Building an orbiter computer

[RisingFury]

I will look into it, thanks for the advice. Do you think maybe a 9800 will be good?

More then enough dude :thumbup:

That's a dual GPU card, IIRC... double 8800 chips, right? That's plenty of power

---------- Post added at 06:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:25 PM ----------

Oh yea... 4 GB of RAM might also be an overkill, especially if you know you'll be running XP... 2 might be sufficient.

 

[orb]

Oh yea... 4 GB of RAM might also be an overkill, especially if you know you'll be running XP... 2 might be sufficient.

Since it's 32-bit Windows, it will see only 3 GB when 4 GB is installed on the motherboard.

 

[Revolpathon]

you can never have enough ram but windows xp will only recognize 3.6 or 3.4 gigabyte's.

AMD doesn't need a good cooling system because they remain cooler in general (my experience stems fromt he x2 series (had a few of those) never went above 40 degrees and when idling it was only room temperature.

Intel provide's good cooling but my i7 920 does get hot (talking about 75 degrees C here) so i am thinking of buying a better one. (case flow in my case is optimal with 2 fans sucking in and 4 fans blowing out.)

i find AMD to be more trustworthy, and the am2+ socket was fantastic it gave me allot of room to upgrade over a period of nearly 5 years.

what you do have to watch out for and i suspect this will happen is that the gtx 280 and other components you have in mind now won't be sold anymore by the time summer is here. because the gtx 280 and it's lill brother the 260 were the first in the 200 line so the cards are getting old now, you might have to watch out for that. also order your components online, it can easily shave off a 100 bucks. and you still get waranty.

 

[jedidia]

AMD doesn't need a good cooling system because they remain cooler in general (my experience stems fromt he x2 series (had a few of those) never went above 40 degrees and when idling it was only room temperature.

Well, my dual 2.7 Ghz Athlon runs at 80 degrees celsius when IDLE. As soon as I give it something to do it's shut-down time. It kind of worked in switzerland, where I just had the case open and the room temperature was constant. But here, where room temperature is regulated by how much wood I throw into the stove, it's very tricky keeping the thing running (hmm, it's feeling a bit warm in here... **computer shuts down** oh hell, not again...), so I got a better case and clocked down the CPU until I find a better cooler (it's running at 2 Ghz currently).

 

[Revolpathon]

damn, my room temperature is around 15 in winter and around 40 to 50 in the summer (seriously need an AC unit) but my amd never went above 60 in the summer.

you sure your cooler is actually spinning since that temp is insanely unhealthily high for something that has no load on it. (also it's away from any heatsource i take it)

 

[RisingFury]

Well, my dual 2.7 Ghz Athlon runs at 80 degrees celsius when IDLE. As soon as I give it something to do it's shut-down time. It kind of worked in switzerland, where I just had the case open and the room temperature was constant. But here, where room temperature is regulated by how much wood I throw into the stove, it's very tricky keeping the thing running (hmm, it's feeling a bit warm in here... **computer shuts down** oh hell, not again...), so I got a better case and clocked down the CPU until I find a better cooler (it's running at 2 Ghz currently).

Well... that's abnormal.

My AMD Athlon idles at 35°C and makes me worried if it goes over 45°C...

My BIOS allows manual control over the fan speed. If yours does, spool it up. Also, clean the dust off thefan blades and from between the cooling ribs. Take a tooth pick or something.

 

[Hielor]

More then enough dude :thumbup:

That's a dual GPU card, IIRC... double 8800 chips, right? That's plenty of power

There's three 9800s--the 9800 GT is essentially identical to the 8800 GT, but on the 55nm fab instead of 65nm. The 9800 GTX is basically an 8800 GTS with a few extra features, and then there's the 9800 GX2 which is the one you're thinking of (basically two underclocked 8800 GTSes welded together).

All in all, the 9-series was kind of disappointing, and not that big of an improvement over the 8-series. In fact, the 8800 GTX was *still* topping the Tom's Hardware benchmarks for FSX even after the 200-series came out. Go figure.

 

[jedidia]

you sure your cooler is actually spinning since that temp is insanely unhealthily high for something that has no load on it. (also it's away from any heatsource i take it)

sure is, otherwise it's shutdown before windows can even load (I happen to know because I once forgott to reconnect the fan after cleaning it). And yes, it's as far from any heatsource as it can possibly be in this room, and standing right on the floor (where it's always a lot colder when you don't have floor-heating).

My AMD Athlon idles at 35°C and makes me worried if it goes over 45°C...

My BIOS allows manual control over the fan speed. If yours does, spool it up. Also, clean the dust off thefan blades and from between the cooling ribs. Take a tooth pick or something.

interesting... you're using the original cooler?

Unfortunately my bios doesn't allow for manual fan speed adjustement, but I turned of all the regulators that would decrease fan speed based on load, so in theory it should always run at the highest speed (according to my speedometer in Bios 3600 rpm).

There's also the weird phenomenon that if I enter bios, the cpu idles at about 35 degrees. However when it idles in windows the temperature is a lot higher (usually about 55 degrees above system temp when it's clocked properly).

I do clean up my fan every two weaks or so. since until recently I ran it in an open case it clogged up rather rappidly. And I replace the paste every now and then too (also, after an emergency shutdown, the lower part of the heatsink right above the chip is so hot that I can barely touch it, so the heat transmission seems to be ok).

 

[orb]

And I replace the paste every now and then too (also, after an emergency shutdown, the lower part of the heatsink right above the chip is so hot that I can barely touch it, so the heat transmission seems to be ok).

On the contrary, it shouldn't be too hot right above the chip to be touched with a finger. If the heatsink is too hot there, the heat isn't drained properly from the chip, because there is either too thick or not entirely touching both sides layer of the heat paste, or something else is blocking heat conduction. The heatsink is cooler in a higher parts, because of fan working as it should.

 

[jedidia]

er... wait, what? I couldn't quite make sense of that. If the heatsink is hot, it means the heat gets properly moved from the cpu to the sink... or not?

the heat isn't drained properly from the chip, because there is either too thick or not entirely touching both sides layer of the heat paste,

I doubt the layer is too thick, I was carefull when applying it, and it's quite good paste. It just about covers the whole surface, that's that. Also, "not touching both sides" is supposed to mean "not touching the heatsink and the cpu", right? well, since the heatsink is pulled down on the chip I can hardly imagine that they wouldn't touch. On second thought, now that you mention it, I do have more trouble since I replaced the paste last time. Hmmm...

 

[Revolpathon]

i ony got a square bit of paste in my cpu and heatsink (came with the package) never cleaned the cpu and heatsink and then re-applied paste myself since my temperature's never forced me to.

an idea that's been going around in my head for when summer hits is to have an AC blowing in cold air directly into the case (if that doesn't cool it down ony watercooling and nitrogen cooling will do the trick)

 

[TSPenguin]

If the heatsink is hot, that means the heat is not properly transported away from it.
And the paste should be just a really thin film. Grinding the heatsink even can make a great difference, especially in lower grade sinks.

 

[jedidia]

If the heatsink is hot, that means the heat is not properly transported away from it.

So I figure, which would mean that the ventilator is too weak, not that there's something wrong with the paste.

 

[TSPenguin]

One fairly common problem is that people set up ventilators in a way that air streams clash and create pockets of more or less unmoved air.
Common sense prevents that of course, but not everybody thinks about how they install their fans.

 

[Keatah]

Try not to get bogged down with details. Just build the computer and enjoy it (orbiter). The last thing you want to be worrying about is if your fan is running at 2400rpm or 2652.3rpm when turbo mode is running a 37.5% dutycycle and you have no hard disk activity.. blahh blahhh..

Whatever you do, don't bother "overclocking" the system. You do not need to do so. Overclocking is for haxorz and script-O-kiddies, computer engineer wannabees really.

 

[Dambuster]

Try not to get bogged down with details. Just build the computer and enjoy it (orbiter). The last thing you want to be worrying about is if your fan is running at 2400rpm or 2652.3rpm when turbo mode is running a 37.5% dutycycle and you have no hard disk activity.. blahh blahhh..

Whatever you do, don't bother "overclocking" the system. You do not need to do so. Overclocking is for haxorz and script-O-kiddies, computer engineer wannabees really.

Or those who want to get a bit more processing power out of their computer, and who think that they have enough margin for error to do so safely.

However, I would tend to agree with your first paragraph, more or less

 

[TSPenguin]

Whatever you do, don't bother "overclocking" the system. You do not need to do so. Overclocking is for haxorz and script-O-kiddies, computer engineer wannabees really.

Pardon me for saving 5 hours on a 24 hour job...

 

[tl8]

I would disagree

Overclocking is a good way to get more out of a system without getting a new one. It also allows you to get cheaper components and still have the speed of more expensive ones.

It is also quite safe as long as you take small steps and test everything. Most BIOSes now have good support for overclocking and anyone who know there way around the Bios can overclock safely.

As for who should overclock, I know some people who overclock there PCs and they are deffinatly not haxorz or script-O-kiddies. Rather just your Average Joe.

 

[dbeachy1]

:ditto: I am a computer software engineer and a script wizard by profession, and I overclock my desktop Core i7 box by 15% and it is rock-solid. Like TL said, you just have to know what you're doing. Overclocking is not for n00bies. Knowing exactly what you're doing when overclocking a system does not make one a "script-O-kiddie" or a "computer engineer wannabee".

 

[foxtrot]

I got all of that except for windows XP i got windows 7
and actually it runs fast especially on Orbiter.
Good graphic 3d games are great on my computer.