My newest baby!

[Giovanni]

Yeah so I was growing tired of my current machine. Had spare money. Said "Why the fuck not!"

And purchased a Blackbird 002. I haggled and got the whole thing for around 5100$ including monitor, mouse and keyboard (voodoo) and the tower itself.

Let me tell you that thing is sexy and it's fucking amazing how quiet it is and how well it runs... well pretty much everything. I had my doubts on the 10000RPM raptor drive and let's just say I'm surprised.

My only regret is that it came with vista... but even then, I don't have much of a problem with it thanks to the processor and the ram.... the only big problem is the size of the tower. It almost comes up to my hip and weights a ton! It's purdy though.

Processor
- Dual Core - Intel(R) Core2(TM) Duo 3.0GHz E6850

Memory
- 4 GB 800 MHz CORSAIR PC2-6400 DDR2 SDRAM

Thermal Management
- CPU and Graphic cards liquid cooling (NVIDIA gfx)

Motherboard
- ASUS Striker Extreme 680i

Graphics Cards
- Dual NVIDIA GeForce 8800 ULTRA, with 768MB of GDDR3 SDRAM (LC)

Displays
- HP w2007 20-inch LCD Monitor

Audio Boards
- ADI Onboard

Primary OS Storage
- 160GB 10000 rpm SATA

Power Supply
- 1.1KW Power Supply

Secondary Data Storage
- 320GB 7200rpm SATA

Optical Disk Bay 1
- Super multi-drive, slim slots with Lightscribe (DVD+/-R/RW+/-DL)

[Rbstr]

Vista isn't bad, it's just not much better than XP. That's it's only problem. (though the 64 bit vista has much better support than x64 XP, IMO)

You do know that you could have easily bought that from the internet in parts for about 2 or 3 fewer "stacks", right?

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Rbstr

You do know that you could have easily bought that from the internet in parts for about 2 or 3 fewer "stacks", right?

And could have setup a nice RAID config too.

[Giovanni]

Yeah I know... but I have the money and I'm lazy... so why the fuck not? :P

[Rbstr]

Because it's wasteful.

Fools and their money are soon parted.

[Giovanni]

Well let's see... shipping, the hassle of finding parts, finding someone qualified enough to actually put it together (I'm not that great.... so... water cooling by me? no way) paying duty at the border because the US fucks with free trade. Having no warranty on something fucking expensive...

I'm saving myself the trouble and money is not an issue for me. Money comes and goes and quite frankly I never find myself needing any of it and I have all I need.

[OneManArmy]

for once im with gio. he's in fucking canada. It's like a third world country up there.

[Giovanni]

Originally Posted by OneManArmy

for once im with gio. he's in fucking canada. It's like a third world country up there.

[Mag-Mower]

www.nicx.com

Great site, usually only a few dollars off of newegg. Plus, most parts come with a waranty on them. You dont have to get water cooling, usually stock parts are good if you dont plan to overclock. Putting it all together isnt hard either, just like lego... expensive lego. And finding parts isnt that hard, kind of fun, but not really.

Anyways, that is a nice system, or so I have read. I also like the look of the case.

[Giovanni]

Indeed the case is sexy.

[Teichgraeber]

Well for that ammount of money you could have had a nice MacPro with 8 cores and a huge ammount of 800mhz ram.Dualboot with xp or vista..a nice single 8800 and a good display aswell.Imo 2 8800 is total overkill.But whatever floats your boat.

[Infernus]

Wait... the system I'm building has a Core 2 Extreme processor, more RAM, a bigger HDD (two actually, they're both clocked at 7200rpm but raptors aren't really useful), and 2 8800 GT's, and a better chipset... for $2000 less?



I would've gone with the oct-core mac pro for that much money, at least the case is sexy and it isn't made by HP.

[Giovanni]

The processor I'm getting is also an extreme series.

I don't need more ram. With vista I'll get a max of 3.5gb detected.

The raptors gives a 21% increase in boot and processing performance over 7200rpm. My 7200 is used for storage and my 10000rpm is used for my gaming and booting.

I have 2, 8800 Ultra... wich means I have two of the biggest cards out there. It's up to 17% more performant then the GTX alone (not in SLI) and the GTX overpowers the GTS... wich graphics card is basically raping your system.

My mobo gives me full upgrade power if I choose to go with either manufacturer of GPU's or CPU's.

Plus I have one fucking sexy case, the pictures don't do it justice, no-tool entry liquid cooled GPU and CPU, all component who could potentially disperse alot of heat are isolated to make less noise and less heat in general.

A 1.1kw power supply if I wish to upgrade.

Plus I have a screen, good service (with my last computer it took them about 2 days to fix it and that's because they didn't have the parts) the voodoo mouse and keyboard too...

I hate Mac, I'm a gamer and I don't want to do 1000 steps in order to just play a game. Plus do you know a whole lot of apps using 8 fucking cores? Your saying my GPU's are overkill then suggest a octo-core computer? When most applications are just starting to used dual cores?


I tried to build it online with the same pieces and for the difference, the hassle just isn't worth it.

[OneManArmy]

yea you probably could of put it together yourself for about 1500-2000 less. but if you got the cash I could see spending it.

I assume it comes with a warranty/service contract or something?
dont have to put it together.
dont have to put the water cooling together.
everythings installed and ready to run.

I wouldn't do it. But it could be worth it to some to not have to fuck around. to just have a bad ass comp set up and ready to rock built with a warranty.

Besides call me nuts but as far as prebuilt desktops/laptops I actually like HP. Use them all the time.

[Giovanni]

Originally Posted by OneManArmy

yea you probably could of put it together yourself for about 2000 less. but if you got the cash I could see spending it.

I assume it comes with a warranty/service contract or something?
dont have to put it together.
dont have to put the water cooling together.
everythings installed and ready to run.

I wouldn't do it. But it could be worth it to some to not have to fuck around. to just have a bad ass comp set up and ready to rock built with a warranty.

Besides call me nuts but as far as prebuilt desktops/laptops I actually like HP. Use them all the time.

That's pretty much what I mean.

I got 2 years warranty at home service within a day during week-days. Basically because I haggled and I said well for the price I'm paying I want some damn service. He threw that in and I was alright with that.

The only reason it comes down to about 2k less is that the 8800 ultra isn't available on most sites... pretty much everywhere I checked it came down about 1.2k/1.5k at most.