EXTREME Machines II

[ad4mg]

I'm building 3 new machines for Tony, KR4UQ, in preparation for his eventual relocation to the mid-west. Tony used to host this site on his server a while back. He sold his business, retired, and will now chase tornadoes for amusement. He's had me build two other machines for his video work, but he decided to upgrade to 3 new machines to conquer these tasks. The specifications on the new machines are as follows:


CASE: Thermaltake V190001W22 Full Tower Case

MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-EX58-EXTREME LGA-1366 socket MB

PROCESSOR: 1 ea Intel Core i7-975 3.33 GHz Processor w/ 8MB L3 Cache

COOLING: Cooler Master V8 180 Watt Cooling Solution

RAM: 3 ea Corsair 2GB DDR3 xms3 Patinum Series RAM Modules

VIDEO: 1 ea NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 PCI-E 2.0 video card

AUDIO: Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty PCI-E sound card

PS: ULTRA 1600 Watt ATX Power Supply

STORAGE: 6 ea 3.5" 1.5 TB Seagate Barracuda SATA-3G Hard Drives

MULTI-MEDIA: 2 ea Plextor PX-B320SA CD/DVD/Blu-Ray RW Disk Drives

ACCESSORY: ULTRA MD3 5.25" Media Dashboard

OS: MS Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64 Bit w/UG Coupon for Windows 7

AUX OS: Ubuntu 9.04 (will upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 when released)
Here are a few photos of machine #1, just finished. Lighting in my garage is poor, will try to get better pics later.

FRONT:
http://mysite.verizon.net/ad4mg/DSC05425.JPG

RH Side w/cover on:
http://mysite.verizon.net/ad4mg/DSC05428.JPG

RH Side w/cover off:
http://mysite.verizon.net/ad4mg/DSC05431.JPG

Back Side:
http://mysite.verizon.net/ad4mg/DSC05435.JPG

LH Side w/cover on:
http://mysite.verizon.net/ad4mg/DSC05436.JPG

LH Side w/cover off:
http://mysite.verizon.net/ad4mg/DSC05439.JPG

[PA5COR]

Meh...
Nothing better as my Sinclair ZX machine with the whopping 16 kB memory block attached can't do.

:snicker:

Kidding....

Nice stuff... :clap:

[W2NAP]

not bad not bad at all.

i havent built a machine in years now. and then due to $$$$ i kept pretty much everything generic (generic sound/vid) and used the most cash for proc. and ram

[kf0rt]

Schweet, Luke! :agree:

And it's amazing how little something like that costs these days.

Seems to me ol' Tony just put together a few high-end boxes not that long ago, too.

[N2NH]

Really Impressive! Is that a RAID setup? Are those Quad Core Intel Chips? What's the power supply on something like that? Really nice cases too...

I'm waiting for Win7 to see if the 64 bit OS is worth it.

:geek: :drool

EDIT: Nevermind. I saw the PS!
:drool: :drool

[kf0rt]

CASE: Thermaltake V190001W22 Full Tower Case
$190
MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-EX58-EXTREME LGA-1366 socket MB
$279
PROCESSOR: 1 ea Intel Core i7-975 3.33 GHz Processor w/ 8MB L3 Cache
$1000
COOLING: Cooler Master V8 180 Watt Cooling Solution
$60
RAM: 3 ea Corsair 2GB DDR3 xms3 Patinum Series RAM Modules
3 * $45 = $135
VIDEO: 1 ea NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 PCI-E 2.0 video card
$510
AUDIO: Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty PCI-E sound card
$140
PS: ULTRA 1600 Watt ATX Power Supply
$350
STORAGE: 6 ea 3.5" 1.5 TB Seagate Barracuda SATA-3G Hard Drives
3 * $120 = $360
MULTI-MEDIA: 2 ea Plextor PX-B320SA CD/DVD/Blu-Ray RW Disk Drives
2 * $135 = $270
ACCESSORY: ULTRA MD3 5.25" Media Dashboard
$30
OS: MS Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64 Bit w/UG Coupon for Windows 7
$190
AUX OS: Ubuntu 9.04 (will upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 when released)

Someone had to... :dance:
My calculator says right about $3,514 for the parts (from TigerDirect and Newegg).

[ad4mg]

CASE: Thermaltake V190001W22 Full Tower Case
$190
MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-EX58-EXTREME LGA-1366 socket MB
$279
PROCESSOR: 1 ea Intel Core i7-975 3.33 GHz Processor w/ 8MB L3 Cache
$1000
COOLING: Cooler Master V8 180 Watt Cooling Solution
$60
RAM: 3 ea Corsair 2GB DDR3 xms3 Patinum Series RAM Modules
3 * $45 = $135
VIDEO: 1 ea NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 PCI-E 2.0 video card
$510
AUDIO: Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty PCI-E sound card
$140
PS: ULTRA 1600 Watt ATX Power Supply
$350
STORAGE: 6 ea 3.5" 1.5 TB Seagate Barracuda SATA-3G Hard Drives
3 * $120 = $360
MULTI-MEDIA: 2 ea Plextor PX-B320SA CD/DVD/Blu-Ray RW Disk Drives
2 * $135 = $270
ACCESSORY: ULTRA MD3 5.25" Media Dashboard
$30
OS: MS Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64 Bit w/UG Coupon for Windows 7
$190
AUX OS: Ubuntu 9.04 (will upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 when released)
Priceless!
Someone had to... :dance:
My calculator says right about $3,514 for the parts (from TigerDirect and Newegg).
That's amazing. I figured easily twice that amount. Never had the time to price it all ... Tony keeps me too busy putting these things together! These are the 5th, 6th, and 7th machines I've built for him in the last couple of years.

This evening, I installed Vista Ultimate 64, and Ubuntu 9.10 beta, instead of 9.04. Didn't activate Windows yet, just wanted to make sure the dual boot scenario worked OK with Ubuntu. There are various "solutions" to making this work (Vista is anal about this), but I came up with an easier solution:

First boot-up was with Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD. Used GParted to slice off 40 GB at the end of the drive as an ext4 partition. Re-booted with the Vista CD, installed same. Re-booted again with Ubuntu, and told it to install "side by side" with Vista using the ext4 partition.

It worked flawlessly ... either OS boots just fine. Interesting little problem ... all the drives are SATA, even the DVD's. Vista only "sees" one DVD drive, but installing the MB chipset drivers should fix this. Ubuntu picked up both, no problem.

I kept time on the assembly ... it took me a total of 5 hours and 25 minutes to assemble the complete machine, box to boot-up. No doubt the other 2 will go much quicker with all the little problems solved. For example, the sound card is a PCI-E x1 card, but with the auxiliary cooling installed, that slot is blocked by the hardware, and unusable. Had to relocate the sound card to the 2nd PCI-E x16 slot.
Yes, the slots are backward compatible. And, note to self ... install cooling fan on back side of MoBo BEFORE installing the MoBo ... :sarcasm:

Those two SNAFU's probably cost me a couple of hours themselves.

Only two more to go ...

[KG4CGC]

Sounds like a lot of fun! Jealous much am I.

[ad4mg]

Sounds like a lot of fun! Jealous much am I.
Man, I was blue-green with envy when I fired that thing up. It really smokes with all that RAM and that video card!

Best machine I have looks like a solar powered calculator next to it ... :roll:

[KG4CGC]

Sounds like a lot of fun! Jealous much am I.
Man, I was blue-green with envy when I fired that thing up. It really smokes with all that RAM and that video card!

Best machine I have looks like a solar powered calculator next to it ... :roll:
... with the Keystone moniker printed under the 8 digit display.

[n2ize]

For the kind of stuff I do here at home a machine like that would be overkill. The most demanding things I do from home are some video and audioprocessing and occasionally some really intense number crunching involving lots of recursion. I don't do video games So far I've gotten by with a 32 bit Dell + 2.5 Ghz processor. Eventually I'll upgrade to a 64 bit machine with multi-core processors. But I'm in no hurry. Meanwhile I could use some extra RAM.