Pretty geeky, even for here ;) But anybody into PC mods at all?

Mine isn't anything terribly special yet, aside from some cleaned up wiring and the lighting, and a scratched to shit window (case is about 3 years old).

AMD Semperon 2800+ o/c'd to 3000+ with a retail AMD heatsink
Gigabyte K8NS motherboard
1GB of PC3200 RAM
Radeon 9600
8x DVD+/-RW
12x DVD-ROM
120 + 60GB Seagate Barracuda HD's
D-Link 802.11b/g wireless lan card
Belkin Firewire card
3 Vantec UV reactive fans w/UV LEDs, 1 plain Sunon fan cooling the HD cage (all fans at 7 volts except for the CPU fan)
Antec TruePower 480W PSU
Chenming/Antec Dragon 601 case, blue power LED, white HDD access LED.
And some missing pci slot covers :(

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Just looking for opinions and suggestions on what to do next, the mod bug bit me again bad.

Thats pretty sick man. Im expecting Prof Chaos to chime in here with his wonderful machine. Im jealous of all your computers.

looks clean on the inside

The part you can see through the window is clean, yes...

Here it is in the middle of cleaning everything up - had all the PSU wires taped out of the way with masking tape while I cleaned out all the dust bunnies, dead bugs (yes, I found one in there.. ew), etc.

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Behind the motherboard tray is horrible though. I spilled a coke on it a couple of years ago (my dvd-rom is still stained from it), and didn't know that it leaked in through the right panel (still haven't cleaned that up). Plus all my wiring for the fans + lighting is severely ghetto rigged, tucked away back there. I do plan to get a baybus-style control for the fans, and clean up the wiring in general - but for now this works.

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^^ Ghetto

I'll get another shot later..

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samsung monitors, good choice

Just a quickie shot of my system. The 7 fan, 5 of whic hare LED, behemoth.

I recently purchased a Kenner Millenium Flacon and a MicroATX motherboard...I'll let you know how things go...

My old machine: (Sold it)

Abit NF7 Mobo
AMD Athlon XP-M 2500+ OC'd to 3200
512 Mushkin Basic Green RAM
Radeon 9800 Video Card. (AGP 8X)
40 gig HDD
X-Navigator case:



Current machine (Built in June 2005)



Abit AN8 "Fatal1ty" Mobo
AMD Athlon 64 3400
2 gig Corsair value RAM
nVidia 6800 GT video card
Dual 80-gig Western Digital SATA HDDs
DVD burner
ThermalTake Soprano Case.
Zalman copper heatsink + fan w/ blue LEDs

Pics of my Soprano build will come when I find them.

This thing is FAST, with a case you could hump. I was thinking about buying a new Asus Vento, but the last build really cleaned me out. Having dual monitors with this is really nice as well. Looks really great with the red lights on the Abit OTES system, and the monster blue Zalman running. The thing sounds like a vacuum when you start it up.

Nice setup, and I can promise you're gonna like the Corsair Value Select - I've got 1 gig of it now and it overclocks like a dream.

... cheap too.

Posted by The Bean is Grounded Nice setup, and I can promise you're gonna like the Corsair Value Select - I've got 1 gig of it now and it overclocks like a dream. ... cheap too.

But will it last 2 years?

Corsair is well known for using cheap-ass Infineon-on-3rd chips in many of their products - I only use, sell, or recommend ram from Kingston.

First time I've heard this (not doubting you - I haven't stayed up with hardware in ages). I've always heard Corsair was well regarded as being quality memory. Kingson is good stuff too, and I've got some Mushkin as well that's several years old... it even survived my dumbass forcing it in a slot backwards when I was in a hurry. Melted the slot and one contact off of the RAM, but it refuses to die (wtf???).

Ask me in about 1 year 10 months and I'll tell you though, assuming I haven't upgraded to something running DDR2 by then.

Posted by The Bean is Grounded I've always heard Corsair was well regarded as being quality memory.

According to what I've seen and read in the German Computer Technology magazine, Corsair's only usually regarded by their "leet factor" (by AOL-ish gaming people) and frequently use overclocked plain Infineon-on-third or cheaper Samsung chips...

Only their cheaper stuff (they don't do "cheap"), and that still doesn't mean a loss in performance, just in lifetime (I would expect 2-3 years for Corsair to start being finicky* vs 10+ years minimum for Kingston which would not only be cheaper but also be the same performance).

* Even just one tiny wrong bit at the end of the memory and you can no longer unzip most things, for example of a frequent symptom.

Pfft. My Friend has been runnning a Gig of Corsair Value ram (PC3200) in his OC'd AMD Athlon 2700 and Abit AN7 mobo. He's had it for two and a half years, and no problems. He's installed it in two other firends machines, and no problems.

According to what I've seen and read in the German Computer Technology magazine, Corsair's only usually regarded by their "leet factor" (by AOL-ish gaming people) and frequently use overclocked plain Infineon-on-third or cheaper Samsung chips...

I'd like to see some proof of the cheap infineon in Corsair. Do you have any URLs for that?

Corsair is not (At least in the US) considered some kind of n00b-1337 thing. People who are "Aol-ish" gamers are the kinds of people who can't be trusted to install their own PCI cards. AOL-ish gamers are the kind of people who think their new Dell Dimension 2400 is the shiz, and bitch continually in any kind of game that involves skill.

Mein two cents.

Ya know, I've had a lot ram go through my hands over the years and ya know what, either it works or it doesn't.

Now, I can understand Beryl's view on Corsair - I'm the same way with AMD - I lost a lot of money on them and I find their desire to rush a product to market a little unsettling. They were always good about RMA and returns but of all the CPU's that have ever gone through my hands there have been a lot fewer dead Intel chips - like 4 - Versus 3 lots of 10 that had a > 60% failure rate and we ended covering the cost of replacing them with comparable Intel's anyway.

Oh, and I'm not counting dead Intel CPU's that I'd shot, microwaved, burned, eletrocuted and so forth - they had only lived past their useful life spans (like 386 and 486 chips) - I'm not buying a $40 motherboard for a worthless CPU. Come to find out I've been a Mythbuster for years.

So, any producer can put out a bad lot or release an engineering flaw on unsuspecting customers. The most important thing when buying is making sure you have someone willing to stand behind the product - it's really a lot more about the vendor sometimes than the hardware. Do you think you can easily get a replacement? Does the manufacturer have a history of releasing product half baked, is it worth it anyway? I've had great fun doing things on computer with big gaping flaws - it can't do "everything" but what it does - oh it does so well.

If you're spending money on the bleeding edge of hardware you're spending an awful lot of money doing R&D for someone else, plus you pay the freight. When you can span $300 and only see a .05% difference in performance why would you want to be in that position? Sure, it's .05% faster, which is cool and all but really - spend that $300 on a nice printer.

Posted by Reb00t I'd like to see some proof of the cheap infineon in Corsair. Do you have any URLs for that?

Normally I'd just tell you to go f*ing google it and figure it our yourself if you don't believe me instead of just lazily asking for me to prove myself, but, since I only know recent German articles, I figure I'll be nice for once and cooperate

From an article in 2004, http://www.heise.d...ine/04/09/08.shtml

Corsair Memory ist ein so genannter Third-Party-Modulhersteller und kauft Speicherchips bei den wenigen großen DRAM-Herstellern ein. Bei Third-Party-DIMMs kommt es nicht selten vor, dass unter gleicher Typenbezeichnung Riegel mit unterschiedlichen RAM-Bausteinen verkauft werden. Das führt in seltenen Fällen zu Inkompatibilitäten ... Die Chips der Marktführer Samsung, Micron, Infineon und Hynix sind auf fast 80 Prozent aller weltweit verkauften RAM-Module zu finden, weitere 18 Prozent liefern Mosel Vitelic, Nanya, Elpida, Powerchip und Winbond. Fast alle dieser Chipfirmen bieten auch komplette Speicherriegel an, die man Originalmodule nennt...

"Corsair is only a 3rd-party in the creation of memory modules; all they do is buy chips from the big DRAM manufacturers such as Infineon (as I mentioned, Corsair frequently uses "Infineon on Third" which uses the crappiest chips they sell), Samsung, Micron, etc... - Kingston only use expensive Samsung, I believe) and simply stick them onto boards. Because of this, it even happens that different sticks of the exact same ram frequently are made with various different physical memory modules, which can lead to lots of compatibility problems..."

If you want more info than the basics and a link to a respected third party for verification, look it up.

Lets see... about a year ago I bought:

A crappy eMachine, but...

It has a decent mobo
an AMD XP 3000+
A home made cut-out side
a gig of generic ram
a big hard drive (120, mabye 160 gigs??)
and I threw in a 9800 pro for good measure.

plays Battlefield 2 and half-life 2 perfectly.

and a Syncmaster 173s!

Oh yeah, and a nice Creative sound setup.






And my latest acquisition, running Toshiba DOS and Windows 3.0 at a blistering 9.54 mhz:



I havent decided what to do with it yet, but right now I'm thinking cigar box computer.


louie

My friend and I riveted together a mount and enclosure to fit two more motherboards into my pc tower. Now my windows pc has a dedicated firewall and webserver to go with it. Fitting all that nonsense into a standard server case wasn't easy. I'm traveling now, i'll post photos when i get home.

Last year at school my roomate and I made a computer for his father. We built it into a wooden russian ammo crate, complete with cryllic labeling.
-ff

Heres a quick pic that I got off my DC.



And no, thats not a dead body on the floor.


And while in my basement, I came across this Teletype my dad bought. It makes a really handy desk now too! Anyways, if I took the time to carve this thing, I could put a LCD on the top, and turn it into one pimp WWII Lan machine. Does anybody know what the little dial on the left does?

here's the ammobox: