I built a budget PC for myself this week. It is something that I’ve been meaning to do for awhile, but for some reason or another never could bring myself to commit the money to because I’m such a tightwad. D=
I can’t recall the last time that I used a Nvidia card. I’ve had a preference for ATI ever since I received my first ATI card as a hand-me-down; which was by no coincidence when I also became addicted to Source games. Most Source games were (and still are) optimized for ATI, so there was a noticeable difference in benchmark performance between comparable cards. Eventually though, I just stopped upgrading (and caring) enough to keep track of those things, and exclusively bought ATI cards. My love affair with ATI became so strong that once, I even bought ram simply because it was ATI certified. Yeah, I’m such a tool. =PpP
All of this ended once ATI sold out to AMD. Driver updates became slow (which wouldn’t have been bad if they weren’t also unstable) and every Catalyst Control Center from 9.4 onward had installation problems. I used system restore more times than I can count — routinely uninstalling and then reinstalling CCC, ATI drivers, and .NET Framework whenever there was yet another broken CCC update. It became so routine that I’d check the AMD forums before each update just to see if they had been deluged with the same old complaints. As for my registry? It was like fighting a losing battle to keep it from looking like something out of Cthulu.
So far, I’ve been happy with my GTX 260 just because updating drivers hasn’t caused anything to ‘splode. =B
I had to post a picture of the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R by itself because it is without a doubt the prettiest motherboard that I have ever owned. That is probably the last adjective I would use to describe the appearance of a motherboard, but… just look at it! Have you ever seen anything so SHINY?! LOL I have no experience with Gigabyte as a brand, but their Intel-optimized boards have good ratings on Newegg, and this board had so much upgrade potential (SLI, tri-channel). It is why I compromised on GPU and ram for now.
This is like its baby picture, because I took it the first time that I powered it up! It looks like it barfed up a bunch of wires in the photo because I hadn’t bothered to organize or tie them up yet. I know that some people consider that a top priority, but I wanted to check my fan speeds and temperature in bios first just to make sure that everything was working properly and I hadn’t messed something up. =X
The V8 is so huge that I was worried I might need to remove one of my fans to make it fit (CM Scout has a 120m fan at the top), but fortunately it didn’t turn out to be a concern. I did need my Dad’s help while installing the mount though because it was difficult for me to screw it into place in the back while holding the V8 in position on the front. He kept asking if I was doing anything that could electrocute him. =P LOL Oh, and the best part was applying the thermal compound (Arctic Silver 5), since it came with a little brush! It was like giving a manicure to a processor. The last time that I installed a heatsink, I used the stock compound that came with it in a tube, which was messy and scary (since there was no applicator). But this was so easy!
Anyways, I love my Scout(s). <3
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Chassis: Cooler Master Storm Scout (Medium Tower)
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PSU: XFX (P1-650X-CAG9) XXX Edition (650W)
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Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (LGA 1366)
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Processor: Intel Core i7-930 Bloomfield 2.8GHz Quad-Core (LGA 1366)
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CPU Cooler: Cooler Master V8
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Memory: Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
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HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB (7200 RPM)
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GPU: MSI Nvidia GeForce GTX 260
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OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
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6 Responses to “Scout”
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Very nice.. Gigabyte boards are indeed pretty–especially that one!
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Congrats on the new build. Speaking of heatsinks, mine is this massive hunk of aluminum that pretty much spans the width the case.
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650W is quite low for a power supply; I have 750W, but I suppose my NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX/9800 GTX+ takes up more power – and uses, unfortunately from a personal perspective, more heat – than yours. Mind you, I don’t think I have a heatsink…. =(
So how do you rate Windows 7 so far?
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Claw
Thank you. =) Hey, haven’t I seen you comment on here before?
AOClaus
Would it happen to be a Zalman heatsink? Some of those things are so huge!
I’d be worried about the weight on my motherboard, since I move my tower a lot. D=
Chris
I don’t think that 650W is too low for my purposes. I’m actually more concerned with the placement of the PSU. Normally, I wouldn’t have a PSU at the bottom where heat could rise to my video card. I should have given that more consideration when I picked out this case (although it probably wouldn’t have deterred me). As of right now though, heat isn’t an issue and my temps/airflow are just perfect.
Windows 7 is really… different? D= I don’t know how else to describe it!
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Fantastic!!!!
Nice Blue BOX!!! XD
You are Engineer too. I didn’t know. LOL
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650w, assuming it’s a good quality PSU, is plenty for a single GPU system. The XFX XXX looks to be made by Seasonic, and similar to their Corsair HX line, which is excellent.
All in all it’s a good looking build. Only thing I’m confused by is the lack of 3x2GB RAM in triple channel, which that motherboard supports.
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