James' PCs

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James McGrath
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James' PCs

Post by James McGrath »

As some of you may know from the 'Let's see your computer' thread , one of my biggest hobbies besides my Cavs is computers. I got my first PC in the summer of 1998; it was a Pentium II 350MHz with a voodoo 1 'graphics accelerator', 64MB of RAM, a whopping 2GB hard drive with Windows 98 all housed in a fabulously 90's looking beige case. Since then I've been hooked on the hobby and I spend quite a fair chunk of my spare time on them.

Rather than clog up the aforementioned thread, I thought I'd start one just for my PCs similar to a WIP thread that I can add too over time.

So without further explanation, these are my current PCs. (You may notice I like to name them after Red Dwarf characters. :) )


'Holly-III' The Main Rig:

Out of the PC's I currently own, this is the one I've had the longest. It has had so many upgrades since 2008 when I first bought it that I believe almost every component has been replaced apart from the CPU, motherboard, DVD drive and RAM. It had a major upgrade in 2012 when I replaced the case, put in an SSD (my first), a new storage HDD, new GPU and for the first time upgraded to Windows 7. Since then I have majorly reworked the cooling, upgraded the GPU again and worked on the internal ascetics with better cable management including replacing the orange TX750 with a blue HX750.

Just to show off how many tweaks I do to my PCs over time, here it is in 2012:

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Just 7 months ago:

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And here it is now:

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This is the one I use the most and I use it for everything; web browsing, watching Blu-ray movies, gaming (yes it's still decent for most games) and for work.

Full specs:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 @ 4GHz (445MHz FSB x9 multi)
Asus Rampage Formula x48 motherboard
Zotac GeForce GTX 960
8GB (4x2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR2 RAM @ 1066Mhz 5-5-5-15 T1
Corsair HX750w PSU
Noctua NH-D15
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD
Asus Xonar D1 (yes, 2 sound cards, 1 for each OS)
Asus PCE-N15 wireless card
120GB Corsair Force GT SSD - Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
Seagate Barracuda 3TB HDD - Windows XP Pro
SONY DVD RW
Samsung Blu-Ray RW
Cooler Master Silencio 550 case
3x Cooler Master Excalibur fans + Akasa Fan Controller Jr



'Hudzen-10' The Gaming PC

This is the PC I built primarily for Gaming in the Summer of 2014. After 6 years of service, my Q9650 was finally showing it's age in games and it was time to upgrade. I didn't want the hassle of upgrading the CPU, motherboard, RAM and reinstalling windows on Holly so I built a whole new PC. Apart from the GTX 760 which was carried over from Holly, everything was new. Since first building it, I have already upgraded the GPU, SSD and added more RAM. I've also added in a wireless card.

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Full specs:
Intel i5 4690k @ 4.5GHz
Asus Maximus VII Ranger motherboard
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 ACX2.0+
16GB (2x8GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3 RAM @ 2400MHz 11-13-13-31 T1
Corsair AX860i PSU
Corsair Hydro H110
Creative Sound Blaster ZXR
Asus PCE-AC56 wireless card
250GB Samsung 850 evo SSD - Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD
Pioneer DVD RW
Corsair Carbide 500r case
Corsair 140mm fan



'Kryten' The Retro Rig

One of my favourite eras of PC gaming was the early to mid 2000s, so many fantastic games came out around that time. Unfortunately I missed a large chunk of the games from that time mainly due to temporarily migrating to a console (PS2) and lack of funds for a new PC at the time (I was still on a 2GHz Pentium 4 and a NVidia 6200 until 2006). Quake 4, Bioshock 1 and 2, DOOM 3, Unreal 2, Unreal Tournament 2003/4, Prey, F.E.A.R, Rise of Nations, (I could go on) are all games I missed at the time and wanted to try out. There were also many games that I had played and wanted to play again, this time around with all the graphics set to max in order to get the best experience from them. Unfortunately, many of these games have problems running on the latest hardware and operating systems. Features like EAX sound effects are troublesome to enable and don't always work and some games like Axis and Allies (2004) simply will not run properly on new hardware due to lack of support. There was only one thing for it, build a dedicated rig!

I'm particularly proud of how this PC turned out. For once I got it right first time both in terms of performance and looks and I had no problems building it:

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Full Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 @ 4.25Ghz (425MHz FSB x10 multi)
Asus Maximums II Formula motherboard
XFX GeForce 7950GT 512MB (soon to be SLI)
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR2 RAM @ 1066Mhz 5-5-5-15 T1
Corsair RM850 PSU
Cooler Master Hyper 212evo
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro
2x 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD in RAID 0 - Windows XP Pro
Pioneer DVD RW
3.5" floppy drive
Corsair Carbide 300r windowed case
2x corsair 120mm AF fans, 2x standard corsair 140mm fans, 1x Noctua NF-A15



'Queeg-500-III' The LAN box

So for the last 3 years or so I've been going to LAN parties almost every week with my mates. up until now I've been taking Hudzen-10 or Holly for this. Only problem is that disconnecting a PC, putting it on the back seat of a Cavalier, driving 10 miles, unpacking it and setting it up only to take it down again and repeat the process every week does take it's toll on the case and the internal hardware. Not to mention it's a big risk moving around £1000+ worth of hardware. My solution? Build a dedicated rig of course! Allot of the components I salvaged from my previous second PC which died on me last year, Queeg-500-II. (now you see how the naming scheme works!) a couple of components were new and the rest was all bought for as little money as possible on eBay.

I've had a few problems with this one. At the beginning of the month, the WD black hard drive died and had to be sent back to the manufacturer. When I was building it I thought the mobo was broken as it wouldn't boot. It took me ages of swapping out components to finally work out that it was a dead i5 750 CPU, oh well, ended up replacing it with a i7 870 so not too bad. Overall though I'm really impressed with the performance of this PC. Considering how little it cost me it gives Hudzen-10 a run for it's money in games.

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Full specs:
Intel i7 870 @ 4.0Ghz (200MHz BCLK x9 multi) (eBay)
Asus Maximus III Formula motherboard (eBay)
EVGA Geforce GTX 760 ACX (originally from Holly then Hudzen-10)
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3 RAM @ 2400MHz 11-13-13-31 T1 (originally from Hudzen-10)
Corsair TX750w PSU (originally from Holly then Queeg-500-II)
Corsair Hydro H80i GT (New)
Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty Pro (eBay)
Asus PCE-N10 (originally from Queeg-500-II)
240GB SanDisk Ultra Plus (originally from Hudzen-10) - Windows 7 + XP dual boot
1TB Western Digital Black (originally from Queeg-500-II)
Pioneer DVD RW (originally from Queeg-500-II)
Generic Novatech crap box case (originally from Holly then Queeg-500-II)
2x Noctua NF-R8 80mm fans (originally from Queeg-500-II)

As you can see most of these components are hand me downs from PC's that have been upgraded.



These PC's represent literally 1000s of hours of work over many years and they reflect my passion for PC hardware and the community.
Now you've seen my PC's I want to see yours, feel free to start your own PC WIP thread and show off your other pride and joy!

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Happy computing! :cheers
tonyo
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Re: James' PCs

Post by tonyo »

James McGrath wrote:I got my first PC in the summer of 1998; it was a Pentium II 350MHz with a voodoo 1 'graphics accelerator', 64MB of RAM, a whopping 2GB hard drive with Windows 98 all housed in a fabulously 90's looking beige case.
Gosh! That makes me feel really old.. My first PC was a 386 SX20.. Yep, a whole 20MHz of Powerrrr..

My First Computer was a BBC-B..

In 1998, at work however, I was Running Silicon Graphics systems, which were the size of a 48U network rack for a four CPU system..
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Re: James' PCs

Post by colin1 »

LAN parties? :shock:
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Re: James' PCs

Post by colin1 »

tonyo wrote:Gosh! That makes me feel really old.. My first PC was a 386 SX20...
Luxury lad
my first PC was an abacus - and it had dodgy sectors
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Re: James' PCs

Post by Cavalier342 »

I'm not an expert but I believe Local Area Network parties would mean several players playing the same game in multi-player mode using one host computer as an LAN point, I used to love doing that back in the day, no need to connect to external internet sources, only a viable connection required and having your mates on at the same time. Those were the days...

As far as the hardware specs go, you may as well be telling me about women's make-up, that's where I'm totally clueless. To me, the higher the numbers, the better the hardware. But I know it's not that simple.
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Re: James' PCs

Post by James McGrath »

Yep, LAN stands for Local Area Network.

Basically you link multiple PCs up using a switch box and create a network so that you can play multiplayer games together in the same room. It used to be very popular before multilayer games over the internet took over.
Cavalier342 wrote:As far as the hardware specs go, you may as well be telling me about women's make-up, that's where I'm totally clueless. To me, the higher the numbers, the better the hardware. But I know it's not that simple.
Most of the time it is the higher the better but as you say, there are other factors. Architecture plays a big part. It's a bit like new engines vs old, compare an old 7.7 liter inline 6 in a Rolls Royce Phantom II to the C20LET for example. The phantom II is bigger, but due to much higher efficiency the C20LET is far more powerful.
It's the same thing when you compare a Pentium 4 with a modern Haswell i5. The Pentium 4 may run at 3.8GHz and the i5 at only 3.5Ghz but the i5 would decimate the Pentium.
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Re: James' PCs

Post by Cavalier342 »

The last proper good game I played in multi-player and single player on pc was Operation Flashpoint. Came out in 2001, but the servers powered by Gamespy were still available up until a couple of years ago. You can still use GameRanger to connect and find games but there isn't much about now. Was the absolute best, I have also played true LAN games such as Midtown Madness with friends years ago, but as you say James, now it's all internet based unless you can get your own set-up together.
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Re: James' PCs

Post by James McGrath »

I love Midtown Madness!

I use to play it over LAN back in the day too, I think I still have the CD somewhere.
Haven't played it in about 12 years now though.
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Re: James' PCs

Post by James McGrath »

tonyo wrote:Gosh! That makes me feel really old.. My first PC was a 386 SX20.. Yep, a whole 20MHz of Powerrrr..

My First Computer was a BBC-B..

In 1998, at work however, I was Running Silicon Graphics systems, which were the size of a 48U network rack for a four CPU system..

Awesome. I like the idea of making a proper 386 or 486 DOS gaming machine at some point.

My parents did have a 386 machine for a while, but I was only about 3 years old and I can't really remember it.
We got the Pentium II when I was 6, and that's what I learnt on really.
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Re: James' PCs

Post by Cavalier342 »

James McGrath wrote:I love Midtown Madness!

I use to play it over LAN back in the day too, I think I still have the CD somewhere.
Haven't played it in about 12 years now though.
I played number 2 before number 1, I had a demo from a games magazine CD, and that game solely got me falling in love with the 69 Mustang Fastbacks. I then got the full version of number 2, spent years on that, even downloading addons and mods for it, then I got the first game some time later. Didn't quite live up to number 2, there's just something iconic about it.
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Re: James' PCs

Post by colin1 »

James McGrath wrote:Yep, LAN stands for Local Area Network..
Err yeah - I know what a LAN is

so a LAN party is just a bunch of PCs linked into a hub

I used to be into PCs as well, it just sort of died a bit to the point where I've stranded myself with a network of WinXP machines, although Firefox in for IE8 has given them a stay of execution. IE8 is struggling with just about everything now. An upgrade is on the cards but it's down the list a bit. I've adopted a sci-fi naming convention but more trekkie than Red Dwarf

Under the workgroup Starfleet:

the PC I oik around on (this one) - USS Enterprise
design studio PC - USS Defiant
music studio PC - USS Saratoga
garage (diagnostics) PC - USS Columbia
guest room PC - USS Voyager

you've got some nice kit there James
93K C20XE Cavalier SRi Hatchback Spectral Blue Metallic
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Re: James' PCs

Post by Cavalier342 »

colin1 wrote: Under the workgroup Starfleet:

the PC I oik around on (this one) - USS Enterprise
design studio PC - USS Defiant
music studio PC - USS Saratoga
garage (diagnostics) PC - USS Columbia
guest room PC - USS Voyager
Love it!! :thumb :ugeek:
Previous:
China Blue 1989 Vauxhall Cavalier L 18SV
Kings Blue 1992 Vauxhall Cavalier LSi Auto C18NZ
Smoke Grey 1994 Vauxhall Cavalier V6 C25XE

Am I a light sleeper or a heavy sleeper? Well that depends on how much I've had to drink...
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