OK, so now we get down to the nitty gritty of all the bits I actually bought and why. I found a store online (www.techbuy.com.au) that sells pretty much any tech gear that you could possibly want (they even sell projector globes which will no doubt come in handy pretty soon). I’ve found them to be really good – prompt delivery, always well-packaged and great prices. The only slight niggle I had with them was when I sent my sound card back for a warranty repair. They sent the card on to the manufacturer (Asus) for assessment, Asus sent it back with a “no issue found” response, at which point I would have hoped Techbuy would have contacted me to say “what do you want to do now?”. Instead, they sent it straight back to me. At the end of the day, I figured out myself what the issue was (Asus drivers) and Techbuy didn’t charge me anything extra, even though it was a “no issue” situation, so I can’t complain too much.
The Case
As mentioned previously, I wanted a case with plenty of room so that I could space out components, and also one that had a front panel display. After a bit of research, I came across the Silverstone GD01MX:
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This case has all the things I need, plus a remote control that’s like the standard Windows MCE remote on steroids (or maybe at least some serious protein supplements!) Solid, well-built and with minimal resonance, we’re looking pretty good out of the blocks.
The Motherboard
This is the Gigabyte GA-H67MA-D2H-B3 if that means anything to anyone. This was my first slight purchasing mistake (albeit only a potentially small one), in that I don’t think it supports HDMI 1.4 for 3D video transport. I think I was too focussed on audio concerns, but still, it won’t cost too much to upgrade when I can finally get a 3D projector so I’m not too concerned.
The Power Supply
“Clean green power” as I’ve stated before. The Silverstone Strider Gold that I chose is 80-Plus Gold certified which means that it supplies power to within +/- 3V which is actually very good. Standard power supplies are +/- 5V or more. It’s also quiet and super-efficient, plus it’s got modular cables so I can remove what I don’t need.
As you can hopefully see from the picture, it’s a 750W power supply. This is significantly more than I will need so it will be kept well within it’s operating range and supply the cleanest power possible.
Below are pictures of these bits coming together.
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And here’s my best attempt at getting a bit “arty” with the lighting and close up etc.:
The CPU and Memory
Pretty straight forward this one – an Intel Core i3-2100 running at 3.1GHz and with built-in Intel HD graphics running at between 900MHz and 1100MHz. Low power consumption, doesn’t run too hot, all good. You can see above the standard cooling fan – I had to pull my head in a little bit with my cooling ideas (see below)!
The memory is a single 4GB Corsair PC10600 @ 1333MHz DDR3 module.
The Storage
2 hard drives, low power consumption (5900RPM) set up as a RAID0 array (striped). The drives themselves are Seagate Barracuda Green SATA-III models. Each drive is 2TB (giving me 4TB of striped storage) – hopefully enough to hold all my CDs and selected DVDs and BluRays (if ever there becomes a legitimate way to do it, or if I just get the s#!ts completely with Sony and get SlySoft’s AnyDVD HD to rip everything to the hard drive).
Here is a picture of the drives in the bay. Gettin’ a little bit cramped in there with all the cables, but it sorts itself out in the end.
Cooling
OK, now I have to admit a little something to you all. It was at this point that I got a bit excited and got a head full of steam and thought that liquid cooling would be freaking awesome even though not really necessary and went ahead and bought a liquid cooling solution for the CPU, thus:
What I didn’t realise was how big this sucker was! There was no way it was going to fit inside the case I’d chosen (I have no idea what kind of case you would need for this monster as I thought I already had a big case! Oh well…) I think if I’d needed a new radiator for my motorbike, this thing could have sufficed – that’s how big it was. Still, I ended up selling it on eBay for not much less than what I paid for it, so no real harm done.
…Still to Come…
The sound card and the BluRay drive. I want to go into a bit more detail on these, so I’ll leave this until the next post.
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