New Computer Saga Comes to an End

Hey there people, as you may have noticed, I've been missing from NoobFeed in the past couple days. Fear not though, as I had no intention to disappear for much longer! Yes, I come back and break the promise of a trilogy, the same that James broke his promise to his wife in Silent Hill 2. As him though, I will learn from my mistakes and I will deliver the goods shortly, especially that I have now finished my new build.. well.. almost. What will follow is a really long blog with everything about my new computer. While biZZy greatly helped me a couple months ago in explaining some of the specs in the different components, all of these were bought without anyones direct recommendation and thus it is my very first complete build.. sort of. My old one was too, except that I knew even less in computers back then. Feel free to leave me suggestions, stuff that I should look for a bit more in the future when buying new computers or anything else as I am still in the learning phase and I don't expect this build to be perfect. I'm pretty sure there are some holes somewhere here and there, but the best way to learn is to do it! For now everything works flawlessly. For the uninterested, you can drop to the last paragraph if you want :]

During the past month, I have discovered the BlackMagic Intensity Shuttle.
The Intensity Shuttle is an HD capture device that supports 1080p and has connections for Composite, S-Video, Component and HDMI, all on-board. After discovering it, I needed one, but to do so, I had to upgrade my computer since it requires the new USB 3.0. With this new type of USB, the Shuttle is able to deliver fast transfer rates of uncompressed high definition capture through USB, it is also the first capture card ever to support it. Hence started my definitive choice of upgrading my computer, but instead of going Intel, I decided to try out AMD.

It all started with a power supply. Who says upgrading to better things, says that my 430W PSU isn't powerful enough anymore.
I have always heard of Corsair like being some sort of masters in the power supply department, so I went with a 650W Corsair PSU. The wires are very long and thick with a mesh around them for protection. It has plenty of connectors and in my case, most importantly, 2 PCI-e 6 pins connectors. I already knew what I would be getting, hence I needed a perfect power supply. The heavy piece came inside a beautiful velvet bag on which it is written Corsair and it smelled weird, but the velvet bag says everything. I feel like a satisfied and classy customer simply because of a velvet bag. Only time will tell if I'll remain that same satisfied customer though ;p

At the same time, I ordered myself my new NZXT Lexa S case, which some of you may have seen in my previous blog.
With 4 external 5.25" bays, 7 internal 3.5" bays and those other little fancy external bays for things such as card readers, I told myself I'd have plenty of space to put whatever I want in there. The HDD bays are also made so that you simply need to slide them in on rails, no need for screws or anything, and their direction is towards the side, therefore you don't get caught in the wires when inserting/removing them. While being a mid-tower, it was designed with enough space to fit those big 10.5" graphic cards and it works. The case came pre-equipped with 3 120mm fans (front, side and ear) and one 140mm top fan, though there is a space for a second 140mm fan to be added as well. Complete with blue LEDs on the front and side fan, the smoked clear window and black interior looks wonderful.. if it weren't for the mess of wires I made in there. The case does have a backtray behind the motherboard to hide the wires, but my PSU's wires are much too thick to fit in there. Making the case a tiny bit larger to give more space in the tray would be a good idea.

My original plan was to include a Blu-Ray burner/reader that worked with Blu-Rays, DVDs and CDs, but these are much too expensive. Therefore I went with a regular HP dvd1270i DVD burner.
Lightscribe support and great speeds, HP has never disappointed me in any department apart maybe from the pre-installed software in pre-built computers. There isn't much to say about this piece other than the reason I needed a new one is because I gave away my old computer to my mother. Would you leave a computer to your mother and prevent her from accessing DVDs/CDs? I wouldn't and DVD burners are so cheap to buy anyway.

As with my old PC, I decided to add the Rosewill RCR-IC002 card reader as it can always be useful.
It supports around 75 types of cards or something. It's entirely useless to support that many, but we never know. I've grown to be used to these card readers on computers and must now have one everytime I get a new PC. It can always be useful when you don't feel like messing around with a USB cable.

Then came the more important stuff, such as my ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 motherboard.
I am fully aware that this motherboard is the perfect tool for overclockers and that I am not one of them. However, I've always been recommended ASUS in that department and this was one of the first motherboards I had seen that was USB 3.0 ready. It also supports a wide range of everything. It pretty much has everything I need and a lot more due to what kind of computer people it is aimed at, but that's the only motherboard that really caught my eye and had absolutely everything I needed, the rest will act as non-used bonuses.

A motherboard without a processor serves me no prupose though, and after several research and a lot of thinking, I came down to AMD Phenom II x4 965 3.40GHz, hence why the motherboard is AMD.
I spent a very long time determining what to get in terms of CPUs, and while Intel is a step above AMD, it doesn't change the fact that they are also twice as expensive as AMD for something that can be considered equivalent. This is my very first experience with AMD, even with pre-built computers that I used to buy. So far I am very pleased and I must say that the Phenom II x4 is a beast! It is ridiculously fast for me, especially when compared to my old Core 2 Duo. Installing the Heatsink was as worst as Intel though, but instead of thinking that the motherboard would break under the pressure of the pins, I felt the motherboard was going to crumble. Either way, installing heatsinks are fun and stressful to me, but overall it was still an easy install.

While I used to have 4GB of memory, I decided to raise it a bit despite being mostly useless to do so.
I once again went with G.Skill since I was satisfied with their products in the past and they had good prices. I got myself some 8GB of DDR3-1333. The only problem that occured is that it was not automatically recongnized properly by my motherboard, probably due to the chipset, but that's quickly fixed manually. Otherwise it runs smooth and I haven't had any problems, thus making me once more a satisfied customer with them.

After all of this, I finally received my Sapphire Toxic Radeon HD 5850.
Now let me explain why I got the Toxic edition.. My primary plan was to get the regular card, but upon purchase, the only model available was the Toxic one and out of impatience since I had been trying to get it for a while, I decided to give it up and get the Toxic edition. It's a bit more expensive, not as much as the 5870 which I didn't feel like affording, but it still does the same thing in the end anyway. As of right now, I'm loving the card, but I now understand why I kept hearing that ATI has the worst drivers compared to nVidia. I thought it would of been a piece of cake to install it, but googling "catalyst install" will give you a pretty clear idea that ATI's drivers are plain a kick in the butt for most people. After messing up a lot of things to make the install work, it decided to work for absolutely no reason. Awesome! Next though, Ubuntu wouldn't boot anymore.. well it would, but it would give me a blank screen. After a few attempts in the recovery console, I didn't feel like working it out since I was already "exhausted" from the Windows issues, so I simply booted up from my motherboard's internal graphics, backed up all my files in Ubuntu and did a fresh install. I then entered the new install and installed the 5xxx series drivers. It's been working like a charm ever since. All I have left to do is reinstall Touhou on Ubuntu, all the rest is done and over with.

Despite the problems at actually installing the Windows drivers and the Kernal compatibility problems, I can feel the power of the card. I will now be able to deliver amazing videos without FPS issues. Running DiRT2 at ULTRA settings and recording with FRAPS, uncompressed and full resolution (1920x1080) gave me 55FPS while in dual screen too (not sure if that can affect anything), so for me it's quite something to see DiRT2 run at full FPS without FRAPS. I am loving the card once it is fully installed and it isn't too noisy either. It is, however, pretty big and quite logically, as things get bigger and more powerful, the more power they drain and the hotter it can get.

Which is why I decided to replace two of my fans (front and back) with some 120mm Rosewill fans, equipped with blue LEDs since I felt like getting more blueness in there. Both are hooked up at my fan controllers and at their lowest speed, they blow as much air as my old fans when they were at their highest. This means that these fans move the air around a lot, giving the case a better airflow, without mentioning the cool effect that the front fan has with the LEDs since it now makes my case look like a Transformer or something. After experiencing the great power of these two little buddies, I will order a third one to replace the side fan as well as two 140mm fans to replace my top one as well as adding a second one. Unfortunately though, Rosewill does not make 140mm fans, so I will have to go with another brand. Another unfortunate event is that my controllers only have 4 wires (I have 2 knobs which controls 2 fans each), and therefore I won't be able to control one of the 5 fans. I have yet to decide which one I won't control, so feel free to leave any suggestion :]


The final result in the dark: Left from the side, Right from the front. By the way, that's my headphones on top of my case from the front, and not part of the case ;p

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Now, with this new setup, I'm ready to record PC videos like never before, so expect my trilogy to come to an end soon. Within next month I'll be looking around to get myself an HD capture card, whether it is the Shuttle or not, which I'll then also start console gaming on PC. Now I better get to work for some new videos and to finish configuring my desktop :]