William Wong
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ED Online ID #11574 |
December 13, 2005
What do you get when you put together the best of everything? The Best Computer of 2005 of course. This system is based on AMD’s dual-core Athlon and ASUS’ A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard (see Fig. 1). It delivers the kind of performance needed to make it a top gaming machine as well as a multimedia delight.
Yes, this project will definitely break the bank, especially with all the necessary peripherals, so you might want to check out some individual components if you are on a budget.
This system will have you seeing double, and not from just the price tag. The dual-core Athlon started things off, and even the motherboard has some interesting pairs. It supports the Athlon’s dual memory-channel architecture, hence two Platinum PC3200 400MHz DIMMs (see Fig. 2) from OCZ Technology. The 1-Gbyte DIMMs mean the system has 2 gig of RAM. The motherboard has two IDE controllers, two pairs of 3-Gbit/s Serial ATA II (SATA II) interfaces, two Fast Ethernet interfaces, and dual SATA RAID interfaces. Last but not least, the motherboard has two x16 PCI Express sockets to handle the two NVidia video cards.
You read correctly. The ASUS motherboard can take two of NVidia’s top-of-the-line 7800GTX video adapters that support the nForce4 Scalable Link Interface (SLI). SLI requires motherboard support, and ASUS delivers. It has a special heat-pipe system to cool them, and the PCI Express slots have two PCI slots between them. This provides the better airflow and space necessary for video cards like the 7800GTX that pack extra cooling onboard.
NVidia’s 7800GTX is available from a range of vendors. Our 7800GTX (see Fig. 3) came from MSI Computer, who also supplies motherboards like the A8N32-SLI Deluxe. Likewise, ASUS has its own version of the 7800GTX. Using two boards doubles system video capabilities with either two boards driving one monitor very fast or up to four monitors with less individual performance.
High-performance video calls for a top quality display like Viewsonic’s 19-inch VX924 LCD display (see Fig. 4). In the past, CRTs delivered the fastest performance that the 7800GTX can crank out, which is necessary for gaming video. Now Viewsonic delivers the fastest response time with the VX924.
For your video viewing pleasure we have Hauppauge’s WinTV-PVR-350 (see Fig. 5) and MediaMVP (see “Making More Of Your PC’s Video”). The WinTV-PVR-350 provides television viewing as well as PVR (personal video recorder) support, and the ability to provide multimedia output to a remote TV via the MediaMVP box. The MediaMVP plugs into the TV and an Ethernet network.
Movie viewing is also possible with Hewlett-Packard’s DVD 740i LightScribe drive (see Fig. 6). More on this later. It handles double-layer media and the LightScribe technology prints directly on LightScribe media.
The other major components in the system include a giant Seagate 7200.9 500-Gbyte SATA-II hard drive. The system itself is housed in an Antec Performance TX1088 AMG (see Fig. 7) with a TruePower 2.0 550-W power supply. This is definitely a cool case, speaking temperately.
The keyboard and mouse combination comes from Logitech. So did the Z-5450 digital speaker system that incorporates a set of wireless speakers for the rear speakers.
Finally, SanDisk supplied external USB support along with flash memory for data exchange because there is no floppy disk in the system. A Sansa e140 MP3 player (see Fig. 8) provides portable multimedia support. HP’s Photosmart 475 (see Fig. 9) portable printer and R817 (see Fig. 10) digital camera bundle rounds out the mobile peripherals.
There are sidebars covering the features of each component used in this project. See the list of sidebars at the top of this article.
Putting It Together The first job on the list was to install the AMD Athlon and OCZ memory on the ASUS motherboard (see Fig. 11). The CPU fits in a ZIF socket and the dual-channel memory snaps in place. The hard part is putting on the CPU’s heatsink (see Fig. 12). Don’t forget to plug in the power connector and put the grease in between the heatsink and the CPU. The grease significantly improves the metal-to-metal conduction that will be especially important if you try overclocking the CPU. The ASUS motherboards are well known for supporting this feature that gamers love. Of course, really pushing the envelope means moving to a water cooling system, but that’s for another project.
Next put the backpanel supplied with the motherboard in the back of the Antec case. The motherboard can now be put into the case. Make sure all the screws are installed (see Fig. 13). Tighten all screws only after the motherboard has been properly positioned.
Connecting the power cables is next. This motherboard has three power supply connections, not just one, so don’t miss one. There are more power-hungry chips on this motherboard than most non-gaming motherboards.
I like to install the case cables next. These are the ones connected to the LEDs and switches on the case. The cables connect to a header in the front corner of the motherboard. It helps to have the documentation unless you can read the tiny letters on the motherboard around the header.
Connect the IDE cable for the HP DVD drive and the SATA cable for the Seagate Barracuda to the motherboard. The IDE connector is a little hard to access with the motherboard installed, but the SATA header is easy to access. Make sure the DVD drive is jumpered as the primary IDE drive. The HP DVD drive is inserted from the front of the case after removing the drive bay panel. Bolt in the drive and connect the power and IDE cables. I also connected the audio output of the drive to the motherboard’s audio support with a cable supplied with the drive.
The internal bay for the Seagate drive was easier to get to, so it was possible to connect the cables before installing the drive in the drive bay (see Fig. 14). SATA still uses two cables, but they and their connectors are much smaller than the conventional IDE drives.
Next was time to install the video cards. It is best to do things incrementally, so I started with just one adapter and left the case open. The video adapter snaps into the PCI Express socket that has a latch that gives the board a three point mounting system versus the two point system that PCI cards have. You also need to attached power for the PCI Express interface. You can use the standard power supply connections and the Y adapter supplied with the card (see Fig. 15). You must plug in power to BOTH connectors on the Y adapter. I actually used the PCIe connectors that the Antec power supply has. This is much easier and it provides better power distribution so go with a new power supply if you can.
I had to plug in the Bluetooth adapter that supports the mouse and keyboard. Add in the monitor and the system is now ready for its initial test.
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