Jeff, since you just swapped out the mobo, memory, cpu, and heatsink, what did you do with the old hardware? I’m a fellow DIY system builder, and I keep accumulating parts in a section of my basement (I figured I’d never get much for 'em on eBay).
I just don’t know what to do with 'em. Do you just toss 'em, try to actually sell them on eBay, or what?
Jeff, do you run any distributed computing on your machine? I’m a big Rosetta@home fan myself, but there are tons of worthwhile projects.
Dude, what’s up with all the LEDs?
What do you mean, “all the LEDs”?
The rear fan is a white LED model which matches the white LEDs in the front panel and front power switch (this is from the black Vento 3600, which is… Darth Vader-esque)
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage//11-173-008-12.jpg
The fan in front of the hard drives is an LED model, but not by choice-- it’s what I had on hand at the time I dealt with the hard drive temps.
The other LEDs are soldered on to the motherboard.
Nice work Jeff. It is refreshing to see a programmer who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty - or rather cut - working on hardware!
Couple of things caught my eye;
What made you decide to go with a 380w PSU? Especially with dual GPUs and an overclocked CPU, I would have thought a 50w safety margin would have been in order.
Also, might want to be careful with your fan configurations, having 2 exhaust fans and only one intake will cause dust to get into all the especially hard to reach places, as air will be
sucked in through gaps in the case. Best to try and equalise airflow inside the case if possible.
Besides that it looks like a great setup. I have an E6600 running @ 3Ghz on stock voltage and Intel HSF. I’d like to get a Scythe or Big Typhoon and crank her up but I’m a bit over the instability and $$$ required for such a job… I’m getting old!
Cheers,
Mike
Jeff - Any experience building a rackmount audio recording machine? I think most of what you outlined here might work… except for maybe the height issue with a rackmount case.
most integrated graphics tend to disable themselves when a video card is added
I’m typing this on a machine running Intel integrated graphics and an NVIDIA graphics card simultaneously. Intel ships the most PC graphics devices last market numbers I saw. Even if this did happen, there would probably be a BIOS setting to prevent it.
where you don’t actually take an interest in the hardware that you use
So buying the wrong hardware for the job is taking an interest in the hardware? I call it being ignorant about hardware. What next, should those of us who don’t copyright infringe and don’t work with large multimedia files buy 800GB hard drives just to take an interest?
Well… its $650 in the US.
In latin america, its like $900 - $1000.
Damn, I want the Core 2 Duo!
Saludos.
Hi Jeff, I’ve been using the Ninja with a fan but looking at your system I’m starting to think it might be a bit overkill since my processor is slower than yours. My case (Lian Li V1000) already has two 12cm fans, so I should be ok.
The video cards are a waste unless you are a game developer. Could have saved ~200 dollars just by going with a motherboard with integrated graphics and then adding some budget line card with two outputs for your other monitors.
: The video cards are a waste unless you are a game developer. Could
: have saved ~200 dollars just by going with a motherboard with
: integrated graphics and then adding some budget line card with
: two outputs for your other monitors.
I believe you are at the wrong website… you want the “Coding for money only” website where you don’t actually take an interest in the hardware that you use. Besides, most integrated graphics tend to disable themselves when a video card is added.
Unfortunately, turning SLI off requires a full system reboot.
Is this a vista thing? I toggle SLI both ways with XP quite frequently… having to reboot would drive me insane 
I see nothing goofy about the name ninja. I do believe you’re required by ancient ninja law to only apply the name to the most awesome things in the world. Or face the wrath of ninja.
Why is the case hard to work with? Are we talking ‘a little cramped,’ or ‘cut yourself on the edges’?
And if hard drive heat is a concern, why stack them both right on top of each other like that instead of using multiple slots? It strikes me as a rather odd design.
In response to Dylan, the Ninja takes up so much space in my case
RAID 0 is evil! I don’t understand why people even consider it, unless your data means NOTHING to you.
I’ve never understood the philosophy of all the bells and whistles. If you had a boring case, no lights and a “normal” heatsink. Wouldn’t the savings justify for the performance difference… or possibly the savings could add more RAM or a nicer video card, then again this is your work machine…So why go with a more expensive motherboard with SLI when your only running one mid grade video card. If its a work machine, onboard should be fine.
I guess we all have our differences 
I go more for the sexy vs. shocking personally Something along the Shuttle line of cases, I don’t have much data on how well they perform but I sure like how they look.
My ideal system would actually be a suite of components housed in identical bookshelf cases, such as the Western Digital MyBook series, all chained together with external SATA, so you could chain together a barebones or beefy system as your heart desires. Ahh, it’s good to dream.
You should of included a shot of your desk to see the 3 monitor setup. Or do you not want us to see how messy your desktop really is?
You have a heatsink fetish, I have a multi-monitor fetish. Show it to us and stop talking about it!
I hooked up the SLI bridge because I was curious. As others have pointed out, it doesn’t hurt to have it there, even if I don’t plan to use it.
Enabling SLI mode can be done through the latest beta NVIDIA Vista drivers. You can pick which single monitor is used when you enable SLI, of all the attached monitors. But you are limited to 1 monitor in SLI mode. It takes about a full minute for the system to initialize the change to SLI. After I did, 3DMark05 scores went up nearly 2x, so it’s working. (But if you wanted 2x the performance, you’d be better off buying a single card that is inherently 2x faster, such as the 7900 GT or the X1950 Pro… but then I guess you could double up on those as well)
Unfortunately, turning SLI off requires a full system reboot.
SLI is not exactly convenient for multiple monitor users…
Jeff - did you buy the parts locally or online? If online - do you mind telling us where you bought them and the cost?
