Self Built Computer Club

Ok so I saw on other forums how they have a club that forum members can join who build their own computers. Feel free to post your custom build experience, post pictures, and talk about custom build setups you have or have done in the past.

If you wish to join this club check the box in your Forum Profile Information and your system info in the computer section. Once checked you'll have a link in your profile as shown on the left of this post.

Users participating in this club will have this icon in their icon list:

If you wish to participate in this group post some information about your custom built computer and the admin will add you shortly after your post.

Admin edit: Editing content quality and adding information to original post.

I think I caught the jest of this and thought it could be interesting. So I'm going to help you out with this project computeruler and set you up a setting that will enable users to check if their computer is a custom built and join this club of yours. I've also deleted all previous comments to make this thread start new and will also sticky it.

We'll see how the idea pans out.

Dont you just love it how Nathan thinks about every idea and gives it a chance?

One of the best forums Ive been to is here.

i cant seem to find the check box. whereabouts is it?

Opps I thought I did this already but apparently not. You should be able to see now in your Forum profile information under computer, was still set so only admin could see it.

Dont you just love it how Nathan thinks about every idea and gives it a chance? One of the best forums Ive been to is here.

[Global Moderator]

Not bad, although I don't have a custom built computer. 

Wait, do I smell Vista on the admin? Noes! *Creates cross with fingers* Vista is EVIL, ate 52% of my two gigs of RAM in this laptop with everything disabled, horrible performance in games.

My desktop is custom though, specs are in the Specs bubble, beware, the bubble is LONG because my laptop and desktop are listed in it. I'll upload an HTML report of my desktop tomorrow generated by Everest tomorrow when I can borrow my bro's flash drive.

my desktop:





Case is a beat up ATX Mid tower, specs are listed in the bubble. I made the top vent using just a hammer, drill, pliers, and a screw driver, oh and a dead 80mm fan as a stencil, it drops the temps 2-5 degree's Fahrenheit. The power button is dangling from the optical drive bay because I don't have a face plate for the case.

There are eight fans in there total, two front intake 80mm front fans, I think there both Quiettek, a 92mm rear exhaust fan, top 80mm exhaust fan, 92mm CPU heatsink fan (I paid $5 for that heatsink 'cause it wouldn't fit my brothers motherboard.), a 40mm chipset fan pulled from a coolermaster heatsink, a 120mm PSU fan, and a 40 or 50mm GPU fan. the front fans are to loud, need to find some, er, donor PSU's or something to replace them with.

The CPU idles at about 90F, its overclocked 37% from 2.66GHz to 3.66GHz, the chipset has a combined north/south bridge, and the north/south bridge has the onboard GPU combined into it, its a 7010 series I think. I found the monitor on the curb back in '06 if I remember correctly, the case was given to me with our first custom built family PC in it. My old Celeron system back in 2004 when I knew little about computers. I learned the hard way with that system, CELERONS SUCK! it was a 2.66GHz Celeron D w/ 128K cache, system had 1GB DDR 400, i think the GPU was a Radeon 9600 series, don't quote me on that because I'm unsure.

Currently my desktop is pieced together half from my old rig, half new parts. CPU, RAM, HDD, the DVD RW drive, and I think a couple of the fans are all re-used from my old rig. the PSU, motherboard, GPU, and heatsink are new parts. My old rigs north bridge heatsink popped off taking the clamp for a heatsink with it, north bridge burnt out, GPU seems to be dead from that also. My old GPU was a nVidia 7600GT 256MB 128B GPU. The power supply wasn't much of an upgrade, its a 550W Rosewill, whereas I had a 500W, but I sold it to my bro for $20 for an HP he got with a bad PSU. Current PSU has more amperage though, which is what I needed. The desktop also currently has no internet connection, kinda sucks when I need to upload something that's on it.

The case has been transported and kicked around so much its practically a Three Ring Circus act to get the side panel back on. You all should feel special, I pulled off the annoying side panel just for the pic above.

The reason I bought my laptop was in case something random like the north bridge heatsink deciding it wants no part of the north bridge's 130F running temp while gaming, and "Ejecting" from the board happens again. At the time of buying this, I didn't realize how much the 8600 series GPU's sucked, this one isn't as bad as desktop models though. Oh well, its warranted, through next September, I'm going to renew the warranty on it soon.  The other reason of buying this is; Its not my problem if the thing breaks.

my first build went pretty smooth, learned everything on my own and bought all the parts as funds became available. plan on building a new one (hopefully skulltrail-based  ).

[recovering disk space -- attachment deleted by admin]

Nice rig setups midnightfire and Dead_Reckon.

so im guessin you wanan see mine?? no side panles or keyboard thats done
http://s257.photobucket.com/albums/hh224/cheesewheels99/

Nice. Looks good. So how loud is that with all those fans?

i only have one running cause i didnt feel like connecting the others yet and the other side panel but its not too bad cept when you turn the 120mms on high

My desk at home. Not my laptop on the left, fixing that ancient thing for someone.

Here's the link to the album with more pictures of my setup:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/noah1978/Computer?authkey=Ch0KWMfNpSc#

woa whats that other tiny looking laptop thing?? with the green foot as the backround ee pc? nice case huge cpu fan needs a bit of cable managment

That my EeePC over there sitting in front of the other keysets for my Zboard.

Yeah, the cables look a mess, but they're still fairly new and a bit stiff. When they soften up a bit, I'll run them through better. The CPU fan is an ASUS Silent Square Pro. It does have a fan in it, but like its name says, it's really silent. You can't hear it unless you open the case and get really close to it. Also has a 3.5" bay control panel which you can see in the album I have linked. There are 3 other fans on the case (80mm in the side, 120mm in the front and back) and one large one in the bottom of the PSU. The monitor is brand new (had it for 2 days now). That entire setup (including the keyboard, mouse, speakers, router, and monitor) cost about $1175.

I have 8 keysets for the keyboard: standard, Office, Gaming (newer version, in picture), Crossfire (their original gaming keyset), WoW, WoW: BC (different layout, much better), Battlefield 2, and Everquest 2 (it was free, I don't even have the game).

That's my 29" Philips TV in the background, also connected to the computer for watching movies.

What case did you use for your build Quaxo? Thanks for the comment Nathan, I plan to upgrade my rig to a Core 2 Quad Q6600 once I get the cash. And also upgrade the GPU Heatsink to drop the GPU temps down a little. Also gonna upgrade to 4GB (2x1GB) of DDR2 800 Super Talent RAM, and a 1TB drive when the prices come down. Right now all 1TB drives I'd get are about $140, by the time I get one they'll be $100-120 I think.

I hope to get a new case when I get the GPU cooler so I don't have to pull anything out aside from the drive more than once when I move it from the current case. Not sure which case I'm getting, I'll update on that later. I doubt it'll be anything flashy, I'm thinking a low profile tower of some sort that will stay cool enough. Maybe even a true desktop case, dunno for sure though, I'll see what Newegg has. The current LED lights in my computer exist because the Chipset fan was the only 40mm fan i had around that was worth a crap and didn't sound like a miniature coffee grinder due to bad bearings. And the PSU, it was the only PSU that suited my budget, though I like the cool effects the fans LED's cast through the rear vents onto the wall. Plus its blue, I love blue, and shiny things, when it comes to shiny things, I'm like a raccoon, I'll grab anything shiny. The PSU was cheap, adequate, reliable (Theres one in my little brothers desktop, and one in  my older brothers desktop. Plus a friend of mine in Florida has one that is subject to cat fur.), it glowed blue, and it was shiny, so its good enough. I think they use car paint on them with the way they take finger prints so easily. I'd like to have a case painted in midnight blue automotive paint, *censored*, if I had the skills, I'd build my own case. But I don't have the skills or the tools, got a dremel, but I'd need at least a drill and a welder to build a case. And quite a bit of steel square tubing, if I built one, you'd need a Kalashnikov to dent it. (For those of you that don't know, a Kalashnikov is the long name for an AK-47, the 47 in the name means it was built in 1947, don't remember the first name of the guy that built it)

ya dead reckon q6600 YAYAYAYAYAY also who ever said all cases had to make of metal