YoGi-Sama
Skilled
Over a year and half of disappointment over Intel’s Netburst crap called Pentium D, I finally decided to upgrade my system. While deciding between MacBook Pro and Desktop I settled down for desktop. Reason was simple; with Intel’s fierce price cuts Quad-Core processor was well within budget… making it a very lucrative option. I mean, it was possible to get double the power at little more than half the cost of MacBook Pro. So following was the shopping list for this Diwali season.
Now… pictures talk better than words….
Q6600, Asus P5KC, Corsair XMS2 800, CM Extreme Power 600w, LiteOn DVD and MX2 Tim… with CM690 to house them all.
And here’s lovely CM690…
Location of front connection ports are the only gripe I have with this cabby as I place it on desk and I’ve to get my ass up to use them.
Another thing I think should be mentioned about this cabinet is that even though it’s by well known brand like CoolerMaster, there are some places where this cabinet shows it’s “value†segment faces. But even then this cabinet has much better construction quality than most of the local brands I’ve seen and I can safely say that this by far the best cabinet I’ve ever used. Not only that, the features that it offers for the price it asks for are amazing.
Let’s see some more pics on internals. Sorry, I was so excited to put together the system that I didn’t picture the empty cabinet or components separately.
Don’t shoot me for cable management though. I did very basic job managing the wires because when I get Ultime-90, I will have to take out everything again. After that I will put more time in hiding wires. Right it’s pretty good and there is lot of open space for unobstructed airflow.
This cabinet gives a lot of option for managing your cables and then it’s all depends on how creative you can get with given options. So stuff like what I did above, it was damn easy with built in cuts on motherboard tray and holder clips. Even the hard drive cables were easy to manage as they go from back.
Now the display… As I stated earlier I went for ViewSonic VX2255wmb. It’s nothing extraordinary, just a regular cheap TN panel display. But TN panels have come long way and even though they won’t surpass PVA panels; they do pretty good job and at nice price point. This particular panel has tad better specs over VX2235/45 panel… and even though VX2245 had lot of other extra features (iPod dock, card reader and USB ports), I decided to go for little better panel specs over extra goodies. VX2255wmb, I must say… is a rather good looking display with piano black finish and silver trim at bottom.
The big power button is in the center with nice bright blue LED (which turns to orange when no input is detected) while control buttons are located on right side at bottom. Not my favorite place, but they aren’t that bad as I thought they would be. I just wish that the legend for those buttons were backlit or at least bit more visible, as it gets lost easily on glossy back finish and most of the time you have to access the buttons by guessing by their position.
Another thing is that this glossy back finish seems to attract dust very easily or at least shows up very easily. Either way, it makes the panel look ugly if you don’t wipe it at least twice a day. I don’t like ACs so my room isn’t closed always and being on ground floor, dust is second resident of my house.
It also has nice wire management feature on backside of stand. Nothing extraordinary but nice thing to have as this panel has decent amount of ports on back if you decide to use most of them.
Notice the dust and smudges… damn the glossy finish.
As you can see, regular stuff for ports on LCD monitor. Power, audio pass-through for built in mic and speakers, DVI, VGA and one upstream USB for built-in webcam. Oh… it also has headphone jack below the right side control buttons which I personally find a nice location for plug in headphones. If you’re wondering why both DVI and VGA ports are connected… well my main system is on DVI and I’ve connected my iBook on VGA. So when I want to work on iPhoto or iMovie I can switch to my iBook on VGA. Nice feature to have, indeed.
This is how my setup looks right now. It sure feels good… compared to my old setup.
Lot of empty space to place food and beer glass.. err.. coffee mug while working. The cabinet in bottom is my old proxy server, used with remote desktop in case you’re wondering. I’ll be settings up new server with smaller cabinet and hidden somewhere else.
Also what you seen on the screen of my old dual-monitors, is a after-effects rendering a short clip. I ran a sort of benchmark on my old system, AfterEffects, 3D Studio Max and Photoshop Filter… and I intend to run the same things on my new system so that I know how much “Real-World†gain I’m getting from my new investment. Sure I can run PCmark but I want to see the real-world application over synthetic benchmarks. I’ll be adding those numbers too soon in this post.
Now let me show off a little bit… not me, but my system.
Placing light at bottom wasn’t doing much… so I moved it on top and result was much better.
And finally, my finished setup.
Total damage was 55k... 40k for components and 15k for LCD.
All is not done yet though… some things are still remaining.
Graphic card, for which my first preference is AMD/ATi’s radeon HD 3870 or 3850. I’ve been using nVidia cards since MX440 and would like to go for ATi this time. Reason being R6xx’s better performance in 3D applications over nVidia’s offerings. Although nVidia is currently leading the performance race in gaming, I am willing to sacrifice little gaming performance over better productivity aid. I mean who wouldn’t like workstation class performance at desktop class price? Now just waiting for proper availability of HD 38xx cards in local market at decent cost.
Ultima-90… too bad it isn’t available readily right now and ultra-90 doesn’t offer performance like that. Ultra-120 is the best… but it’s also heavy and big.
Some more bling-bling, yes… some decent performing LED fans. Looking out for something which doesn’t burn hole in my pocket while still offering decent airflow at acceptable noise. Let’s see how that goes. Also some nice front panel fan controller with display. Had seen a Zalman made one, looks pretty decent unlike some of the controllers that look like they arrived from some other planet or from some b-grade Hollywood sci-fi movie.
Macbook Pro was replaced by this new system but that doesn’t mean its out. Maybe next year I’ll be to get my hands on it. This is one desire that I’ll be surely going after.
- Intel Core2Quad processor, Q6600 (2.4 GHz, 8mb L2 cache, G0 stepping)
- Asus P5KC motherboard with DDR2/DDR3 memory support
(good option to upgrade to DDR3 memory when DDR3 memory gets cheaper)
- Corsair XMS2 CL5 DDR2-800 MHz ram, 2GB kit (2 x 1gb)
- Western Digital Caviar SE16 320 GB drive, SATA2
- CoolerMaster Extreme Power 600W PSU
- Lite-On DVD writer, 20x, SATA
- Thermalright Ultima-90 Heatsink + Scythe S-Flex 120MM fan
- GeForce 8800GTS 320mb graphic card
- CoolerMaster Stacker 810 / CM 690 PC cabinet
- Dell 22″ LCD Panel, E228WFP
Now… pictures talk better than words….
Q6600, Asus P5KC, Corsair XMS2 800, CM Extreme Power 600w, LiteOn DVD and MX2 Tim… with CM690 to house them all.
And here’s lovely CM690…
Location of front connection ports are the only gripe I have with this cabby as I place it on desk and I’ve to get my ass up to use them.
Another thing I think should be mentioned about this cabinet is that even though it’s by well known brand like CoolerMaster, there are some places where this cabinet shows it’s “value†segment faces. But even then this cabinet has much better construction quality than most of the local brands I’ve seen and I can safely say that this by far the best cabinet I’ve ever used. Not only that, the features that it offers for the price it asks for are amazing.
Let’s see some more pics on internals. Sorry, I was so excited to put together the system that I didn’t picture the empty cabinet or components separately.
Don’t shoot me for cable management though. I did very basic job managing the wires because when I get Ultime-90, I will have to take out everything again. After that I will put more time in hiding wires. Right it’s pretty good and there is lot of open space for unobstructed airflow.
This cabinet gives a lot of option for managing your cables and then it’s all depends on how creative you can get with given options. So stuff like what I did above, it was damn easy with built in cuts on motherboard tray and holder clips. Even the hard drive cables were easy to manage as they go from back.
Now the display… As I stated earlier I went for ViewSonic VX2255wmb. It’s nothing extraordinary, just a regular cheap TN panel display. But TN panels have come long way and even though they won’t surpass PVA panels; they do pretty good job and at nice price point. This particular panel has tad better specs over VX2235/45 panel… and even though VX2245 had lot of other extra features (iPod dock, card reader and USB ports), I decided to go for little better panel specs over extra goodies. VX2255wmb, I must say… is a rather good looking display with piano black finish and silver trim at bottom.
The big power button is in the center with nice bright blue LED (which turns to orange when no input is detected) while control buttons are located on right side at bottom. Not my favorite place, but they aren’t that bad as I thought they would be. I just wish that the legend for those buttons were backlit or at least bit more visible, as it gets lost easily on glossy back finish and most of the time you have to access the buttons by guessing by their position.
Another thing is that this glossy back finish seems to attract dust very easily or at least shows up very easily. Either way, it makes the panel look ugly if you don’t wipe it at least twice a day. I don’t like ACs so my room isn’t closed always and being on ground floor, dust is second resident of my house.
It also has nice wire management feature on backside of stand. Nothing extraordinary but nice thing to have as this panel has decent amount of ports on back if you decide to use most of them.
Notice the dust and smudges… damn the glossy finish.
As you can see, regular stuff for ports on LCD monitor. Power, audio pass-through for built in mic and speakers, DVI, VGA and one upstream USB for built-in webcam. Oh… it also has headphone jack below the right side control buttons which I personally find a nice location for plug in headphones. If you’re wondering why both DVI and VGA ports are connected… well my main system is on DVI and I’ve connected my iBook on VGA. So when I want to work on iPhoto or iMovie I can switch to my iBook on VGA. Nice feature to have, indeed.
This is how my setup looks right now. It sure feels good… compared to my old setup.
Lot of empty space to place food and beer glass.. err.. coffee mug while working. The cabinet in bottom is my old proxy server, used with remote desktop in case you’re wondering. I’ll be settings up new server with smaller cabinet and hidden somewhere else.
Also what you seen on the screen of my old dual-monitors, is a after-effects rendering a short clip. I ran a sort of benchmark on my old system, AfterEffects, 3D Studio Max and Photoshop Filter… and I intend to run the same things on my new system so that I know how much “Real-World†gain I’m getting from my new investment. Sure I can run PCmark but I want to see the real-world application over synthetic benchmarks. I’ll be adding those numbers too soon in this post.
Now let me show off a little bit… not me, but my system.
Placing light at bottom wasn’t doing much… so I moved it on top and result was much better.
And finally, my finished setup.
Total damage was 55k... 40k for components and 15k for LCD.
All is not done yet though… some things are still remaining.
Graphic card, for which my first preference is AMD/ATi’s radeon HD 3870 or 3850. I’ve been using nVidia cards since MX440 and would like to go for ATi this time. Reason being R6xx’s better performance in 3D applications over nVidia’s offerings. Although nVidia is currently leading the performance race in gaming, I am willing to sacrifice little gaming performance over better productivity aid. I mean who wouldn’t like workstation class performance at desktop class price? Now just waiting for proper availability of HD 38xx cards in local market at decent cost.
Ultima-90… too bad it isn’t available readily right now and ultra-90 doesn’t offer performance like that. Ultra-120 is the best… but it’s also heavy and big.
Some more bling-bling, yes… some decent performing LED fans. Looking out for something which doesn’t burn hole in my pocket while still offering decent airflow at acceptable noise. Let’s see how that goes. Also some nice front panel fan controller with display. Had seen a Zalman made one, looks pretty decent unlike some of the controllers that look like they arrived from some other planet or from some b-grade Hollywood sci-fi movie.
Macbook Pro was replaced by this new system but that doesn’t mean its out. Maybe next year I’ll be to get my hands on it. This is one desire that I’ll be surely going after.
