Upgrading my computer ...
Posted: Sat 8 Dec 2007 20:27
I finally recieved all the new parts for my PC yesterday, so I spent the afternoon rebuilding it all ...
Here are the new parts that I got ...
1 x Asus Maximus Formula motherboard (Intel X38 chipset, DDR2, LGA775) :
1 x PowerColor ATI Radeon HD 3870 512 Mb DDR4 (PCI-E 2.0, DirectX 10.1) :
2 x OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 2 Gb Dual Channel 800 Mhz Cas 3 DDR2 memory kit :
So there you go, there's some very nice hardware there isn't there ...
The motherboard is one of Asus's top end motherboards, based on Intel's X38 chipset, and it's also a part of Asus's Republic Of Gamers range, which means that it's full of features and excellent for overclocking. It's an LGA775 motherboard, so it supports all of the latest Intel processors, from the Celerons right up to the new Penryn based Quad Core processors. It supports DDR2 upto 1200 Mhz, which is great, as DDR2 is much cheaper than DDR3 at the moment. It also supports Crossfire for having multiple ATI graphics cards, and it has PCI-Express 2.0 as well, hehe. The board also has loads of other things, like 6 Sata II ports supporting raid, fancy onboard 7.1 audio, lots of USB 2.0 ports, firewire, and it even has power, reset and clear cmos buttons integrated on the board itself, as well as a hard drive activity LED, which is very usefull. It also has a fancy cooling system, with loads of heatpipes and heatsinks. Good stuff, lol ...
The graphics card is ATI's latest and fastest one, which is currently really hard to get hold of, so I was right to preorder it! It supports DirectX 10.1, has a PCI-Epress 2.0 interface, and runs 512 Mb of fast DDR4 memory. It also accelerates HD video, uses less power than the previous generation and runs cooler too! This has to be one of the best graphics cards ever, being extremely fast, feature rich and cheap too! What more could you want, lol. As for the ram, well, it's always hard to choose good ram, but in the end I went for two of these OCZ Reaper kit's. They run at PC2-6400 800 Mhz, with timings of 3-4-4-15, which is good for 800 Mhz ram! There's nothing much to say about these really, except they look awesome with their heatpiper cooling system, lol!
Here are some photos of the new parts put together on their own :
Here are some photos once they've been fitted into the computer case :
Here are some photos of the onboard audio and LCD poster lit up :
So there you go then, that was longer than I thought it would be, so I'll stop now, haha, sorry ...
I'll post up the complete specs of my pc and some benchmark results in other topics as soon as I get the time ...
Here are the new parts that I got ...
1 x Asus Maximus Formula motherboard (Intel X38 chipset, DDR2, LGA775) :
1 x PowerColor ATI Radeon HD 3870 512 Mb DDR4 (PCI-E 2.0, DirectX 10.1) :
2 x OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 2 Gb Dual Channel 800 Mhz Cas 3 DDR2 memory kit :
So there you go, there's some very nice hardware there isn't there ...
The motherboard is one of Asus's top end motherboards, based on Intel's X38 chipset, and it's also a part of Asus's Republic Of Gamers range, which means that it's full of features and excellent for overclocking. It's an LGA775 motherboard, so it supports all of the latest Intel processors, from the Celerons right up to the new Penryn based Quad Core processors. It supports DDR2 upto 1200 Mhz, which is great, as DDR2 is much cheaper than DDR3 at the moment. It also supports Crossfire for having multiple ATI graphics cards, and it has PCI-Express 2.0 as well, hehe. The board also has loads of other things, like 6 Sata II ports supporting raid, fancy onboard 7.1 audio, lots of USB 2.0 ports, firewire, and it even has power, reset and clear cmos buttons integrated on the board itself, as well as a hard drive activity LED, which is very usefull. It also has a fancy cooling system, with loads of heatpipes and heatsinks. Good stuff, lol ...
The graphics card is ATI's latest and fastest one, which is currently really hard to get hold of, so I was right to preorder it! It supports DirectX 10.1, has a PCI-Epress 2.0 interface, and runs 512 Mb of fast DDR4 memory. It also accelerates HD video, uses less power than the previous generation and runs cooler too! This has to be one of the best graphics cards ever, being extremely fast, feature rich and cheap too! What more could you want, lol. As for the ram, well, it's always hard to choose good ram, but in the end I went for two of these OCZ Reaper kit's. They run at PC2-6400 800 Mhz, with timings of 3-4-4-15, which is good for 800 Mhz ram! There's nothing much to say about these really, except they look awesome with their heatpiper cooling system, lol!
Here are some photos of the new parts put together on their own :
Here are some photos once they've been fitted into the computer case :
Here are some photos of the onboard audio and LCD poster lit up :
So there you go then, that was longer than I thought it would be, so I'll stop now, haha, sorry ...
I'll post up the complete specs of my pc and some benchmark results in other topics as soon as I get the time ...