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Loading ...Xmas Suprise!!!
Elemental Dragon ¦ Bex
As some of you know, I got myself engaged last month, so I wanted to make my fiances pressy extra special! He’s been wanting a LAN PC for all the time I’ve known him, and over time his PC has been getting to the point of becoming unplayable. So the perfect pressy? A new PC!
Now looking at his PC, most could be scrapped, but he’d a good graphics card (7950 GTX) so I just need to get it out without him realising… So I kinda stole it out his PC and put a semi-dud 7600GT in it - lol - he thought his PC was about to die days before xmas!
I then ordered up his parts from work and ordered a few pieces from Kustom PCs
- E6750 (partially donated by my colleague)<br />
- 2GB Adata DDR2 800mhz<br />
- Gigabyte GA33-31M-S2L<br />
- Maxtor 160GB SATA (also donated)<br />
- Thermaltake 500W (my old blue LED fan 1)<br />
- Sony DVD-RW (also donated)<br />
- Silverstone SG01-Evolution case (KPC)<br />
- UV Blue spiral wrap (KPC)<br />
- 2x Blue LED 80mm Golf fans (KPC)<br />
- Noise dampening (KPC)</p>
Just some box peeks:
Started the build and all seemed to go smoothly, the case is an absolute treat to work with! Enough room for GTS (the hdd caddy prevents the 2nd 6pin connection but I suppose you could mount the hdd in the 5.25? and fit well - possibly an ultra?) Lots of handy little ideas in this redesign (CPC have a review of the old 1) and a nicer finish imo!
Here you can see I’ve mounted my mobo, CPU and other bits and pieces. The mobo was a bargain and has lots of connections - ideal if your looking for a media pc with on board GPU (I’ll be disabling this feature obviously) fire wire, plenty of USBs and usb headers with good on board sound. A good addition would be 1 of Creative’s new PCI-e1 sound cards which has almost all of the x-fi features at a much lower cost.
After cunningly stealing my fiance’s GPU it was time to test - would it power? Or would it blow up? Thankfully it powered but… the fans, especially CPU fan acted stranged. I obviously thought it was due to there being no RAM in the machine, so I put it aside until I could finish nabbing the other parts. But once again, the CPU fan played up, not spinning up until I rebooted the machine from a fully powered up state. Checked all over the BIOS but there’s nothing I can see stopping it.
Anyway, I finish installing Windows XP (he didn’t want Vista but that’s cool) and got all the drivers etc and installed Crysis (and extra special suprise and a gift from some friends to add to the big gift!). Gave it a quick test a w00t! It’s perfect! Played Crysis at high settings perfectly smooth at 1280×1024. Boxed it all up and wrapped it up with ribbons etc!
He was raging because I made him carry it home whilst he was dying to rip it all open! But it was ok, as Xmas day came not long after and he could open it all up. I’d been slowly but surely renewing his PC all year (New Saitek keyboard and Thermaltake Gamma pad for his b’day and his work gave him a new mouse - A4 Tech I think…) and the tower and monitor were all that was left to renew.
He was so delighted that he ran straight through with it and plugged it all in immediately grinning like a maniac. Then he sat down and the smile faded… was it broken? Did it not kick up? ……”but now the monitor’s too pish for me to see things or enjoy it!” *face palm*
TYPICAL! BLOODY TYPICAL! So you know what I did? I felt so disapointed for him that we went out boxing day monitor shopping! Found a beautiful LG 26? HD TV at £399 - but we decided to sleep on it. Walked 5m down the road next day and found the bigger better model for £50 less and 5yr screen cover! So wallet out and off home with a lovely new 27? HD TV for him to take home and play his PC and Xbox 360 on!
Only problem now is I can’t get him off the damn thing…. >.
congrats Bex!
I think if my girlfriend built me a PC for Christmas I’d ask her to marry me too! That is if I didn’t die of shock first!
Even when I’ve had mine open on my desk she doesn’t even give it a second look or even comment on the pretty colours and shiny waterblocks!!! Strangely her sister thought it was “really cool” - maybe I chose the wrong one? (Don’t go there Combatus)
At least she said “when we move in together we’ll have to have a 2 bedroom place - we’ll need one for your PC”….
Wasn’t sure how to take that….
ROFLMBFFAO! Aw Combatus *hugs* Thankyou and I’m sure you didn’t pick the wrong 1 if shes kind enough to offer you an entire room 
~Bex
Looks awesome, one question though: Small portable and powerful LAN PC, 27″ monitor. Isn’t that kinda going 2 make it difficult to actually take to a LAN event lol i mean the monitors like 3x the size of the pc! Anyways it still looks gr8 and congrats getting engaged!
Lol the TV is pretty light to be honest, but it’s still alot easier than a 19″ CRT!!! Oh and thankyou! *hugs*
Nice build. Love the pics, particularly the sweet desktop set-up. Good thing the gfx card was up to powering that big screen - at least that PSU will take more if needed!
what is the make of that screen and where did you get it from it looks sweet
thanks
It’s a 27″ LG HD TV. Setup looks even better now as we’ve got bigger better desks at the new flat
~Bex