Shitballs

I tell you, it's always something with PCs. You get parts that don't work. You get the wrong parts. You get damaged parts. You pay for express shipping then wait a week to get your stuff. If it's not one thing, it's another.

I got my order from Performance PCs today, which should have been a Swiftech system and a new side panel for my case. Well, the side panel had a big ugly dent in it. The box was damaged, and it looks like a small, heavy object or perhaps the corner of something big and heavy smashed the box. The packaging was good, but there was a big tear in it.

That isn't horrible since it's not Performance PCs' fault, but screwing up my order is. I had ordered a Swiftech Pump/Reservoir assembly that fits into a drive bay. Instead, they sent me just the reservoir. The reservoir is only $20, but the pump is $80, which I have of course paid them. It's an easy mistake to make--the part number for the reservoir is MCRES-1000, and the part number for the pump/res assembly is MCRES-1000P--but they had better get on top of that and send me the $80 pump I paid for.

Second, I had ordered two sets of PVC tubing. Instead I got one small cut of it that's maybe a little over a foot long. Nowhere near enough for a full system. Who bothered to even pack that stuff?

Jeez. I bought the components separately because I didn't need some of the stuff included in the Swiftech H120 Premium System (namely the fan, radiator mount and green coolant). If I'd known the packers were going to do a half-assed job, I would have just saved myself the hassle and bought the system.

Now comes The Test. I immediately contacted Performance PCs with the problems and sent some pictures of the dent. It's late Friday so they might not get the email until Monday morning. They need to send me the pump, the tubing I ordered, and a new side panel. I expect them to respond apologetically and immediately send out the parts. If there's even a little wee bit of resistance, I will never buy from them again. That might sound harsh, but in this industry there's no room for fuckin' around. There are plenty of other places I can buy this type of stuff, and my experience with various companies' customer service has taught me that if they don't deliver reasonable service, don't stress about it... just buy your stuff elsewhere.


Oh, and btw... The Swiftech Apogee waterblock looks freakin' awesome. It might look nondescript in pictures, but in person it's quite impressive. These aren't the best pictures, but it should give you an idea.

One down, lots more to go

I received the Thermaltake Toughpower 700w Modular PSU today. There's not a whole lot you can say about a power supply. It's just gotta work.

But, I can say that I really like modular cable design on this sucker. It has three PCI-E connectors, which I suppose is because some newer motherboards have three PCI-E slots. Why anyone needs three, I do not know. The PCI-E cables are also longer, thinner, and much easier to manage than the thick, rubbery ones on my old OCZ.

Also, I've noticed that this PSU is a good deal quieter than my old OCZ. I thought my OCZ was really quiet, but I can't even hear this thing.

Apparently shipping for the Swiftech system and side panel got delayed until tomorrow. It'd be nice if my holesaw arrives tomorrow as well, since I can't install the Swiftech system until I can cut a hole in my PC.

New changes/upgrades forthcoming...

1. Selling OCZ 520w Powerstream. I'll be replacing it with a Thermaltake ToughPower 700w modular PSU with quad 12v rails. This will help me a lot with wire management since I'll only have to have cables in the case that I'm actually using. It'll also ensure that I'll have enough juice for all the fans in my system, which has been a bit of a problem.

2. Selling the Asetek Waterchill system, to be replaced by a Swiftech system. I don't expect performance to change a whole lot, but the Swiftech system will allow me to put the reservoir/pump apparatus neatly into a drive bay, which will allow me to put the hard drive cage back in, which will allow me to route the wires in back as I did before. The downside is that I have to cut a hole for the 120mm fan/radiator, but that's just how the cookie crumbles.

3. Replacing the side panel of the PC with a solid one with a 120mm fan mounted on it. This will allow me to ditch that pesky internal fan mount contraption that I have to remove every time I want to access my PCI cards. I may get a windowed side panel and a little bit of lighting. Not sure.

4. Cutting a 120mm fan hole on the top of the case to mount the Swiftech fan/radiator. This will actually be an intake fan in order to cool the radiator.

I just got paid today so I'll be making these changes very soon.

A new record!

I overclocked my cards a little more last night. Actually, a lot more. Surprisingly, these cards overclock remarkably well. The memory seems to be tapped out on one of the cards, but I got the core on both cards all the way to 675. Remember, the original core clock is 560. These nVidia cards never cease to amaze me with their extreme overclockability. 115mhz over stock? That's insane and a half. I had tried pushing the memory, but I had some artifacting issues at 830, so I backed it down again to 800. Like I said this appears to be an issue with just one of the cards, because it would pass the test in RivaTuner, but show artifacting during gameplay.

I ran 3DMark'06 again, and this is what I got:



7,278 3DMarks. Now, you'll undoubtedly see higher scores out there, largely due to the new Core 2 Duo processors which hike up the processor score. But smart gamers know that processors don't have much effect on real-world gameplay. The most important score, the one that really shows how much gaming muscle you have, is the Sharder Model 3.0/HDR score, which at 4,194 is very high. What makes me proud of this is that I'm doing it on a system that cost me hundreds less than it would have cost to buy a pair of stock 7900GTX cards, yet I'm getting better performance. God bless overclocking!

The even sweeter part of this is that I had been worried that with the new 7900GT 512s, I would not be able to acheive the same high overclocks I had with my Signature Series card. I can see now that my fears were unfounded, and these new cards have overclocked every bit as well as I had hoped for.

The rig that was not to be, and lessons learned

After some new insights and some careful though, I decided to end my listing early and pull my system from eBay. I'm going to end all other listings too.

There were a lot of factors that affected my decision, and I will still be making some rather big changes to my current PC, but it will cost me less than a full upgrade.

My plan had been to move to a new case, new cooling system, Intel and ATI platform. I wanted to work with Intel's Core 2 Duo, and figure out ATI's system. Case and cooling wise, I wanted partly to conceptualize a PC that I would sell if and when this business of mine becomes a reality.

However, after learning more about the changes I was making, I've decided it's not the best move.

First, now is a bad time to move to Core 2 Duo. For one, it requires ATI for dual-card setups because nVidia has not finished their nForce motherboards for Core 2 Duos. Originally I was interested in ATI, but after learning more about Crossfire, it appears that their answer to SLI is basically a mess. There are lots of driver issues, setup headaches and compatability problems. SLI is easy to setup and works very, very well. ATI's cards also consume a lot more power (about 100 watts more per card!), and I did not want to have to get a bigger power supply to run my rig.

Additionally, memory is a huge problem. The new platform requires DDR2 memory. When I bought my rig, I got OCZ Platinum 500, which at $230 was some of the most expensive memory out there. The cheapest quality ram I could find with the Core 2 Duo was Patriot 667, which at $260 is still extremely expensive. I then found out that for the best overclocking (1:1 FSB:MemClock), much more expensive memory would be needed. Memory alone would add as much as $300-$350 for my system, and that's if I got the cheaper stuff. Until memory comes down in price, I don't think it's a good time to upgrade.

On top of all that, I couldn't help but feel that my asking price of $2,000 was compromising too much. I feel I deserve more for the work I put into the PC and given its quiet operation and high-end performance. My original price was $2,500, which I feel is much more fair. but if I can't get that amount, I would rather not sell it.

So, this is what I'm going to do:

I'm going to sell my bulky Asetek Waterchill system, and replace it with a Swiftech system. The Swiftech system will offer better performance, and the entire pump and reservoir fit into a single 5.4" drive bay. I would be able to put my hard drive cage back in, and install my hard drive "backwards" like I had it previously. Altogether the case will be far less cluttered.

This will, however, require a case mod: I'll be drilling a 12cm blowhole in the top of the case, and mounting a 12cm intake fan there. The radiator will be mounted to this fan. This will give me better (and quieter) cooling than my current 80mm radiator.

I will probably also replace the side panel on my PC with a simple solid black panel with a blowhole cut in the side. This will get rid of the annoying fan cage that now sits next to my PCI cards.

The total cost of all this stuff will be around $250.

lol

I was perusing some of the other systems for sale on eBay, when I saw this one from some guy who said he was selling a "custom painted" PC. I clicked on the picture to see this. Hahaha. Yeah. My girlfriend said it looks like a high school notebook.

In case you're wondering, normally when people talk about custom painting on a PC, they're talking about stuff like this.

Oh and yes, my system is for sale on the mighty eBay here.

Booyah, part 2

Well, I overclocked the cards quite easily to 600/800. I might try clocking them further later, but they're rock solid. Extended gameplay and 3DMark and not a single artifacting problem. Temps are still low.

Oh, did I say 3DMark? Take a look!



That, my friends, is some serious muscle.

Why no one will care about G80

Okay, not *no one*. There will always be some enthusiasts who rush out and buy the latest technology just because, well... it's the latest technology.



This is a pic (supposedly) of the new DirectX 10-ready G80 card from nVidia. More have surfaced on the web and the consensus seems to be that they're not fake.

It's been rumored for a long time that the new cards would be extremely power-hungry, and this would confirm it: It has not one but TWO PCI-E 12v connectors. That means a lot of people will need to upgrade their power supplies to use it, and even more people would have to upgrade to use SLI (only the newer, pricier power supplies have quad 12v rails).

Also, remember that actually using DirectX 10 will require upgrading to Windows Vista. So between a new PSU, a new card and a new OS, some people could be looking at a $1,000 upgrade path for a single-card.

But the biggest reason I think people will hold off on these cards is that the software isn't there. Big upgrade paths are software driven. The last few years have been huge for the graphics industry: intensive games like Doom 3, Half-Life 2, FEAR, and Oblivion pushed hardware in a big way. Additionally, the prices of large, high-resolution widescreen monitors came way down. So, while five years ago few people played anything higher than 1024x768, now you have gaming possible at 1920x1600 with games that will cause any system to really strain.

So, maybe those few with the really high-end monitors will have some cause to upgrade. But the new cards will also cause current solutions to come down in price significantly. Since a current SLI or Crossfire system will easily play any current game even at very high resolutions and details, until some hardware-crunching killer apps come out I doubt many will be aching to make an upgrade to this kind of power-sapping hardware.

If there will ever a great time to buy just behind the technology curve, it's looking like this winter will be it.

Booyah

SLI in all its glory. Read it and weep, biatch!




Now to see how well these puppies can overclock.