ah ha - now the stuff i was reading on wikipedia makes so much more sense. i've noticed that on wikipedia, a lot of times the really technical information lacks definitions of basic concepts.

i added that RAID controller i linked to my phase two wish list. i was doing some reading at work (i was literally the only one there until 11:30), and saw that PCIe ports link directly to the northbridge, whereas onboard SATA ports go through the southbridge too. for $100 it seems like a good investment.

edit: of course, that doesn't mean i'll get it for sure. 3ware's RAID controllers seem to be the market favorite, and they start in the $300 dollar range.

random question: my case came with a reset button. does that most likely connect to the CMOS reset, or is it for other boards that have pins mine don't?

Only the PCIe x16 port links directly to the Northbridge. The x1 PCIe ports link to the Southbridge through a much slower bus. So, the only peripherals that get the benefit of a direct connection to the Northbridge are the video card, memory, and CPU. Go to Intel's site and look at the chipset system diagram, WWW Link.

You really need a PCIe x8 RAID card to surpass the throughput of a SATA bus. Some boards do come with x8 slots, but the P31/35 boards don't. I haven't looked at RAID cards so I don't know, but one that utilizes an existing SATA port would get around the thoughput limitation of an x1 port. As far as I know, they all do that. However, the big speed boost in basic RAID comes from the fact you have two or more disks and controllers providing throughput across separate buses. Any add-on card may suffer speed degredation due to a possible interface bottleneck. Avoiding that bottlneck is kind of the whole point of integrating RAID into the chipset. There are other important RAID functions mainly used in server systems, but for a desktop, speed is the main objective.

I'm not sure if I understand what you're asking with the reset button question, but the pin header on the bottom right of the motherboard is where all of the basic case switches and lights would normally connect, including the case reset button. My board has all of the usual connections and even has the older style 3 pin power LED connection.

DOH! hehe. oh well. (the diagram i was looking at on wikipedia just said "pci express" in the article on the northbridge, thus my confusion).



now that i look at all the numbers, you're totally right. there's no way even 6 SATA ports could use up the entire bandwidth from the SB to the NB, unless you also had a whole lot of peripherials. i'm not really working towards a particular goal anymore (mostly just learning for its own sake), no particular goal for hardware anyway (other than a sound card next month and probably an upgraded graphics card for my birthday around late march).

...and a slimline/slot load DVD-RW. i want to do this case mod, and then use this triple fan grill and swap out the black/blue LED stock fans for transperant/green LED ones. that'd look wicked.

yeah i know, that grill is $40... but... i want it!

now that i read it, i'm not sure myself. i think i was worried there might be some other type of reset all together... like equivalent to restarting in windows or something. i don't know. it was late and my brain was fuzzy.

Oooh, pretty. You'd say, "yuck" if you saw my case. It's the old ugly beige sheetmetal style. Decorating the case looks like fun though. Maybe one of these days I'll get one of those newfangled fancy ones if I ever have to scrap my old case from the 20th century, hehe.

At that point you could have spent the $200 on Windows XP Home Full Edition to "upgrade" Vista back down to XP. It's a bit more than that for full XP Pro, of course. The only thing stopping you might be if the new computer had any "poisoned pill" hardware that required Vista (like a DX10 video card with no backwards compatibility to DX9, for a hideous hypothetical example).

The extra ram was still money well spent, regardless of what operating system you ended up with.

heh yeah that color is... well, yuck. i really dislike that color, always have. on some of these casemodding sites, i've seem people take one of those basic, circa 1988 cases and turn it into a real beauty.

honestly i'm really satisfied with my case. some reviewers have complained about cable management, but $10 worth of stick-on clips and ties solves that. it's a really popular case right now, and my guess is that's because it's great out of the box but also presents so much room for case modding. i've had a lot of ideas on that front as well, but the only one i'm sure of is that fan/grill/slimline combo. the only irreversable part of it would be the hole cut for the dvd player, and i can live with that (and probably cover it up if i ever change my mind).

personally i don't really like the windowed side panel, and the top/control panel could use some work. i've never used a hand dremel before, but i don't think i'd be too hard for me. once upon a time i was a wiz in the woodshop (built a pool table at age 13 with no more than verbal instruction from my woodship teacher). still, i might practice on my old case a bit to get the feel for it.

speaking of which, i'm vaguely wondering if there's any chance i could salvage that thing. when i got it, i told myself that in the long run, i wanted it to be nothing more than a media center PC.

i'm thinking with a new case, PSU and fan, it'd still be able to do that, and i could probably do it for less than $100. my only problem is that the mobo is some weird form factor - mini BTX or something? it doesn't look like micro ATX. it has 4 DIMM slots and space for only two expansion cards (PCIe x16 and x1) (micro ATX seems to be 2 DIMMs and 4 expansion slots usually).

otherwise it looks standard-ish. and i could always drill holes into a new case to make it work. i just need to get a PSU that matches Dell's funky proprietary MB connector (PC power and cooling).

edit: well, it'd probably be a little more intense than that. still, it'd be an interesting challenge. revive what i can of the old computer into a silent media center PC on a modest budget. still, this case is only $50.

the more i look at my old MB the more i realize it's not very standard at all. the CPU bracket is on the east side of the MB right next to the case's 80mm fan. the pentium Ds do get really hot. mine's a 2.66G, so it's not exactly slow. i was thinking if i were to try and salvage it for a HTPC, i could try underclocking it. i'm sure i still have my re-installation CD somewhere. i could salvage the RAM and VGA for the short term at least (533 DDR2 and a radeon X600... not great but it gets the job done... on the other hand i could significantly upgrade both for like $50).

i think i'm gonna hold on to my Pentium D if nothing else; it could come in handy down the line. a friend of mine pointed out today that computer technology has reached a point where, unless you're gaming, and if you know what you're doing, hardware can last a pretty long time. i've been wanting an HDTV for a while, and i hate the idea of using the cable company's DVR box when i can have control over my own and not rent it from them. my roommate and i keep talking about wanted to get cable for football season. if i'm gonna shoot for a home theater PC, i want an ATSC-compliant TV card and a respectable sound card. since it'd be in the living room, i'd want to keep it low profile and try to make it as silent-running as possible.

You better be quiet about all this case modding, you're going to get me roped into it, hehe. Anyway, it sounds like you're pretty handy with a screwdriver so things should work out well and I'm sure you'll find it rewarding.

I don't know what to tell you about resurrecting your old system, but I have couple old K6-III 450 systems I can't seem to get rid of, you want 'em for your media system? Anyone? They were high-end systems in their time, but I don't have a use for them and I can't find anyone who wants them. I'd hate to just throw them away.

I'm doing my final Windows install on the new system. The first one was for testing so I could trash it and not worry about it. It gets pretty beat up with all the fiddling. I've reloaded my computer a bunch of times this year for various reasons. It's sooooooo monotonous. I tell ya, if I have to reload any time soon after this, I think I'm going to wretch.

I've got my quad in an old modded AT tower case. It used to be beige; I stripped the paint off and polished the steel panels to a mirror finish. The plastic has been vinyl-dyed blue and silver and the front bezel cut out and filled with aluminum mesh. At one point the CD drive faces were dyed to match but they've been replaced and I haven't bothered to do the new drive.

The case sat for years but I resurrected it because my IFX heatsink wouldn't fit in any of my existing cases and I didn't feel too bad about hacking this one apart. My plan is to build an acrylic case from scratch to showcase the IFX but until then the AT case reigns supreme. I've actually grown fond of the industrial look and the mirror polished panel behind the mobo is still pretty cool

AT Case Hack Job

totally random: did you know baker's chocolate is a great substance for polishing metal? i saw it on myth busters. cocoa powder is a fine abrasive, so you can use it as a polishing agent as long as you clean the surface afterwards with some isopropyl alcohol (to get rid of the oils). i tried it once on the bottom of an aluminum can and it really made if very mirror-like. a LOT of work though; probably better to start with a fine-grade steel wool and then switch to the chocolate.



wow that's a big case! even if it ran horribly, my old case did spoil me by being pretty small. it measures 12.5" tall, 3.7" wide and 14.5" deep. by comparison this antec 900 seems monsterous, but looking at that thing all i can say is 'nevermind' i didn't realize you could dye plastic - do you have to start from a light color like white, clear or beige?

also i noticed you mentioned having a problem with animal hair; i do too. i've got a longhaired cat, and my roommate has a medium-sized sheperd mutt. what did you use for filter material? did it noticably reduce airflow?

i was thinking about general air filters the other day, as an alternative (or at least, something to reduce dust buildup). i think HEPA filters smell funny, and after doing some research, i found that electrostatic precipitators (such as the ionic breeze from Sharper Image) produce ozone and nitrous oxide as side effects. so i'm back to considering filter mesh.



hehehe. i was talking about it with one of my coworkers last week. he said something like, "why would you do that if you can't show it off?" (alluding to PimpMyRide and all that street racing business). my reply was, "it's not really for anyone else; i want to enjoy it. and do desktops ever look nice? i don't think so. at least i can make mine look like a half-baked postmodern art project." besides, a lot of the basic stuff really isn't very expensive. it's really a question of how much work you want to put in (and at a certainly point, how competent you are).



think they'd handle 1080i DVR? (the TV cards i've looked at recommend a 3.0G pentium 4 at least). they've gotta be useful for something... i just have no idea what off the top of my head.

i did some more "window shopping" on newegg yesterday for this HTPC idea -- mostly to get a sense of how much i'd realistically spend on a project like this, and the XPS revival wishlist totals to just over $350 w/o tax or S&H. that's not bad! this assumes i'm keeping my old PD 2.6G, 2x512MB 533 RAM, radeon X600 and WinMCE. the most expensive item on that list is a half TB drive, but if i'm gonna do DVR i'd better have the space for it. you might also notice lack of an optical drive; i would use the DVD-RW on my current desktop after doing the slimline mod mentioned above (or upgrade to a blu-ray/DVD-RW when they drop in price).

also, what's the point of having this if i don't have a nice, big TV for it, right? 1080i LCD TVs are starting at $800 for a couple 37" models.

as a bit of a tangent, 1080i is a 16:9 (1920x1080) version of WUXGA (1920x1200), which is what my current monitor runs at. i paid about $600 for this thing two years ago, but that was at the discounted price for buying it with a new PC. one (and probably the only one) good thing i'll say about Dell, they make very nice monitors. this thing has 4 USB port extensions and 2 media multi-card readers; it has 5 connection types and built-in picture-in-picture; it's color has been flawless since the day i got it; the stand is sturdy and has built-in portrait orientation support and cable clips, and it's pretty easy to detach the display from the stand for moving them separately.

anyway, the real point is that i wouldn't bother to buy the HTPC components until i can afford an HDTV. maybe this all seems a little frivilous, but honestly, it keeps me from burning all my money up at bars and the whole point of what i'm doing with my life right now is to get some nice things. i graduated with high honors from a good university, and i'm bound for grad school sooner or later; but the truly sucky thing about being a student was being poor all the time. and i'm still a little weary of being a student anyway (what's nice about working is that my job ends when i go home--school is a constantly, back-of-the-mind nagging).

so i'm enjoying my mid 20s, and at least some intelligent investment in electronics is just that- an investment (better than drinking). and i make respectable enough money that i'll have this computer purchase paid off by March 1st. i've been living more modestly in other regards anyway (not going out often, brown bagging my lunch, etc.).

of course, the big downside to getting stuff is that it'll be more difficult to move when i do go to grad school (i'm not really interested in any of my options in southern CA).

random question: if i see a fan i like, can i remove the LEDs? not replace them, but actually remove them from the fan and keep the fan motor circuit in tact? (maybe solder a couple connections if i have to).

Yea, i tell ya, the stuff I could have bought with the money I wasted partying in my 20's, but that was quite a while ago for me, hehe.

As far as an HTPC, I thought about that at one time, but decided to go with an HD TiVo plus lifetime service. It doesn't cost a whole lot more than an HTPC and it has cable cards so it's a drop-in cable box replacement, just a lot less trouble, hook it up and you're done.

I have a 720p LCD TV and that seems adequate for me. I thought about 1080p, but the only media that can really take advantage of it is HD DVD and Blu-Ray. The players were really expensive last time I looked. I'm using an upconverting DVD player and the TiVo for broadcast media which is all 720p or 1080i anyway. I'm happy with it, but if I were to buy right now, I'd probably go for the 1080p set since they're not really that much more expensive. Definitely would buy LCD again. Another good thing about 1080p is that it's better for a PC interface, but I don't share that stuff. I'd be constantly at odds with my wife about it. She pretty much has the run of the TV which is fine with me because I spend most of my time in my office.

I just have a plain 'ol 1280x1024 LCD monitor for my PC and I don't think I'll be upgrading that anytime soon. It is a pretty nice one and it's not that old. I suppose it would be nice to play games at a higher resolution, but the one I have seems fine for me.

that's my exact reasoning on the screen (oh, and i always confuse p and i even though i know the difference between progressive and interlaced - probably part of my dyslexia issues). if i'm going to buy a bigscreen at all, i might as well get one that'll last (through the next display standard, at least). plus, i can't say i wouldn't game on it, and i'm really used to 1920x1200.

drives are another issue; i agree that blu-ray drives are way too expensive right now ($200 for a blu-ray/DVD-RW combo, and AFAIK internal HD DVD drives aren't available yet). i would wait for the current standard war to blow over and prices to drop before i'd commit to a next-gen HD drive; all the movies i have now are on standard DVD anyway.

heh... this has turned into more of a discussion about computers in general than a place i'm looking to for advice

Craig i remember you were saying AMD's spyder platform looked promising to you. i spend earlier today reading up on some of it (the 790FX chipset and CrossfireX) because i've got the flu and it was something to do. i remember a year or two ago when AMD bought ATI, a friend of mine said it really excited him. some stability problems, but otherwise the 790FX looks like it could be an impressive northbridge; the reviews i read said it'd be much stronger once they got a new southbridge into the set.

one thing that stood out to me was in the review of Gigabyte's version of the board, the reviewers complained about the placement of the PCIe x16 slots (all next to each other in a line). they said that'd be a problem for VGAs that have a stock cooler that taking up the adjacent expansion slot. unless you take the extra step to swap out the stock air coolers with right-angle liquid heat exchangers, they're right (or course, if you're going to spend the money on four VGAs, liquid cooling probably doesn't seem that expensive). but to me, this seems like an issue with the ATX design as much as anything else--i'm sure in 1995, no one was planning on having a relatively small market of enthusiast gamers who might want to take up 8 slots worth of expansion space.

i know that some professional solutions have the graphics cards in an external server of some sort, but from what i've read it doesn't look like that'd be a great alternative for gamer/enthusiasts either. i mean, if AMD/ATI really wants to sell this platform (to the enthusiast crowd at least), it seems like this might one thing they'll have to address.

edit: (well, the 3780 X2s coming out next year might solve this, so anyway...)

i just thought it'd be an interesting topic; i wanted to discuss the spyder platform more earlier, but i hadn't looked very deeply into it at the time. just wondering what you might think about any of this.

Yea, it does look promising. I'll be looking into it for my next upgrade in a year or so and that should be right about the time the Spider has really matured. I'm always looking for the cheapest, fastest upgrade. Computers are just such a horrible investment, you don't want to be spending a ton of money on any one system. And, with the incredible pace they advance, there's really no reason to.

As far as the dual video card setup, they do/will offer a non-Crossfire Spider version which is what I'm interested in. The problem with a dual setup is that the video card is really the most expensive component in the system and to double that expense just isn't reasonable in my mind. If I just go for one high end-card every year, it's likely to out-perform last year's even against two of them. I'm hoping to see GPU's follow suit with CPU's in offering multi-cores. In that case, it would make a dual video card setup redundant, just as multi-core CPU's have made motherboards with mulitple CPU sockets redundant.

Liquid cooling does solve the problem of bulky heats sinks and fans. It's is a lot of trouble to set up, but it's vastly superior to standard air cooling. Parts stay much cooler and it's a heck of a lot quieter. Though, there is leakage risk. Computer parts don't do too well when they get coolant on them. For me it's more a matter of time than expense. Liquid cooling isn't terribly expensive, but it's much quicker to build an air cooled system.

BTW, hope you get over your flu quick.

check this out.. from what i can tell, these basically run natively in crossfire. it's tentatively set for Feb. the current 3870s go for about $250. i imagine the X2s/3890s will go for at least a bit more, but they still might be able entice a few nVidi'ites over to the red side

i was also reading the other day that CrossfireX will support "hybrid crossfire" designed for budget-end systems, which is an interesting idea if nothing else (relatively impressive performance out of lower-end components).

SLI is a horrible waste of money. If you're rich and you can afford to buy two top end cards when you buy your PC, fine. Don't ever fall for the "I'll buy one card now and another later" BS, because by the time that rolls around you'll be able to buy one new card that will outperform your two old ones.

QFT. SLI is only effective if you build something faster than the fastest available single card at the time. Even worse than the "fill one slot, upgrade later" plan is people with 2 midrange cards in SLI. What the heck were they thinking?

Going back to the filter question, I had 2 kinds of filter, one a foam type material and the other a fine steel mesh. Bottom line, anything dense enough to filter dust will not be good for airflow. Pet hair on the other hand is coarse and you can get away with much bigger mesh that won't have much if any impact on airflow. If you look at the system pics I posted earlier, that black mesh on the front of the case will stop lint and hair.

The best defense is getting the case up off the floor, and vacuuming frequently. Moving the case up onto my desk cut the dust accumulation by an order of magnitude at least.

yeah my next "computer purchase" really needs to me some new furniture.

i agree completely about SLi, it just isn't worth the money unless you've really got money to burn on an annual basis. i also agree with you Craig, that computer components are a poor investment. i think with some computer devices, it's another issue.

i mentioned how satisfied i am with my monitor, for example. even though an LCD will die eventually, i think getting a quality one is a much smarter investment than buying cheap.

for example, i was thinking about buying two 17" 1280x1024 monitors (not necessarily at the same time) and using them in portrait mode as "wings" on my primary monitor. and surprisingly, this isn't even primarily for gaming or home entertainment. a lot of academic research now is available most readily online. while it was easy enough to print most articles, it was somewhat expensive. it was also a big mess. while i was writing my thesis it would have been really nice to have the option of having a PDF or two open on side screens, especially when it was something i needed to quote from. don't get me wrong, it'd also be a lot of fun for gaming and general messing around.

...wow! check this out. yeah, just a little overkill   

Multi-monitors are great for work, even if it's just having a word processor on one and reference material on another. Very poorly supported for gaming though.

I live in Reno Nevada and we have a number of Casinos here (nothing like Vegas though). Casinos have pretty deep pockets when it comes to decorations and the local one my wife and I frequent has a bunch of ultra high resolution panaroma displays on the walls. The things are huge. I drool everytime I look at them, the detail is incredible. I have no idea what the resolution is, but it's so fine, you can't see the pixels as close as you can look. They're not projectors either. They lay perfectly flat against the wall. I'm sure they cost tens of thousands of dollars. Could you imagine something like that as a computer monitor or TV?

Anyway, monitors are a much better investment. They're usable quite a bit longer than the box. Usually, it's a matter of wanting a bigger one more than anything else. I plan to keep mine for several more years at least.


Well, the next step is to put it on one die. They keep doing stuff like this so I'm pretty sure they're coming. nVidia offered a 7000 series card with 2 GPU's for a time as well.

The beauty lies not in spanning games across both screen,s but in being able to do other things at the same time without having to minimize the game

I had a pic of a red light bulb on my 2nd monitor to provide "general quarters" lighting while playing Silent Hunter