Once in a while, when I'm not toiling over broke ass computers or cleaning up massive malware infestations, I have a chance to build some nifty computers for our customers. Recently there was this gaming box that was kinda fun to build and certainly a pleasure to burn-in by stretching its legs with some games that were heavy on the eye candy.
This particular machine was commissioned by a young gamer that had the money to spend and wanted a decent box to grow with as his needs changed, but also to kick some serious ass in current games.
The build starts off with the Antec Nine Hundred case. Despite having three 120mm fans and one huge 200mm fan, as long as they are set to low, the machine is very quiet. The benefit of all that air flow though, is cooler internal temperatures and a little more headroom should he decide to push the overclocking envelope a little bit. Cooling aside though, the Antec is a relatively bold looking case, reminiscent of the Apache helicopter design, and that seems to appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike.
Inside the box, the machine is backed by the latest ASUS Striker II Extreme mainboard which uses the nVidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset. This board has a very nice design and a bevy of features for the gamer and/or tech enthusiast (read: lots of shiny LEDs). The only drawback is the crazy price tag that comes with it.
Sure the heart of this machine could be a little stronger, but I've messed with a several different Intel quad core CPUs and found that the minor speed increase didn't seem to match up with the extra money spent. In this box, we used the Intel Core2Duo E8400 3.0ghz CPU and mounted it underneath a Thermaltake TMG i1 heatpipe cooler. The E8400 is very overclockable and relatively inexpensive at the same time. If the customer wants to, he can upgrade to a higher end quad core CPU down the road and not be out a load of money on the old CPU.
The Antec TruePower 850W power supply was employed to power up the system and keep it running well for years to come (through upgrades and additions). The Quattro 850 has modular power leads for devices, so you only have to use enough wiring to meet the demands of the installed equipment. This helps keep the mess of wires to a minimum, which allows for better overall airflow inside the case. Usually my issue with power supplies is that the leads for mainboard power and 12V are too long and they always get in the way, but because the Antec Nine Hundred case mounts the power supply at the bottom of the case, it would have been nice if the 12V connector was actually about 6 to 8 inches longer. Of it was, I wouldn't have had to run it across the top of the video card as shown in the picture - I hated doing that, but there was no other option available.
Memory wise, we used the Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1333 4GB RAM kit. I like the speed of this memory as well as the physical design and the attached heat spreaders. Where they happen to sit in the case, there is a constant slow speed air flow moving right across the top of the modules which should help to keep them at moderate temperatures while being tortured by long and heavy gaming sessions.
Since storage wasn't a huge concern, but the ability to expand later if necessary was, the customer opted for a single Seagate 500GB 7200rpm SATA2 hard drive with 32MB cache. These drives seem fairly reliable and relatively quick, not to mention that they are also priced very well, so I think it will work out just fine. On the optical storage side, the LG H62N 20x SATA DL DVD+/-RW drive was used. They work well, are fully capable of burning all current CD and DVD media with decent speed and seem to be very reliable. We've shipped over 150 of these drives and have yet to have an issue with them.
Of course the king of the castle in this machine (besides the crazy motherboard) is the nVidia 9800GX2 video card. Currently, this is one of the fastest video cards on the market and when I tried out some games and graphics benchmarking programs on the machine I could literally see the difference between this card and lesser ones. Again, this is where a well ventilated case comes in handy - the 9800GX2 video card, even with its large, and sometimes noisy fan, gets fairly warm when it has been run hard for a good length of time.
Not pictured here are the Logitech G15 gaming keyboard and the Logitech G5 mouse that go along with this system. Both of these items are excellent products and the added bonus of the LCD readout on the G15 keyboard just adds to the high-tech overall look and feel of this system. All in all, this system was a fun build, and for the time it took to put it all together, load it up, and test the hell out of it, I was briefly in love with computers again.
