Computer-construction tips please!

[JivinJeffJones]

Originally Posted by Jack Flak

Did you buy anything yet? I'll sort you out.

I've realized that with shipping costs (for individual components overseas) and ridiculous costs (for individual components in Australia), it's actually considerably cheaper to buy a whole system from America and have it shipped over. Like, $1000 cheaper. So I guess I'll have to use my newfound building knowledge for upgrading. At least I'm more clued in as to what goes on in a computer now. Before this thread, I'd never even heard of overclocking. Or water-cooling. Or RAID 0. Or DDR3. etc

This is basically the system I'm looking at getting atm. Mine will be water-cooled. It doesn't have everything quite the way I wanted, but close enough. I'm gonna wait til the ATI 4870X2 comes out next week to decide from the reviews if I want to go for that (quad-crossfire), or the GTXs.

[Dom]

Originally Posted by JivinJeffJones

I've realized that with shipping costs (for individual components overseas) and ridiculous costs (for individual components in Australia), it's actually considerably cheaper to buy a whole system from America and have it shipped over. Like, $1000 cheaper. So I guess I'll have to use my newfound building knowledge for upgrading. At least I'm more clued in to what goes on in a computer now. Before this thread, I'd never even heard of overclocking. Or water-cooling. Or RAID 0. Or DDR3. etc

This is basically the system I'm looking at getting atm. Mine will be water-cooled. It doesn't have everything quite the way I wanted, but close enough. I'm gonna wait til the ATI 4870X2 comes out next week to decide from the reviews if I want to go for that (quad-crossfire), or the GTXs.

If you import it, becareful, unless you know someone in the states who can send it to you as a gift (and trust me postage will soar if you do it that way) OZ are GOING to slap a huge duty/tax bill on importing it (this is one of reasons why oz is so expensive). good luck..

[Dom]

Originally Posted by Sling

When you build your next computer, use this case. Or something cooler. Either is good by me.

Someone should get this guys type... that mod is amazing...

[Santtu]

Originally Posted by Dom

You really need a multi core GPU system... but looking at the processors you are considering, you probably don't have the resources for a decent pci express x16 option... which is a shame as (xander will correct if i'm wrong) if you got 2 cards that had 2 gpu's on them, (like mine, it is one card that is actually two put together to work as one) if you got two of them and put them in a system with two pci x16 slots and didn't SLI them, you could run four monitors in dedicated mode (1 gpu each) and each gpu should knock your old radeon 9800 into a dustbin...

Thanks for the advice. I'll consider it later when I get more money

Edit: btw, I won't be looking at the 4 game screens actively, and I'm not wishing to enjoy the view particularly. I only wish they work well enough to offer a decent response rate, ~1ms.. ~50ms inside my own network, and ~100..150ms from game-to-blizzard-server-to-another-game. The usual latency is around 100-150ms from game-blizzard-game on my servers. I just wish to enjoy the view on the 5th game, and to have low latency for my 5-boxing.

[Xander]

Originally Posted by JivinJeffJones

I've realized that with shipping costs (for individual components overseas) and ridiculous costs (for individual components in Australia), it's actually considerably cheaper to buy a whole system from America and have it shipped over. Like, $1000 cheaper. So I guess I'll have to use my newfound building knowledge for upgrading. At least I'm more clued in as to what goes on in a computer now. Before this thread, I'd never even heard of overclocking. Or water-cooling. Or RAID 0. Or DDR3. etc

This is basically the system I'm looking at getting atm. Mine will be water-cooled. It doesn't have everything quite the way I wanted, but close enough. I'm gonna wait til the ATI 4870X2 comes out next week to decide from the reviews if I want to go for that (quad-crossfire), or the GTXs.

Okay let me just say one thing... Noooooooooo!!!!!

Thermaltake? Are you sure??? I know they have prebuilt LCS cases (liquid cooling systems for the uninitiated) but it's low grade. You can get a custom system built for you. Tt LCS stuff is supposed to be prone to corrosion which is baaad.

I applaude your bravery in choosing water cooling on your first time out but it's not something you want to get wrong. Imagine fitting it all and wanting to change on little thing. It involves draining and refilling.

If you get it custom built you can have 1/2" ID tubing (that stuff is a beast!) a nice Vario pump and some proper radiators. You see with air cooling the actual choice of coolers other than the CPU's cooler is pretty much of a muchness. Aside from a couple of them they're all the same. The same is not true of watercooling.

Oh and even if you get watercooling, if you want it quiet you still have to buy quiet fans.

If nothing else, trust me on this. Don't get Tt LCS if you can avoid it. An Antec 900 air cooled system would be colder and much, much better for your peace of mind.

If you are determined to get watercooling then check for specialised shops either on the web or in your area. They'll probably customise cases for you. Either that or get a Cosmos S. A tripple rad, reservoir, pump and as many blocks as you dare can all be piped up internally on standard fixings... just don't get a radiator with wider spacings on the fan holes than 15mm and it drops in. Dead easy, no BS.

[Dom]

Originally Posted by Santtu

Thanks for the advice. I'll consider it later when I get more money

Edit: btw, I won't be looking at the 4 game screens actively, and I'm not wishing to enjoy the view particularly. I only wish they work well enough to offer a decent response rate, ~1ms.. ~50ms inside my own network, and ~100..150ms from game-to-blizzard-server-to-another-game. The usual latency is around 100-150ms from game-blizzard-game on my servers. I just wish to enjoy the view on the 5th game, and to have low latency for my 5-boxing.

Hmm are you sure the bottle neck on the client to server is the system waiting for the GPU and not gerneral CPU load or even network bottleneck? What kind of internet connection do you have? What level of contention is on the line? what is the UPLOAD speed rather than download (it's normally much much slower and this is where gamers get problems)... Also your network router/hub could slow the response rate as it works out which packet goes where... have you tried nailing down the internal IP addy's to see if there is much of a difference then? or even (if you have a decent isp) you could assign externall ip addy's direct to each client pc through the network, this would axe any burden on the hub other than to pass it straight through. Run the network on cat 5 (gigabyte Lan) wires not on wireless or it will defo slow down with 3-5 WoW sessions open.

[Xander]

Originally Posted by Dom

Run the network on cat 5 (gigabyte Lan) wires not on wireless or it will defo slow down with 3-5 WoW sessions open.

*nit picking*
That's CAT5e old chum. CAT 5 is 100BaseT.

Oh and if you've got the money, N-Draft wireless is supposed to be extremely fast. Probably fast enough if wireless is a necessity.

[Dom]

Originally Posted by Xander

*nit picking*
That's CAT5e old chum. CAT 5 is 100BaseT.

Oh and if you've got the money, N-Draft wireless is supposed to be extremely fast. Probably fast enough if wireless is a necessity.

meh.. I knew it was cat 5 e just I've not seen straight cat 5 available retail anyway!

[Santtu]

Originally Posted by Dom

Hmm are you sure the bottle neck on the client to server is the system waiting for the GPU and not gerneral CPU load or even network bottleneck? What kind of internet connection do you have? What level of contention is on the line? what is the UPLOAD speed rather than download (it's normally much much slower and this is where gamers get problems)... Also your network router/hub could slow the response rate as it works out which packet goes where... have you tried nailing down the internal IP addy's to see if there is much of a difference then? or even (if you have a decent isp) you could assign externall ip addy's direct to each client pc through the network, this would axe any burden on the hub other than to pass it straight through. Run the network on cat 5 (gigabyte Lan) wires not on wireless or it will defo slow down with 3-5 WoW sessions open.

What I meant by ~1..50ms home network latency had game latency included, something that's affected by fps. My general understanding is that game effects can't usually take place faster than the delay between two successive renderings of the game environment. 50ms delay would correspond to a low fps of 20.

My connection is a lowly 1mbps in, perhaps about 100-150kbps out. That's something I didn't think about; having cable modem, each of the 5 game instances only have about as much upstream network capacity as they would have with a 28kbps modem. That's poor. I use 8-port switches that can transmit full duplex 100/100 in all of the 8 ports simultaneously. Cost about ~20-30e few years back, I think.

So thanks, I'll definitely look at the upstream capacity of my poor cable.

[Dom]

Originally Posted by Santtu

What I meant by ~1..50ms home network latency had game latency included, something that's affected by fps. My general understanding is that game effects can't usually take place faster than the delay between two successive renderings of the game environment. 50ms delay would correspond to a low fps of 20.

My connection is a lowly 1mbps in, perhaps about 100-150kbps out. That's something I didn't think about; having cable modem, each of the 5 game instances only have about as much upstream network capacity as they would have with a 28kbps modem. That's poor. I use 8-port switches that can transmit full duplex 100/100 in all of the 8 ports simultaneously. Cost about ~20-30e few years back, I think.

So thanks, I'll definitely look at the upstream capacity of my poor cable.

Well, you're welcome for that! Not sure how else to run 5 consective games. I do know that trying to run 3 bf2 clients from the same adsl connection, would trash it. (it was a typical 1 meg down 256k up). The FPS was lower than normal though, due to having to wait for info from ther server before being able to even know what to render.