Kennie

Nice review

Because I am lazy, I will just link to the imgur gallery, and select a few highlights from the update for this thread. Today I received: Essence STX, AV 40, 1984, air And as promised, case pr0n. Before doing anything, this is how it has looked the last two months or so. Golddddddd! It looks as if it can go really, really fast. I hope it will make my CPU do that. I don't know too much about mirror finishes or anything but I for one am satisfied with that result. Installed, both the STX and the V6GT, my case now looks like this It might be hard to tell, but most of that cablemess is on level with the motherboard tray, so I would say it does not compromise airflow. And then these. This is what was included in the package. And this is how the important part of my desk looks like nowadays. And I also received the greatest book in the world. Numbers: CPU idle temperature: 28C (dropped about 18C) CPU load temperature: 36C (dropped about 22C) Impression of speakers/soundcard: Holy shiiiiii-- Totally worth it. No further upgrades planned in the nearest time, though. My build is now rather complete. Full specs: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T (clocks will change though, I hope I will get it to 4G ) Asus M4A89GTD Pro G-Skill Eco PC3-12800 2*2GB 1.35v Sapphire Vapor-X HD 5870 1GB Asus Xonar Essence STX Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 2*1TB Corsair HX750W Cooler Master V6GT Cooler Master Haf 922 Samsung SyncMaster B2330 23" Steelseries Ikari Laser White Roccat Sense Adrenalin Blue Mousepad Some cheap logitech keyboard M-Audio Studiophile AV 40 2.0 speakers Steelseries Siberia V2 Headset Subtotal: Somewhere around 2000€ I like it. Now to see how much I can overclock this baby. ********* Update: I got it overclocked to 3.8GHz Here are some benchmarks and that CPU-Z validator Quite an astonishing increase in the Cinemark benchmark, compared to the 3.56GHz result I got earlier. If you want to see something else, tell me. Because I'm sort of out of imagination. Oh yeah and temps: Idle 33C, Load: 55C

New update! I got some of my new stuff yesterday, not that much though. So I ordered a Steelseries Ikari Laser mouse, white edition, a Roccat sense adrenalin blue mousepad, and the cooler master V6GT. I have also ordered (and they should arrive next week) M-Audio AV 40 speakers, Asus Xonar Essence STX soundcard, Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell (I've read it before, but I wanted to own a copy, and the store which sold the speakers also sells books, oddly enough), Two cans of compressed air to clean out the dust from my Haf 922, Siberia v2 headset and siberia in-ear earphones. Because I will be getting a new soundcard, I will wait with the unboxing of my new cpu-cooler until that arrives, so that I will have one big christmas eve. What I did unbox, and am now using, is the Ikari laser and the mousepad. And thus, let the visual flooding commence! I didn't receive them in any larger package, as I picked them up from the store, so I just received them like that, in a plastic bag. Good enough for me. It wasn't as colourful as I had hoped, and the image isn't too sharp. However, the surface capabilities makes up for that. I like how they just had to add the three badges for the different windows versions. The mouse is very glossy, as you can tell by my camera flash making the packaging surrounding the mouse light up. The two together, along with my keyboard and monitor in the background, merely for showing the size. It's a very large mousepad.

Life has got stats, however, it is using old drivers, so you have to manually list them. The data is all there, how much money you've got, your education level, and so forth. You just have to compile the list yourself. There are, however, newer drivers available which have got automatical stats, so if you'd like to use those, you can change server. I heard 308x.3j uses the newest ones. Pretty sweet stuff. ps. Just remember that once you change server, you will lose all progress in this one. ds.

Okay, thanks for your input. Seems like I'm pretty set for those then. I'll just have to see what soundcard I'll get then. I suppose it's mostly an issue of how much I want to pay, I reckon a soundcard won't get outdated as fast as other hardware. So in comparison with the 5870 I bought as part of my new computer, paying for quality here feels more long-term. Bravura is some 130€, Forte is 150€, Asus D2X is around 120€, STX is at 165€. The differences between prices aren't that huge, but STX might feel a little overkill for my purposes. I will probably go with something around 120-130€. Of course, I am still accepting advice, so if my reasoning is in any way flawed, don't hesitate to point that out. So basically my logic committed suicide and I ordered the STX. I like to use both speakers and headphones, and it feels futureproof enough. And it was only 35€ more, so not too much. Thanks guys.

Okay, thanks for the advise. Is Asus better than Auzentech? Because I've been thinking of getting the Auzentech X-fi bravura, and I've read really positive reviews about it. The AV series has got bass boost, although I'm not sure how effective that is. Although I'm not listening to music purely dependent on that (quite a lot of trance music, though), I just got the feel that they are better than, say, a 2.1 system for about the same price. The AV40 has got 4" subwoofers, while I'm not sure what the impact of that actually means, I still have a feeling it would be better than the labtech 2.1 system I'm using right now (the bass is quite sucky on it). Cheers.

They're totally in my price range as well. No but really, I'd like an answer on my question about how much difference/improvement there would be.

Nice! I was looking at the X-Fi Bravura as well, seems really good and has got beyond my understanding-features. My only concern is how much it is worth it, for instance versus your X-Raider. How much difference is there really? I understand that if I were to use my current set of speakers, I would barely notice any difference. But what are the actual differences, given sufficient gear? While I would certainly want something like that, I need to somehow justify it (hence the "have I gone mad?"-addition to my subject). Of course, I have never really experienced music being played from more expensive equipment than on-board sound coupled with 30€-speakers or headphones, so I have no idea what to expect, really. It might as well blow my mind.

The cheapest I found was roughly at 150€. Most other places were around 170€, some at 200€. I'm a bit reluctant to buying stuff used, I would prefer to get it fresh and new. Probably only a personal quirk though. My two main sites I use are verkkokauppa and Jimm's Pc Store, and when I find a specific product there's this site Hintaseuranta (basically 'price tracking'), a kind of search engine for most Finnish online stores to see if there are cheaper alternatives available (I'm rather clueless whether there are further alternatives available). We seem to have Asus and Creative soundcards, some Auzentech, and then professional ones, but not much more. Thanks for your replies.

Hey guys Because the current hardware I'm using is the on-board sound on my M4A89GTD Pro, and my speakers is a 2.1 labtech thing which was like 30€ when I got it, I'm looking to upgrade stuff. I have no idea how high I should go, or how high is even sane to go. While I want the best possible, I can't just go throw around my money, so I thought I'd ask you guys for advice. I like the M-Audio speakers, and if nobody can convince me otherwise, is what I'm going to get. I'm looking at either the AV 30 or the AV 40, possibly lower if that is completely mad. I can get the AV30 for around 100€, the AV40 for around 150€. From what I've gathered, they're both excellent monitors, my only gripe is whether it is worth it. As for soundcard, I'm rather lost. Initially, I looked at the Asus Xonar Essence STX, but I have a feeling it might be a tad too professional for my use. Basically, what I would be using them for, is listening to music (and not just 128kbps mp3s, mind you), and a little own music creation, however nothing dramatical. And gaming, of course. I've heard bad stuff about creative's soundcards, and the choices seem rather limited, so I hoped you could help me out. tl;dr; Need speakers and soundcard for listening to music, give advice.

I've had a 250GB Seagate Maxtor drive for about 4 years now without problems, and I'm having 2x1TB Barracuda 7200.12 drives currently. Haven't had a problem with Seagate ever. Perhaps I'm just lucky. Perhaps you are just unlucky.

I use steam, so yes, I have the latest patch. Furmark didn't show any errors, seems to behave just nicely. I tried turning off graphical settings in jc2, and it seems that anti-aliasing is the culprit. With 4x or 8x, case #1 is apparent, with 2x, it's gone. Not really sure how this is possible, but it seems to be the cause. The CCC settings are all on "Application managed", by the way.

Yeah, I've got the latest drivers. And as stated, my card idles at high 30s, lowest continous temperature I've seen was 35, highest was in high 70s, about 75.

Hey, I got my new rig put together a month ago or so, although after a while of playing Just Cause 2, odd flickering squares started popping up. I have two different versions, one, which is more common, seems to be about particles, like dust, and as squares around lightsources. It is usually solved by rebooting, but it comes back quite fast. The other, less common one, is larger flickering squares, covering everything which is somewhat close, that is, if you're on the ground, in a forest, everything. As seen in the screenshot. It does not occur too often, and usually after playing JC2 for a long (3+ hours?) while. My question now is whether this is caused by the AMD drivers for my card. The second case, when triggered, appears in everything, from minecraft, bf2, jc2 to the preview for changing the settings in CCC. The first scenario doesn't appear as clear in other applications, although I have spotted something which could be it in bf2, not sure though. Temps should not be an issue, from what I've monitored, my gpu idles at 35, and occasionally hits 75 on load. CPU goes from ~38 to ~56. I'm using a DVI-VGA adapter, if that has any relevance, since my monitor only came with a VGA cable. The build is as follows: AMD X6 Phenom II 1055T Asus M4A89GTD Pro G-Skill 1600MHz 2x2GB Sapphire Vapor-X 5870 1GB Corsair HX750W I haven't overclocked the system in any way.

Update: Okay, I'm not really sure what to think now. I got an SMS today about the motherboard and GPU I RMA'd, saying they had tested them, and they found no problems whatsoever. Well, I took the stuff home, I thought, I'll put it together again, to further investigate the problem. To my sheer amazement, it worked! Somehow, my system works. No products changed, swapped or anything. It just works. Oh, and I acquired AS5 thermal paste too. All photos I took of the unboxing stuff are on my old harddrive which I don't really have access to right now (or I cba to install it in my system), so unless you are dying to see me open boxes, I will spare you the spam created by them. What is to come more of, though, are benchmarks. Cpu score: 14330 Graphics score: 14511 Cinebench 11.5: CPU: 5.65pts OpenGL: 32.14 fps SuperPi 1M: 21.423s Just Cause 2: Concrete Jungle: 46.15fps avg. Although not HD resolution, this is what I game at, since I play in windowed mode. Annnnnd a pic of my epic very-awesome cable management which basically consists of "tuck everything behind the motherboard tray". Some rough temps: CPU: Idle 36C, load 52C CPU cores: Idle 26C, load 47C GPU: Idle 35C, load 63C