical Storage: I have 1 CD-R, CD-RW drive, and also a DVD-R,RW Lightscribe drive

Why: I burn a lot of movies, and it was pretty cheap, and also came with lightscribe (which i never actually used yet, lowl) Also burn a lot of applications to CD's.

Audio: Realtek HD Audio

Why: Came with the mobo

GPU: EVGA GeForce 7950 GT KO Superclocked w/ 512mb DDR2 Ram

Why: This is why i had to boost my power supply, and ended up frying my mobo. I play a lot of high end games, and though this isn't quite as good as the 8000 series, it has a lot to offer as it is factory over clocked.

PSU: Vortec 650 W

Why: MORE POWER!! I added so many new components all at once, my old one couldn't take it (i think it was 450W)

Cooling: Good old, standard fans. I started off with a liquid cooling system, but for some reason it never worked properly. My computer would often overheat, and shut down. I removed it and replaced it with the stock fan and heatsink that came with the CPU, and that fixed it. I also have 4 90mm fans, 1 in back, 2 in the side, and one up top, along with a 120mm fan in the front, not to mention the fans on the CPU, Hard-drive cooling rack, and GPU.

Why: Fans work well enough, i don't do any over-clocking, so my computer temp stays pretty stable.

OS: Windows XP Home SP3

Why: While i could change to Vista (which was not out when i began construction, though it is vista compatible) I play a lot of games, and vista requires too many resources, and has for too many bugs for me to be able to rely on it.

All in all, it works pretty well, though i still have some bugs from time to time. It plays games very well, and everyday applications, and web-browsing are ultra fast due to cable internet, and an upgrade to CAT6 cable.

If you are interested, here are some links to some photos i took. They aren't the best cuz i took them with my phone, lowl. If u have any questions let me know, other wise, brag away!


http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g7.../Photo0023.jpg
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g7.../Photo0021.jpg
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g7.../Photo0019.jpg
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g7.../Photo0018.jpg
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g7.../Photo0017.jpg
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g7.../Photo0013.jpg
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g7.../Photo0012.jpg

[Joe]

Here's the semi-sarcastic post:

I'm the proud parent of a nice black, Paperweight. It's an IBM Thinkpad 600X

CPU: Say hello to this blast from the past! It's a 400Mhz Pentium III! Yessiree, they don't make them like that anymore....they make them Better!

Hard Disk Drive. With the storage capacity of less than 2 DVD's this 10 gig storage block can hold a surprising amount, I currently have about a 1000 songs, three movies, and two episodes of south park, as well as several game soundtracks.

OS: "Wow, all that stuff, and XP to boot? How do you do it?" you might ask. The answer is, I DON'T!. I Use Xubuntu Linux as my OS of choice, though for the first 14 months I had this box, I ran XP SP2, with Windows Media Player 11 to boot.

RAM: This bad boy can easily overpower a.....microwave, or roadkill, whichever you prefer with it's whopping 256MB's! It's not upgradable either, so I'm stuck with a lap-warmer that surfs the net and plays music.

Video Card? There's not one! just a basic 8mb (if that) on-board card.

This laptop can access the net via a wireless card plugged into a special port. Also, the one USB port makes running a usb drive and a printer nearly impossible.


Yeah, my laptop crushes the oppistion in all fields, just because it's VINTAGE! (It's apporiximately nine years old, used to have Windows 98)

EDIT: I Almost forgot! There's this little problem with my built in CD-ROM (not R+RW, just ROM). It reads disks, when it feels like it....which is almost never. So it's not really a CD-ROM drive, more like a disk scratcher!

Regards,
Joesteel

[Furore]

Here's the semi-sarcastic post

Here's the three quarters sarcastic post...

This Compaq Presario SR5420AN comes with...

- An amazingly energy efficient (though otherwise fairly crappy) Sempron LE-1250 @ 2.2 GHz.
- A GeForce 6150SE which sadly runs pretty much all of my games quite well. I don't seem to get many new PC games these days... Oh and it's selling point is that it's energy efficient...
- Craptacular sound granted by the ALC 888 chipset.
- MCP61PM-HM motherboard. It does the job...
- A staggering(ly crap when running Windows Vista) 1gb of DDR2 SDRAM.
- A 160 GB SATA 3G hard drive. Not bad, not bad. (Not good neither, but it holds everything I need it too. )
- A 16X DVD(+/-)R/RW 12X RAM (+/-)R DL LightScribe SATA drive. It's really just a novelty. You burn the disc, flip it over and then burn a label on.
- And the usual crappy bells and whistles such as a card reader which goes where a floppy disk drive would have gone a decade ago.

I unashamedly say I mainly bought it as it was $500 and came with a free $350 widescreen LCD monitor.

[VidenTheColdOne]

lowl, i wasn't aware there were still old junky computers running. My desktop is my baby, but i do have a less than spectacular laptop.

Its a Compaq Presario M2000. Not a terrible laptop... 3 years ago. It has a 1.3Ghz Intel Celeron M CPU, 512mb ram, 40gb hard drive, onboard video, and audio. Dvd player, CD burner, Windows XP SP3.

It gets me around, good for surfing the net, and playing some older games. Gets me from point a to point b.

[Mr Spike]

Mine's from a few years ago as well.... upgraded it a bit myself (i'm into that kind of stuff).

CPU: Pentium 4 2.8GHz single core
RAM: 512Mb
Hard Drive: 37.5Gb, with external 500Gb ()
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT 256Mb (PCI only)
8x CD-ROM, CD-RW, CD-R, DVD-R, DVD-ROM
Windows XP

Currently looking at more RAM, better CPU and possibly new sound card.....

[Unknown Entity]

Here's the three quarters sarcastic post...

lol, try this on for size!

CPU: and CPU stands for?
RAM: yes, i feel like RAMming this proxie buster piece 'o *BEEP*
Hard Drive: 'My Computer' says 68.something GB...
Graphics Card: Don't care - gotta give it back to my school at some point anyways...

This shows just how much I know about it, lol! I DO know its a Dell Vostro thing, that looks quite... cool.

Viden, I LOVE the pics of your computer - that is one sexy computer if I ever saw one! (Great... now I go down in history books as the silly girl who described a computer as sexy... oh sh*t)

[VidenTheColdOne]

lowl, thanks. It looks pretty on the outside, but the inside is a mess. I have a ton of cables going in every direction, and i think i accidentally unplugged the fan in the top the last time I opened it up.

I built it in the hopes that i could run any/most programs, and or games without restriction, and so far i have not had any problems. The sad thing is, even now the componants i chose are becoming outdated, even though its only about a year old. Though i have continued to upgrade it. At some point i will need to buy a new video card, and even my processor is coming up short in some tasks.

[ultima_trev]

All I have now is a paperweight Dell Inspiron laptop, though I now have the money for a new rig. Not much I can say about the laptop:

• 1.67GHz Core 2 Duo Allendale
• 2GB 667MHz DDR2 memory
• Intel X3100 integrated GPU
• Acer 19" HD monitor, 1440*900 res (the 15.4" on the laptop is too small
• Razer Habu 2000dpi laser mouse
• Logitech Z-4 2.1 sound system
• Logitech G11 LED backlit keyboard

However, I have the money to splurge on some components, this is what I've decided on:

• 2.6GHz AMD Phenom X4 9950
• AMD 790GX mainboard
• 2GB Corsair Dominator PC8500 DDR2 memory at 1.06GHz
• ATI Radeon HD4870 GPU w/ 512MB 3.6GHz GDDR5 memory (maybe I'll drop in two for Crossfire)
• 128GB OCZ Solid State Drive

[darkViVi]

Gorath my homeboy?! yo black azz still trollin these cracka boards?

Yo fo real dis be da DX10 gaming shizzle this playa be playin on!

2,4GHz dual core (thats two processors each 2,4GHz)
2GB RAM
Nvidia 8600gt 512MB
440 GB storage
tri-monitor setup
Logitech LX710 wireless keyboard
Logitech MX 610 wireless smart mouse
Logitech 210 sound system
Logitech Driving Force Pro steeringwheel

[Sean]

Mine's been a work in progress, I'll start with the original system I bought off someone, and what it is now, which is technically a "new" system.

My brother's friend built computers as a hobby, and this one he had built on commission for someone from the parts she had bought and couldn't get right, but she wound up letting him have it since she decided to go through Dell. He lost his full time job and needed some money, so back in 2005 I gave him $700 for this system, since he was going to sell it to a computer store and they were only offering him $600.


ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
AMD Athlon 3200+ 2.0, he overclocked it to 2.4, I clocked it down to 2.2
2x nVidia 6600GT in SLI
Antec TRUE 550W PSU
1GB DDR RAM
XP Home
Asus aluminum case
120GB SATA HDD

I was going to a LAN party when I dropped the tower, and since it was aluminum it got the shit bent out of it, but all the components were fine, so I changed it to this steel tower I still use today. I later upgraded to an nVidia 8600GTS instead of the 2 6600s.

Then I replaced the motherboard, CPU, RAM, and PSU, and later upgraded the GPU again, when Age of Conan came out; I wasn't happy pushing 22FPS on medium settings. I'm currently sitting on...

AMD x2 Athlon dual core 6000+ 3.0GHz
ASUS M2N-32 SLI Deluxe
nVidia GeForce 9800GTX
OCZ 700W PSU
4 GB (4x1GB) Crucial Ballistix dual channel DDR2 RAM
Windows XP Pro
3 seperate HDDs at the moment, in the process of building a file server to remove 2 HDDs from my gaming system to free up air flow, cables, and energy pull.

Samsung 22" Widescreen LCD as my main monitor
HP 19" LCD as my secondary.

I literally cannot live w/o two monitors now, unless I'm on my laptop.

Can run WoW at 160+ FPS w/o VSync, but literally draws so fast it causes video lag and sometimes massive screen tearing, so I had to turn on VSync to keep it from happening.

I bought a new tower, HDD, and copy of XP Pro and rebuilt the "old" system (minus SLI, only one 6600) and gave it to my mom, since my brother fried the IDE Channel on her old, old Dell.

[VidenTheColdOne]

Sounds like a nice rig.

Unfortunatly my video card is obsolete. Luckily i don't have any problems, i can still play most games on high with little to no problems. I can play WoW fine, i don't have any problems.