I'm a 31 year old American expat living in Oslo, Norway, with my bulldog, Ada, and my husband, Johannes. My interests include interaction design, especially information architecture, philosophy of mind and ethics, cognitive psychology, sociobiology, feminism, yoga, fat acceptance, knitting, pottery, and cooking.New computer!
I have just built myself a new computer from scratch. I bought the best components that aren’t unreasonably expensive–e.g. the q9450 and not the qX9770; the Radeon 4870 and not the GTX 260 or 280. Here are the specs:
- ASUS Rampage Formula
- A highly tweakable motherboard based on the x48 chipset.
- 4 GB Corsair Dominator PC2-8500 RAM
- 1066 MHz with CAS latency 5. I have not installed the included fans.
- HIS Radeon 4870
- Yes, yes, I know that ATI graphics cards suck. Except that this one doesn’t.
- Intel Q9450
- A quad-core 2.66GHz CPU.
- Mist 1000w Power Supply
- This is a Norwegian-made power supply. It’s gotten excellent reviews but I haven’t been able to find any information about it in English. It’s completely modular and almost completely silent.
- Western Digital Raptor X
- Here shown installed in the same kind of case I got. This is a 10,000 RPM 150GB SATA drive with a 16MB cache. It’s noisier than hell, but it sure looks pretty!
- Clear Computer Case RaptorX
- Their site is down for maintenance now, but you can still see the case on the front page.
- Samsung DVD Burner
- Does the job quietly.
- Western Digital WD4000KD
- The old 7200 RPM 400GB SATA drive that has my life on it.
- 3 Nexus Real Silent 120mm fans
- Virtually inaudible.
The most hardcore technical bit was when I had to rewire the connector for the front USB ports.
Everything worked perfectly the first time I powered it on and has continued to work perfectly since. With the exception of the clicking of the Raptor X, it’s virtually silent. It runs a little hot, but I understand that’s typical for these motherboards. The video card runs very hot, but from the reading up I’ve done, that’s normal for these 4870’s. I have played with the fan speed a little to get the temperature stable and quiet–25% seems to be the magic number.
The only disappointment has been with the new mouse I bought—I wanted a rechargeable mouse, but it turns out that the one I bought doesn’t work with the old Intellipoint software that allows the user to change the mouse orientation. I was able to get a driver filter to reverse the y axis, but this disabled some of the mouse button functions I use the most, like middle-clicking to view the desktop. Thus I have switched back to my trusty Wireless Intellimouse Explorer with Intellipoint 4.12.
My monitor is the same HP F2304 23″ LCD I’ve been using for the past few years, although it now has to be propped up by the orb Johannes bought me for my birthday a few years back. And, of course, I continue to enjoy using my vintage Model M keyboard.
Next I will put some pretty lights in it, and then I will water-cool it.
Very nice, I hope you’ll be happy with your new computer.
One word about water cooling, though. It may actually increase noise. It’s nice if you replace noisy fans with it, particularly the graphics card fan, but if you can, look for a shop where you can get a demonstration to make sure you find a noiseless cooler.
(A polite computer does not gurgle while playing games.
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