Monday, August 10, 2009  

[New rig!]

I'm almost done with my new rig. I bought everything on Friday afternoon, and was then kept pretty busy with setting it up since then. I took leave for tomorrow, intending to go back to work (and cancel my leave) if I managed to be done with it in time, but looks like I won't be.

I bought my first rig back in 1996. It was an Intel Pentium 120Mhz, with a 1.2GB hard disk. Mind you, back then, the fastest processor was 133Mhz and most hard disks are 500MB-800MB. Ever since then, I've never bought another Intel processor.

For my new rig, I decided to get an Intel because the Core i7 simply has no real competition - yet. Also, this was the first rig I'm building where budget is not that much of a factor. I ended up with a Core i7 950, 3*1GB of Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600 RAM, GeForce GTX 275, 2*1.5TB hard disks, 700W PSU, and a new casing.

The casing and PSU were the only items I did not do any research on. For the casing, I thought it would be a good idea to go down and look at them first-hand. I wanted to change a casing because it was insanely troublesome cleaning the dust filters on my current CoolerMaster. The dust filters do their job very well, but in order to clean them, I need to remove my DVD drives, detach the front panel, then painstakingly remove each and every individual piece of sponge (they are the dust filters). The sponge was thin and it was only a matter of time before I tore them...Not to mention the fact that sponge will break down over time.

Unfortunately, the only casing that met my requirements was a Lian Li. I wasn't considering Lian Li at all because of the higher price they command. But it was the only one that met my easy-to-clean-dust-filters requirement. The Lian Li I ended up with cost almost twice the amount of my second-choice CoolerMaster (which had the same dust filter problem).

I paid the guys from the shop to assemble everything for me. When I got home, I went through everything to make sure they did it correctly and realised that they used the not-so-good power connector from the PSU to the motherboard. There were two possible connectors to use, and they went with the weaker-powered one. Good thing I spotted that. Wish I thought of taking pictures...Then I would have something to show for this entry.

Other than a few hiccups with the way the motherboard worked with SATA drives, it was smooth-sailing when it came to software installation. I'm in the middle of mirroring all my data now, which is taking forever. There are, however, a few issues that need resolving...

First, my UPS. The output of this UPS is only 300W. It's meant for typical home systems, and not one like the one I've built. Everything's fine when the power is on. But I tried turning off the power and the UPS could not power my new rig via its batteries. I may need to get a new UPS. I'm still considering it. A UPS that matched my new 700W PSU would cost an absolute bomb.

Next, there is some issue with the audio. Previously, both the bass and treble were at reasonable levels. I used the same sound card and installed the same drivers, but the bass is almost non-existant now. I can't figure out why. This is not my strong suit...And searching on Google didn't help. I might have to get a new pair of speakers that comes with bass/treble adjustment dials...Which I don't mind because I've been thinking about it anyway. My current speakers are the only things that were still beige. I saw this 2.1 speaker system that I liked, but there's one issue. The sub-woofer projects like a regular speaker, instead of downwards. Due to the placement of my rig, this means the bass would be projected into the back of my monitor. That can't be good.

This was supposed to be the last piece of the puzzle for my room upgrade plan. But now it looks like I have a few more items that I may need to get.

^^^ by Locksley @ 10:12 PM. 6 comments.
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[Comments]

For speakers that are cheap and damn good, you can consider the Logitech x230 2.1 speakers. Costs only $69 but sounds damn good for that price range. =p

-Nixxy
Looks good, but I can't adjust the bass on the speaker. The whole point now is to get a pair of speakers that allows me to do so. Actually my current speakers are good enough, strong bass too. I just don't know what happened after attaching them to my new rig. The bass is almost completely gone... :( Can't figure out where the problem lies.
I'm thinking of Altec Lansing's VS4121. I've seen them before. If I remember correctly, there are bass and treble dials on them. They cost more though...About $120.
Fixed the low-bass problem. It was due to the K-Lite codec I installed. Removed them all and installed only the video codecs. Audio is now back to normal. Phew.
Why are you using K-lite codec pack? All codec packs are scams I feel. Use VLC and you should play almost everything you need.

And why are you still using a soundcard? Some of the newer mobos have integrated sound chips which may or may not be better than your old soundcard. But I guess if everything works, I won't bother to go tinker around.

Congrats on new rig. Now find some stuff to run on it.
My codecs are all pretty old. Instead of downloading them all again, thought I'd try K-lite. VLC has problems with a certain audio codec, the name of which escapes me at the moment.

I need to install codecs anyway since I use video encoding software.
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