Anyone build a quad core?

Pacu · **on:** January 24, 2009, 11:06:52 PM

Anyone here ever built a quad core computer? I think this year i'm gonna do it. Maybe tie it in with my home theater as a part time dvr . Ive been reading up on making a hi def blu ray system.

I built my current computer out of a former HP. The Best Buy discount helps out alot!

Grant Lamontagne · **Reply #1 on:** January 25, 2009, 02:21:04 AM

I am looking at buying a "canned" computer for the first time- well, unless you count my laptop and netbook. My main desktop has been dead since October and I need to replace it as my laptop isn't really powerful enough to do some of the things I need to do- like video editing. My other desktop is kind of overworked already and so heavy duty things like video editing aren't a good idea on it, so I need a new desktop.

Given the prices of the desktop machines nowadays there's really no point in buying parts and cobbling them together. Sure, I'll mod it some, but to build one from the ground up? No thanks...

Def

J-sews · **Reply #2 on:** January 25, 2009, 05:34:15 AM

Oh good grief, I thought you meant a Leatherman Core.....

Pacu · **Reply #3 on:** January 25, 2009, 05:38:30 AM

Quote from: J-sews on January 25, 2009, 05:34:15 AM

Oh good grief, I thought you meant a Leatherman Core.....

wait....dual Cores are not out yet~

Whoey · **Reply #4 on:** January 25, 2009, 11:46:56 AM

I've been thinking about a quad core for some time, and it's hard to choose between a "canned" as Def says and a DIY. The upside of the DIY machine is that you know exactly what parts you're putting in, whereas the "canned" ones are pretty basic, and do usually include Vista (I could care less, I'll be installing Linux on it anyways...) There's a bit of a price difference too... canned are generally a bit cheaper.

For an entertainment system, Def pointed the EEE BOX to me... which is a tiny little box with a 1.6 atom core, which could mount nicely behind a LCD/Plasma TV with no trouble. I would have a beast machine setup in a different room to do the heavy DVR work (where the fans needed to keep it cool don't bug you as much) and have the EEE BOX to playback files. Something like Mediaportal is built for that now, which runs on windows (The EEE Box runs winXP). The EEE Box pretty much looks like a Wii... but is available in white or black.

EEE Box:

I as it is have a beast running as a PVR/DVR machine, a desktop case, with digital display on the case. It's a P4-3.2Ghz HT, has 1gb ram, and a 160Gb HD, has both digital and analog tuner cards, and a DVDR, the machine came with XP home, never bothered to change it. It's a bit noisier than I'd like for the living room, and takes up quite a bit of space... I never watch or record TV on it, never use the DVDR... so it's pretty much just doing the duty that the EEE box would do but taking up about 10x the space.

this is my current PVR:

I think within the next month or so I will have upgraded to a Quad core for my main machine. This one is barely able to keep up with my needs, and it's maxed out as far as the CPU/RAM is concerned for the mainboard.

Grant Lamontagne · **Reply #5 on:** January 26, 2009, 02:20:07 AM

I am pretty certain that you can get the EEE PC with Linux instead of Winders. That way you don't have to pay for the MS License you aren't going to use.

Def

David · **Reply #6 on:** January 26, 2009, 02:47:12 AM

Quote from: J-sews on January 25, 2009, 05:34:15 AM

Oh good grief, I thought you meant a Leatherman Core.....

Me to.

DoughDTD · **Reply #7 on:** January 26, 2009, 05:48:49 AM

Quote from: J-sews on January 25, 2009, 05:34:15 AM

Oh good grief, I thought you meant a Leatherman Core.....

I was very excited to see pics of this haha.

-Dough

Whoey · **Reply #8 on:** January 26, 2009, 10:18:29 AM

Quote from: Defender on January 26, 2009, 02:20:07 AM

I am pretty certain that you can get the EEE PC with Linux instead of Winders. That way you don't have to pay for the MS License you aren't going to use.

Def

XP is fine tho if I'm going to use it to run the mediaportal frontend

ecfiffer · **Reply #9 on:** January 27, 2009, 08:40:18 PM

a buddy of mine built a quad core system last year. its not too bad... if you want a 'canned' system just about anything now-a-days is alright... but most of the time for the money you spend on one of the 'canned' systems you can build your own with better specs for the same if not a touch more in price...

Splat · **Reply #10 on:** January 31, 2009, 12:59:05 AM

Quote from: pacu on January 24, 2009, 11:06:52 PM

Anyone here ever built a quad core computer?

Yeah. Save your $ and get a dual-core. You'll be fine and have some $ to buy another multi, knife, whatever.

Whoey · **Reply #11 on:** January 31, 2009, 10:11:49 AM

depending on what you're looking at, there's little to no price difference... (4x2400mhz vs 2x3000mhz) and 9600 > 6000... of course there are some cheaper dual cores.

I'm still planning a new beast with a quad and at least 4gb of ram... probably 8...

Whoey · **Reply #12 on:** February 19, 2009, 03:33:49 PM

On valentines day I ordered One of these:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?lc=en&dlc=cs&cc=cz&product=3821726&

HP Quad core Q9300 with 3gb ram, and 500gb HD space, onboard intel video

Today I added an Asus Geforce 9600 GT 512mb

when I migrate from my current beast the final product will be:

Quad core Q9300
4Gb Ram
GF 9600GT
2x500GB, 2x250GB, 1x200GB SATA drives

Also I'll be pulling the guts from the HP case in favour of my old tower, which has ALOT more space which I'll need for the harddrives, as well the stock 300W PSU is not enough juice for all the hardware going in to it, so it will be replaced with the 450W in my current tower.

Will add some geek pr0n later... once I start moving stuff around... oh, and the Vista 32bit spanish is getting wiped out too... no use having a 32bit os with that much memory (4gb+512mb from video card)

Whoey · **Reply #13 on:** February 20, 2009, 08:57:09 PM

my plan backfired! my old 2x 1gb DDR2 is only 533, and the new machine only accepts 666 or better... so 3GB it is... for now...

The windows experience rating before the video card change was 3.4, after it's 5.9 which is the highest you can currently get. It sure is smooth, but I'm still not liking Vista. Haven't gotten Ubuntu/kubuntu on it yet, I've been re-arranging files on my hard-drives on my old machine as I can only put 3 drives MAX in the new case (connections are there for more, but no more drive bays in the case!) The plan to move to my old case is scrapped because I cannot put my old mainboard into the new case for the wife to use... bummer... so my HD total will only be 1250GB... instead of the 1700GB I had planned...

Grant Lamontagne · **Reply #14 on:** February 20, 2009, 11:18:25 PM

Only 1250gb and 3g? You must be devastated... let me get out the yellow pages, there has to be a support group for this!

Def

Whoey · **Reply #15 on:** February 21, 2009, 02:06:22 PM

s'ok when I upgrade and swap the 2x512s I'll put 2x2gb, and have 6gb!

the harddrives will just have to find other homes in other machines around the house... we need heaps of storage!

I'm Still Bison · **Reply #16 on:** February 21, 2009, 02:33:24 PM

When you get that much capability;NASA will be wanting to put it under contract.

Splat · **Reply #17 on:** February 21, 2009, 03:57:52 PM

This reminds me of my days running a BBS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system Four nodes was the largest I got up to. First running on Desqview, then LANtastic, then.. I can't remember the last networking s/w I used... maybe it was Windows based. Computers everywhere.

Now I have everything wireless. Those were the days.

cryptrick · **Reply #18 on:** February 21, 2009, 04:04:47 PM

Quote from: Whoey on February 19, 2009, 03:33:49 PM

On valentines day I ordered One of these:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?lc=en&dlc=cs&cc=cz&product=3821726&

HP Quad core Q9300 with 3gb ram, and 500gb HD space, onboard intel video

Today I added an Asus Geforce 9600 GT 512mb

when I migrate from my current beast the final product will be:

Quad core Q9300
4Gb Ram
GF 9600GT
2x500GB, 2x250GB, 1x200GB SATA drives

Also I'll be pulling the guts from the HP case in favour of my old tower, which has ALOT more space which I'll need for the harddrives, as well the stock 300W PSU is not enough juice for all the hardware going in to it, so it will be replaced with the 450W in my current tower.

Will add some geek pr0n later... once I start moving stuff around... oh, and the Vista 32bit spanish is getting wiped out too... no use having a 32bit os with that much memory (4gb+512mb from video card)

Thats a bloody good PC you got going there... having to use up over a TB of storage and 5 SATA ports, maybe its time you started trimming down your 'collection' of you know what, a bit

Whoey · **Reply #19 on:** February 21, 2009, 05:12:35 PM

Quote from: Splat on February 21, 2009, 03:57:52 PM

This reminds me of my days running a BBS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system Four nodes was the largest I got up to. First running on Desqview, then LANtastic, then.. I can't remember the last networking s/w I used... maybe it was Windows based. Computers everywhere. Now I have everything wireless. Those were the days.

I think we used lantastic in school, one of my labs we had to network 4 computers ... those were the days! I think it was 4x 486 DX 25s or something along those lines. at the time I was doing most of my C programming labs at home on a 286!

Whoey · **Reply #20 on:** February 21, 2009, 05:15:57 PM

Quote from: cryptrick on February 21, 2009, 04:04:47 PM

Quote from: Whoey on February 19, 2009, 03:33:49 PM
On valentines day I ordered One of these:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?lc=en&dlc=cs&cc=cz&product=3821726&

HP Quad core Q9300 with 3gb ram, and 500gb HD space, onboard intel video

Today I added an Asus Geforce 9600 GT 512mb

when I migrate from my current beast the final product will be:

Quad core Q9300
4Gb Ram
GF 9600GT
2x500GB, 2x250GB, 1x200GB SATA drives

Also I'll be pulling the guts from the HP case in favour of my old tower, which has ALOT more space which I'll need for the harddrives, as well the stock 300W PSU is not enough juice for all the hardware going in to it, so it will be replaced with the 450W in my current tower.

Will add some geek pr0n later... once I start moving stuff around... oh, and the Vista 32bit spanish is getting wiped out too... no use having a 32bit os with that much memory (4gb+512mb from video card)

Thats a bloody good PC you got going there... having to use up over a TB of storage and 5 SATA ports, maybe its time you started trimming down your 'collection' of you know what, a bit

between mp3s of our CD collection, tv shows, and movies, there's not much space left! also using a 6megapixel camera in raw format at concerts tends to eat up space in a hurry... there is no other 'collection' (isnt that what the internet is for?)

Whoey · **Reply #21 on:** February 25, 2009, 10:43:30 AM

I'm now totally running on the new machine... I made a bracket from the drive bay slot fillers out of a different machine to hold one more drive, so the total storage is 2x500GB & 2x250GB (1.5TB

)

Benner · **Reply #22 on:** February 25, 2009, 12:07:36 PM

Quote from: Whoey on February 25, 2009, 10:43:30 AM

I'm now totally running on the new machine... I made a bracket from the drive bay slot fillers out of a different machine to hold one more drive, so the total storage is 2x500GB & 2x250GB (1.5TB )

Mines only 40 GB and I've only managed to fill half of it in 2 years.

Roadie · **Reply #23 on:** February 25, 2009, 12:09:15 PM

1030GB Here, not totally full but heading that way

Benner · **Reply #24 on:** February 25, 2009, 12:11:13 PM

Quote from: Roadie on February 25, 2009, 12:09:15 PM

1030GB Here, not totally full but heading that way

Is that mainly pics and music?

Roadie · **Reply #25 on:** February 25, 2009, 12:24:59 PM

Quote from: Benner on February 25, 2009, 12:11:13 PM

Is that mainly pics and music?

Well 60GB of that is my portable HDD which has a pics, music, email and work backup on. The rest is roughly as follows..

Music is about 50GB (3 copies 1 normal, 1 backup, and one lower bitrate!) Pics is about the same (1 normal, 1 backup) Games take up about 50GB too. I also have dual boot 32bit XP and 64bit XP so that's 2x the OS and the programs ~40GB, a couple of Virtual Machines at ~10GB each (Win2K on X64 XP so i can run the odd program that needs a 32bit environment), then i have ISO's of my most used games and software so i don't have to have CD's around (also means i can install my stuff on my other computers without having to have a cd/dvd drive in it ~20GB. so thats about 200GB gone there (ish)

I have about 150GB free (across all my drives) so thats 650GB unaccounted for (i think!) which is pretty much TV shows

Benner · **Reply #26 on:** February 25, 2009, 12:26:57 PM

Wow.

I just have a handful of pics on mine.

Roadie · **Reply #27 on:** February 25, 2009, 12:27:37 PM

Quote from: Benner on February 25, 2009, 12:26:57 PM

Wow.

I just have a handful of pics on mine.

Yeah i have a lot of crap

Whoey · **Reply #28 on:** February 25, 2009, 02:09:45 PM

oh, was I supposed to count the two external drives too? add a 300GB & an 80GB (which may switch to 500 or 200, depending which works) and the wife will end up with 2x500GB or 1x500 + 2x200

Bottom line, in the house between 3 PCs there is: 4x500, 2x250, 1x300, 2x200, 1x160... Over 3TB of space...

We also have a lot of TV shows as well as music...

Roadie · **Reply #29 on:** February 25, 2009, 02:13:59 PM

Quote from: Whoey on February 25, 2009, 02:09:45 PM

oh, was I supposed to count the two external drives too? add a 300GB & an 80GB (which may switch to 500 or 200, depending which works) and the wife will end up with 2x500GB or 1x500 + 2x200

Bottom line, in the house between 3 PCs there is: 4x500, 2x250, 1x300, 2x200, 1x160... Over 3TB of space...

We also have a lot of TV shows as well as music...

I only stuck the external one in there to get over a TB

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Anyone build a quad core?

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