More Power!
I’ll possibly be away for a few days while I do a total rebuild on this PC, which is an ancient beastie. To be honest I don’t need to build a new rig, but given that Windows Vista arrives towards the end of January, I do want my machine to handle this bloated behemoth of an Operating System (OS). I’d roughly guess that about 90% of PC users who want this OS will end up doing a rebuild of their machine.
It’s slightly absurd that an OS should require so much resource power just to bloody run, but that’s just typical Microsoft. I’m going to stick to XP for as long as I can though, because I’ll be buggered if I’m paying £220 for the Home Premium Edition, I’ll wait for a price drop. I’m not too clear on the upgrade version yet as the info is a bit clouded. So this Friday 5th, my new PC parts will arrive along with XP Media Center 2005. Hopefully everything should go well, because I’ve got a heap of reviews needing checking.
This new rig will be mainly built for non gaming use, as I have the Xbox 360 for games now. So I’ll be doing video encoding, general office use, blogging/php work, photo editing and multimedia on this new rig for the most part. One half of me doesn’t want to spend the best part of £750 on new parts, given that this machine still does and can easily do anything that I normally throw at it. Hell XP flies on this. However it struggled with the Windows Vista Beta, although it was a beta. See ya soon!
So I’ll be moving from:
Abit NF7-S Motherboard
Barton 2500+ (running overclocked at 2.4ghz)
1.5GB of DDR3200 Ram
3x160GB Hitachi Deskstar Hard drives
Creative Audigy 2 Sound
Nvidia 6800GT (running dual 19" Widescreens)
Geforce 2MX PCI (running one 20.1" Widescreen)
To:
Abit AW9D-Max Motherboard (its got blue leds!)
Intel Core 2 DUO 2.4ghz (will be overclocked)
2GB of DDR2 PC6400 Ram (further 1gb to be added later)
1x160GB Hitachi Deskstar (got enough external storage as it is)
Creative Audigy 2 Sound (I’ll stick with this for now)
Gainward Geforce 7900GT (to drive my dual 19" screens)
to this or anything else 
Don’t you hate it when you take the day off, only to find the delivery of your PC parts/etc have no chance of arriving in time?
Don’t you hate it when the Order Status has a poor description, which doesn’t tell you a single thing about the status of your order?
Don’t you hate it when you contact the company via a useless email webnote system since they’re rather not talk to their customers, and then have to wait for a reply? It’s been 4hrs now…
Welcome to my morning. I’ve used Overclockers Uk for years. For the past 8months or so I’ve seen increased complaints on the web about them, hell even PC Format have ranted about this once superb company. I paid for frikken delivery on Friday 5th, I’ve taken a day off work to await the new bits for my PC and I’ve got nothing. Now I’ve got no sodding PC to even write reviews on until the bits arrive!
To make things worse, this laptop I’m on started playing up and is about to die as it has graphics issues so I’m waiting for a repair company to pick that up.
I doubt I’ll be using them again for big orders. Small orders yes but not one involving multiple items anyway. It turns out that the Hitachi hard disk wasn’t in stock yet their stock checker said it was at the time, so they held back the order.
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz
Abit AW9D-MAX Intel 975X (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 NCQ 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache
Gainward BLISS Geforce 7900 GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel
Thats my order above. I’m willing to put aside my anger because its the first week of new year and people/businesses are still getting back on their feet after the holiday period, and naturally everyone is feeling a bit fatigued from it.
However, that still doesn’t discount that two webnotes went ignored, I couldn’t get through to any of their telephone lines due to busy tones and their ‘real time stock checker’ is anything but that. Lastly order status could have mention that the order was ‘Withheld or awaiting stock’, I mean wtf does ‘Printed at warehouse’ mean for crying out loud?
I’ve been saying for quite a while now that they’ve simply got too big. They remind me of Dell, once a great company but poor now. Gonna stick to Ebuyer/Amazon/Scan and Kustom from now as they’ve never let me down for getting pc bits on time.
You got your parts yet Darren? I can’t wait to get Vista running on my PC set-up but I won’t be affording it this month unfortunately as I move house on/around the 19th January.
It’s an absolute stonking CPU though, I have had mine rendering fine in 3D Studio Max at 3.6ghz on air (Titan Amanda). I also went for the G.Skill 2gb HZ Ram instead, but I’m sure you’ll get lots of juice out of those bad-boys, however why do you only want to go to 3gb? Surely 4gb would be the better option?
NokkonWud.
Allo Matey! Yeah, the parts arrived on Monday and I was up and running in about 1hr. Sadly the stock heatsink broke 2mins after taking it out of the box lol. I was just examining it and a small plastic notch on one of the legs fell into my hands. I managed to attach the HS to the mobo but I’m not too impressed by the temps – 40-41c idling with fan rpms @ 1740 (max I think?). Not too happy with the stock fan noise either tbh.
I’ve ordered that big Scythe Ninja HS off Ocuk and its arriving on Wednesday. I can’t wait to OC this baby! Just for the sake of it tbh, as it’s not really a gaming rig.
I could go upto 4gb but then what will I do with all that ram lol. I guess I’ll review my decision when Vista arrives. I can afford it on release day but I really think £220 for retail Home Premium is taking the wii.
Geeks
/me whacks Lise with a trout…
Got my Scythe Ninja this morning, my god what a monster of a heatsink! It only just fits on my mobo, since the NB heatsinks almost block it.
Had to remove and reseat the thing 4 times because I just wasn’t happy with the temps I was getting. Eventually I think I’ve got it sorted. So far I’m running at a stable 368×9 @ 3.3ghz at stock volts. I’ve only had the patience to test with Orthos for 1hr though and that was fine.
I had a right nightmare disabling SpeedStep though, even though it was disabled in bios, the bugger would still switch itself on in Windows, I’ve no idea how. It seems to have sorted itself out now. Idle temps are 43-45c, with load hitting about 49-50c. Not bad.
I could push it a bit more, but I’ll wait for the AS3 thermal stuffs to set in before I do so. Gotta love this cpu!
Hey Uncle! I agree with Lisa, you lot r sad and need to get a life
Get married too 
Those temperatures are still quite high, especially considering it’s winter. Mine runs at 21degrees at 3.0ghz-3.2ghz, it was only 32degrees idle at 3.6ghz! Saying that, my heatsink makes yours look like a little baby
.
As for 4gb, I suppose it would be useful to someone like me who uses 3D Studio Max over someone who doesn’t
.
As for you 2, I have a life… it just so happens to revolve around PC’s
.
Btw mate, what you using to get your temp readings? I’m using CoreTemp.
I do admit my temps are slightly high from what I’ve seen in other OC’ing threads but I’ve no idea how to drop them any further tbh.
My case is the old school Coolermaster 201 btw, with 4x80mm 25cfm fans. Airflow is perfect in there and theres no obstructions either as I’ve hid most cables behind the mobo itself. Ah well, as long as the bugger ain’t crashing I guess.
Ignore the other two. They tend to always post OT posts and just generally babble about anything
Im loving my setup too – and just like you i took 4 days off work in the end to receive them after OcUK lied to me TWICE about the order – i even had to pay £18 for Saturday delivery which they wouldnt do free of charge, even though 2 of there phone people told me the order was packed on the Tuesday, and the Thursday – ****’s the lot of them.
I use Everest because I can’t stand CoreTemp/MBM or Speedfan. I think it’s the best by a mile.
I use an Akasa Eclipse-62 with 2x Silenx 120mm fans (Link)
I built my new system last week, got part from ocuk and Dabs – both arrived very quickly and without any bother, though the mobo box was a bit beaten up.
I got the same CPU as you but with
Asus Commando mobo
2x1GB Crucial PC2-6400
3x320GB Seagate sata drives for RAID 5
MSI 8800GTX
Enermax Libery 620W PSU
Thermaltake Xaser III tower I’ve had for a few years
Tried Vista on it but didn’t have the drivers for the graphics card (100.59 out today, gah!) so I’ll be sticking with XP myself for a while too. Runs superbly, and is very quiet!! Ok, the graphics card produces enough heat to warm the entire flat, though
Traaaaaaaaaaaaat!!!
Bwaahahaha, that’ll teach you to buy some overpriced gpu! Installed Vista on launch day and it’s pretty decent. Feels much quicker then XP.
/me bounces off snickering at the driverless 8800 user
Well, the drivers are out now but I think I’m still going to stick with XP until I’m eventually forced to downgrade to Vista.
You gotta come on irc more matey! Stop playing Eve
Too much money! And Mega Geeks! We should all be playing with Barbie sets instead.
I agree with Ribsy.
Hmmmm…..hang on….
OMGWTFBBQ?
You can’t agree with him ozzie gal! Thats not fair! /me slaps