Computer thread!!!

[HarukoE30]

It IS possible to dual boot...shit, OS whatever is still just an operating system

First off, yes it's possible to not only dual, but triple & etc. IMO, the best combo is building a Hackintosh / Win7 machine. Can read about it by searching TonyMac86!

For everything that doesn't involve games, using OSX has been a great experience & change for me since I started in PC's like 15 years ago. Windows 7 hands down for gaming which is on a separate SSD altogether & the switching between the two is a 30 second process if that.

How is all this possible?

The moment Apple started using Intel Processors, people have been paying for over-priced PC's that run a Unix code OS.



I remember the first time I got this thing of beauty. Ex got it for me as B-day present. Case has been home to such builds that housed LGA775/LGA1366/LGA1156 & soon to be Haswell unless I change my mind within the next week & just upgrade to IB 3930K which looks nice.

Ugh I can taste that MSI GTX 670 PE video card already

[Click]

Current rig. Built a little over 4 years ago.



Parts that went in it. Went pretty nuts with it. Spent over 2gs. Shoulda bought e30 instead but I digress. I love building pcs. The firm push of ram. The latching of the cpu in the socket.... One could buy a top of the line german screwdriver/nutdriver set and with a couple odd sets of pliars you'd be set for a couple hundred bucks. I just spent 70 bucks alone on a Hansen bolt extractor set this past week for get rounded nuts off the e30. Could spend 10K in tools for cars and still be needing things.




First rig. Built like 9 years ago. Had super fast 2-2-2-5 latency Corsair RAM (1 gb). I think it was/is faster than my current rig lolz. It now lives at my step brother's place. Note the aftermarket Thermaltake north/south bridge cooling.



Video card was a Asus 9600xt. The video card came with 5 cds that were install discs for Half-Life 2. The cd key also unlocked the og half life, CS:S and a ton of other old school valve games I discovered when I installed steam. Looking back I was pretty damn lucky to be introduced to the most epic pc game right off the bat.



Originally posted this pic on some computer forum back in 2004 like some ethug or something lol. Had many good times in OG call of duty and UT2004.

[R3Z3N]

^^^Seeing that messy desktop is depressing ;-)

[Varinn]

Bump cause I got new shits!

Picked up an i5 cpu/mobo and some ram a week back and had issues with a hard drive and my sound card on the new system so I got fed up and removed them. I quickly realized it was totally ok without them and decided to downgrade my monstrous Antec full tower to a Corsair 550D as I no longer need 15 fucking drive bays. Brought the case home this morning and swapped my build over. I also downgraded to a single monitor and I'll be giving my old build to my girlfriend. I might sell the case and buy something smaller as I doubt she'll want a PC that rivals herself in size, with how happy I am using this new Corsair I might buy her the same case. With the extra space from the smaller tower and one less monitor I was able to dig my old Z5500 speakers out of the closet too.

The old: The impossible to cable manage monstrosity that sounds like a wind tunnel even at idle.


The new: The wonderful 550D, what an easy case to build in, it's better in every way than the Antec was and fully assembled and closed up I have decent temperatures still (not great) but it's absolutely silent. The only thing that seems to make any noise at all is that damn spindle hard drive, so much motivation to swap it out now.


Corsair 550D
ASUS P8Z77-V LK
i5 3570K @ 4.2ghz
8GB Kingston DDR3-1600 (2x4GB)
XFX 7870 DD
120GB Crucial M4
640GB WD black
Corsair HX620w

[Chrisv006]

2600k @ 4.8
H100 push/pull
CM690 Case
2x 6970's Xfire
AS rock Extreme MB
16gb Crucial DDR3
3 displays - 1 2570x1440 (center), 2x 1920x1200 (wings)
Crucial M4 128gb
Samsung spinpoint F3 1TB
Corsair Silver 850w
Whole bunch-a fans

Games at ~6500 x 1200 rock :) Need to upgrade my other monitors to the match the center.

[TexasTerp]

I'm out of town so I'll have to add my "big rig" once I get back.

Here's my laptop/"design desktop" setup:

Dell 24" LED monitor
Macbook 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo
6GB RAM
256 SSD
Bluetooth Keyboard and Magic Mouse

Overall it's a great setup for my design work. I don't do any gaming on it so it works out beautifully.

Here are the specs on the Linux server I'm planning on building.

10x 2TB WD Green Drives in Raid 10
4x 5 SATA to 1 eSATA port multipliers
2x Dual Port eSATA RAID controllers
1x 500w Power Supply (Modified)
1x AMD Phenom II X4 2.7GHz 100w Quad Core Processor
8GB Corsair DDR3 RAM

Still trying to decide on a motherboard, but I'm really only looking for one with high RAM capacity, decent GPU and a Gigabit LAN. HDMI output will be nice, but not necessary.

[Massimo]

I'm out of town so I'll have to add my "big rig" once I get back.

Here's my laptop/"design desktop" setup:

Dell 24" LED monitor
Macbook 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo
6GB RAM
256 SSD
Bluetooth Keyboard and Magic Mouse

Overall it's a great setup for my design work. I don't do any gaming on it so it works out beautifully.

Here are the specs on the Linux server I'm planning on building.

10x 2TB WD Green Drives in Raid 10
4x 5 SATA to 1 eSATA port multipliers
2x Dual Port eSATA RAID controllers
1x 500w Power Supply (Modified)
1x AMD Phenom II X4 2.7GHz 100w Quad Core Processor
8GB Corsair DDR3 RAM

Still trying to decide on a motherboard, but I'm really only looking for one with high RAM capacity, decent GPU and a Gigabit LAN. HDMI output will be nice, but not necessary.

Y so much space? 20tb, you running your own cloud server? lol

[Herr Faust Schinken]

20tb damn dosent this entire site take up like 6gb or something

[TexasTerp]

Y so much space? 20tb, you running your own cloud server? lol

20tb damn dosent this entire site take up like 6gb or something

Sort of, I'm running my own media server. I have close to 200 movies on blue ray which isn't much, but each BR movie averages about 25GB of space. I'm actually projecting that I'll need closer to 30TB in the first iteration of the build. I currently have 14TB of movies and music in a RAID 10 setup (aka 7TB of singular data mirrored).

I'm actually working on a better overall configuration for scaling, the hardware configuration I posted really isn't ideal and I'm working on a better way to stack 10TB (5TBx2) at a time so I can easily scale without any significant hardware changes.

I travel a lot for opera and Netflix has a pretty shitty streaming list. I used to do torrents (had 3000 movies at one point) but I wanted better quality so I scrapped my entire library and started ripping bluray discs.

I'm going to setup a firewalled VPN and tie my media server in with my HD DVR so that I can access my library from anywhere in the world on any device.

I've also looked at mirroring the data using Amazon Web Services but it's cheaper to by the HDDs on my own.

[Massimo]

Sort of, I'm running my own media server. I have close to 200 movies on blue ray which isn't much, but each BR movie averages about 25GB of space. I'm actually projecting that I'll need closer to 30TB in the first iteration of the build. I currently have 14TB of movies and music in a RAID 10 setup (aka 7TB of singular data mirrored).

I'm actually working on a better overall configuration for scaling, the hardware configuration I posted really isn't ideal and I'm working on a better way to stack 10TB (5TBx2) at a time so I can easily scale without any significant hardware changes.

I travel a lot for opera and Netflix has a pretty shitty streaming list. I used to do torrents (had 3000 movies at one point) but I wanted better quality so I scrapped my entire library and started ripping bluray discs.

I'm going to setup a firewalled VPN and tie my media server in with my HD DVR so that I can access my library from anywhere in the world on any device.

I've also looked at mirroring the data using Amazon Web Services but it's cheaper to by the HDDs on my own.

Man this is what I have been wanting to do for a long time as well. I really want to start ripping bluerays onto my own server but I don't have the money to spend on the hardware. looking forward to the pictures.

[imsotyerred]

so how and when can we sign up for this Texflix?

[Chrisv006]

Sort of, I'm running my own media server. I have close to 200 movies on blue ray which isn't much, but each BR movie averages about 25GB of space. I'm actually projecting that I'll need closer to 30TB in the first iteration of the build. I currently have 14TB of movies and music in a RAID 10 setup (aka 7TB of singular data mirrored).

I'm actually working on a better overall configuration for scaling, the hardware configuration I posted really isn't ideal and I'm working on a better way to stack 10TB (5TBx2) at a time so I can easily scale without any significant hardware changes.

I travel a lot for opera and Netflix has a pretty shitty streaming list. I used to do torrents (had 3000 movies at one point) but I wanted better quality so I scrapped my entire library and started ripping bluray discs.

I'm going to setup a firewalled VPN and tie my media server in with my HD DVR so that I can access my library from anywhere in the world on any device.

I've also looked at mirroring the data using Amazon Web Services but it's cheaper to by the HDDs on my own.

Have you considered encoding down to ~8gb? I have approx. 140 HD rips encoded down to this size...quality is still very very good but its way more compact and easier (cheaper) to store/backup. I fit all my movies, TV series, DVR'ed shows (HDhomerun), music, documents, family photos/movies and backups (whole computer backups for my other 6 systems) on 6tb + 6tb NAS for backup.

I do need an offsite storage for 'mission-critical' data

[CreamE30]

Hey all, bit of a novice here when it comes to the computer world but, I am considering upgrading my laptop. Currently I have a Macbook Pro early 2008 model and I want to upgrade from 2GB to 4GB ram and maybe get bootcamp so I can run windows. Honestly, the main reason I want to do this is so I can enjoy all the fruits of Steam. I'm sick and tired of my buddy telling me he got this or that game or whatever on sale for 6 bucks. I'm fed up with my xbox and I can't get much out of a steam account running just OSX. I figured if i upgraded the ram and got windows I could actually use this computer for more than just a glorified typewriter.

Thoughts? Basically I'm debating if its worth it even. Or if I should just wait till I'm out of college and build my own computer.

[James Crivellone]

Got tired of the slow HDD that came with my 27inch ASUS AIW PC, so I tossed a 600GB Veliciraptor in it. Much better!



I would have gone SSD however I wanted more space

[ethrtyiS]

one of my main builds.



Intel Core i5-2500k Overclocked @ 4.5ghz
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Heatsink
Asus P8P67 Motherboard
16 GB DDR3 Corsair Vengeance RAM
1 TB HDD - Seagate
750 GB HDD - Western Digital
500 GB External HDD - BlackArmor
300 GB External HDD - Maxtor
LG CD/DVD Burner
1 GB GeForce GTX 560 Video Card Superclocked
Dual 20" HD Dell Monitors at 1600x900
8 Channel Fan Controller
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit