Sea Shadow

It has been awhile since I have been here but I found it rather amusing that dailytech carried an article about DFI unveiling its 590-SLI board today. And it is TUESDAY! I know DFI announced it quite awhile ago, I just found it amusing that this particular article about it was on a tuesday after we all kept facetiously using that as the day for when everything was going to happen

When I had my setup up and running I used a Swiftech Storm waterblock for my CPU but everything else in my setup was from Danger Den. IIRC the DD-D5 and Swiftech MCP 655 are both the same Laing pump. As far as VGA waterblocks go I don't know what to tell ya there. Though I agree with SeanDude05 about getting a Black Ice GT radiator.

Out of curiosity, huge in comparison to what? Anyways I voted windows, I love it for my HTPC setup and for SFF systems. I guess cost is one of the reasons as well, things are just so expensive when you buy pre-built. Also I really enjoy XP and how stable it is (can't say the same for previous versions). I think I am cursed when it comes to using Macs. Every time I use one I somehow manage to crash one application or another (sometimes the whole machine will just lock up). In the space of 30 minutes I crashed Safari 6 times. Though my friends seem to do just fine when they use them, perhaps I am a bit too agressive at multitasking.

Price cuts rule!! Anyways I am probably gonna snag an X2 3800+ and OC it as high as I can. /me awaits THE Tuesday

That may have been the problem. You need to make sure that the fabric you are using is clean and free of any particulates that may get ground into the acrylic.

Out of curiosity what type of fabric did you use with the Novus?

I 2nd this, Novus is THE STUFF to use when getting rid of scratches in acrylic. Personally I only use #2. I use sand paper of varying grits to get rid of anything major and then Novus 2 to finish it all off. I haven't tried #1 because #2 gives me acceptable results. Though I may have to just try it out and see what the results are. And by acceptable results I mean I can't even see a hairline scratch, even if I hold it at an angle to a bright light. Heck I can't see a dang thing even with it edge lit by an LED. All thats there is my etch If you are left with tons of scratches then you are using the wrong type of cloth to wipe it off, either that or you are using the same cloth for all the different steps.

I have been working on one of those for quite some time, unfortunately I am easily distracted by other projects so I have 4 or 5 half finished projects lying around my room. It is in a state where it can run and has XP installed on it. However the enclosure isn't fully put together and I have a little bit more wiring to do. As far as cooling goes just make sure it can get some air. I have an EPIA MII 12000 and after running at full power for an hour or so the chipset HS feels warmer than the CPU HSF. Really the biggest source of heat in those systems is the hard drives. I have a 30GB 2.5" HDD as my boot/app drive and a 250GB 3.5" HDD for data storage. After a few hours the 3.5" heats up to be crazy hot. A small fan can really keep temperatures in check, as long as you have some airflow over the components everything will stay cool (well as cool as the air in the car). One very important thing for you to consider is what front end are you going to be using? So far I have been using Centrafuse and it is amazing. Parts wise I used this: EPIA MII 12000 (1.2ghz) 1U PCI Riser Hauppauge 150 MCE TV Tuner PW-200M 200 watt DC -> DC PSU 100 watt power supply brick (for when I use it as an HTPC at home) Toshiba slim line DVD-ROM (no idea what the specs are I just ripped it out of an old laptop) w/adapter Slime line floppy drive w/adapter 2.5" 30 GB IBM HDD w/adapter 3.5" 250 GB Maxtor HDD 256MB of PNY DDR PC2100 (hey it is what I had lying around) various small switches and wires to fit my needs 2x60mm fans from old P4 heatsinks lots of acrylic & acrylic solvent

If you read the article by bit tech you will find that the motherboard pictured isn't final (which is to be expected). So I am guessing it will probably be just like the ATi based boards that we have seen pictures of. OT: just for you NeoAethyr, I did some searching and I found two different IDE controllers that also support SATA. The first is a PCI-E 1x It has one IDE channel and 2 SATA channels allowing for up to 4 drives total. linky The second one should take care of most of your port needs It has 3 external and 1 internal USB port. It also has 2 external 1394a ports (thats Firewire 400) Then it has two SATA ports And to top it all off it has one IDE channel. linky If you want to carry this discussion further I would suggest to do it through PMs so that this thread doesn't go too far OT.

Yes, sorry about the short novel of a post I made. I just thought I would explain the reason why somethings are the way they are. I enjoy a good discussion with people and NEOAethyr and I seemed to be getting along ok. Sorry if it seemed like it was on the edge of heating up. Anyways, it looks like NEOAethyr may get his wish for the nice copper coolers Bit-Tech swung by DFI at Computex and got some more info about the 590 SLI. I must say it is looking good.

*sigh* I will have to start from the beginning Well then go whine to the companies who designed the chipsets. They were the ones who decided to drop the support for that. Heck Intel's new chipset doesn't even have one IDE port on it' date=' motherboard manufacturers had to use a 3rd party chip to put on an IDE channel. If DFI really wanted to they could do the same thing. But with as many SATA channels available as there are I really don't see a problem. You are correct in your assumption that it will probably never happen. This is because you want the new and the old to coexist and you want the entire industry to change to fit those needs. And you can achieve most of those things you wanted. They make a USB device for almost everything under the sun these days (I have even seen a USB powered shaver). In your case you could use, USB Modem, USB to VGA adapter, USB to IDE (no I am not talking about an external HDD enclosure but those would work too). Alternatively you could just get another video card and throw it into the other PCI-E slots. Heck over at Computex HIS is showing off a video card that uses a PCI-E 1x slot. So not only does this have more bandwidth available than the entire PCI bus, it lets you keep one of your coveted PCI slots for something else.

Now I am really getting confused. It seems there may be another version of the nVidia motherboard. However, I digg the layout of the SATA ports, well except for the random 2 mid way up, unless those are capable of supporting optical drives. They look to be on a seperate controler chip, if they can support optical drives then all the more reason to get that board. picture from madshrimps Oh wait! Is it possible that they are the various versions of the nVidia and ATi Chipsets? The one pictured above could be the 590 SLI, with the first picture being a 570 SLI. While the other pictures might be the ATi boards with the RDS600 and ULi south bridges. Edit: now that I think about it, it actually makes perfect sense. From nVidia alone there are 4 variants of the 5xx series 590 SLI 570 SLI 570 Ultra 550 So I guess it is possible that there would be 4 (maybe more) versions of nVidia based AM2 motherboards from DFI. There MIGHT be more if there are various features used or not used (kind of like the DR vs non DR boards). Then there are the ATi Boards so that leaves 2 (possibly more, maybe less) more motherboards. Then again this is all just a guess I have no idea what will happen. I must say that I can't wait to see the real thing though

After watching the press videos (google is your friend) I must say that Nintendo is definately onto something. The Wii looks absofrigginloutley amazing!! The remote/nunchuck combo looks amazing for FPS games (might make them actually enjoyable on consoles). And of course the library will be TONS of fun, now I can get my Sonic and Mario fixes w/out having to dig out the old consoles and spend forever cleaning out cartridges.

In the guide I made you can see me running a couple windowed proggys at once across monitors in dual view. linky

QFT, I had a minor issue but things were resolved. After that it took 30 min to put it together (I was a freak about tidyness, that was before I tossed in a WC setup) and it booted up just fine, took weeks to get the settings to where I am now.