computers...

[Burgerman]

I am a geek. I aleayds build my own computers, since3 you cant buy anything decent ready built. My overclocked Opteron 185 dual core processor and 4gb of the worlds best low latency RAM as well as my M/B are toast... RIP after 5 years non stop abuse at stupid speeds and temperatures. So I have not been able to post much for the last week.

But I am building a new baby... This one has 12GB of super fast 2000 mhz RAM in 6 sg sticks and is all matched to go in triple memory banks... Does anyone have a clue what I am on about? And intels fastest i7 chip. Well not the fastest they make but this 4 core (8 thread) CPU is running perfectly stable, water cooled as we speak... Only fired it up last night. And its a 3ghz chip already going at 4 with very good benchmarks. More to come. I have 7 1TB discs, but only a pair of old Nvidia 7800 graphics cards as I dont do games. Rips movies in about 1/4 the time my old opteron did. But heat is crazy. I had to fit water cooling. I have done that 13 years ago though including digging a hole in the garden!!! http://homepage.ntlworld.com/coolsites/ that was fun... This one is about 35 times faster though!!!

[JoeC]

I just built one with the i5-750, eight gigs of some kind of RAM, and a Radeon HD-5770 graphics card. Only a single Spinpoint F3 hard drive for now, but it's been working like a dream compared to the five year old laptop that I was on before.

I don't play many games either, but the reason I spent an extra $100 on the graphics card instead of putting it into more RAM or a faster CPU was to take advantage of the hardware acceleration available for video tasks. Resampling and converting a movie from a video camera from a multi-gigabyte file down to something less painful to upload for youtube is a great example. I use Cyberlink Powerdirector, and a task that would take a couple of hours on the laptop now takes just over half an hour on the new desktop. When I enable the hardware acceleration to put the load on my graphics card instead of the CPU, the job is done in under ten minutes! It also keeps my processor usage well below 50% while it's doing it. I made sure to get a large enough enclosure and large enough power supply to add a second graphics card later if I ever take on a project that needs to render a larger quantity of video with even more speed.

Probably my favorite part of the new PC I built is the monitor- http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Displays/productdetail.aspx?c=usl=en&cs=19&sku=320-9270 Compared to the laptop, or even most monitors I have seen, all of the photos I take look a lot better. It doesn't help me process them to look better on other people's lousy monitors, but it does help me enjoy looking at them! It also gives me a good idea of what it will look like if I send something to a printer!

[Thye Harleyman]

not a Geek..

home built computer by me, on air no overclocking as don't really beleive in it but can do it if needed.

from memory...

gigabyte top spec usb3 sata 3 mother board
intel i7 930
GTX480 graphics
2 1TB Sata 3 Hdd in Raid
6 GB tri channel matched extreme profiled memory
on air and cooooooollllll
2 x 24inch true HD monitors

performance.. not bad

[Thye Harleyman]

sorry about the spelling.. lol,

next upgrade is the intel 980 extreme and taking the memory to 24GB matched tri channel with extreme profile. I don't play games either

[JoeC]

So, what do you use yours for if you don't play games?

I do some CAD work at home occasionally, using Solidworks 20010, but that's not very taxing since I don't get to bring the company seat of the FEA simulation package home. I could also use it for generating CNC toolpaths some time, but I haven't done it yet. That's another task that really eats up your resources! Other than that, most of the time when I'm doing something that wouldn't work on a $200 refurbished netbook I am managing the photos I take, sorting through them and editing them. Less often I use Cyberlink Powerdirector to edit short video clips. I really don't do anything else that warrants something faster.

[Burgerman]

next upgrade is the intel 980 extreme

The 950 (which I am typing this on) is running at a 200 base clock (fsb) speed and is running at 4ghz... And will run 24/7 that way. It will actually run pretty stable at 4.2 as well. It was 1 third of the price of the one you want to upgrade to, and massively faster. And you already have one??? Confused!!!

[Burgerman]

What do I do?

Websites, photography and editing, rip movies to dvd daily, vid editing, aurocad, and I dont like waiting... No games. My work folder is 212gb. My photo folders are several terabytes and my backups are huge and go back about 17 years... And I like technology...

Waiting for a del 27 inch monitor, have had for 5 years a 24 inch samsung monitor that is basically a higher quality version of the dell truesharp 24 one for photo editing purposes. And always have the latest CPU/CHIPSET/extreme low latency memoty, etc... Inever had a computer with less than 8 hard discs fot 12 years.

I wast money on computers because the fastest ones are too damned slow. And once you understand the benefits of a good monitor/extreme memory/fast processors/overclocking/etc theres no way to settle for less, that the typical user does... It seems like their machines are in slow motion. And screens too small

[TwoTeasChris]

My photo folders are several terabytes and my backups are huge and go back about 17 years

I have >700Gb of data here backed up on to two other PCs. But being a bit paranoid I also backup online. (Mostly photos and videos inc. 4000 old photos and negatives scanned into the PC by hand! Took months. And all our old VHS camcorder stuff back to the 1980's.)

I have found SquirrelSave(!) to be the best for online backup so far. Fast and unlimited backups for £5 a month, and their servers are in the UK.
It would take you ages of course to get it all your stuff online.
(Carbonite have sneaky small print that throttles your uploading speed as you upload more data. btw)

[Thye Harleyman]

Just checked the comps hdd size, they are actually 2TB drives.. really shouldn't try to remember things like that when tierd!

what do I use it for? well just messing around really..

photo editing for my printing hobby, 16GB working file size is the norm for me on this.. storage of "clients" designs (stickers/vehicle graphics/fine art etc), vid editing and manipulation, website stuff (when I get the time), vehicle diagnostics. Looking at CNC control when I get around to it amongst other prat around jobs..

I have in total around 14 printers (can't be bothered to count them all..), smallest A4, largest 54inch.. what I see on screen Is what I get (WYSIWYG)

print capability? Gallery/museum grade Giclee fine art..

why do I do these things? Just because..

other hobby is anodising but that is laid to one side at the moment, as I got bored with it might restart that next year , got to get round to rebuilding the shovelhead that bit me as well

memory upgrade when it becomes available in the sticks I want, as is rare at the moment.. CPU when I can be arsed/fit it all in between the M.E. and life

[TwoTeasChris]

I'm going to lay my geek trump card.

I have run my main PC almost 24/7 to search for prime numbers of various kinds for over 5 years. (And other PCs part time.) Until recently 2 of top 20 world record twin primes were found by me. (Until last month I held the world record for the biggest twin prime not of the form k*2^n+-1.) And I have had 225 primes in the top-5000 during the last 5 years. http://primes.utm.edu/bios/page.php?id=738

(Or is it nerd.)

[Burgerman]

For amusement. My new PC has a radiator that looks like a heater matrix from a car. Its pre filled and sealed. You just bolt it on to the case/processor. It works unbelievably well. It knocked 32 degrees from the CPU. And allows my i7 950 processor to run at 4ghz and 60c and very quietly. Actually it runs at 4.4 but its at just 1.2225v at 4ghz. That makes iot much faster than any of the more expensive processors. Runs 8 instances of prime95 all nigh without a problem. See the radiator in the case at the rear / top.

[Burgerman]

The 120mm 2000 rpm fan is on the outside rear.

The memory is 12gb (two sets of these) http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =MY-279-CS and running at 2005... Complete with everything set to the lowest latency possible... Thats very fast memory.

[TwoTeasChris]

Stop it!
10) You shall not covet.

Did you get it all from overclockers?
Is it plumbed in to the hole in the ground!?

[Burgerman]

8 x 1 terabyte hard disks existing.
700 watt power supply existing.
DVD drive existing.
2x Geforce graphics cards existing (and another on the way from ebay cheap since it takes 3 in SLI form)
24 inch samsung Syncmaster monitor existing. But will be swapped for a 27 inch dell after xmas...
Motherboard and memory, and CPU from Overclockers.
Modem existing...
Printer and scanner and mouse and keyboard existing.
Case new, same place. And cooler.

[Thye Harleyman]

I bow to the super Geek! lol

[Thye Harleyman]

1kw power supply.. like to have headroom overkill I know, but that's the way I like it.
Coolermaster Cosmos Pure case..
extra fans and digital fan controler with temp displays
same memory and fan unit.. for now as waiting on larger sticks becoming more available

[Burgerman]

What sticks are you waiting for?

The 12gb and 6 slots run at 2000 mhz with that xms low latency stuff and with very fast timing without an issue if you choose the correct latency settings and voltages.

Why would you need more than 12gb? I had swap file "off" since 4gb and 5 years ago. And I do movie and huge photo editing with 4gb. Now 12! Quality is more important than quantity when its about memory or power supplies. Especially memory. Here is an interesting thought. All the 600, 700 etc power supplies are already overkill. How do I know? Have you felt the amount hot air coming from 1kw fan heater? Well its huge. All of that would be coming from the back of your pc if it really took 1000 watts. I suspect a couple of hundred to be closer to the real mark... I am tempted to max everything out and actually measure the real amps and volts on a power supply to see what ACTUAL watts it takes to run 3 graphics cards, 8 disks, 12gb mem, and a 4ghz clocked processor...

[TwoTeasChris]

Not sure we are talking about the same thing but iirc when I ran my overclocked core2 quad @ 3.1GHz running prime95 it pulled about 210 watts from the wall. (A psu rated at 85% efficiency, I think.)

What's that, 2p per hour, 50p a day. Not bad for a load of fun. (Excludes the monitor.)

[Burgerman]

About 120 watts for a big monitor all lit up white? But that doesent use the power supply. Hdisks dont use more than a few watts, so realistically you only need a 300 to 350 watt power supply.

[saintort]

[quote][I bow to the super Geek! lol/quote]

with enough money many people could have monster computers

i started my computer experience in 1965 with analog computers
and was laid off in 1992 after 25 years of operating portable processing centers with alll that entails and i dont mean pcs
oil exploration used to account for the majority of computing power till the military/gov got fully into it


but 12 gigs ram ..... im not sure that is enough
never enough ram
never enough disk space
never big enough speakers
never enough amps (in anything)

and last of all never enough money


bergerman is a shining example to all
a bit of gumption and a bit of effort and almost all is possible

[Thye Harleyman]

I get to have spare power available with the BeQuiet Dark, and I get to heat the office as well I do like to be enviromentally friendly after all

quality beats quantity every day, appart from in the case of laying down lead then the more bullets the better

[Burgerman]

Hyperthreading on, runs 8 copies of prime overnight on its 8 "cores", 12gb of super low latency Corsair Extreme Dominator GT memory (6 Sticks) running at 980mhz (1940mhz) 8, 9, 8, 20 and 1T and the processor at a lowish 1.33v and at 4500ghz +

That makes the new 1000uk pound "gulftown" 3.6 cpu look a lot sick! And it only has official support for half that memory speed too...

And I only just started trying to clock this system. Theres more to come. At least 4600 will be possible here I think... Maybe more. And this is with an over the counter "sealed" water cooling system. Thats a lot faster than anything official you can buy from a 200 uk pounds processor.

CPU and memory benchmarks are MILES ahead of anything I can find no matter how much you want to pay. Other than hugely overclocked systems...