Computer Build Review

[Dan Brown]

Hello All-

   I think some of you will remember a few weeks ago I built my first new rig. I want to deliver the final report! This is long, but it's designed to be a log of the build so that others may learn from what I did. This is NOT meant to be a brag session, merely me posting information to help fellow board members out.

BACKGROUND:
I had been running the same Dell C840 laptop since August 2002 (freshmen year of college). Thanks to a service contract, I ended up on my 3rd hard drive, 2nd motherboard, 2nd keyboard, 2nd DVD drive. I upgraded from 256 to 768mb ram, and recently to 1GB. It had an onboard GeForce 440 GO video card (56mb). 1.8ghz pentium 4. XP Pro, Office 2003, etc. I used it for some engineering modeling, but mostly it's my personal computer (iTunes, Quicken, MS Outlook, AIM, games, etc). Ran FS2004 about 15-20fps with medium settings.

I finally decided that I needed an upgrade, so I started doing research on here. Main criteria:

-Stick to ~$1000 budget
-Firewire Port (legacy iPod)
-Upgradeable setup (for example, had room for more ram, more hard drives, overclockable down the road, etc)


THE COSTS: ****AS OF JULY/AUG 07****

Ended up purchasing the following:

EDIT: Video card is DDR3 memory (256-bit, 256 mb) not DDR2

I did not need to buy a monitor, I had a 15" NEC LCD that could have sufficed, so that's why I have the separate totals. Purchasing the monitor was totally an extra expense, which is why I consider myself basically meeting my goal of a $1k system.

As far as software: I'm running XP Pro (32bit) as I had a brand new copy that I purchased over a year ago when I was student for about 12 dollars. I also got XP Pro 64bit and Office 2003 enterprise edition in that package deal. It was sitting around unused, so I don't count that. Two days ago, I picked up Office 2007 enterprise edition for 20 dollars, which is also not added in. I figured people could take my list and ad the software they wanted.

THE BUILD:

This was my first build. I work on cars frequently, am a mechanical engineer and helicopter pilot by trade, and have installed a few car stereos in my day. However, this was different, and I spent a lot of time here reading (in addition to other online sites). I felt pretty confident I could build this.

1st major issue: The CPU fan didn't seem to sit very well, but I wasn't sure of the pressure I was applying and didn't want to hurt the mobo. Fast forward... once the build was complete, the CPU was overheating BADLY causing the BIOS to shut down the computer. Turns out the "TIM" pad that comes on the stock Intel heat sink was TOO THICK, which would not allow the fan to seat all the way down. I bought some thermal compound and the fan seated perfectly, keeping temps down.

2nd major issue: Could not install windows, kept getting hung up at various parts of the install. As it turns out, the BIOS had my memory running @ 1.75 volts, when it was rated @ 2.2V. Nick helped me troubleshoot this, and I quickly changed the value in the bios and it worked well. I currently have backed the voltage down to 2.0V and it works fine. I have read that manufacturing rating of 2.2V is slightly overkill, only necessary for overclocking.

3rd major issue: I selected NTFS QUICK format, instead of the standard NTFS format. I did this because I was a little impatient after all these other problems, and also because I have a 500gb hard drive and I figured the regular format would take forever. I learned my lesson when I had to reformat the long way after doing the short way. It took about 2 hours on my setup, should have done it the first time.

NOW:
I currently have an excellent computer! It is a huge improvement over the old computer. I thought my laptop ran well until I was running it side by side to this thing. The tower looks good, I enjoy the dual core that'll chunk out two or more tasks at once while hardly breaking a sweat, whereas my old computer would get hung up with one hogging resources while you tried to do something else. I have yet to use the lightscribe burner, but hopefully that'll be cool. The card reader is cheap, but also a welcome part. Basically, I enjoy having everything incorporated on a single package, whereas I had a lot of external parts to expand my laptops capabilities.

I keep FS2004 locked to 40fps with almost all settings on Ultra High. The only time it drops below 40 is if I'm doing an external view above a busy city. All cockpit and VC stay locked @ 40. I fly online with VATSIM and it doesn't kill my FPS like it used to. Overall I am very happy with the raw performance.


CONTINUED-----

[Dan Brown]

FUTURE:
-I will buy a second hard drive in a few months and run a RAID setup so I can have some backup capability. I shouldn't need a true 1TB of storage anytime soon, and I think RAID setups are just plain cool so 2x500 should be more than enough.
-I will probably buy a GPU and a CPU aftermarket fan in a few months as well. The video card fan isn't the best, and I'm going to overclock the system at some point, so the CPU fan will be a must.
-RAM upgrades will someday come as well, and I might step up to Vista as well.
-I plan on keeping this general chassis for a while. The Motherboard will support the 45nm chips & 8gb ram, so I can upgrade that later. I will probably also go with a better graphics card in a year or so. No rush, I am very happy with the current setup.
-Will probably go to FSX in a year after these upgrades are performed.  

PICTURES:
Old Setup:


New Setup!:


The rig itself:


Blurry Attempt to see the colored stuff:



CONCLUSION:

I am VERY VERY happy with this whole project. I will admit, I did get very frustrated when I had the above mentioned problems. However, when I posted them up, many people came with help. I would especially like to thank Nick for helping me out a few times. Also, thanks to those who made recommendations when I was tossing around my original parts list. The aBit "uGuru" software is a pretty handy utility that lets me set my fan speeds, voltages, etc right from windows. It helps me keep everything under a watchful eye. Also, It has an "AutoDrive" function, where it runs a customizable configuration profile for certain programs (ie FS2004) so I have that profile set to higher fan speeds, to keep everything cool during high demands. It automatically reverts to a quieter profile/config once FS2004 is closed.

If you are thinking about tackling your first build, I highly recommend it. It is a very rewarding experience, and it is also MUCH cheaper. A comparable rig from Dell is around $2000 right now, and it's still has that Dell grip on the installed software, etc. I basically spent half of that, and prices are getting cheaper all the time. Just take your build slow, do a little research, and don't be afraid to ask questions. Everyone on here was very helpful and supportive. Also, they are good troubleshooters should you ever have problems.

Thank you everyone for your time. If you have any questions/comments, please post them up, I want to hear it all. Happy Simming!

-Dan

[MOUSY]

Hey Dan! Congrats on finally getting everything smoothed out! Thanks for the update.