Building the Ultimate Gaming System VI

THE CASE

For the case, I chose the Thermaltake LANBOX Lite Windowless. Thermaltake has quickly become incredibly famous in the case making world for their Thermaltake Armor case, which is literally a tank of a case (and probably the best purchase you can make if you're looking to make the best damn PC period, but I digress). The case is about 10-20 pounds of solid steel and aluminum, with tiny pinprick fanholes all over the sides (reminiscent of the Apple tower PCs we've seen everywhere). And, of course, it comes in one color: Solid, beautiful, piano-finish Black. Perfect.

And while we're at it, I took the liberty of replacing all fans in the case with VANTEC STEALTH fans, which tend to work better (and quieter) than stock models (in this case, naturally, Thermaltake fans). No insult to Thermaltake- but VANTEC specializes specifically in being quiet like this, and that's exactly what I was looking for. Remember- I'm going for quiet. For the record, I put it on with some Arctic Silver thermal paste, for quality.

THE MOBO

For this, it was really more of a “What fits” problem than anything else. Because I am going SFF, I have to use a special mobo- a Micro ATX motherboard. Naturally, few good gaming motherboards are made in these specs, primarily because it's incredibly hard to do so- you have to cram a whole lot in a whole little, and make sure nothing overheats while you do it. For this, I chose the ASUS P5B-VM- a rather sporty little motherboard with a lot of power, but crammed down to the point of being cramped. Naturally, though, ASUS knew what they were doing, and make it virtually unbreakable- a definate buy for a SFF PC. Thus, I went for it.

THE POWER SUPPLY

Despite this being a small system, the power supply is a big damn deal. For a system that needs to be compact, the typical squid-output of plugs (where they are all sticking out the back) isn't good- it leaves the unused ones just “hanging” in the case. This is a problem, especially when some of the fans (especially the Blue Orb II, see below) will be open, prone to cutting through cords. Thus, we need something both powerful, cool, and modular.

The answer? A PSU by a little known company called HiPER. The HiPER HPU-4S580, a 580 volt PSU, is definitely enough to run everything in this system and anything we add to it in the future. Plus, to make it that much more awesome, the system comes with every power cable known to man (to make sure everything works right, no matter what you have), lots of accessories and instructions, and a damn tool box for your spare computer parts. HiPER, I love you.

THE PROCESSOR

This wasn't hard at all- the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600- the 2.4 ghz Model. While it used to be a fair tie between the P4 and the Athlon offerings, this is no longer- Intel rules the processing world now with their Core 2 Duo systems, and the E6600 is the best offer you can get. 2.4 Ghz seems very small until you watch this puppy plow through anything you throw at it, hands down- so this was easy. Being LGA775, it fit nicely into any modern Micro ATX mobo available (since most are LGA775)- so this was an obvious choice.

Of course, I'm no fool- processors require cooling like crazy, and in a small case like this, we need a monster cooler. There is only one answer to this problem: the Thermaltake Blue Orb II, the “weapon” of CPU cooling. Weighing in at about 15 pounds of aluminum and steel and with a 120mm fan blasting away at what appears to be about 100 heat sink prongs, this monster is known to warp motherboards and processors- but since we're using the Thermaltake Lanbox Lite (Which puts the motherboard on the bottom rather than on the side), warping is not a factor at all- which is perfect. After all, they were made for each other.

THE RAM

For this one, I decided to go a bit heavy- but restrictedly. You see, Windows XP 32 bit (The XP I have to go with due to some driver issues) has a nasty restriction with RAM, and going over 4GBs is impossible- the system really doesn't like it. Thus, the idea here is to buy some high end sticks that will do me well, but not break the bank- and obviously stay affordable.

The RAM set I chose is the GeIL 2GB DDR2 SDRAM. It's basic stuff, but the coolers on it are fairly top-of-the-line for GeIL- bright neon orange, but nice nonetheless. This RAM won't get hot, period- a big important feature, since they will be right under my Blue Orb II (which will be running hot, obviously).

THE VIDEO CARD

This was another tough choice. Ask any hardcore graphics enthusiast today and they will tell you that if you want to do heavy video card stuff, you're going to want to use the GeForce 8800 series- a monster of a video card that can handle any game you throw at it, SLI or not. But it's expensive- and most of all, it's loud. It's useless for me to have a big bad video card in a system when I only intend to use it for minor gaming and media centers- and when it will kick the thing up like 10 damn decibels louder, it's a ridiculous choice. So no.

In this case, I chose a little known card- the XFX GeForce 7850XT Fanless. This is a specially made card that, rather than using a fan to cool it (like most cards do), this card actually uses heat pipes to pump the heat out into a cooling array on the top of the card. The card ends up being a might bit taller and wider than your usual fanned apparatus, but it is 100% silent- absolutely no noise.

This doesn't make the card weak or inferior to the 8800- actually, it's perfect to this system. For one thing, it's DX9.0 compliant, making it the top end of all XP gaming you will be doing (and trust me, upgrading to DX10 isn't worth getting Vista). The card plows through anything you run at it, and at no point does it need that nasty kick-up sound you hear when a card activates it's fan- it's fanless!

As for the TV-in, I went with a ATI HDTV TV-in card (the 100-715331). It's fully HD compatible, made to take in any kind of signal (it takes in HDTV, FM radio, and even gaming systems), and does it all without breaking a sweat.

THE SOUND CARD

The sound card was a breeze- I just popped in a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 7.1. I hate to say this, but no amount of bitching will save me from really admitting that sound cards matter very little- I could have gone integrated with no worries. If you use headphones a lot or just don't have a 7.1 system, there is little reason to plop down more than $30 for a card. Thankfully, this one was only $28.99- a steal, so I went for it. It fit.

THE HARD DRIVE

The Hard Drive was simple- I wanted one drive (as I'll explain why below) that spins fast and lasts forever at 500GBs. The SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series 500GB did just fine for me, at a nice sweet price point of $120. Samsung drives have become quite nice recently, and I couldn't find a better deal, both with reviews and with the price. Not much else to say!

THE OPTICAL DRIVE

There's a lot of debate in this realm from most PC builders, as those with money (and desires to spend it) are trying to merge over to HDDVD or Blu-Ray (mostly Blu-ray) for storage media. However, we're going for a cheap and small PC, and obviously the new Blu-ray recorders (running at an “Amazing” 1x or 2x (ugh)) aren't the greatest thing in the world. My result?

Unfortunately, I must admit that I got the Pioneer 18x DVD+-R DVD Burner. While it is a wonderful and solid burner, there is one key issue with the drive in that it runs rather loudly in the small area it is put in. This is not a major issue for bigger PCs, but it definitely sucks in a small form factor PC such as this. Still, when the drive is the loudest thing in the case (when it's still reasonably quiet), it's not that big of a deal.

MISC

On top of all that, naturally, I had some separate purchases that don't necessarily fall into the big list of the stuff above. This includes a rounded IDE cable (instead of the flat), some high quality SATA cables, some random crap I had run out of (an anti-static wrist strap, some better screws), and some other necessary features. I also naturally purchased some accessories- a XBOX 360 wireless controller and a Logitec wireless mouse- but who cares about that?

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