General Discussions

I have two standards for a case.

1. Tool-less.
2. Steel.

Everything else is negotiable.

I currently own a NZXT Phantom and it runs everything pretty cool. It was my first PC I built, so I'm not sure what's considered quiet and loud, but to me it seems to be pretty quiet. I'm mapping out my next PC, which I'm leaning towards the NZXT 820 (which I believe someone linked earlier.)

I'm weird when it comes to cases. I want something that performs and is built to last. But I also want it to be sexy and flashy. BUT I hate LED lights at the same time. If the case comes with it, fine, but I refuse to buy any extra LED lights. The gunmetal NZXT 820 could possibly be the sexiest thing I've ever seen... even more than all the females I've met.

My advice save your cash before America implodes.

You will no doubt need it for the upcoming weeks, being serious.

@DABhand - Well, when the country implodes brother at least I will have my survival tactics brushed up on via The Last Of Us.

Also, brother, your inbox is now full so I never got an opportunity to elaborate. My main focus for configuration is whether or not to utilize my CPU as the PhysX processor. I may be smokin' something here, but I keep feeling as if you once advised using the CPU for that task. However, NVidia seems to recommend otherwise... quite frankly, I have come to trust your input more.

At everyone else, I made my decision, and am grateful for all the input... even though I strayed off of the beaten path.

I went with the original model Storm Scout (primarily because someone was practically giving it away new-in-box on Minneapolis Craigslist). I had to make a couple of additional mods to my old rig. My HD 7970 had to go because it was one inch too long! It has been replaced by the GeForce GTX 770 (comparable at least). I eliminated my Cooler Master Evo 212 in lieu of the Corsair H80 as my main focus in the new build was dropping CPU temps (success at 20º C cooler). Lastly, I added another Crucial M4 and slapped the two in RAID 0. I know that there is little to be gained performance wise here, but my lone 128G kept swelling to near capacity. It just seemed cheaper to toss in another 128G versus purchasing a brand new 256G.

So here are the new specs/inards:

Case: Cooler Master Storm Scout (Version 1)
Processor (CPU): Intel i7 3930K
Motherboard: Asus P9X79 Pro
Graphics Card (GPU):
EVGA NVidia GeForce GTX 770
Memory: Two Pair - Corsair Vengeance Series 8GB DDR3-1866
CPU Cooler: Corsair H80
Solid State Hard Drive (SSD): Two - Crucial M4 128 in RAID 0
Standard Hard Drives: Two - Seagate Barracuda EP 3TB
Power Supply (PSU): Corsair CX750M

Here is a look: Link

My inbox is fine, there is space, dunno why the system would say otherwise.

Best to keep the GPU doing the Physx and CUDA work, they have their own chips onboard the GPU that deals with that stuff. So no need to take away processing power of the CPU to deal with it. You are no longer using the AMD GPU which requires the CPU to do this.

If your 128 GB SSD is filling up quickly, the RAID 0 configuration will only double the speeds of the drives, like I mentioned in the private message, half the data is recorded on one drive while the other have on the other, this makes the system read from both drives simultaneously effectively doubling the speed. But it also means if any data required for windows operations is stored there and has data corrupted or missing then it can stop the system from booting.

Read up on my old thread on SSD configuration and how to use another drive outside of the array as the pagefile and for user data to be stored, thusly keeping the usage to the SSDs down to a minimum as SSDs have a half life.

Link

That is exactly why I asked... I could not remember with certainty which direction you said to take with the PhysiX processing and why.

I appreciate the input, and will hit up that SSD thread again.

[Edited by The Admiral, 10/11/2013 4:03:39 AM]