Congratulations! I just upgraded myself from my old c.2003 Dell Dimension. It's a nice feeling to be able to turn up some settings 
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Originally Posted by DarkEther
Got my new 'puter!
I had CR piece me one together so I can Ultra with the rest of you all. Just trying to get the game installed/updated atm - I copied all the pigg files over, but it still insists on fixing all of them. <sigh> Anyhoo, probably be on the fast machine for our next foray into TFedness. I actually had it for the one last Saturday, but there was lightning moving in, so I didn't want to chance it with the new precious. And thanks to CR for working with me on this.  And cool background - looks familiar!  |
Pics or it didn't happen!
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Your welcome DE, I was happy to. |
Originally Posted by DarkEther
Got my new 'puter!
I had CR piece me one together so I can Ultra with the rest of you all. Just trying to get the game installed/updated atm - I copied all the pigg files over, but it still insists on fixing all of them. <sigh> Anyhoo, probably be on the fast machine for our next foray into TFedness. I actually had it for the one last Saturday, but there was lightning moving in, so I didn't want to chance it with the new precious. And thanks to CR for working with me on this. And cool background - looks familiar! |
The case was the all black aluminum CoolerMaster ATCS 840 which is an inch or so taller and a couple inches longer than the largest full-tower I had built in prior to this but being all aluminum it was actually lighter. With 4 CPU cores humming along @3.5 Ghz and 8GB of fast RAM (the board was actually very picky and wouldn't accept any other memory off the QVL... it really loves the good stuff though
) and a factory overclocked VaporX edition of the fastest single videocard you can buy it's now officially the (new) fastest and largest system I've built (sorry Pyro 
).As for the electrical storms the 3000 joules rated Surge suppressor was included (not optional) for that very reason. I've used them for years and even when the lights flicker here from a heavy storm none of my systems have ever had a problem. If you ever did take a severe surge it would blow the SS but your PC would be safe... you would have to buy a new SS before you fire up the PC again but it's much better than the alternative.
Plus they ensure anything plugged into their SS upto $150,000 if the unit should ever fail to take the hit and protect the equipment.As for the background yeah I thought you might like that.
It was funny that soon after I sent out the machine that "memories" thread came up and people had forgotten that it was your commission in the first place heh.Quote:
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Originally Posted by PowerStream
Pics or it didn't happen!
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Click thumbs for bigger images.
Sidenote: The top of the case is actually flat across... that thing you see with all the USB, ESata and Audio connections
on it is like a hydraulic bay you press on the top and it raises up to give you access to all the ports so you can plug stuff in.
Also this thing looks wicked cool in person but it's tricky to photograph something all black and shiny like this...
it's the flash that makes the two disk drives stand out, under normal lighting the facade is uniformly dark and even though
it looks like it has a polished high-gloss finish it actually has a brushed metal finish which you can see really well in the last image.
It's just what I wanted - no huge light show, no jet noise, no nothing.
It just kicks butt and stands there, like the monolith from 2001. 
FYI, I have it setting on the side of the computer desk for the moment, just to the side of my monitor and keyboard/mouse, and all I hear is the game.
Oh, hey, CR - that ZoneAlarm deal is about to drive me to axing it. I keep telling it to allow stuff and remember the settings, and it's managed to pop up and stop the game from launching and such. It might be great, but I'm not sure I'm doing it all right.
Anyway, thanks again for your time and for putting it all together for me!
My Deviant Art page link-link
CoH/V Fan Videos
Dude, that CPU cooler is GINORMOUS! Great rig! Grats DE! I'm very jealous!
Beautiful work as always CR, congrats DE...
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Gratz man. Yeah it's real nice when you can see Ultra Mode with all it's eye candy goodness. |
Originally Posted by Jophiel
Congratulations! I just upgraded myself from my old c.2003 Dell Dimension. It's a nice feeling to be able to turn up some settings
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Originally Posted by PowerStream
Dude, that CPU cooler is GINORMOUS! Great rig! Grats DE! I'm very jealous!
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Definitely one of the parts helping to keep everything running cool and near silent.
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Originally Posted by LadyJudgement
Beautiful work as always CR, congrats DE...
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Originally Posted by DarkEther
It's just what I wanted - no huge light show, no jet noise, no nothing.
It just kicks butt and stands there, like the monolith from 2001. FYI, I have it setting on the side of the computer desk for the moment, just to the side of my monitor and keyboard/mouse, and all I hear is the game. Oh, hey, CR - that ZoneAlarm deal is about to drive me to axing it. I keep telling it to allow stuff and remember the settings, and it's managed to pop up and stop the game from launching and such. It might be great, but I'm not sure I'm doing it all right. Anyway, thanks again for your time and for putting it all together for me! |
Ya I know right? For being such a powerful machine you can barely hear it.
Towards the end of the build the only thing left that was still making noise were 4 of the covers for the unused motherboard slots (unlike the the videocard slots which were filled) on the back of the tower. They were lose and even when screwed down tight would occasionally rattle when the machine was going full tilt so I took them out soft glued to each of them two strips of foam damping material I had measured and cut out. Now they are silent and since the foam is attached to the covers and not the tower itself it will not interfere if you should ever decide to install something into those slots down the road. Click the thumbnails below and you'll see what I'm talking about...
Hah it's funny you should mention that... I almost put this in place of the windows startup theme to play when you turn your PC on.
The firewall is not preventing the game it's just holding it until you give it permission (the first time) to run. Because it's a clean installation on a new machine it hasn't yet learned what is trustworthy and what is not.
Zone Alarm is an excellent firewall and like most of it's kind it has to learn your computer habits so initially it will start out asking you frequently what processes should have access to the internet and also what things "out there" should be allowed in to your machine. This is doing exactly what a firewall should do and I would strongly suggest you not disable or uninstall it.
Don't worry once you get past the first few days of telling it what gets permission you will almost never hear from it again... it will just sit silently in the background and protect you based on your directions... but if you want a real eye-opener though just wait a week or two and go into the settings and see how much bad stuff ZA has blocked from coming in... the number is usually in the hundreds if not thousands of attempted break-ins with an always on high-speed connection. >0.o<
Two other things:
1, Only use the "remember this setting" if you are absolutely sure you want to Always allow or Always Block something. The settings can of course be changed later but it's easier to spend a few minutes initially to get it right. If you are not sure about something tell it to block (without remembering) and see what happens. This should be your default answer when you are unsure as it's better to be skeptical than too trusting. If, for example, you install Firefox and the first time it prompts you say don't allow you will right away notice that your browser can't connect to the internet and so you can click on Firefox again and now when it prompts you can say yes and remember and then you will not have to worry about your browser again (unless you reinstall or do a big update, see below).
If you don't recognize the apps name that is asking for web access just let it wait while you google it (ZA will hold the app indefinitely while you decide yea or nay). Type the name of the process exactly as you see it ZA's prompt box (example: avgrsx.exe) and you will find sites saying what the process is and if it's ok to let pass. In my example it was part of AVG Anti-Virus so I'm sure it's a good app I would go back to the ZA box which is still holding the AVG process up and say allow and remember.
Think of ZA as your first line of defense... like the guard at the gate saying "HALT! Who goes there!" and forcing everything, that would normally sneak by you, to stop and identify itself.
2, Sometimes you will get asked permission again for a program you already gave the green light to weeks ago (and said remember this answer)... this is also correct behavior and usually means the program has changed.
Example, when there is a huge patch or whole new issue to CoH (small patches aren't a problem) the firewall will recognize that it's not the same app as before (much of the code is changed) and challenge it. This behavior is to stop a once good program from being corrupted or taken over by malware without you knowing about it. It only takes two seconds to click "remember" and "yes" again (if you are sure all is ok) so it's not a big deal but it's far better than having a program not smart enough to realize a potential threat.
CR
Yes, ZA's been on much better behavior lately - it's stopped the non-stop questioning like a child. I'm leaving it go as is for now.
On one laptop, I installed PeerBlock and run it at times and just look at all the stuff it's intercepting. It's really amazing all the crap out there trying to foot in the door, so to speak. And people never know about it unless they have these kinds of things running on their system.
My Deviant Art page link-link
CoH/V Fan Videos
Got my new 'puter!
And cool background - looks familiar! 
I had CR piece me one together so I can Ultra with the rest of you all. Just trying to get the game installed/updated atm - I copied all the pigg files over, but it still insists on fixing all of them. <sigh>
Anyhoo, probably be on the fast machine for our next foray into TFedness. I actually had it for the one last Saturday, but there was lightning moving in, so I didn't want to chance it with the new precious.
And thanks to CR for working with me on this.
My Deviant Art page link-link
CoH/V Fan Videos