Computer Upgrades!

[yacob.naif 10+ year member]

Been spending a lot of time on a computer forum lately, piecing together info for upgrading my computer. I was trying to decide whether i was going to get new computer monitors, or a new HDTV, but HDTV's keep getting cheaper, and better, and i want to wait a year or two until the 1080P DLP's become more affordable, so i decided to deck out the rig.

I'm excited!

First computer overhaul since i bought it in November, 2004!

It's an HPm1090n desktop, with a 3.6ghz p4, an upgraded 500w p/s, and 1 gig of ram.

Had two nice plextor 16x drives, that both died on me, so now it's time for an overhaul

Ordered the following for the rig:

- a 500GB seagate sataII drive

- 2 18x samsung dvd-r SATA drives

- a 4-hard drive mount (3 5.25" bays to 4 3.5" bay converter) with fan

- an additional ATI x1300 PCI card with two DVI outputs

- 3 sata/power cords

- 3 dvi cords

- 3 new sceptre 20.1" widescreen monitors (300 candlepower, 1000:1 contrast, 1680x1050 res., DVI inputs, 5ms reponse)

Now all i need is a stand for the 3 monitors. The only specs i could find on the monitor gave the dimensions including the stand, i could not find a measurement for the depth of the screen without the stand, so i need to wait and measure them when they get here to make sure they'll fit on the ergotron stand i want.

How do you guys think i did?

I realize the PCI video card is kind of a joke, but my mobo only has 1 pci-e port, and the only quad-monitor pci-e cards i could find had no 3d acceleration, and cost $400 and up.

And some of you will combat my buying SATA optical drives, but i wanted them for certain copy-protections, that otherwise require you to open the case, and unplug your ATA drives I'm sure some of you feel me there.

So OTHER than that, i'd love comments.

Click to read more...

 

[yacob.naif 10+ year member]

ps. that was copied and pasted from my thread on the computer forum, hence the defending of my SATA dvd drives, and my unnatural use of 'love' when asking for comments.

If i were here, i'd say, tell me what you ****ing think.

But most of the people on the computer forum are foreign, and would have no idea wtf i was talking about //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[dewitt88 10+ year member]

Not flaming just curious...Why such a big hd? ****? (Joke) I like ATA myself. I think I can find you better on the card I will look. You need DVI or VGA? LMK I can def help ya out bro!

 

[yacob.naif 10+ year member]

well, SATA's 300MB per second, which is **** fast, which is ideal for a hard drive.

also, SATA ports each have their own personal connection directly to the motherboard, and each have their own channel, as well, so there's no bus sharing and slowdown problems like you get when, say, trying to do on the fly burning between two drives on the same ATA channel, or having an ATA channel split between a hard drive and a cd-rom which causes all sorts of problems. All the drives can function full speed, at all times.

The big hard drive is just for backup stuff. I like to keep my primary drive clean, except for temporary files, and actual installed programs. A lot of PC games cannot be copied to a CD or DVD, as well, so you have to keep the image on your hard drive, and run the game with a drive-emulator like alcohol 120%, which is another reason for the big space.

Also, i do a lot of torrents/newsgroups, which as you know are 1000's of tiny 32kb-1mb files, which are later compiled into a finished file, and all those tiny files cause HUGE fragmentation. If i download a dvd image off of a torrent or newsgroup, i usually have problems with buffer underruns even when only burning at 8x, let alone faster, so if i use my primary drive as the temporary space when utorrent downloads all the fragments, and then transfers the finished torrent to the secondary hard drive, it will be linear, and defragmented.

Also, i'm anal retentive about keeping my computer running fast, so i like to do a full format/reinstall of my entire operating system every once in a while, and until now, i was forced to back things up onto dvd's or cd's, which is time consuming and inconvenient, and now with a huge hard drive, i'll be able to keep all my videos/music on the second hard drive, while i defragment, and reinstall windows on my primary drive.

Also, the 500GB drive was only $139. You gonna tell me you couldn't find SOME use for that much space for that price? That's the price of a 120GB at best buy //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

And the PCI video card is for my 2nd and 3rd monitor.

I have a PCI-express ATI x1300PRO, but it only has one DVI port, and one VGA port, so with the additional card, i'll be able to have all 3 monitors hooked up to DVI ports, as well as having my primary monitor on it's own card, while the other two secondary monitors are hooked up to the PCI card, so i'll still be able to run a game in full speed on my primary monitor, without sacrificing the performance of any of the 3 screens.

 

[Calikid 5,000+ posts]

what computer forum did u post that??

 

[dewitt88 10+ year member]

Def sounds like you are heading in the right path. I am the same way when it comes to keep a clean system. Awesome price on the 500 GB Can't beat that, I would also go for that. As far as the third card situation I can kind of understand your logic but I don't need 3 screens. Well it sounds like it will be nice when you are done with it all.

 

[yacob.naif 10+ year member]

what computer forum did u post that??

Pm'ed you, i don't know if outside linking is allowed here.

 

[Calikid 5,000+ posts]

cool.