New "beater" build

DreamKiller · Post by **DreamKiller** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 9:28 pm

Built this baby up from lots parts I had lying around. I just took an afternoon of cleaning my workbench and put this together:

Specs:
Cheapie Rosewill case - forgot the model#, had it lying around
Noctua 120mm exhaust with CPU duct from an old Antec case
AMD Athlon X2 3800+ with a freezer 64Pro heatsink - hand-me-down
2x 512MB Kingston DDR400 - from old system
2x 512MB Corsair XMS 3200C2 - from my P4 old gaming system
Total of 2GB at 400MHz 2.5-3-3-7
ASRock 939Dual-SataII motherboard - found in a dumpster, all SATA ports, sound, USB, ethernet doesn't work
Sapphire 2600XT PCIe: bought it for an HTPC that never materialized
60GB Seagate Barracuda V - from my old "fatty" PS2
Generic USB card - mobo USB headers don't work
Netgear 10/100 Ethernet card
Silverstone Strider 400w - old P4 gaming system

No CD/DVD drive - I install stuff using a shared dvd-drive with drive mapping.

Old Dell P990 19" Trinitron CRT - got it for $5 at a garage sale
Old Logitech keyboard - got it for $1 at a garage sale
Microsoft Optical 3-button mouse - got it for $1 at a garage sale

It's quiet, boots up quick, plays guild-wars/tf2/wc3/bf2 nicely when friends come over. Small enough to stuff it in the backseat of my car for lanning.

I hope to upgrade the video card cooling to a passive one. I'll probably swap the PSU fan too.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 1:42 am

incredible build considering most parts are from dumpster-diving! the spec is actually slightly better than the PC I am writing this on

I especially like the ducted case fan and the neat and tidy cabling, good job.

FartingBob · Post by **FartingBob** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 3:55 am

Wouldnt it be better it your RAM were in duel channel with the same type, the way you have it is both channels have 1 corsair and 1 kingston. I always thought it was better to pair them up. Especially if they are different specs.

IsaacKuo · Post by **IsaacKuo** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 6:25 am

Nice, elegant cabling job. I particularly like how you tucked the mobo power cable underneath the video card.

It's a pity that the hard drive is hardmounted, but that's a sensible choice for a LAN party machine.

Cistron · Post by **Cistron** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 8:33 am

FartingBob wrote:Wouldnt it be better it your RAM were in duel channel with the same type, the way you have it is both channels have 1 corsair and 1 kingston. I always thought it was better to pair them up. Especially if they are different specs.

I think the dual-channel arrangements differ from mainboard to mainboard.

DreamKiller · Post by **DreamKiller** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:16 am

Thanks for the comments

The RAM are running in dual-channel. The board wouldn't post at 400MHz in stock so I had to up the RAM voltage a little bit from 2.5V to 2.6V. I also had to loosen the timings since the board was booting up with the Corsair XMS' timings rather than the significantly slower Kingston ones. Running 4 sticks of identical RAM would be ideal, but remember, this is built from spare parts I had.

As for the HDD, I *might* get a suspension kit for it (those 5 1/2" to 3 1/2" things) but it's noise level is acceptable since every other PC in the LAN parties I go to has screaming fans in them.