Spoons Dream PC

[Spoon]

Finally up and running. The PC was created with one goal to be as quiet as possible, yet at the same time be a powerful and fast PC, that can be used for development (and occasional games playing), front display:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/images/misc/spoon-pc.jpg

The PC has a certain car theme, the buttons are [start]=power on [air-con]=old turbo button, controls fans [boot release]=reboot. The circular dial is a water temperature meter, it is connected to the CPU.

The case was an old AT server case, big and heavy, just what is needed to quieten everything (does not have a cover on yet):

http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/images/spoon-pc.jpg

The power supply is a Thermaltake fanless unit, with a big heat sink that sits out side the PC (the AT case needed a little reworking to accomadate it):

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/images/misc/spoon-pc-psu.jpg

Onto the CPU, a 3GHz AMD 64 bit processor, it has a sythe ncu-2000 big 0.5Kg passive cooled heatsink. The motherboard has 'cool and quiet' which lowers the cpu speed by half and voltage when the cpu is usage is < 50% load, when idling the heatsink does not get warm to the touch:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/images/misc/spoon-pc-cpu-heatsink.jpg

The graphic card is a Sapphire Radeon 9550, good enough for Halflife 2, but the original had a very noisy fan, so was replaced with a Zalman vga heatsink ZM80D-HP:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/images/misc/spoon-pc-gfx.jpg

The case has two fans (one front, one back), both modified (with 470 ohms trim pot) to be low speed (1000 rpm) and silent, they mount onto silicone mount to stop the transfer of noise to PC. The fans are wired into the old turbo switch to run the fans at full speed if required.

http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/images/spoon-pc-fan.jpg

The motherboard is an Asus K8V SE, the memory is 2x512 DDR 400 with fitted heat coolers, sound card is Terratec Aureon Space 7.1. Originally I had a 200GB Seagate Barricuda, but despite being a known for quietness it was too loud during seeks, so it was replaced with 2x Western Digital laptop scorpio drives (2x 80GB), these are very quiet, and have the advantage in not getting very warm. They are installed into SATA using two adaptors (not for speed, but rather because the first drive was SATA and this was ghosted across):

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/images/misc/spoon-pc-hdd.jpg

[LtData]

Looks VERY nice, Spoon. And nice touch using the old Turbo button to speed the fans up. Very clever.

[JVILLAS]

WowSpoon!, very sweet, a wonderful work of Art, I'm drooling,congratulations.

[Smoggy]

Question...Why not liquid cooled?

[Spoon]

Too noisy (they have pumps), too fussy (having 2 litres of water in a tub somewhere).

I am a few weeks away from finishing and will post new photos then (the outside is looking as good as the insides).

[Smoggy]

Springing a leak would suck too

[neilthecellist]

OMG OMG Spoon! Nice computer!! What video games do you play that utlilize your video card? FarCry? Halo? UT2004? Pariah Multiplayer demo?

[Spoon]

Just half life 2. The PC is looking more finished (just needs the case painting).

[neilthecellist]

I didn't like the validation system of Half Life 2. You had to validate the DEMO, that was SOOO stupid. WHy does a demo need validation?

[LtData]

As far as I'm concerned, the validation system may have been a little annoying but its the best way they could find to cut down on the pirating of HL2. Don't know about the demo, actually bought the game myself.

[rledford]

At the bottom, on the front of your PC, what is that thing? I could guess, but I know that I would be wrong.

:smile2:

[LtData]

Looks like a PC speaker to me.

[dickymint]

That is one serious looking piece of pc.......

[neilthecellist]

wow, thread bump. :)

My brother just got his nVidia 6600. It's been softmodded to run like a 6800GT, beats yours, Spoon! (no offense, just friendly competition)

[LtData]

Yes, but his is quiet. You could probably stand beside his and barely hear it. The entire room can probably hear your brother's computer boot up. Remember Spoon is going for power but quiet power.

[ChristinaS]

Yes, but his is quiet. You could probably stand beside his and barely hear it. The entire room can probably hear your brother's computer boot up. Remember Spoon is going for power but quiet power.
These young guys want to HEAR the power! See what they do with their cars - to bigger the roar, the more powerful they feel - I only think the muffler's gone :D

[neilthecellist]

LtData, my brother's computer is FANLESS. Absolutely no fans, and this huge ThermalTake heatsink.

[LtData]

Mmm, more like only has a few fans. If you have a TOTALLY fanless PC you have some way of piping the heat directly outside of the case. Just not putting fans into a computer case = bad idea.
And Christina:
Along those lines, I've seen a computer that, for some reason, had a real turbocharger hooked up to the front fan intake.

[ChristinaS]

Did you ask WHY? :D

[Spoon]

Images updated.

[LtData]

So you did decide to water-cool the CPU?
And I like the buttons.

[Spoon]

No water cool, just a big heatsink.

[LtData]

Ahh, misunderstood your comment. The water-dial is hooked into the CPU temperature.

[brian10161]

!!!! DAM! that looks fast lol. huge heatsink too. looks almost as big as the one in my stereo for the amplifiers. thats telling you something. dont the amd chips create more heat? i thought i read somewhere they were bad for that , but you know what? i dont like intel anymore, so an extra 4 or 5 degrees in temperature? pfft well worth having an amd. i like the computer man, awsome!

-brian

[Spoon]

AMD have cooler chips than intel ATM (excluding the centrino which is more notebook based).

[coatrackofsatan]

I like AMD Chips, my computers stats are like this
Dual SLI Nvidia GeForce 6600GT Cards
2 gigs corsair RAM
300 gig 7200 rpm HD
3.4 Ghz AMD Dual Core Processor (not sure exact model because its at home and I'm at school :blush: )
NForce Motherboard (again srry it's at home and i'm too forgetful)
DVD-ROM drive and a DVD+-RW drive
Floppy drive (still need it :cry: )
and it plays everything i have perfectly
and the cooler is pretty quiet, and it keeps the internal temp below 84 degrees Fahrenheit
but ur computer looks like 10000 times cooler (i shouldn't have gone with a stock case)

[neilthecellist]

Bump.

In my absence, I saved money for a new computer, although there are still components which I am still looking forward to upgrade from. Here's my current (somewhat new) setup:

AMD 64 3000+ (overclocked to about 3800+) <-- need to upgrade this for next-gen games like Unreal Tournament 3 / Gears of War
GeForce 7900GTX 256 MB PCI-Express
40 GB SATA 1 hard drive <-- old?
2048 MB RAM DDR2 880mhz
5.1 surround sound (generic PCI card)

I tried running Rainbow Six: Vegas on this computer at 1024 x 768 resolution and I was getting god-awful performance. :(

On a lighter note... dBpoweramp runs nicely on this machine. :) Conversions are near-instant for individual files, regardless of codec (normal conversion settings, that is). :)

[LtData]

Neil: get a better CPU, preferably a dual-core, and get a bigger HDD. Also, try turning some of the prettier graphics options down.

[bhoar]

The unit on the right will be my dream PC (at least in relation to dbpoweramp) when I upgrade the board, memory and CPU to a Q6600 later this year.

http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/7240/image003iv8.jpg

:) :D :)

-brendan

[LtData]

You mean the stack of CD drives that has a computer attached to it? :P

[bhoar]

You mean the stack of CD drives that has a computer attached to it? :P

Yes, though you neglected to mention the three stacking columns (plus one spindle) to hold all 600+ CDs (as well as the robot arm that moves them)! ;)

-brendan

[neilthecellist]

http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=279&page=1

According to general benchmarks, I should be getting near-60 frames per second on 1024 x 768 resolution, maxed out details. The strange thing, though, is that I'm running the game at 640 x 480 resolution at lowest details and I'm getting serious lag. Some of the video game forums are calling Rainbow Six Vegas an "inefficient" game. I guess I can see why.

From fiddling around on the computer, I've narrowed down to the two suspectible culprits behind my awful performance: CPU or motherboard. I've already overclocked my CPU to a point higher than the game recommends (game recommends at least a 3.4 ghz CPU, my CPU is overclocked to a 3800+).

Overclocking my GPU did nothing to improve performance, I was getting around 20-30 FPS on certain points of the game.

Neil: get a better CPU, preferably a dual-core, and get a bigger HDD. Also, try turning some of the prettier graphics options down.

I was wondering if I should invest in a quad-core CPU. And does AMD do that or is it currently just Intel? */me Googles*

Running other games on this computer produces funky results too, but I think this thread has gone off topic enough... ;)

[LtData]

AMD's quad-cores will be coming out in the fall, I believe. Also, the FPSs are when you are not using FRAPs, correct?

[neilthecellist]

Well, about the FRAPs thing.... I have FRAPs enabled when I'm playing video games, but not recording any video. I use FRAPs sometimes solely as an FPS indicator (especially when a game doesn't include its own FPS counter, which can be annoying :-\ )

[LtData]

OK, I just wanted to make sure you weren't running benchmarks when you had FRAPs recording. Just the FPS counter alone is fine.

[donny]

about your problems:
and a new hard drive could speed up some things, especially because of fragmentation on the old small drive you have... and these new drives are really faster, not just marketing.

and those things about recommended and similar settings are usualy just markteing tricks to get people buying the game. they really say that the latest rainbow six is very demanding on the hardware... besides, the markings on amd processors should represent their Intel equivalent but overclocking to 3800 doesn't mean that it is more than 3.4 Ghz the game is asking. this game probably want's a dual core thing...

overclocking the GPU probably didn't work because your processor is not fast enough to supply it with info.
or maybe it is a motherboard thingy. you didn't say nothing bout it. what chips does it have? who made it?

genreally:
you are not going to get that much out of games with a quad core processor. maybe some of the really new games will have options for it...
on the other hand tha dual core is used in some games that I saw. for instance Hawok sistem found in most modern games supposrts threading on multiple processors.

RAM is very important for alot of things and is usually the best and cheapest upgrade to the system (to a limit of course :) ) your 2GB should be enough...

[neilthecellist]

about your problems:
and a new hard drive could speed up some things, especially because of fragmentation on the old small drive you have... and these new drives are really faster, not just marketing.

Should I invest in a SATA II? My brother was considering a solid state hard drive (Yes, we both realize how expensive it is, but if it means super fast-ness, we might invest in a SS hard drive)


and those things about recommended and similar settings are usualy just markteing tricks to get people buying the game. they really say that the latest rainbow six is very demanding on the hardware... besides, the markings on amd processors should represent their Intel equivalent but overclocking to 3800 doesn't mean that it is more than 3.4 Ghz the game is asking. this game probably want's a dual core thing...

overclocking the GPU probably didn't work because your processor is not fast enough to supply it with info.
or maybe it is a motherboard thingy. you didn't say nothing bout it. what chips does it have? who made it?

The strange thing is, Rainbow Six: Vegas runs on Unreal Engine 3, but looks nothing like Unreal Tournament 3 or Gears of War, both games which also used Unreal Engine. In fact, with HDR turned off in Rainbow Six: Vegas, the graphics honestly just looks like Rainbow Six: Lockdown (the prequel game to Rainbow Six: Vegas)

genreally:
you are not going to get that much out of games with a quad core processor. maybe some of the really new games will have options for it...
on the other hand tha dual core is used in some games that I saw. for instance Hawok sistem found in most modern games supposrts threading on multiple processors.

RAM is very important for alot of things and is usually the best and cheapest upgrade to the system (to a limit of course :) ) your 2GB should be enough...

So for now, a dual core is good, but in the near future, a quad core may be preferrable?

[LtData]

SS HDDs are STUPID expensive. I believe it is around $300 for a 32GB drive and $500-600 for a 64GB drive. And no, they are not much faster in transfer rates than normal HDDs. Their advantages are lower power consumption and faster access times.

Dual-cores will be fine for the next few years. If you wanna burn your money, sure go quad-core. As for SATA-II, most new drives support it, if your mobo does too then mabye buy one sata-II drive for your main drive but keep the rest of your drives still.

[bhoar]

SS HDDs are STUPID expensive.

SS=SAS?

-brendan

[LtData]

apologies, SS = solid state aka flash-based

[neilthecellist]

SAS... British Special Air Service?

I uninstalled Rainbow Six: Vegas today. I think that perhaps, because Vegas was developed on an early corporate release of Unreal Engine 3, Vegas' performance just isn't that great as it could be. Guess I'll wait to see what Gears of War on PC and Unreal Tournament 3 on PC will be like before I go benchmarking in the future.

[bhoar]

SAS... British Special Air Service?

SAS = Serial Attached SCSI (replacement for SCSI that allows SATA drives to be plugged into some SAS hardware).

Original acronym "SS" was actually meant to imply "Solid State", e.g. flash storage.

-brendan

[donny]

you probably shouldn't rush into quad. there were games with problems with the dual core processors (audio/video out of sync and similar things - one of them runing twice as fast as it should, other at normal). so similar can be expected with quad if the coding is too optimized. or just bad...

on the other hand it will be easier to convert to quad from dual, then from single to dual ;)