Reader's Rig Photo Gallery

[Rory Buszka]

Ask and ye shall receive. This thread is for posting photos of your rig, modded or not. Though it's most likely that everyone viewing these forums has high-speed internet access, please resize all your photos to 1000x750 pixels or smaller, out of courtesy to those remaining few who might not have incredible bandwidth.

Addendum: This thread isn't *just* for modded PCs - if you feel you have an interesting or unique build, throw it up here. Also, if you've ghetto-modded a store-bought PC, that's legit, but don't post photos of your $399 Wal-Mart special here unless you've added a window and CCFLs, or something.

[Rob Williams]

I will start off, although my computers never stay the same for very long. Case is the Antec P182, computer consists of eVGA 680i, E6600, 2GB Tracer 1066, ASUS 8800GTX, Corsair 620HX PSU, 2x 320GB Seagate, Pioneer 18x DVD+RW. Cooling consists of 3x 120mm case fans, Corsair Airflow ram fan and Corsair Nautilus water cooling.

[MacMan]

I will start off, although my computers never stay the same for very long. Case is the Antec P182, computer consists of eVGA 680i, E6600, 2GB Tracer 1066, ASUS 8800GTX, Corsair 620HX PSU, 2x 320GB Seagate, Pioneer 18x DVD+RW. Cooling consists of 3x 120mm case fans, Corsair Airflow ram fan and Corsair Nautilus water cooling.

Very sharp looking machine Rob. Clean and elegant on the outside, loaded on the inside. What more can you want?

[South59]

Ok this is the first offering of my rig,its a little bit dark but i took it in the dark so the lighting would show up!South(Tim)i will post a picture thats without the lighting on later,This has a Mach Speed 939a Motherboard,an AMD 64X2 4400+ Procesor,2 gigs of Platinum OCZ Gamer memory,a Nvidia 7300 PCIE 512 Card,250 gig Maxtor sata primary and a 200 Maxtor ide slave,its has 4-80mm cooling fans,a blue clear Logysis Gamer Case,by the way this case is pretty hard to upkeep to were its perfectly clean all of the time,i would not advise this case unless youir going for the looks,the case itself is not really hard to clean its just a pain in the A__. :D South(Tim)

[South59]

This is the more Clearer pictures of the computer i built i had,It shows a little more detail i think,South.

[MacMan]

This is the more Clearer pictures of the computer i built i had,It shows a little more detail i think,South.


Nice looking computer South; you did a good job and I hope I can do the same in the future. Hell, who needs a monitor when you can just look at the tower glowing blue in the night? :) :)

[KusoSamurai]

MOBO: Asus P5ld2 Deluxe
Case: Aerocool Masstige
RAM: 2 GB OCZ
HDD: 80 GB
GPU: Sapphire ATI Radeon X850XT
CPU: Intel P4 3.0Ghz OC 4.0Ghz

[Merlin]

I started 6 weeks ago, I got the parts payday by payday ( 2 weeks )
I'm really pleased of the build, here are a few images.

AMD AM2 X2 6000+
ASUS-M2N32 SLI Deluxe WiFi
WD 150 gig Raptor SATA
Samsung CD/DVD Burner SATA
Corsair XMS2 Twin gig 800 mhz
Silverstone 1000w ST1000 Strider
GPU 8600 GT ( temp video card )

Loaded windows in 18 minutes

Deckard

[Rob Williams]

If it takes 18 minutes to load Windows, there's a problem ;-)

Looks good man! That cooler makes any computer look awesome.

[madmat]

You'd get better temps rotating that cooler to blow the exhaust towards the back of the case. Looks nice and clean.

[Merlin]

I tried to rotate it to face the back but it didnt fit over the CPU fully.
It is a rectangle shape fitting over the square CPU.

Right now it's blowing upward the way heat wants to travel. and there is a fan at top blowing up and out.
The temps only ever get up to around 102*F under a load, not overcloked as yet.
I'm not sure yet how to do it in Vista, but I have most of the drivers working after a week of research. AI Nos will not load ( just to try it out )

Deckard
AKA Merlin

[Merlin]

If it takes 18 minutes to load Windows, there's a problem ;-)

Looks good man! That cooler makes any computer look awesome.

Oooops It took 18 minutes to install the OS

Merlin

[Merlin]

Since the build, I installed the chiller.
Rather than posting all the images here, Check out the link.

http://www.pbase.com/merlinsgraphics/2007_machine_build

They are not in the build order.

The temp change from the Zalman was a little better, Zalman makes a Fantastic product, I get 10 to 12 C better temps with the CoolIt Freezone chiller Idle temps now around 28C to 31C....under heavy load they get up to 38C to 41C. Next I'll try some OC ing temps

Merlin

[sbrehm72255]

Here's a fairly current look at what I have in my rig right now (close enough anyways).........:D

[MakubeX]

And here's a current one of mine with my new PSU.

[Rory Buszka]

I suppose since I started this thread, it's high time I contribute.

This is my daily driver, the machine I've built for general-purpose stuff. One of its design requirements was that it had to be completely "silent" - inaudible over the noise floor in a quiet room. I built this machine in April of this year, and it was a respectable mid-range rig at that point. The AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ performs about the same as a Core 2 Duo E6420. I'm not sure how much this machine counts as 'modded', but most of its tweakage has to do with reducing noise output to inaudibility.

Parts List
============
Case: Antec P150
PSU: Antec NeoHE 500 (bought to replace original first-run NeoHE 430)
Motherboard: Abit KN9 Ultra (NF570; MCP55 single-chip, Silent OTES)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, 90nm Windsor core
Memory: 2GB OCZ Gold PC2 8800 (@ PC2 6400, dual-channel; this was given to me)
Video Card: HIS X1650XT 256MB iSilence
Sound Card: ASUS Xonar D2 (in these shots, it's the Razer Barracuda AC-1)
Hard Drive: Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATA2 3.0Gb/s
Optical Drives: Samsung DVD-RW and DVD Combo drive
CPU Cooler: Scythe Ninja Plus
GPU Cooler: HIS stock iSilence cooler (works just like ABIT SilentOTES)
Front Fan: Evercool Ever Green 92mm
Rear Fan: Panaflo FBK-series 120x38mm
CPU Fan: Evercool Ever Green 120mm
Fan Control: MCubed TBalancer BigNG (mounted in 3.5" bay)

Front of Case
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~rbuszka/reference_smaller/Case_Front.JPG

Rear of Case
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~rbuszka/reference_smaller/Back_3qtr_sml.JPG

Side Open
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~rbuszka/reference_smaller/Side_open.JPG

CPU Cooling (with front-to-back airflow)
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~rbuszka/reference_smaller/Ninja_fans.JPG

The loudest sound produced by this rig is the sound of the hard drive spinning. Generally, the fans spin so slow that you can see the individual revolutions. I've had some trouble with the fanless HIS Radeon X1650XT card, so right now the video card is a 256MB eVGA GeForce 7600 GT KO.

Cheers, all.

[Merlin]

Man, that's a large cooler

[sbrehm72255]

And everyone thought that water cool took up a bunch of room..............;)

[Rory Buszka]

Well, I transport my rig a lot (and I mean a LOT), so water spillage is a major concern for me. That's what has kept me on air instead of water. I'm also not sure whether there are any good perfectly-silent watercooling pumps out there, and it would certainly be a major project to outfit my case with watercooling.

[sbrehm72255]

Water cooling can be a pain to setup in some cases, the smaller the harder.

Truely silent pumps, not really, about the quietest has the noise level of a low speed 120 fan at the most.

[Merlin]

I did have to RMA the first coolit, by the way I had to cut one screw shorter http://www.pbase.com/merlinsgraphics/image/81904593
Because of the return.
But the new one, I saw that the return was now, no way near the long screw. Must have been a design change.

[sbrehm72255]

Here's a few changes after the holidays and cold winter nights..............:D

[Americanfreak]

You can check out a few I have done

http://americanfreak.modders-inc.com/images/QuakeWars_BackPack-1a.jpg
http://americanfreak.modders-inc.com/images/MI-Cosmos-1.jpg
http://americanfreak.modders-inc.com/images/Amf_LucidDream-2.jpg
http://americanfreak.modders-inc.com/images/CM-8.jpg

[Krazy K]

Is it christmas yet? I know this isn't safe or whatever but it runs fine. It is a mess but it gets plenty of air! How about another free case contest for the poor guy that needs one...
http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x38/fordman32508/DSC00555.jpg

[Krazy K]

Here's what it looks like now. Problem 8 solved. Problem 9 and 10 have appeared.
Case
http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x38/fordman32508/DSC00558.jpg
Full internal
http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x38/fordman32508/DSC00559.jpg
Liquid cooling by Koolance
http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x38/fordman32508/DSC00560.jpg
Problem 9, how to get all of this in the case when I don't even have enough room for my hdd's!
http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x38/fordman32508/DSC00563.jpg

[zacharyt1122]

Hey guys! New to the forums, but have been reading Techgage for a while. Wanted to show off my machine. I didn't build it, ABS did, but thats because it had been a while since I built a machine, and I wanted to try out water cooling:)

Probably my next machine I will build (I am buying a house, so I will probably build a HTPC).

Tell me what you think.

http://i438.photobucket.com/albums/qq104/zacharyt1122/Computer/CIMG0478.jpg
http://i438.photobucket.com/albums/qq104/zacharyt1122/Computer/CIMG0479.jpg
http://i438.photobucket.com/albums/qq104/zacharyt1122/Computer/CIMG0480.jpg

Its a QX6700 oc'd to 2.93 (keeping it low till warranty is up), SLI 8800 GTX's (oc'd from EVGA), 4 gigs ram, and 1.2 TB of space. I even have it to dual boot 32 bit XP and 64 bit Vista.:D

[Merlin]

Nice Rig, Zach
I may do some water cooling myself.
Gotta get the heat down on the GTX280 and might as well do the CPU as well.

Merlin

[zacharyt1122]

Thanks Merlin. Honestly, its nice to look at, but I wouldn't do it again to be honest. It keeps it at a steady 50 C, and I have seen air coolers that can do that.

The video cards had some heating issues when I played Assassins Creed (for some reason, no other game out there made it overheat). So I bought a cheap small box fan from Wal-Mart, and it keeps them about 10-15 C cooler (and without all the work of adding an aftermarket cooler or additional fans.) I have to dust it about once a month, however.

[Kougar]

Looks good, I like how the CPU fan is still in place over the block!

Just to defend watercooling's good name and give you a comparison: at full CPU load + GPU load, my CPU temps are between 50-55c just now (according to Realtemp). They would be lower without the overclocked GTX 260 in the same loop running Folding@home. ;)

Watercooling performance depends greatly on a large number of factors. I will agree that low-end and those cheap self-contained WC kits are not worth touching nor the time/hassle involved to get them running as compared to a high-end air cooler. I don't have a TRUE Black to test, but I am sure an air cooler couldn't touch my temps. :)

[zacharyt1122]

Thanks, Kougar, actually the fan promotes circulation through the case, which more water coolers should do.

But the problem with my water cooling setup (Gigabyte 3D Galaxy) is that to get better temps, you have to turn the fan up, which it can get REALLY noisy, which is the exact opposite of what I wanted from a watercooling kit.

Maybe my next extreme build I will research quiter coolers :cool:

[jvargaszabo]

There are some pretty sweet rigs on here. I'm making my own external watercooling solution, but it's really just cooling a thermoelectric module that I'm going to have on my CPU. I've tested the rig, it works, just need to fix a few leaks.

What I really want to find, though, is some decent quick-detach, no-spill bits, to make the system a bit more modular. Anybody know what I'm talking about? I've seen a few, but none that will fit my 1/2" ID vinyl tubing.

You can check out my specs in my sig, I'll post pictures later. I can't complain :D

I posted something about my watercooling stuff in a new thread, not knowing about this one. Like I said, pictures will follow.

[Krazy K]

If I were to name this rig, I would have to call it Phoenix since it has risen from the ashes, or RMA's, and is finally back together and running in somewhat of a stable state. The power is now coming from a 750 silencer, the board is now a M2N32 and the gpu has been dumped until I can get the RMA going on the 8600.

The temp at 3.3ghz broke 60C so I leveled it off there. As you can see the cooler wants to face up, which won't hurt in the case with the top exhaust fans. The cooler isn't anything special so a new one is moving up on my wish list. The passive cooler is impeding the fans so it had to be blocked up so it can clear the cooler. If you have a M2N32 and love your cooler, gimmie a reply. Otherwise I might look at something like a Tt Bigwater 760i or the CM V8. A decent fan controller would be nice to toss into the mix to get rid of the onboard headers.


Just like in the review, the back side didn't have that much room to tuck all the cables into and you just have to force the foam and the cables to fit in the same place. Otherwise the case is pretty nice to work with. The tool-less expansion in the back is a bit hard to work with. The ledge is recessed and you can't get a screwdriver on it and the angle with a hard makes it hard to get much torque on it with your hand as well.

How many people will tell me that taking my 3 SE16's out of RAID5 and striping them is a bad idea?
http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x38/fordman32508/DSC00639.jpg
http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x38/fordman32508/DSC00641.jpg