product_recall

Age/Occupation/Location?

25/Graduate Architect/Adelaide, Australia

How long have you been a member of Guru3D forums?

Bout a month.. reading for 1 year+

What did you first come here for?

A year ago at least. the forums are a great read and i was looking for 3Dmark software and driver updates..

What do you mainly use the system for?

I use this system mainly for CAD as i have an old Dual AMD MP for CAD drafting and 3D rendering and when they are networked up together i get enormous net rendering capabilities and i cut my productivity in half at least.. Nothing like 3 processors for rendering graphics... I am slowly installing all my old games to the new AMD64 for that much needed kick in fps and image quality..

How much did you spend on the rig?

AUD$1700, plus a few hundred for little bits and pieces later on..

How often do you update/buy a new rig?

Upgrade yearly if i can, but i have bought another 'Shuttle XPC' for my car's multimedia stuff i dont think i'll upgrade all three computers for some time.. well... untill i need a new SLi MB and new graphics cards early next year....

What components are used?

• AMD Athlon64 3500 (clawhammer) o/c to 11x232 as baseline (40degrees C), its been to 255 but ran hot.... (68degrees C)
• ASUS A8N s939 K8T800pro wi-fi deluxe Motherboard
• 4 x 512 (total 2Gb) DDR400 Corsair RAM
• MSI NX6600GT 128Mb AGP pgaphics card o/c to 1.24ghz (1.32 for 3Dmark) Memory Clock and 632.2 VGA Core Clock. (yes it runs hot too..)
• WD 40Gb IDE HDD
• 2 x WD160Gb SATA II HDD's in JBOD 300+Gb RAID.
• Thermaltake Armor Full tower Black
• Thermaltake Bigwater Liquid Cooler with AquaBay M3 Storage try upgrades.
• Pioneer 110 DVD+/-RW
• Pioneer 109 DVD+/-RW
• HYUNDAI ImageQuest L90D+
• Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse.

Why ATI or NVIDIA, why Intel/AMD?

I've had a number of ATi and Nvidia Graphics cards, including the 9600XT, Ti4200 and the 6600GT.. I have enjoyed Nvidia or late due to price and availability in Australia..

I have always been an AMD fan since the K62-500, then the Dual Athlon Mp's are still going strong and also getting my hands on the 3500 early this year for very little $$$'s was also a bonus for continued AMD loyalty..

Does the system work as expected?

No... it works better....

What's the best part of your rig?

Hearing the gurgle from the 1.5Litres of water circulating in it... and having it run the tasks i require of it effortlessly and easily...

What sucks and should not have been bought?

I should have got the Thermaltake Armor case in Aluminium... it weights 21.4kg's as it stands.... crazy..!!! looks great but weights a ton...

Modified cases/video cards/other? Did you do it yourself? Walk us through it.

I dont like paying for things i can do myself... its the same with my car.. start with an idea and build it up from there... This is not a very good example though... sorry.. i decided to just buy a nice case and customise it with the thermaltake catalogue and a few little of my own touches... I'm building my old Dual AMD into a 'Hellgate-London' casemod so i'll show some flair there... This is just an example of a case that works well and rund perfectly.. easy to take to lans or work and looks great when toting it around.

3DMark scores?

Had some strange things here.. i usually get 9030 3Dmark03's with 1024x768 default settings but had one when overclocked heavily and just before temp warnings went off that spiked to 12220 an hour later. i cant explain that one.

Future upgrades?

Thermaltake Purepower 2.0 UST to clean up the cables and get rid of the ugly MOLEX plugs..

SLi Motherboard possibly a ABIT Fatal1ty or more likely an ASUS (got 3 of them so why not 1 more..)

Pair of PCIe Graphics cards... probably Nvidia if they every come out with 7600GT's...

VGA watercooling block and another radiator/fan combo..

Logitech Laser Mouse

Gaming Keyboard