Computer nerds, this is the obligatory "describe your rig" thread

That's pretty creative!

Normally you put your computer on wood. I've never seen someone put wood on their computer.

A coworker had me spec a laptop for them recently, and we went with an ASUS as well. It was about $400 and is probably the cheapest laptop I've ever experienced, and I was pretty amazed at how well it ran. I've used ASUS motherboards in the past, and they were always quality, so it's good to see that quality finds it's way into their other products as well.

 

I'm very excited. As soon as tax returns come in sometime in early March, I'll be purchasing a Sapphire AMD Radeon 7950. This will be the most expensive video card I've ever bought for my personal use(workstation card I bought at work ran us about $800 a few years ago).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202026

So, for those who game(or also do things that require workstation class cards), do you prefer Nvidia or AMD/ATI?

My very first video card that I can actually remember buying was an Nvidia TNT2 way back in 1999. I used various Nvidia cards after that, then made the switch to ATI(before they were bought by AMD). Used them for a few years, then switched back to Nvidia again for a couple cards. I'm currently running a GTX 470, which is a beast(or was when it was newer).

I can't say I really have a preference to be honest, because it seems those two competitors go back and forth with who has the top performing card at the time. Right now from what I've read it appears to be AMD(at least in my price range).

 

They say necessity is the mother of invention I couldn't just toss it, because it worked (works) perfectly.... and I couldn't justify spending money on a new one at the time...again, because it works perfectly. I still fire it up for updates, or when I need to print things....it's more or less a desktop now, and I keep the printer hooked up.

 

Pics or it's worthless

I make wooden computers.
This is just a touchscreen terminal that controls the house.

 

Should I ever win the lottery, you'll probably be getting a PM from me asking you to design and build your entire setup for the new house I would be building.

 

I'll pick up some batteries for the camera, Ctrl....maybe I can present a little slide show of Frankie's marvels of engineering later this evening.

 

I would expect this rig to exist in a cylon's house. NICE budget build!

 

Wow, you got some damn good deals there!

The cpu/MB combo is good, and the SSD you got was a great frickin price!

 

Intel i7-3770k, Corsair dual fan water cooled
Asus sabertooth z77
16gig DDR
1gig WD
Asus optical
800 gold Corsair ps
Corsair 500 case
Evga 670Gtx-oc

 

No doubt. He needs to help out on this thread
http://www.politicalforum.com/computers-tech/290233-blowouts-promos-fire-sales-oh-my.html

 

I just did a few upgrades. First, I purchased a new laptop which was delivered to me only this past Monday ( 2/18 ).

ASUS G75VW-DH73-3D
17.3" 1080p (with 3D)
Intel i7 3630QM
16GB RAM
256GB SSD HD
750GB HD
Blu-Ray Burner
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670M (3GB)


Also just yesterday, I ordered an upgrade CPU, motherboard, and RAM for my main desktop PC. After it arrives and I put it all together, it will be:

Intel i7 3770 (didn't need the "K" model, I don't bother with overclocking)
ASUS P8Z77-V Intel Z77
16GB G.SKILL Ripjaw X Series RAM
2x EVGA GeForce GTX 580 in SLI
Antec 1200w power supply

... plus the standard stuff - a couple hard drives, Blu-ray drive, etc. I'd like to replace the main boot drive with an SSD, but I think they're still much too expensive. The speed is great, but I need more space, and the higher capacity SSDs cost an arm, a leg, and your first-born. Let's see - $370 for the cheapest 500GB SSD I could find, or $70 for a decent 500GB standard platter drive? Yeah, no contest.

My video cards also aren't top of the line anymore, now with the 600 series (got them right when the 580's came out), but with 2 of them, I'll be set for a while.

 

Meet Frankie (and NubbyKitty)


Cradle and cooling fan


Dremel tool enlarged ventilation port


The "Bolt" and screen prop / angle adjustment system

 

That is made of awesomesauce. Frankentop is welcome next to floorbiter any day!

Just so you know you can probably grab a fan for that thing for about 5 bucks... but I would beg that you don't.

 

I couldn't help but think of these two lines when looking at these pictures.

Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology.

 

The six dollar bionic jury rig. lol

 

i7 3770
Patriot Viper 16GB DDR3
1GB Geforce GTX 650
Asus P8 Z77-V Pro
Samsung 128GB SSD

Gives me a Windows Experience of:

Processor - 7.7
RAM - 7.8
Graphics - 7.4
Gaming Graphics - 7.4
HDD - 7.9

 

I am surprised at the number of people running their native ivy bridge graphics whom I assume are gamers.


Haven't seen any real beastly GPU's

 

I get a 7.4 so that's good enough!

 

Oh believe me... ain't broke don't fix it...

I am just impressed with the intel's performance.

(I just went back and re-read everyones rigs... and noticed the couple of GTX670/470) I would like to see some benchmarks between it and the nVidias listed.

 

2 Geforce GTX 580's in SLI isn't beastly?

 

Oh yeah... that's beast... not sure how I missed that...

 

I just went into the laptop closet.
I have this model... working perfectly. I would be happy to send it to you (sans hard drive). It is a presario c500 (tag on bottom).

 

Phenom II X6 1100T (Black Edition, I think) CPU, I forget what my motherboard is , Geforce 560 GTX Ti, 8 GB RAM, a couple of SATA platter HDs (as in not SSDs), and my favourite part of all: OpenSUSE as my operating system. I might have been running Solaris if Oracle hadn't taken it over

 

Heh, I can only offer scores given by Win 7 Pro 64-bit running in VirtualBox (latest version) with 2 CPU cores assigned, 4 GB of RAM and my video memory maxed out at 256 MB:

Processor - 6.7
RAM - 7.3
Graphics - 4.1
Gaming Graphics - 4.2
HDD - 7.1

 

Thanks for the thought, Ctrl....but that's ok. I've sorta retired Frankie to printer support duties / conversation piece / monument to the ingenuity of the hopeless cheapskate.