My Game PC

Parts

• Case: Antec Performance One P160
• Powersupply: Ocz Gamexstream 700gxssli
• Screen: Apple 30" Cinema Display (driver)
• Mainboard: Asus P5n32-sli Se Deluxe (drivers)
• Cpu: Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
• Memory: Kingston KVR667D2N5K2/2G Kit
• Harddisc: Western Digital WD740GD-00FLC0
• Videocard: 2x Asus Geforce E7900GTX 512MB (driver)
• Audiocard: Creative Soundblaster X-FI Extreme Music (driver)
• Speakers: Altec Lansing FX6021
• DVD Recorder: BENQ DVD+RW 1670
• CPU cooling: Zalman CNPS9500AT Cpu Cooler
• Case cooling: 2x Zalman ZM-F3 Case fan 120mm
• HDD cooling: Silentmax HDSilencer

Putting it all together

So much for the easy part... Now i had to get MS-Windows on it. First of all it didn't recognize the disk controller and asked me for a floppy with drivers which obviously wasn't supplied with my mainboard. Not that i had a floppy drive in the system... (Now i understand what all these "Built for Windows Vista" stickers mean... They should say "Not designed for anything else but Windows Vista") Okay, bought a floppy drive and some floppys, created a driver disk with the bootable cdrom supplied with the mainboard, tried installing windows again and got one step further. "Starting MS-Windows".... and dead again... After replacing each component one by one it turned out that the mainboard didn't like the 4 Corsair memory modules (CM2X512-5400C4), so replaced them with 2 Kingston modules which where cheaper anyway. 10 hours later by now, but i had windows running on it. ...for about 10 seconds... Every time i tried installing something i got a lockup. After some research on the net it turned out that the nforce4 controller and Maxtor Harddisks don't go well together. Replaced the harddisk with a Western Digital one and put it on the Sil Controller instead of the nforce controller. (It looks like Asus doesn't like the nforce chipset either. They put a 2nd disk controller and a 2nd network controller on the mainboard). Disabled the nvidia disk controller and nvidia network controller, reinstalled windows on the new disk and it all looked stable.

Sound upgrade

After installing some games with all the graphical details set to maximum i was pretty happy with the looks of it. Just not the sound. It sounded like if i was playing in the bathroom. Way too much surround effect in it. Disabled the onboard audio and put a soundblaster extreme music card in it which sounded really good.

Noise and temperature tweaking

Now i only had to do something about the noise. The chassis-fan which came with the case was one of the hottest and noisiest components in the system (around 50°C) and the part of the videocards where the powerconnector is located was kinda hot too (around 65°C). The CPU however kept cool. So i replaced the chassis-fan with a zalman fan, put an additional zalman fan between the harddisk-brackets and the videocards, replaced the cpucooler with a zalman cooler, put the harddisk in a silencer box and configured the bios to set the fanspeed as low as possible. (Ofcourse the entire mainboard had to be removed to put the cpu cooler into place.) This resulted in a normal temperature of 40°C and peak temperature of 50°C. You could hardly hear the system running now.