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

Yep, there's one on every computer forum. This is the place where cybernecks(just made that up, how's that for before coffee) tell us all what's under the hood of your computer. I'll go first.

Intel i-7 870 Overclocked to 3.96ghz
Gigabyte P55-USB3 motherboard
Zalman cooler
G.Skill Ripjaws 2x4gb DDR3 1333
EVGA GTX 470 running at 760mhz
Three Velociraptor 150gb 10k RPM hard drives
One Intel 90gb SSD drive
Creative Audigy 2 Soundblaster

I'm pretty excited. My wife just told me that after tax returns, we have enough in the budget for me to spend about $500 on my rig. It's been years since I've been able to afford an upgrade(cars, the roof, and the plumbing have all conspired to take my disposable income over the last two years). I'm thinking I'll upgrade my video card to an Nvidia 600 series. That'll run me about $350-$400. Not sure what I'll do with the rest yet.

 

I have one server, and heaps of little nettops, laptops, and tablets. My entire house is run by the server. Any machine attached to the network becomes an interface for the system. If I netboot a computer (boot over network, without a hard drive) it becomes part of the main system, directing media, interfacing with a monitor/tv. If I boot to an operating system, it becomes a controller. I can interface with any room, any media, any power/lighting, irrigation, serial device or piece of AV equipment attached to the system... from anywhere.

Any action can be used as a trigger. So, for instance, when I play a movie, the lights dim to theater lighting in the room. If I receive a call, it pauses my media... whether that is a movie, or live tv. If I want to change rooms it will throw whatever I am doing at whatever room/interface I want seamlessly. If someone rings my doorbell it wakes up all the TVs/monitors in the house and shows the door camera... etc ad nausium.

My server hardware is nothing special... it just has server grade I/O. It is several years old at this point... but there is no benefit to upgrading it for my needs.

So just a 2x2.8 MHz phenom processor.

So 4 gigs of DDR2. If I had any self respect it would be ECC RAM.

See... horsepower doesn't really matter for my needs... input/output quality does.

 

I recently fried my motherboard, so I used that as an excuse to upgrade a little. I bought an AMD FX-8350 4ghz overclockable 8 core processor, an ASUS motherboard with a lot of nifty USB ports (including a few USB 3.0 ports), and 16GB RAM. I already had a pretty good server case that holds up to ten HDD, with fans blowing across each group of five drives. The video card is still pretty basic, but I don't really push it much. In fact, the whole system is far more than I need, but I just couldn't pass up the chance to upgrade.

I do also have a rather nice HP ENVY 17 laptop that I use in the living room and a netbook that I often drag around with me.

 

Your whole house network setup is something I've dreamed about since watching Star Trek as a kid, and seeing the way voice commands told the computer how to change various things going on. When I was about 8 or so, my father had a networking device of some kind that was for controlling various things around your house. Lights, electronics, etc. It wasn't a PC or computer software, it was a stand-alone box of some sort. Dunno what ever happened to it, but we only had the box and not the rest of the equipment to hook it up with. Still, it stands out in my memory because I thought that would be the absolute coolest thing. This would have been back around 1990 or so.

Love your setup. Thanks for sharing it!

 

Nice setup! I'd love to get a server case. I have a full tower case and I couldn't fit another hard drive in it if I wanted to(possibly SSD, but I don't want to use SSD for a drive that will be written and overwritten a lot).
Speaking of SSD though, I read recently they may have figured out how to stop the wearing out of the "flash" memory after repeated writing and re-writing. They were able to do it using heat of all things. If they can achieve that, no more hard drives with moving parts.

 

That would be nice. I thought about going with an SSD boot drive, but I ended up going with a 10,000 RPM drive instead. It still boots quite quickly, but an SSD would be nice. I did put an SSD drive in the netbook, which works pretty well. I tried one in the bigger laptop, but I started having weird issues that disappeared when I switched back to a platter drive.

 

We actually have a Next Gen interface... lol
[video=youtube;F3fTPNoxZmY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3fTPNoxZmY[/video]
[video=youtube_share;lUM5rxiWFnk]http://youtu.be/lUM5rxiWFnk[/video]

Its all free... check it out. http://www.linuxmce.org

 

I'm running a pretty decent gamer rig.

ASRock Z77
Intel Ivy Bridge i7 3.5ghz
16GB RAM
128GB SSD (Something from SanDsik)
2TB HD (WD Caviar Green)
EVGA NVIDIA GTX 670

Plus a 1TB external HD, a pretty decent gaming headset, and a sweet logitech trackball mouse. I could probably overclock this rig pretty well, but I know nothing about it, and so far I haven't encountered anything I'd need to overclock.

 

I have a macbook pro, can't wait for someone to take the (*)(*)(*)(*) lol

 

QX9650 + GTX280 and a bunch of other stuff that I can't be bothered listing

Had it since 2008, but I can still max most stuff.

 

Can you even call that a rig? :V

 

(Taking the (*)(*)(*)(*) aside, my normal macbook is still running nicely and doing good work for me after 5+ years - more than I can say for any other laptop I've ever owned)

 

I recently upgraded, but my old HP laptop is still working fine after about six years. My Asus netbook is just short of four years old and still works fine - I use it quite a bit.

 

Could be the mac person is rougher on their equipment. Maybe they smoke or they aren't big on dusting.

The thing I see all the time, doing repair, is the slimline slot type DVDRs. They go bad a lot. Hard drives are the next most frequent, but that is with anything with a spinning drive.

Mac makes brilliant stuff. No doubt they have set the bar. Their aluminum extruded cases are... art. There is no way to fault them from an aesthetics/design/form perspective. They are pretty. The OS is strong as well. Not big on the simple UI... but... I can open a terminal, and I am home. Will take it over a windows rig any day... but then... I don't use computers for gaming anymore.

Well... outside of mame. Should note the home automation platform has its own mame embedded. We emulate pretty much every system from c64 to arcade to PS2. Can play multi room multiplayer as well...

 

I've got a sweet one.. It has a board for entering every single letter and number, this cool thing that looks like a rat that I can move about a pointy thing on my screen AND it's display is even in color!

 

I7-2600K CPU @ 4.40GHz
ASUS P8P87 PRO Mobo
1GB GeForce GTX 550 TI
4x 4GB DDR3 RAM

60gb SSD which is just dedicated to my OS
1TB HDD which holds my documents, app data, and explorer history, temporary files, games, ect.

best porn rig ever.

 

My drive went a couple years back. First, the disks stopped getting into the drive right unless I pushed them further in with some other thin object (like, another disk). And then the inevitable happened: I accidentally got the second disk stuck in there. Whoops. So I tried fishing them out with a third disk. That... didn't go well. End result: disk drive dead, 3 CDs stuck in it (I never did get my copy of Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee back). Pretty funny story to tell around the proverbial water cooler. My dad's and my stepmom's both went as well. And then it's just a huge pain in the ass to replace, and really expensive to get the parts.

 

I recall that CD drives used to be able to be forced open by sticking a paper clip into a little hole - I checked my Win7 PC and it doesn't have that - I don't know why modern computers removed such a basic and useful feature.

 

To sell more drives.

 

I have a pretty sweet rig.

Apple IIc Plus:

CPU: MOS 65C02, 4 Mhz
RAM: 128K, 1Meg max
PORTS: two mini DIN-8 serial ports
RGB monitor port
Composite video output
External floppy port
Storage: Internal 800K 3.5-inch disk drive

Its pretty damn sweet. I use it to store my thumbnails on my Floppy disks.

 

Behold my Apple II GS Woz edition and envy me...



I play Tass Times in Tone Town on it.

 

Beautiful. I had one handed down to me by my grandfather when I was young. I still own it and like to show it off every now and then.

 

Don't get me started on my Amiga collection.

 

This is my budget rig that I made with parts I bought during black friday of 2012.

i5 3570K cpu and Msi Z77A-43 Mobo combo - $200
Cooler master hyper 212 cpu cooler - $17
120 gb Ocz Vertex 3 ssd - $50
Seagate Barracuda 3tb hd - $96
Zalman z11 plus hf1 case - $55
Rosewill 630w psu - $38
G.Skill Ares 16 Gb ram - $59
Asus DL dvd burner - $20

Total Cost: $535 after taxes and MIRs

 

Lol....me too...from an HP to an ASUS.

My six year old HP laptop* still works fine, too...."computingwise"....but it's a Frankenstein.
The cooling fan went out about 3 years ago, so I bought a little electronics cooling fan at Radio Shack and mounted it on a wooden "cradle" I built for the computer to rest in....I spliced into the HP's power cord to run it. One of the lid hinges broke free of its internal mounting, so I drilled a hole through the lid and tightened everything up with super glue and a nut and bolt. Eventually, the lid tensioners completely failed, and the lid wouldn't stay up without something behind it, so I screwed a piece of wood (a door shim) to the back of the cradle to hold it open. It's even adjustable!!...pivoting it alters the screen angle.

*Obviously, portability suffers.... but that didn't stop me from packing the monstrosity up and taking it to the
beach house for a family reunion.... it was quite a hit. lol....they were merciless in their ridicule! Asses

I finally got around to buying an ASUS about a year ago...a Best Buy "open box special" for $224.00. Great little machine, so far...

(I'll try to post a picture of "Frankie" when I get a chance)