Topic My Rig

Riddar

Figured I would post the specs of my rig. To nip some complaints in the bud, yes it's excessive, no it's not a budget or bang for the buck build, yes I have a girlfriend, it is paid for with a job, and so on. I just wanted to save up for a while for a killer rig, so I did.

Onto the good stuff!

CPU: QX6800
Mobo: Asus Striker Extreme
RAM: Corsair XMS2 Pro DDR 800
HDD: WD 7500AAKS (Two, in RAID 0)
Case: Kandalf LCS (Liquid Cooling system)
Graphics: EVGA 8800GTX (Two, SLI)
Monitor: Samsung 226BW (1680 X 1050 native)
PSU: Enermax Galaxy 1000W
Keyboard: Logitech G15
Mouse: Logitech G7


That's the bulk of it. I have another 2TB of Mybooks connected by Firewire800 (I'm a media packrat, I back up my DVDs to waich on networks TVs and travel with). Also works for backup. Also got the basics, a few extra fans, a pair of Lite-On combo drives, mousepad, and the like.

Had it for three weeks (well, only finished for good a few days ago, a dual boot on RAID 0 with partitions and all is a royal pain), and haven't regretted it a moment! Haven't overclocked yet, but certainly looking forward to it; give me a few days to settle in and relax. The quad core processor runs at just 40C full load already, and thats without lapping or tuning. The graphics run hot already, but leaves a little room; a waterblock in the future will open those up as well.

-HAL-

I hate you..
Very nice system you've got the Riddar!
(yes, I'm a bit jealous... )

Riddar

Thanks!

I waited in line for a Wii to put on eBay, held off on console gaming of any kind, spent countless hours of building, setting up, and praying it would work, but everytime I go outdoors in Oblivion its freakin worth it

mmarsh

Just a question,

Assuming money was no object. Why did you use DDR2 800? If that was my system (and I wish it was) I would have put in Corsair XMS2 DDR2 8500 (1066 mhz).

Frankly I wouldnt bother overclocking. Overclocking is really only worth it on low-mid level systems. The performance increase wont justify the strain on a very expensive processor.

Riddar

First question; according to every single source I could find, the real-world performance gains at higher clock speeds were negligible. I decided to get DDR 800 RAM with a nice big heat spreader so I could focus on lowering the timings, an area that DOES put out a real world gain.

And for overclocking, it depends on how you define strain; I am not pushing the processor to the limits of stability, but I see nothing wrong with pushing it until the die reaches a reasonable 60C, a pretty conservative number (many consider 75C an upper limit). 40C full load is excessively low.

joshuk

What an awesome set up. Have you done any benchmarking with it yet?

Riddar

Nothing much, just a 3D Mark scan, which turned up a score of 15983 or so (might be remembering it wrong). I haven't overclocked yet though; I want to lap the processor and heatsink down, but have been putting off having to remove my waterblock and everything.

I'll do it soon, though, and post the results.