Ordered Some New "Stuff" - Updated with Pictures!

[Mark H]

I just bought some local items and placed an order into Newegg for some stuff that I will use to build the digital imaging system that planned for the last year. I got my wife's blessing and went to work.  ;D

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard.
AMD 64 3500+ Athlon 64 939 Pin processor (Retail)
2 Gigs Crucial PC3200 Ram (sorry forgot to use Poaster's link  :( )

eVGA GeForce 6800 video card (locally bought)

1.44MB floppy

MSI 16x DVD Rom
Plextor PX-716A DVD?RW

Western Digital 74 gig Raptor drive (SATA)
Seagate 80 gig 7200.7 drive (SATA)
2 Seagate 120 gig 7200.7 drives (IDE) (locally bought for $49 each @ Best Buy)

Keyboard
Trackball
2 channel speakers (locally bought)

Win XP Pro
Photoshop CS upgrade (I currently have Photoshop 6.0)

Lian-Li PC-6077 black case w/window

Antec NeoPower 480 PSU (w/free sleeving I won from systemcooling.com)
APC battery backup (locally bought)

NEC 22" FP2141SB-BK CRT (for digital image in Photoshop CS)
Sony 19" LCD (for Photoshop CS tools) (locally bought)

Once I receive everything and start assembling, I will try to get some pictures to poast.

[Buffalo2102]

I just upgraded my system with the same MSI motherboard and a AMD 64 3000+ (S754).

Install was a dream and have had no problems since.

Good luck with it!

[pat]

Very nice, have fun with that.
What camera/s do you use?

[Mark H]

Very nice, have fun with that.
What camera/s do you use?

I'm have all Nikon equipment, so I will be getting a Nikon D2H or D70 and using them with my current line of lenses. I may also get a film scanner to scan slides and negatives I take with my two Nikon film cameras.

[Mark H]

It lives! I will shoot some pictures to post one of these days.

I am typing this message on the new PC.

Mark H

[Whizbang]

OOOeee.   :D

[Internet Addict]

Cant wait to see the pictures

[Mark H]

Here is the enclosure for the external hard drive (200 GB Seagate) I put together:



Here is the overall computer with the power on and two screensavers running. The external hard drive is behind the LCD monitor. You can see the laser printer on the left, which is networked with this PC and our other PC (not pictured):



Here is a wide angle shot of the overall system with the newly installed keyboard drawer I placed under the table:



Here is another angle of the overall setup (note the Epson scanner in the lower right):



Here is the front of the PC. Note the multicard reader above the floppy and the two optical drive stealth covers. The case is a black Lian-Li PC-6077 case with an extra hard drive cage installed:



Here is the back of the PC. Note the absence of a fan on the back of the PSU. The PSU has one 120 mm fan on the underside of it, which allows it to cool better and run quiet:



Here is a view of the side window with one of the bose speakers to the lower left. Note the two hard drive cages, each with two hard drives and a filtered 80 mm Panaflo fan. The lower cage has a Western Digital 74 GB Raptor SATA drive and an Seagate 80 GB SATA drive (SATA cables are the blue one in the lower part of the window. The upper cage has two 120 GB Seagate IDE drives. You can see the 2 GB of Crucial Ballistix PC3200 RAM in the upper part of the window view (it is the gold items). The IDE cables make it look congested, but it really isn't too bad.:



Here you can see in the upper mid area the Crucial Ballistix RAM partly covered by the Thermalright XP-90 heat sink/Panaflo fan, which blows down on the RAM also.



Here is a different view of the inside of the PC. Note the 120 mm fan on the bottom of  the Antec Neopower 480 power supply. There are two 80 mm Panaflo fans in the back. You can also see the bottom side of the eVGA 6800 card as well as a some heat pipes on the lower part of the heat sink (look closely):



Both fans in the hard drive cages have a clear shot into the case with no obstructions. There is also an 80 mm Panaflow fan in the top, where a top blowhole exists (not shown in any pictures that I posted).

All the wire sleeving was done by Performance PCs due to a contest I won to get the free sleeving. The heat sink and Panaflo fans came from them as well as the side window. The rest of the items came from Newegg and a local supplier.

Mark H

[Whizbang]

Looks a bit risqu? for a professor.   ;D

[Internet Addict]

Awesome Pictures.

[Carskick]

That's a really nice setup. I like that PSU that is all wireframe on the back.

[scuzzy]

Darn nice, Mark. The case is beautiful.

[Mark H]

Darn nice, Mark. The case is beautiful.

I highly recommend Lian-Li cases after putting this one together. Antec cases are like a good Ford/Chevy as they get the job done well, but Lian-Li cases are the Ferrari's of the PC world.

[slaxorz]

Well my system now looks ugly :'(. Looks awesome i think that must have cost you a pretty penny.

[Igloo]

i really need tom get my pics up.... but they are over 1 mb each, and i dont know where to upload them too.... :(

any body know a good place?

nice case, :D

*hopes to either a) get another monitor
b) build a new fx 53/55 pc in 2 months ;D

i hope to work aboput 2 moths, and with some savings i have at the moment, build a top of the range style alienware, but for half the price *goes off moaning how expensive they make them, and how people r gettting ripped off*

Igloo

[Mark H]

i really need tom get my pics up.... but they are over 1 mb each, and i dont know where to upload them too.... :(

any body know a good place?

I used www.photobucket.com for my image hosting. If you plan to link them to this site, you will need to cut the size of the images down to no larger than 640 x 480 pixels and also downgrade the file size as well. My pictures are only a few Kb in size. If you put up huge file sized pictures, it will cause people with dial-up modems to have large delays in loading the page.

As to a processor, I selected an AMD 64 3500+ for $280 US as opposed to the FX55 for close to $1,000 US. The performance increase is not that large to justify the huge expense. In time the FX55 chip will decrease in price and then an upgrade can be done with just the processor. That is the way I will handle it. Just something to think about.

[Carskick]

One thing in the computer world, if you are not extremly wealthy, never buy the very latest. The price will likely half in months. For example, the FX-51 started out at about $1000 about a year ago. It is now only $400.

[trav]

Wow! Very nice Mark!  


I like your case!

[Igloo]

how should i resize the pictures properly?

i dont have anything fancy to do it with, just plain old paint,  :-[

Igloo

[Neon]

I love it! Awesome setup, especially lovely Lian Li case, nice keyboard tray

2GB of RAM - wow

How do you like the XP-90? I've been looking for an excuse to get one of Thermalright's latest - just don't have anything that's running hot enough to justify it at the moment. ;) Maybe in the summer...

plus a little home networking - very nice job, Mark

[Mark H]

The XP-90 is great! It is a light weight heat sink and is high enough to clear the RAM that is installed. There is no way an XP-120 would fit this motherboard. I think the XP-90 is a better buy. Check the price on www.performance-pcs.com as it beats Newegg's price by quite a bit.

It was very easy to install as I didn't have to press hard to install it. You unscrew the original RM and then install the Thermalright RM onto the stock backplate, which is nice. The heat sink has four retension hooks that connect to the loops on their RM. Very easy to connect.

With its extension over my RAM, the 92 mm Panaflow fan helps cool the RAM some also. Some motherboards would be oriented in such a way the the fan could cool some of the other areas of the motherboard.

It is very quiet when paired with a 92 mm Medium flow Panaflo fan that is attached to the 3 pin fan connector. I got the fan from Performance PCs as well.

For the thermal interface, I used Arctic Silver 5, which works very well as well. A little bit goes a long way with this stuff. The smallest tube could easily handle more than a dozen builds.

Mark H

[Mark H]

After rerouting the cables some, the cables look much better (no new pictures though). The cables looked more cluttered than they really were in the above pictures, because I use a short telephoto lens (Nikon 105/2.8 AF micro) when taking the picture, which compresses distances.