What's Your Rig?

[mamypocopants]

Hi all...

I am a self professed computer geek and want to tell everyone about my baby

It is based on a shuttle SN42 box with a micro form factor ATX motherboard and nForce2 chipset with a 400mhz bus speed (supports dual channel too). It comes with onboard 6 channel sound (great sound), onboard nvidia GeForce4 VGA with TV out and dual monitor support (unused), onboard 10/100 lan network (don't they all now?), onboard 1394 firewire (not bad for a nearly 3 year old PC), and a SPDIF in/out optical connection. It has a wireless network connection based on the 811g standard (fun to play with and there are some unsecured networks available in my building with www access).

A Maxtor ATA 133 200gb hard drive, an Athlon 333mhz Barton core xp2500 CPU overclocked and running solid @ xp3200 specs.

A Gigabytle Radeon 9700pro video card with TV out (TV out used regularly for downloaded movies and DVDs). It cost 13,900 baht new but I have had this card for over 2 years and it still plays the latest games admirably with good detail. It came with a 3 year warranty and has been replaced once.

It has a samsung combo DVD reader CD writer drive that is absolutely shagged and has been for ages, requires a paper clip to open it and occasionaly causes the whole comjputer to lock when initialising reading or writing discs, but it still works so I will wait until it is totally f%#ked or when good quality dual layer DVD writers hit 2000 baht @ Wat Panthip (won't be long I am sure).

This is all hooked up to a Phillips Flat screen 17 inch monitor and a logitech wireless keyboard and mouse (the cheaper 2000 baht variety). I have always used the cheapest, shittiest keyboards until I treated myself to the logitech KB and mouse deal, wow, didn't know what a pleasure it was to have a decent keyboard. It's been running on 2 AA batteries for 6 months now but the mouse chews them every 3 weeks. Not a problem though, 2 AA rechargables are 150 baht.

I don't have a floppy drive and have not had one for about 4 years, they truely belong in history.

This PC still runs rings around laptops with not much more desk space used and used to put desktops to shame as well.

I have a TOT 512k connection and my computer is rarely turned off thanks to Bram Cohen and the likes of suprnova R.I.P, mininova etc.....

I love playing counter strike and have wasted a good part of this year shooting people online, I love the plentiful supply of very cheap, non copied games available for the Thai market.

Recently I found a Pentium 3 500mhz on a ASUS P3B-F motherboard with a whopping 64mb of PC100 memory and an awesome 16bit ISA soundcard in an ATX tower case that someone had thrown in the bin where I live. I am already beginning to feel a strong bond with this computer and it could soon grow into a mia noi situation, with me, god forbid, spending some money on it so it can reveal it's true beauty to the world and not have to live in shame hidden in my closet. I will have to keep a close eye on the bin for some additional upgrades.

Well, thank you for listening and feel free to share what awesome computing power lies lurking in your clutches....

[terdsak_12]

Mine's black!

[Boatabike]

Mine has black trim but is mainly whitish, oh and something inside that goes whir..! Lots of messy cables hanging out the back that collect cobwebs and dust very quickly! And an automatic coffee cup stand that pops out at the press of a button, best bit i think.

[h90]

thats not for coffee, thats for tea!!!

Mine has black trim but is mainly whitish, oh and something inside that goes whir..! Lots of messy cables hanging out the back that collect cobwebs and dust very quickly! And an automatic coffee cup stand that pops out at the press of a button, best bit i think.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Thetyim]

[Firefoxx]

An SFF's nice, but unfortunately I needed the expandability of a normal case.

Case: Aluminum case, made in China, 2,200 baht. Has an acrylic side panel and plenty of room for expansion, with front panel USB, Firewire, and audio. Aluminum made it easier to modify to fit extra fans. Good ventilation, with two fans blowing directly on the the 5 harddisk bays.

Mainboard: Asus P4P800 deluxe. Has RAID, has firewire, has nice overclockability. Very stable.

RAM: 2x512MB PC3200 DDR, from RAMBO. Cheap, does the job, stable, since I don't overclock my ram.

VGA: ATI Radeon 9600 pro. A middling card, does the job.

DVD-writer: Pioneer 108, with cracked firmware. Writes any media I throw at it, and lets me choose the speed at will. A liteon DVD-rom drive complements it.

Harddisks: 2x250GB SATA Maxtor Diamondmax 10 (16mb buffer) harddisks, connected to a promise enhanced SATA controller. Allows TCQ, which means better multitasking performance (there is a marked improvement).

CPU: P4 2.4C HT, overclocked to 3.2GHz, with stock cooling.

[LivinLOS]

Which one..

The home theater PC (HTPC) this one is nice, custom CNC machines and black anodised case with VFD display and IR reciever etc..

,

The RAID(5) storage box (640 GB storage on that one alone),

The main desktop,

The laptop,

The hacked webplayers (used as a interface to the jukebox solution on the HTPC for house streaming audio)

The mini laptop (libretto) for immediate travel (photo backup, email use over GPRS)...

Different toys for different tasks.. Of all the lessons I have learnt is that your best investment over time is a great keyb / mouse combo and high quality screen.. The box underneath may change but the input and your eyes benefit for years..

[bkk_mike]

I have a couple...

Main one is a 2-GHz pentium 4, Asus P4B266 motherboard, 1GB Ram, a couple of hard disks, one 40Gb, one 250Gb, a Radeon 9600 XT Vivo graphics card, and twin 17" LCDs. A DVD Rom drive, and a multi-format dual-layer DVD+/-RW drive that my brother gave me for Christmas. All in a nice Lian-Li case.

The second one is an old Hitachi Flora 310, bought at Pantip over a year ago for 7,500 baht. (Basically an old PC with a 1024x768 LCD monitor built into it. 333MHz Celeron is a bit slow for doing anything other than browsing, especially as the motherboard can only handle 256Mb of RAM. However, I put an 80Gb hard disk into it and it runs XP acceptably. I use it as an email PC at home, and it's the PC I tend to take with me if we go anywhere for the weekend. I intend to swap out the motherboard with a Epia SP 1300 LVDS in the next couple of months, which will turn it into something that can handle DivX playback properly. (Current motherboard is Flex-ATX, and since the LCD needs LVDS output, it's a bit restricted in what I can replace it with.)

I too have a Libretto, but it's sitting gathering dust... - Need to upgrade the O/S to Linux, (bigger hard drive already in it), but as the floppy drive isn't working, and it hasn't got a USB port (for my memory cards) - I'm going to have to take the hard disk out to install a new O/S on it...

Newest toy is my PSP - very nice little machine. Especially now I've got a decent sized memory stick in it (512Mb).

Edited June 16, 2005 by bkk_mike

[Totster]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

totster

[Firefoxx]

LivinLOS, seems like you're as computer crazy as I am. Total of 4 desktops, 4 laptops, of varying age. Main deskop has more than a terabyte of storage (I do a lot of DV), with plans for more.

[francois]

hi'

Custom Case from original San .. some ext fans more

psu tagan ui2 480w(dual fan 80mm, thermoregulated)

Mb gigabyte titan P4 i1000pe(865pe chip)

P4c 2.6 OC to 3.06ghz stable.

HS(heatsink) termaltake heatpipe 101 with 80mm fan and ductin'

ddr ram 2X512mb dual channel

hdd Sata maxtor 80gb + ext 80gb (laCie)

dvd rom Asus 16x (48x for cd)

dvd-rw Dl Nec 16x. dvd 9 @ 4x cd @ 48x W/R

gforce fx 5200

sound blaster live 1024

on a nice 19" (gateway ev910) screen and dsl 5mb

francois

[Crushdepth]

Main deskop has more than a terabyte of storage (I do a lot of DV), with plans for more.

Just curious...how did you manage that ?!?

Quite happy with my 2.6GHz P4, had for about 2 years now. I put in a second 80 gig hard disk and upgraded to 1 gig of RAM the other day, but beyond that I don't know anything else about it, other than the fact that mine is also black :-)

Anyone got a link to an idiots guide to hardware ?

Edited June 16, 2005 by Crushdepth

[expatinasia]

Mine's aluminum, silver, 13" corner to corner. Hubba hubba.

[Firefoxx]

Crushdepth, with my system it's fairly easy to get multi-terabyte storage (for anyone who doesn't know, 1 terabyte=1,000 gigabytes). My mainboard has 3 PATA IDE channels and 2 SATA connectors, so assuming that I have 2 optical drives, this leaves 6 available slots for harddisks (4 PATA, 2 SATA). I also added a 4-port enhanced SATA controller, which allows 4 more SATA harddisks. I also have an external firewire enclosure. So it's quite possible for me to have up to 11 harddisks connected at any time (I have an Enermax 450W PSU, so power isn't a problem). Currently, I have 5 big ones, which puts me just over 1TB, but I'll upgrade soon.

Another cheap way to easy big storage (inside your case) is to buy USB-to-ATA cables... they are about 500 baht each. Just buy one for each harddisk you want to add, and use a USB hub or USB PCI card if you run out of USB ports. For the SATA route, 2-port SATA PCI cards can be had for around 1,000 baht each (I got mine from the US). For guys who want to go way out, there are 16 port SATA cards available.

[Gary A]

Runs great and boots fast.

Intel 3.0 GHZ/256/800 CPU

ASUS P4P800E Deluxe Motherboard

Seagate ST380013AS Serial STS/720 Hard Disk Drive

1 Gb PC2700 DDR Memory (Nanya)

ATI 9600SE 128M DDR V/D/VO Video Card

Mitsumi FX5411W 54X CDR

Mitsumi 1.44 FDD

Antec CA-3700BQE 350 Mid-Tower Case

Foxconn 3.2GCPU Fan

[xyz]

Recently, I spent about $2000 US (about what it would cost me for a vacation in LOS) to buy 3 Dell systems. Dell was selling these at about 50% off their regular price; it was a deal I couldn't refuse:

Inspiron 700M laptop w/ 1.6 Ghz Pentium M, 512Mb Ram, cd rw, dvd rom, modem, wireless adapter, 60 GB HD

Dimension 3000 w/ 2.8 Ghz P4, 512MB Ram, cd rw, Nvidia 5200 Video w/ 128Mb, 40 GB HD, 160 GB ext HD

Dimension 4600 w/ 2.8 Ghz P4, 512MB Ram, cd rw / dvd, PCI Ex ATi radeon X300SE w/ 128Mb, 80 GB HD

I also kept my old systems which are:

HP w/ Celeron 1000, 512 MB Ram, cd rw, 20 GB HD, 80 GB Ext HD

Brand X running on Win 98SE, P2 333Mhz, 512 MB ram, cd rw, 10 GB HD

I got all 5 systems connected to DSL via wireless adapters

Edited June 17, 2005 by xyz

[Jockstar]

Athlon 64/3000+

1.81GHZ

1GB RAM

K8N NEO2 MSi Main board

GEFOrceFX 5900 Graphics card

Samsung DVD Writer

160 GB HD

1000W Saag speakers

And loads of other &lt;deleted&gt; that i have no idea about. But it was thanks to Firefox and a few others that i have this system. Cant complain. Its been good. Also mine is mainly white but also a bit of black and 3 fans.

Edited June 17, 2005 by Jockstar