New gaming rig - I has happy :)

CTXMedia

CTXMedia

Well-known member
My 5 year old gaming PC gave up the ghost last weekend, so I decided to spoil myself.

I fired-up the laptop, hopped onto eBuyer.com, and bought these:
+ 24" ASUS monitor ...
smile.png


Built it yesterday afternoon, took it home last night, installed Win 7 (x64) and all the latest drivers ... then fired-up COD Black Ops to see how it looked.

I could only get 30-40 fps on my old PC @ 1024x768 res. with all the textures turned down and x2 AA, so was curious as to how fast and far I could push the new rig.

I decided to start at the top and work my way down. I set x8 AA, textures to "extra" enabled colour shading, shadows, bullet holes, etc. and put the res. to the maximum the monitor would support - 1920×1080.

UN-FRICKIN-BELIEVEABLE!!!!!! 90+ fps without any additional overclocking on the machine. WOW!!!! Textures are amazing, no lag whatsoever, no artifacts, no glitches, nothing but instant response at full res and revs ... YESSSSS!!!!!!

Just out of curiosity I OC'd the card some more with EVGA Precision to see if the framerate increased, but it appears to be max'd-out already out-of-the box, and even after three hours of playing the fans on the GTX 460 never rose above the 40% default ... RESPECT!!!!

I'd originally planned to go with the Palit 460 (my previous Palit card ran VERY fast), but with a single fan it was going to be v.noisy and I didn't want it cooking itself out of business one month outside of the warranty!!

The new case, has four fans (including a 200mm one in the top) - combined with the twin fans of the 460 and the massive fan on the ENORMOUS CPU cooler, it runs very cool and very quiet (which is good, because the PC lives in our bedroom and Mrs. Geeks is usually trying to get to sleep whilst I'm saving the world ... lol).

I'm really pleased with it (can you tell
biggrin.png
) and just wanted to share my happiness with people who might understand what a joy it is to use a fast, impressive, kick ass bit of kit. (Mrs. Geeks just doens't "get" IT at all ...).

... and that's all I have to say about that.

Cheers,
Shaun :D
 
Nice :)

I am waiting for Ivy Bridge. I already own 5850 so my next update would be bigger. Do you use SSD or HD in RAID?

What's your ingame name in Black Ops? I play it on mostly every alternate days or when I am free :P
 
Nice new rig :) I just built a new one a back in June and was extremely happy with it :).

hellreturn/geeks I'm also on black ops, my group owns 3 servers from TDM / HC TDM / FFA :) if you guys ever wanted to game. PC ME :)
 
Enjoy.

I upgraded my PC just over a year ago as it was on its last legs and I needed to do something before I was unable to even get online and order some new parts :D

Intel i7 O/C'ed with 6GB RAM and all the appropriate bits & pieces.
Like the OP, the cooler is bigger than everything else put together, but it needs to be as it easily hits 40 degrees in the lounge during the summer.
 
Brogan said:
... but it needs to be as it easily hits 40 degrees in the lounge during the summer.
Click to expand...

Ah, yes, I hadn't thought about that - should have enough fans to cover it though :)

hellreturn said:
Do you use SSD or HD in RAID?
Click to expand...

1TB HDD, but I'm taking a 64GB SSD home at the weekend to trial. Ironically, the loudest noise in the new rig is the ticking of the HDD being accessed, so I'm hoping to get Black Ops on the SSD to see if it's quicker and quieter. (Assuming that's the way to go about it?).

hellreturn said:
What's your ingame name in Black Ops? I play it on mostly every alternate days or when I am free :p
Click to expand...

HarrisTweed :)

Cheers,
Shaun :D
 
I'm still using a 6 year old amd desktop with 1 gig of ram, g-force 3. I'm also looking to upgrade this summer.

If you don't mind me asking how much did that setup cost you?
 
physicspirate said:
Looks pretty sweet. Have you ever tried liquid cooling?
Click to expand...

I did toy with the idea, especially as it's located in the bedroom, but didn't want to spend the extra just at the moment. There's plenty of room in the case for it though, so I may "upgrade" later on. :)

Cheers,
Shaun :D
 
Russ said:
Nice new rig :) I just built a new one a back in June and was extremely happy with it :).
hellreturn/geeks I'm also on black ops, my group owns 3 servers from TDM / HC TDM / FFA :) if you guys ever wanted to game. PC ME :)
Click to expand...

Sure, anytime. Please, PM me your server IP or website and I will visit.

@Geeks I think with SSD your game loading will be much faster and yes noise will be gone. I practically use SSD for OS and HD for storage and software installations.
 
hellreturn said:
Sure, anytime. Please, PM me your server IP or website and I will visit.

@Geeks I think with SSD your game loading will be much faster and yes noise will be gone. I practically use SSD for OS and HD for storage and software installations.
Click to expand...

SSDs make next to no difference to load times in most games (at least in my experience, with a 64GB Crucial C300). However for loading Windows and running Steam (and other applications) from, SSDs provide a vast improvement.
 
Nice PC apart from the graphics card....i'm not a fan of geforce since my last one set on fire due to a bad fan.
 
Darkimmortal said:
SSDs make next to no difference to load times in most games (at least in my experience, with a 64GB Crucial C300). However for loading Windows and running Steam (and other applications) from, SSDs provide a vast improvement.
Click to expand...

It should AFAIK. In W:ET and COD4, when you start game, it reads from HD all the time. In W:ET, on each map start, it loads map from HD into memory or at least it reads from HD. I assume it would be same in all Quake3 based games. I will do some testing with BC2 and Black Ops tonight.
 
Top Bottom