Not a ThinkPad, but... [Large photos!]

[A31]

...it's my custom built PC! See specs in my signature!

[wolfman]

Nice job, particularly with the cabling. Are those low RPM fans?

[A31]

Cheers. No they're not, they are plugged into the molex plugs on the PSU too so they run at full speed all the time.

I can max out the vast majority of games at 1080p on this system with the 5870 by the way.

[Tasurinchi]

Nice job, particularly with the cabling

+1 The cabling in my custom made desktop doesn't look so nice as this one... Good job!

Powerful gaming rig. But which games do you play that can take advantage of 16GB RAM??

[dr_st]

Very nice rig.

I really would like to build a post-Core 2 desktop system. But I don't have anything to do with it really nor anywhere to put it. Need a bigger house first.

[A31]

+1 The cabling in my custom made desktop doesn't look so nice as this one... Good job!

Powerful gaming rig. But which games do you play that can take advantage of 16GB RAM??

I have 16GB of RAM because I like to run virtual machines, that's why - otherwise I would have stuck to 8GB of RAM.

This is actually the third rebuild of my system! I'm going to try and put that 24-pin power cable behind the motherboard tray today just to tidy up the look a little bit more. If you have a decent case like mine (the Lexa S) it's very easy to do cable management because you have grommets to put all the cables through.

[Tasurinchi]

If you have a decent case like mine (the Lexa S) it's very easy to do cable management

Right you are... I think my problem is that I was too inpatient/too lazy to think about cable management. I have an old Thermaltake Armor, which has lots of space and places to hide/arrange cables. I should re-build my set up one of these days...

[cxd9615gb]

Nice build. Not sure about the tidy cabling comments, here's the cabling in my new case the Corsair 300R.

[A31]

I love the Carbide 300R! Awesome case! It's the one I seem to be recommending to everybody on the Computer Forum right now.

[cxd9615gb]

Tis indeed a nice case for the money, best case I've ever owned for sure.

I'm curious if you'd get better temps with your CPU cooler drawing from the right side of your case, rather than the GPU which is bound to have hot air.

I found that when using that orientation with my CPU cooler and my old 8800GTX/4890 the idle temp would be much higher, although I guess load temp isn't affected too much..

[A31]

I'm curious if you'd get better temps with your CPU cooler drawing from the right side of your case, rather than the GPU which is bound to have hot air.

I found that when using that orientation with my CPU cooler and my old 8800GTX/4890 the idle temp would be much higher, although I guess load temp isn't affected too much..

That's what I'm thinking too, but when I first built the system I didn't have a graphics card - I only got the 5870 last weekend so I haven't had time to fiddle around yet. I'm also tentative about moving the cooler because I have all RAM bays populated with high-profile RipJaws-X DIMMs and the cooler fits fine with all the DIMMs installed when pointing downwards. I'm not sure if it would fit the other way - in fact I don't think it does as that's how I tried to install it to start with.

Since getting the 5870 my temps haven't gone up at all really. At idle the 2500K is at mid-high 30s and at full load it's around low-mid 60s, and my 2500K is overclocked to 4.3GHz too.

[A31]

Some shots of my PC, sorry they're not the best ever.









RAM



5870



Cooler





By the way I am looking at possibly selling the Lexa S (my current case) and my OCZ ZS 650W (my current PSU) to a friend in October and then getting myself an NZXT Phantom case and a Silverstone Strider Plus 750W modular PSU to replace the Lexa S and the OCZ and then maybe early on next year I'll pick up another 5870 and then run CrossFire. Would need a bigger case and a more powerful PSU to run a second 5870, hence why the upgrade in case and PSU. My friend is looking around for a new case and power supply anyway, so I told him I'd sell him mine and he seems quite keen to buy it.

[A31]

Thread bump time, haha!

I did some serious cable management work around February time and I added a Blu-Ray Burner drive in September, so I think some new photos are in order.


Here are some photos from February shortly after I improved the cable management (finally got that ugly 24 pin power cable behind the motherboard!) It's a bit dusty I know, I can never keep the dust bunnies away no matter how many times I spray it with air!









That molex plug hanging out from underneath one of the disks connects the fan on the side panel to the power supply.


Here's one from the beginning of September showing my Blu-Ray Burner drive. (sold my old Blu-Ray ROM drive to a friend who coming to think of it, still needs to pay for it!) I took other photos too but the hardware inside looks the same.




And, if you're interested, here is my desk setup - also taken in September. It has changed a tiny bit since then but not a lot (only added a desk lamp).

[Cola]

Really nice setups, guys.

Here's mine:

Inside





And the desktop setup. (I've gotten rid of the triple monitor setup now though, as I kinda didn't have any time left for gaming anymore, so a standard setup is more comfortable for everyday use.)




Specs:
Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 955BE 3.2GHz Quad Core
AMD HD7870XT 2GB
2x2GB 1.6GHz Corsair DDR3 ram
120GB OCZ SSD
500GB WD Storage drive

[A31]

Looks nice, good cable management and nice enough specs!