DCEmulation

Just put the finishing touches on mine (for now... as always)

Windows 7 Home Premium
Intel i7 930 quad, (liquid cooled)
6GB DDR3
ASUS P6T SE MB
(2) ATi Radeon HD 5770s 1GB
Corsair HX 850W pro series Power Supply (modular)

Think I've spent around $1500. But running Crysis for the first time in my life at completely maxed out settings, at 60 FPS... Pricless. Only things I have planned for the future are probably an SSD and a Blu-ray writer...

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"He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living hand-to-mouth." -Goethe

Dell Precision 390:

~ Windows 7 Ultimate x64
~ Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz
~ 6GB DDR2 Ram
~ Proprietary Dell motherboard and power supply
~ 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
~ 128MB nVidia Quadro FX550 (needs to be upgraded)

IBM Thinkpad T43p

~ Windows XP Pro SP3
~ Intel Pentium M/Centrino (Sonoma) 2.26 GHz
~ 2GB DDR2 Ram
~ 80GB Travelstar (most likely)
~ 128MB ATI Mobility FireGL

Dell Precision 350:

~ Windows XP Professional SP3/Windows Server 2K3 SP2
~ Intel Pentium 4 HT 3.06 GHz
~ 1GB RDRAM
~ Proprietary Dell motherboard and power supply
~ 2 36GB Seagate SCSI hard drives
~ 128MB ATI FireGL

I have 3 other rigs, and a decent ASUS gaming laptop, but was too lazy to post the specs on those.

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"He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living hand-to-mouth." -Goethe

Going from best to worst

Gaming:
17" MacBook Pro (Early 2008)
2.5ghz Core2Duo 4MB L2 cache
2GB RAM (really need to upgrade to 4GB)
250GB 5400 RPM hard drive
Superdrive
512MB nVidia 8600m GT
Snow Leopard and Windows 7 Ultimate

Carry to work laptop:
13" Black MacBook (Mid 2007)
2.16ghz Core2Duo 4MB L2 cache
160GB 5400 RPM hard drive
2GB RAM
GMA 950 graphics
Super Drive
Snow Leopard

HTPC:
PowerMac G5 (June 2004)
Dual 1.8ghz PowerPC 970fx
4GB RAM
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
1.5TB 7200 RPM hard drive
80GB 7200 RPM hard drive
Super Drive
Leopard

Spare laptop:
PowerBook G4 (15" 1.67/1.5GHz)
1.67ghz PowerPC G4
1.5GB RAM
ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 64MB
80GB 5200 RPM hard drive
Super Drive
Leopard

and a ton more I do not use on a regular basis.

Nothing impressive:

Primary computer
17" MacBook Pro
2.4GHz Core2 Duo
2GB RAM
200GB hard drive
Epson Stylus CX6600 printer/scanner
running OSX 10.5.8

Secondary computer
Mac SE/30
32MB RAM
1GB hard drive
Apple ImageWriter 2 printer
running System 7.5.1

Been thinking about scrounging up some old parts to finish my jukebox project (I ended up passing along the Mac Mini I originally had set aside for the project to someone in desperate need of a computer), but my budget is still stretched a bit thin from summer vacation.

My main computer:
Windows 7 Pro
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition - with a Cooler Master Hyper 212 on it.
Antec 902 case. Cools quite well and not too loud.
Antec TruePower 750 Watt PSU
8 gigs of DDR3
ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 mobo
GeForce GTX 260 Superclocked
Some 650 gig HDD.
HP DVD burner.

I think in total, after rebates, it cost around $900.

I'm planning to get a big internal HDD. I have two external HDDs, one terabyte and one half terabyte. I think the terabyte drive is starting to have issues, which is worrying as I do video editing on it.

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How to be a Conservative:
You have to believe everything that has ever gone wrong in the history of your country was due to Liberals.

I was running 12 GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 but I decided it wasn't worth it, and got $200 back for 6 gigs of it.

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"He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living hand-to-mouth." -Goethe

Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Intel Core i5 750 @ 4Ghz with a Corsair H50 cooling it
Coolermaster CM690 Case w/ 7 fans (5x 120mm, 2x 140mm)
Corsair TX750 750w PSU
8GB G.Skill F3 1333 DD3
MSi GD-65 P55 (1156) Motherboard
2x Palit GTX460 1Gb's in SLI Overclocked @ 900c/1800m
A bunch of harddrives totalling something around 2TB (to be replaced with an SSD for OS and a 2TB drive for storage)
Samsung DVD writer.

I've got pics, but they are from earlier this year when I was running Quad SLI 9800GX2's. I'll throw some pics up if I ever get around to taking any.

Nice. I've never overclocked a CPU before... Has anyone heard much good about doing so with the i7 930?

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"He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living hand-to-mouth." -Goethe

Going newest to oldest, parts wise...
yuki (my main machine):
15" MacBook Pro (Mid 2010)
2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 620M (4MB L3 Cache)
4GB DDR3 RAM
500GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
Intel HD Graphics (built-into the CPU)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M with 512MB RAM
Has Snow Leopard and Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installed.

kimiko:
15" MacBook Pro (Early 2006)
2.0GHz Intel Core Duo (2MB L2 Cache)
2GB DDR2 RAM
320GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
ATI Radeon x1600 with 128MB RAM
Superdrive
Has Snow Leopard, Tiger, and Windows XP Professional installed.

ping:
Mac Mini (Early 2005)
1.42GHz PowerPC G4 (512KB L2 Cache)
1GB DDR RAM
150GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB RAM
Combo Drive
Has Tiger and Panther installed.

miho (the machine my mother uses right now):
2.4GHz Pentium 4
512MB DDR RAM
20 GB + 8GB Hard Drives (it used to have a 60GB drive instead of the 20, but that ended up in a PS2)
NVIDIA GeForce 4MX (aka junk)
Runs Arch Linux and Windows XP Professional.

And... the machine I'm building now out of some spare parts I have laying around...
junpei:
2.8GHz Pentium 4
1GB DDR RAM (might be putting more in it, if I can find more laying around)
120GB + 80GB Hard Drives
NVIDIA GeForce 4MX (why I have more than one of these, I have no idea)
Will run Arch Linux and Windows XP Professional... Maybe Open Solaris as well.

That about covers anything that's remotely useful/useable...

The 920's hit high 3Ghz's fairly easily with a good cooler Jeeba. I'm guessing the 930 is a better revision than the 920 (meaning Intel simply ups the baseclock on a more revised 920 chip to make a 930), so it should overclock a little easier/cooler than a 920 should. You should be able to hit 4.0, possibly 4.2, 24/7 stable with watercooling.

It's a crapshoot though, some 1366 chips like to overclock high, some don't. It's a lengthy process getting high stable clocks, to say the least. Lots of rebooting, changing volt settings, playing with this and that, and lots of benchmarking (with utilities like CoreTemp, Prime95, etc).

If you want a hand, let me know.

Thanks a lot. I've been considering it.


Also, it's good to see I'm not the only one left here who's into PC gaming.

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"He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living hand-to-mouth." -Goethe

Yea, but even the hardcore guys like us are starting to get tired of the bullshit. Developers are integrating console ease of use into PC games where its not wanted (removing dedicated servers for example), and instead of building engines for the PC and "dumbing" them down for the console users, we're getting left with a stagnant graphics market because of console ports.

Basically, I believe this will be my last "enthusiast" build if it keeps up the way it is. I'm tired of the PC gaming community getting shit on, and I'm not paying premium prices for hardware if I'm not going to get to take advantage of it.

For years, I was using hilariously old hand-me-down Macs. Two months ago, I had some extra money plus a full time job. For $700, I built this budget machine, including a monitor. My next goal is to take the slow processor and decent video card out of this machine into a new MAME cabinet. I should also mention it's the first PC I've owned/built. So far, it's been great. At first, I was going to overclock the processor for more power. But once I started using the machine, it's plenty for my needs. Starcraft II, Mafia II, Just Cause II and Adobe CS3 run great.

Intel E6500 Dual-Core
4GB DDR3 RAM
GeForce 9800 GT
2x 500 GB 7200 RPM HDDs

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Core i5-750
4gb 1333mhz ddr3 ram
gigabyte p55 motherboard
Geforce 8400gs
1tb drive

It is running 10.6.4 with a vanilla kernel and dualboots win7. I currently have it driving 2 19 or 21in monitors (I really don't recall, but they're 1440x900). I really want to upgrade my vid card to a radeon 5xxx series because I want to get up on some more pc gaming I just used this card when I built this rig because the 5 series didn't have gfx kext for osx yet.

Laptop

Pentium dualcore (forget the exact one)
3gb ddr2 ram
some shitty gfx card.

also a 2006 macbook with 1.5gb of ram running as a htpc.

My media server is an intel atom with 1gb of ram currently has 2 1tb drives in it. I'm thinking of putting an old 640gb drive in my main rig and running my media server with 3tb of harddrive space. Only problem with that is most I can put drive wise in my media server is 2 drives and I don't like externals. So, I'll either build an amd build to hold plenty of drives or something.

edit: I have a few more rigs

My old AMD Athlon 3000+ with an nvidia geforce 5600 and iirc the 256mb version. It sports a 160gb hdd and 1gb of PC2700 ram. I gave it to my friend/room mate to use since he was using a p4 era celly and those things are just fucking trash. The thing had problems just running youtube videos. So, this was an upgrade for him as it can run everything he needs to do just fine as well as actually play videos with out lagging down the entire system.

In my closet I have a 3.2ghz P4 with hyper threading and 2.5gb of ram. No gfx card is currently installed as it was the machine that I took my current gfx card from. Once we get a tv in the living room I will buy a gfx card for it and put it back into commission as a htpc. I know the machine is easily capable of running 720p video and although our tv will be 1080p (should be a 42iner) I think we will be fine.

TBH, I can see a quality difference between 720p/1080p but not a big one. The size difference in 1080p and 720p rips also makes me pretty alright living with only 720p ability. Also, the tv in my living room is only 720p and I'm not 100% sure if my 2006 macbook could handle 1080p rips or not and I don't want more duplicate copies of videos. My room mate uses his wii to run wiimc and it can not handle 720p content so for some tv shows that we both watch I have to get 480p and 720p versions or just settle for 480p.

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SCO=SCUM=M$=SCO it keeps repeating
i'm a randite
DYTDMFBSB?
There must have been some mistake
I'm not the one who should be saved
My divinity has been denied
Mary and me were both fucked by God

my main machine, hooked up to my TV across the room via HDMI and into my stereo system (my 'main' monitor and kb are across the room with 35ft cables):

Asus K8n-dl motherboard
2x Opteron 290s (2.8GHz Dual Core software downclocked to 1GHz, set to ramp up when it hits 80%+ CPU in small increments until it's no longer at 80%, cut CPU temperature by 20*C)
9GB PC3200R ECC Ram (4x2GB, 2x512MB, 5GB on CPU0 and 4 on CPU1, am pondering changing it to 8/1)
Radeon HD 4650 (40$ budget card, wanted just anything quieter and cooler than my x1900 AIW whose video stuff isn't supported under XPSP3/Vista/7)
22in shitty widescreen LCD @1680x1050 over VGA as my main monitor (it was a gift, and haven't wanted to upgrade yet)
47in LG LCDTV 1080p via HDMI for video
MixVibes USB U-Rip22 (I was sent this for review and gave them a 2 page list of bugs with the software, they said thanks, please don't put out a review, and that they'd work on it. That was 18 months ago and the software was discontinued =P hardware works fine)

Main HDD: 4x 72GB 15K SAS drives in Raid 5 on a Promise FTTX4650
Old Main drive: 150GB SATA WD Raptor 10K
Storage: 750GB WD Green SATA

XBOX HD-DVD drive for playing, and Samsung Slimlime DVD burner for burning.

The case is custom built and unfinished. It's the reason for all the usb stuff (sound, and optical) as I intend to have the case be sealed/soundproof.


Additionally I have a box running FreeNAS with 2x 1.5TB, a 750GB, and a 500GB SATA drives and 2x300GB IDE drives for a total of about 3.8TB of space. I built this box to: 1) be able to turn off my main machine without losing access to everything on it, 2) have less hardware to worry about in my main machine/ less heat/less noise, 3) I was able to stuff it in a closet to not have any impact noise-wise.

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"When you post fewer lines of text than your signature, consider not posting at all." - A Wise Man

MacBook Pro (SD/FW 13-inch Unibody)
CPU: Intel Core2 Duo P7550 2.26GHz @ 2.26GHz [SSE3/SSSE3/SSE4.1/x86_64/PAE/XD/VMX/EST/DualCore]
L2: 3MB
FSB: 1064MHz
RAM: 2.7GB/4.0GB
Disk: 286.24GB/297.77GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M [256 MB/Stock] 1280x800
OS: Mac OS X 10.6.4 (10F569)

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It's thinking...

Antec Three Hundred
Antec Basiq 350W
Biostar TP43D2-A7
Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.0GHz)
2GB DDR2-800 RAM (at the time, virtually all so-called "1066" modules were just overclocked/overvolted 800 modules)
Radeon HD 3450
320GB Hitachi Deskstar
Some DVD burner

Pretty much all gaming on this system is old, indie, and/or emulated, and I regularly run fairly demanding engineering apps, hence the CPU/GPU imbalance.

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"You know, I have a great, wonderful, really original method of teaching antitrust law, and it kept 80 percent of the students awake. They learned things. It was fabulous." -- Justice Stephen Breyer

Entirely true. But, for now, there is a lot of good material. For one, my favorite game franchise period, Total War, won't be seeing light on a console for ages. And the PC still holds the MMO market... but 10 years from now, much like ten years ago, things are going to look a whole lot different.

IMHO, it's the evolution of online console gaming that has substantially thus far, and effectively will drain the life from PC gaming. That, consoles that support higher and higher resolutions, and console games that support mouse and keyboard (First Person Shooters, MMOs).

Yet, all in all, as long as manufacturers produce hardware that is ahead of the console curve (console gens can last a decade at this current rate, new video cards come out every year), there will definitely be a consumer base for it.

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"He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living hand-to-mouth." -Goethe

Built this over a year ago on a massive budget. Pretty proud of myself since it's the first computer I've built entirely on my own. Runs like a charm.


Windows 7 Home premium 64bit (free upgrade from Vista)
GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3 AM2+/AM2 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Phenom 9850 2.5GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition
GeForce 9800 GT
4GB OCZ Platinum 1066 DDR2
HP PSC 2110 printer/scanner/copier with a lifetime supply of ink (freebie courtesy of the state of PA)
Widescreen Planar monitor, media keyboard, and mouse snagged from work when I got laid off.
Brand new leather executive chair pulled from Staple's dumpster. Seems to be in mint condition.

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