New PC Part 2

November 24th, 2009 omo Posted in Gadgets, Reviews | 1 Comment »

Instead of breaking down and putting it together over Thanksgiving I caved in last weekend and build the thing up. What’s left to do is rebuild the old box using one of the drives I currently have (probably the 250gb).

I’ll break it down into sections–

Impression:

• SSD is hella fast. When people say it’s the best upgrade you can get, I believe it. Then again I was always a fast-disk-ftw kind of guy.
• Win7 is pretty okay. Being 64 bit didn’t cause any problems, besides the $30 upgrade program needs an upgrade, and a fresh install probably means I had to do it twice.
• I like windows gadgets, but the one gadget I want/need (VPU temp) seems like a pay-only dealie, as it requires a component software used by hardcore tuners. I am not.
• The Antec 1200 is a beast. Huge. I can raise a hamster in it if I didn’t have to weave like 2 additional cords from the matching-heug Antec CP-850 just to power up all the fans in the case. And there are SIX of them that comes with the case, with space for one additional more on the side.
• Airflow in the case is serious. It’s definitely like an air tunnel. My VPU used to run on average 85-90C in my old case, now it runs 75-80C. That’s impressive; in fact it’s so impressive the VPU fan is off unless I play a game, which it rarely spins past 30%. I think this means “mission accomplished” in a different sense; it saved me the money of buying a VPU HSF upgrade or a new, quieter VPU. Kinda wish for a switch to turn off the fans short of unplugging them.
• Airflow in the case is also curious. Like a typical full tower case, one side of it is the “top” end and it is about 50% perforated. It’s also where you can install the additional (120mm) fan. Go google up an Antec 1200 review if you’re curious how it looks. In the box there are two pieces of clear plastic wrap covering it. I am thinking of leaving it like this; this way it’ll create a more linear flow of air from one side of the case to the other, and possibly a stronger positive pressure. It just looks dinky.
• The three forward case fans are the loudest thing in the box. And instead of a typical Antec “H M L” switch, they have dials that you can turn to full, mid, min, or anywhere in between. Kind of neat I thought
• Oh, the fans are decked out with blue LEDs. The top 200mm fan have LEDs on a switch. How thoughtful. But the rest of them don’t, and it kind of sucks :( Why not? It’s freaking annoying.
• I don’t entirely regret buying the Antec 1200 by accident, because it did solve one problem I’ve had, but it’s just too much for poor omo. At the very least it makes my stock CPU coolers more than sufficient. As you might have heard, the new i5/i7 have low profile HSF compared to even my socket 775 Conroe. Not that it matters–
• Overclocking this generation of i7s is like overclocking old school 80486, where you can wire a switch to the case for that “turbo” button. It’s more complicated nowadays, because there are more than a few power settings you have to change on the BIOS side, but also some CPU features like that Intel Turbo thing which OC’s single cores for single thread apps, and obviously your multipliers will be off the spec so it’s wonky and you might want to turn it off. MSI has literally a button on their boards that does this. Gigabyte does not, but in the BIOS there’s a preset feature which does this for you basically. Oh, it helps to have 1600 DDR3 ram. Which I do \o/ And of course, a reboot to turn it on/off. So it’s not quite as easy as the days of old. It really doesn’t take much to run my i5 up to 3.6GHz without breaking a sweat. And I mean by ME breaking a sweat trying to find the best values to tune the rig. As far as I can tell the CPU only runs hotter because the powersaving features are off, so when it idles it still clocks at 3.6ghz and not downclock to 1.1ghz as it would stock.
• Did I mention the heug case + the heug power supply is heavy? I guess one thing to note about the PS is that it really is quiet, and pretty quality. I don’t regret getting it even if I’ll never use anywhere close to 850w that it is specc’d for.
• So much of what I installed with this box is already in Win7’s came-with drivers, I ended up forgetting installing random crap, lol.

To Do:

• Need to move crap around so I spare out a drive for the old box. I already have an image
• Since I inadvertently solved the VPU heat/noise problem, and I doubt I’ll overclock any more than “stock OC” I might just cancel the CPU HSF, or use it in the Sonata. I’ll probably leave out the heat pipe crap this time.
• Wish I can engineer a light switch for the 5 other sets of LEDs in the Antec 1200. Time to google up a mod. Srsly, that is almost a deal breaker right there. Good thing they’re not that bright and I can point them away from me.
• Still have to figure out a backup solution. I would like a NAS but given this monster case I might just settle for 2x or 3x 1tb drives and run RAID 5. Just hope my currently 1tb will last when 3x 1tb drive is < $200 (not far in the future I think).

Regrets:

• I spent too much money.
• Related to that, it isn’t difficult to reconfigure some stuff and eek out enough cash for an i7 860. The improvements are notable simply because of hyperthreading… But rly, I’m sure my CPU can handle hyperthreading, but it’s just disabled in the hardware. Wish some magic can unlock that lol.
• Related to that, too, is the RAM. I mean I guess I have 1600 ram but I should’ve known better that I’ll rarely use it. Could’ve saved maybe $10-20.
• It’s freaking heavy. Again, and gaudy, and the light problems.

Tags: pc building