They say if you want something right you have to do it yourself. I hate taking the time to research and buy my own computer, but the big name manufactures skimp and the custom builders are too expensive. My attempt at getting a deal on an "open box" system failed miserably. So the only way to get what I wanted was to build my own system. And it should be here midweek.

If you're looking to build your own system right now and have a budget of 3k (which I consider to be solidly average for a good computer), I recommend this setup to you. The link above has all the parts except for the hard drive, which I already have. You can save yourself $400 by going with the 940 version of the i7 processor, and another $150 but using the Asus P6T Deluxe Version 2. Save yourself $80 and just use the stock CPU cooler that comes with the processor if you're not going to overclock. And you could save $100 or so with a smaller power supply.

Upgrade the system by adding one or two more graphics cards (and leaving the current power supply.)



The base of any system is the motherboard. I was going to go with an Asus PT6, which would have been just fine. But I haven't been wild about Asus support in the past, and I kind of hate their website. I know everyone loves them, but I'm ready for a change. I went with wildly overpriced, packed with awesome overclocking features, X58 Classified by EVGA.





The brains of course is the processor. I can't really use a NVIDIA Telsa Personal Super Computer at the moment, so I went with the Intel i7 Extreme Edition. Slightly pricey at $1000, it's a power house that is going to make all my photo editing much faster... I suspect that with 8 blazing fast processors, Deep Rybka will run fairly well too.




I'll be overclocking, so I needed more than the stock cooler that comes with the processor. The Noctura isn't the coolest looking aftermarket cooler on the market. But it's one of the top performers.

Mind you, I was very tempted to go with water cooling for this system. But I have a problem with going a little overboard sometimes, and if you try to add water cooling for more than just your processor (i.e. your memory, video card, and hard drives), things get a little more complex -- and expensive.

Not only that, but companies keep threatening to come out with an affordable, usable phase change cooling system. We might see one in the next year or two, and sub-zero CPU temperatures are really sexy to think about. Anyway, it was easy to talk myself out of the water cooling system for now. I may change my mind later, and with my case, I'll be able to.




I decided to go with 1600MHz memory instead of just 1333. The 1600MHz memory doesn't do much for you that the 1333 Mhz memory doesn't already do, unless you want to overclock...

Oh yes, I will overclock...

I also like the heat dissaption on the Corsair Dominator memory. Twelve GB of fast DDR3 memory can get really hot. They're taller than other memory sticks, but I have a ton of room in my case. I even bought a fan which to go on top of the bunch; hopefully that will keep me cool enough.




I bought a second set of these to bring me up to 12GB. So I'll just add an extra picture here. . .




The motherboard was an upgrade from my orginal design, as was the memory. My last upgrade is the graphics gard. I was going to go with a GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 card, a great value offering blistering speeds. But I decided to spend a little more money on the Radeon 4850 X2 instead.

The X2 performs a little better and has 2GB of memory to help support the big resolutions on my monitor. But maybe more importantly, it has four montior ports allowing me to hook up a third monitor again without having to buy a second card.

(I would have three monitors now, but when I upgraded to 64 bit Vista, Asus didn't offer the bios upgrade I needed for my motherboard, and a second graphics card was causing my system to crash -- hence my move to the EVGA motherboard this round.)

I was going to buy two of the Core 216s to get the third monitor, so buying a card with four ports actually saved me some money.



Note that I do not have three of these. But I could.... Oh but I could!

Only running one graphic card, so 1000W power supply is a little overkill. But, I like being able to upgrade. And even better, while running at just half capacity the power coming out of this thing is super clean.





Assuming you have plenty of memory, the biggest bottleneck in a system is usually the hard drive. Though I'm going to try running this system with no paging file on the hard drive, I opted for a fast drive anyway -- specifically the 300GB Western Digital 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor. It's fast, it has great reviews, and the name is just awesome.

The RAW files coming out of digital SLRs today are pretty huge (especially if you remember to "expose to the right"), and they're only getting bigger. This machine is really a graphics editing (chess analyzing) machine when you get down to it, so I do think the drive upgrade will be worth it.





Though it would be impossible to say that the best part of this machine is NOT using a sound card from Creative Labs, I think it's one of the many high points. The Clario Plus is actually cheaper than my current Creative Labs sound card, which as I write this, is sitting in a corner somewhere collecting dust because of the pops and clicks associated with 64 bit, 4GB systems.

I upraded my current computer to 4GB of RAM last year and a 64bit OS, and basically I lost my overpriced Creative Labs sound card. Lost of people have had this problem with clicks and pops on 64 bit systems with 4GB of ram, that is the Internet is to be trusted. And how Creative Labs hasn't fixed this yet is beyond me.

But it's not my first gripe ever with them, and I've decided it's my last. I'm not alone. Sites like New Egg have tons of reviews where people are proclaiming their joy and freedom from Creative Labs.

Besides, the HT Omega cards are getting outstanding reviews in their own right.





Last but not least, I needed a case to put everything into. I needed something that gave me plenty of room for massive graphics cards, lots of drives, and the extended ATX form factor of the X58 Classified motherboard. It needed to have great airflow and also support a water coooling system in case I want to upgrade in the future.

There are a lot of great cases out there, but I settled on the Thermaltake Armor+ full tower case. I love Thermaltake products and case designs, so decided to stick with them.


That's basically it. Turns out that double sided Blu-Ray burner have become affordable at some point while I was sleeping, even though the discs really aren't. It will be great for off site backups eventually though, so I picked one up.

I'm pretty darned excited. It's not going to "process the unique entity [referred] to as John Henry" from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. (A Great show that I really hope isn't canceled in May.) But it'll do for another few years.

RRRRRRRAAAAWR!

Well, I've been just terrible about updating the blog lately. I blame that partly on being extraordinarily busy, though too, there is a healthy dose of "lazy" that just can't be discounted.

Dawn is back from her trip and we wasted no time cleaning off the kayaks and floating down one of the many thousand beautiful rivers in Florida. This time we chose the Weeki Wachee River.



We put in at Weeki Wachee springs, and you just can't imagine how many springs we floated over. Dawn kept calling them out as we passed, but eventually just gave up as the day went on.

The water is stunningly clear and cool when you first put in. And actually, it's cool and clear for the vast majority of the trip, until you get much closer to the Gulf. We didn't even clear the kayaks when we got home. Quite a contrast from rivers that are more like the Everglades, where you feel like you're paddling around in primordial bioluminescent ooze.

We didn't see nearly as much wildlife as we usually do, but what we did see was striking. We weren't in the water for even a minute before we got our first surprise -- a bald eagle. It's hard to shoot 600mm in a moving kayak, but a got a picture for the scrap book anyway.



Same caveat on this next picture. The river moves along fairly fast, enough that even our little anchor wasn't holding in some places. I was hoping for a better picture of this hawk, but you get what you get sometimes.



Last but not least we saw a river otter swimming upstream as we were pulling our kayaks out. I regret not ripping the camera gear out of my pack and running after it, but it was hot and I was pretty exhausted. --We'd been in for about four hours, and did some honest paddling for the last leg of the trip.

It feels good to be back in the water!