Geekery upgrade

[greatbear]

I'm writing this on my spiffy clean, upgraded and newly quiet PC. Gone is the Athlon X2-4600 I started with and the temporary stock heatsink/fan I fitted it with and in it's place is a nice shiny X2-6000 along with the water cooling. I was assembling this thing as an upgrade for the studio PC a couple years ago. The original motherboard would never work properly. The PC got put on the back burner until the later part of '06, when the failing studio PC needed a replacement. I rushed together the replacement and essentially had it in 'beta test mode' for over a year. Now I can finally start tweaking and tuning it all the while basking in the soft hum of watercooled goodness.

The CPU that came out of this one will make a nice foundation for something else, either a new web server or garage PC. I can also turn my attention to getting a new display for this setup, plus upgrading the LAN and running cables. After that, a new library/multimedia server and a simple PC made from spare parts for the garage. Jeff's PC will get a much needed replacement, and his old one might end up at his parent's place after some minor upgrades.

It's [H]ard out there for a geek.

Comments

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

The mobo is an Asus Crosshair, the water cooling setup is a Koolance PC3-726 integrated case/watercooling thing. The Crosshair mobo is compatible with the new Phenom quad core CPU, maybe that will be a future upgrade. I have a pair of EVGA GeForce 7800GTX cards in SLI, but I am thinking of eventually tossing them for a single BFG 8800 GTX that comes with a very nice factory installed waterblock. I had intentions of stripping off the (very nice, actually) stock heatsinks from the 7800 cards and fitting them with waterblocks, but they are kinda behind the times now. It'd be nice to have a pair of those watercooled 8800s, but that is some serious coin, and sadly, the CPU could never feed them enough.

I am looking to get at least a 24 inch display. The 30s are droolworthy, but I have to see how well everything will fit on the new desk I have in mind.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

I need to do some upgrades too, like a totaly new PC, or will it be the Mac? Dunno due to fact that as I hone where I go job wise in the next year, it may require I jump ship to Apple but will maintain a PC side too.

If I stick with Windows, it'll be a total upgrade most likely, including a new case etc. The current case is 6 YO (although the PSU has been replaced twice since then and it's currently a 450W job, rather than the old 300 watter that came with and the original replacement was as well), the video card, an Invidia G-Force MX2 w/ 64MB on board of memory is the same age but still does OK, the processor, MB and the 120G drive are all 4 YO now, give or take, the DVD drive is now almost 3 YO, the CD-RW is now 6 but barely gets used now except for using as a source for CD copying

The MB is a mATX board w/ 266DDR memory now sporting 1G of RAM and a 2 Gig celeron and can only accept the 475(?) pin P4 processor, now not supported and has 400Mhz FSB.

But for now it's OK but I know in another year it'll need to be replaced but for now I'm thinking of a Firewire/USB external drive, not concered with NAS drives at this time but something for additional storage capacity for audio and video files for the short term so doing CD's and video editing projects are easier to do.