Post your computer

Custom built- straight off the presses

2X Nvidia GTX 295s overclocked as far as water cooling allows (I forget the numbers)
2X 850 watt PSU
1X Core i7 OC to 4.2 ghz (!!!), which, surprisingly, still bottleneck the GPUs a little bit.
The rest is unimportant- a case is a case, etc.

Congrats, nice rig!
It would be purrfect to help the CPF Folding @ Home team.

What monitor are the 295's driving?
What mobo?
Full specs.

RA40 said:

Congrats, nice rig!
It would be purrfect to help the CPF Folding @ Home team.

What monitor are the 295's driving?

Click to expand...

Depends on if I'm gaming or not, but usually one Acer 22' LCD. If I'm playing something really immersive I'll hook up another.

Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128377

6 gigs of DDR3

It's pretty crazy what this can do, I get 120 FPS on Crysis with a TOD mod on on the highest settings with both monitors active. I haven't tried GTA IV but it's supposed to be very CPU-reliant, and with this monster at 4.2 ghz I should be fine- people say even a q6600 runs it.

I render stuff incredibly fast, as well, especially when I use Gelato.

Lumenshroom said:

Custom built- straight off the presses

2X Nvidia GTX 295s overclocked as far as water cooling allows (I forget the numbers)
2X 850 watt PSU
1X Core i7 OC to 4.2 ghz (!!!), which, surprisingly, still bottleneck the GPUs a little bit.
The rest is unimportant- a case is a case, etc.

Click to expand...

Mine, lessee here...

Primary
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 dual-core @ stock speed
8GB Crucial DDR2-800 @ stock speed
Radeon HD4830 @ stock speed
Gigabyte P45-based motherboard
Corsair 650W PSU
DVD burner
Card reader
A couple hard drives
Windows Vista Ultimate, 64-bit. Technically it dual-boots WinXP 32-bit, but I never use XP anymore :shrug: This is my home rig.


Secondary
AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ dual-core
4GB Crucial DDR400
GeForce 6600 "vanilla"
Asus A8N-E motherboard
Antec 480W PSU
DVD burner
Card reader
A couple hard drives
Windows Vista Ultimate, 64-bit. This one also is technically a WinXP dual-boot system, I just don't use XP anymore. It's on a separate Maxtor Atlas 15K II SCSI drive, normally dormant. I keep this system at my workplace for employee use.


Tertiary This is an eMachines system I was given... gonna see if a pal of mine wants it, he's never had a computer

AMD Athlon64 3400+ single-core
1.5GB of some sort of DDR
eMachines ATI-based motherboard with onboard ATI video
300W PSU
DVD burner
Card reader
Hard drive
Windows Vista Ultimate, 64-bit.


Crash-test-dummy system
AMD Duron 1GHz
Shuttle MN31-N nForce2 motherboard
ATI Radeon 9200 AGP video card
LSI Logic Ultra160 SCSI card
Seagate Cheetah X15-36LP 15000rpm primary HDD
Seagate Barracuda ATA IV IDE secondary HDD
Win2000 Pro / Win98

The Duron system there is my "honeypot" system that I'll use when attempting to deliberately infect a computer in order to collect malware samples. To facilitate that, it runs a deliberately insecure Win2000 installation, backed by Acronis TrueImage to restore it for the next run. Don't do much of that anymore, but it gets an occasional outing :thumbsup:

mechBgon said:

Crash-test-dummy system
AMD Duron 1GHz
Shuttle MN31-N nForce2 motherboard
ATI Radeon 9200 AGP video card
LSI Logic Ultra160 SCSI card
Seagate Cheetah X15-36LP 15000rpm primary HDD
Seagate Barracuda ATA IV IDE secondary HDD
Win2000 Pro / Win98

The Duron system there is my "honeypot" system that I'll use when attempting to deliberately infect a computer in order to collect malware samples. To facilitate that, it runs a deliberately insecure Win2000 installation, backed by Acronis TrueImage to restore it for the next run. Don't do much of that anymore, but it gets an occasional outing :thumbsup:

Click to expand...

Hobby or career? Did you ever get to delve into Conficker's code?

Work rig:

Asus M3A79T-Deluxe mobo
AMD 7750 Kuma
GTX 260 C216
2G G Skill D9 sticks
Corsair 520HX
2T in WD drives
In a well aged Super Micro full tower case. (Has seen about 4-5 builds in it.)

Online & secondary back-up rig:

MSI K9A2-Platinum
AMD 5600+ Windsor
2-8800GT cards
2G Patriot EPP sticks
Corsair 620HX
1.5T total in WD drives (500G each)
CoolerMaster WaveMaster case

Up the creek back-up rig:

MSI K8N-SLI
AMD 4200+ (Socket 939)
No vid card
2G Kingston Value Select
1T in WD drives
CoolerMaster Real Power 400W PS
CoolerMaster WaveMaster case

I feel sorry for anyone still using prebuilts- I saw an Inspiron 530 at Wal-mart going for 1200 USD yesterday. Really. 1200 dollars.

For that you get a sluggish duel-core, two gigs of RAM, a 250 watt PSU, and an integrated card. Oh, and a BTX case.

Lumenshroom said:

Hobby or career? Did you ever get to delve into Conficker's code?

Click to expand...

Hobby. My main goals were

1) to study in-the-wild attack methods, and proactive defenses against them (successful, resulting in my Windows security guide in my sig)

2) to submit malware samples to the security vendors (successful) and get insight on detection rates of "fresh" malware right at the moment when it actually matters (successful).

3) and to help other people in real time by doing SiteAdvisor reviewing (unsuccessful, because SiteAdvisor proved to be worthless against quickly-evolving threats, and often worthless against static threats as well :thumbsdow).


I'm not l33t enough to disassemble code, the best I've ever managed is some basic detangling of obfuscated JavaScript. But the code holds little interest, I'm more interested in the broad elimination of the attack vectors. Conficker, for example, is just one of countless thousands of network/AutoPlay worms, and yet they all can be rendered helpless by simple proactive countermeasures.


Back on topic, I much prefer building my own computer instead of buying a Happy Meal™ system off the shelf. For those considering building your own system, you might find this photo guide useful. I admit the hardware in the guide is old stuff, but most of the core knowledge still applies.

Here is mine.

CPU-Intel Q6600 OC'ed to 3.2Ghz with a Zerotherm Zen 120mm cooler.
MOBO-Gigabyte EP45-UD3P.
Ram-Patriot Viper running at 1:1 with CPU.
GPU-MSI ATI 4670HD 512MB slightly OC'ed.
PSU-Xigmatex 750W Crossfire\SLI ready.
HD-Western Digital Caviar Blue 640GB.
CD\DVD-Some old Sony since both of my Samsungs died.:scowl:
Case-NZXT Alpha.
OS-Windows Vista Ultimate 32Bit and Windows XP Home 32Bit dual-boot.


It will not run the lastest and greatest games maxed out but I can play Half-Life maxed with no problems.



Mike.

Ill have to dig down a bit to see what exactly i have running in my primary machine. i recently built one witch is more of a computer that i use to do things i do not want my primary pc to do while i am playing games (converting dvds, downloads, ect)

"Kuma" AMD 7750 CPU clocked at 3.55ghz running at 1.6volts (!) front side bus a 209mhz and multiplyer is at 17.
Some old thermaltake cpu fan that makes my cpu run around 71c under load. (pushin it!)
2x2gb of el cheapo RAM
Biostar ta690g mobo
no name 600 watt psu
wd caviar green 500gb drive
some case i scored from one of my friends computer junkyard (could have built a pc from that stuff alone!)\

All in all a cheap little "slave" pc that gets used quite a bit. CPU wont last long, but hey, she runs fast, very fast. i can convert a movie at around 180-190 frames per second.

i am still thinking about overclocking those dual 2.8ghz xenons in my server. dont know if i could do it though

Clock speed isn't everything- you can OC a P4 to 8.0 with dry ice coolant but any stock, recent CPU beats it.

Is that crysis @ 120fps with full eye candy? AA on?

I have a 30" LCD & still reluctant on getting 2x 295's.
Will the extra card be worth it? Maybe for crysis only?

Is there going to be a 8core gaming cpu soon? I like to do video editing aswell.

Flashanator said:

Is that crysis @ 120fps with full eye candy? AA on?

I have a 30" LCD & still reluctant on getting 2x 295's.
Will the extra card be worth it? Maybe for crysis only?

Is there going to be a 8core gaming cpu soon? I like to do video editing aswell.

Click to expand...

I cannot find the link to save myself but I distinctly remember Intel releasing some new sort of 8 core CPU to the professional market and saying they would soon become available to everyone- can't wait, really.

Also, yeah, AA was on.

The second GPU is definitely worth it if only because you can render absolutely insanely fast with Gelato, and you're pretty much covered as far as hardware for 5 years even if you're not gonna upgrade.

mechBgon said:

I'm not l33t enough to disassemble code, the best I've ever managed is some basic detangling of obfuscated JavaScript. But the code holds little interest, I'm more interested in the broad elimination of the attack vectors. Conficker, for example, is just one of countless thousands of network/AutoPlay worms, and yet they all can be rendered helpless by simple proactive countermeasures.


Back on topic, I much prefer building my own computer instead of buying a Happy Meal™ system off the shelf. For those considering building your own system, you might find this photo guide useful. I admit the hardware in the guide is old stuff, but most of the core knowledge still applies.

Click to expand...

This wasn't the case with Conficker at all- if you never found out, it first generated a list of 50,000 websites randomly domained and randomly named, the names encrypted within two shells, and any updates it needed were hosted on those. After those were decrypted and bought (using thirty grand, mind you) the next update came in from a few websites which weren't bought and shut down, for some reason. This encrypted ANOTHER list and used the same method, except the encryption was many times more advanced. It turned out to be a decoy and the worm was updating itself with a peer to peer network. It didn't do anything important except install some adware, probably at the expense of another criminal who wanted some cheap cash off of the Conficker flood.

It was a gorgeous piece of code, really, it even hopped from flashdrive to PC and vice-versa, and as a precaution it installed a patch on the computer that hosted it to patch the hole it got in through- so no other malware would interfere.

Desktop:
20" iMac 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Wireless Apple keyboard
Wireless Mighty Mouse

Laptop:
eee PC 1008HA white

We don't do anything heavy, just web and photos. Mainly into style, I guess. :shrug: Mac OS X is super stable and fast. I go months at a time without turning off my computer even though a cold start is only about 20-25sec.

You're saying you only got an Imac because of the case? Have you seen BMW's case?

Lumenshroom said:

You're saying you only got an Imac because of the case? Have you seen BMW's case?

Click to expand...

I like OS X and iPhoto is a pretty good application. Mac hardware is also nice. I like the fact that the power cord is the only cord in my setup. I'm not into gaming and my hard-core numerical modeling days are behind me, so I don't need very much horsepower these days. At least not in a computer.

Lumenshroom said:

This wasn't the case with Conficker at all- if you never found out, it first generated a list of 50,000 websites randomly domained and randomly named, the names encrypted within two shells, and any updates it needed were hosted on those. After those were decrypted and bought (using thirty grand, mind you) the next update came in from a few websites which weren't bought and shut down, for some reason. This encrypted ANOTHER list and used the same method, except the encryption was many times more advanced. It turned out to be a decoy and the worm was updating itself with a peer to peer network. It didn't do anything important except install some adware, probably at the expense of another criminal who wanted some cheap cash off of the Conficker flood.

Click to expand...

You're discussing the update mechanism the Conficker worm would use after infecting a system. I'm discussing the methods the worm uses to attack, and pointing out that they've been used many times before, and will be used many times again. It's simple to proactively neutralize them, once and for all; in fact, I have a Conficker-specific guide if anyone's interested in an overview: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=76&threadid=2268929


I used to do a bit of video editing and 3D modelling, and I must say, dual-core and multi-core processors are incredible assets Wonderful to see how the pricing has come down.

Desktop:

Early 2008 model Mac Pro:

Dual Quad Core 2.8 GHz Intel 5400 series 64 bit Harpertown processors
10GB of 800MHz ECC FB-DIMM RAM
ATI Radeon 2600 graphics card, but will update to 4870 or GTX285 soon, probably--it isn't a gaming rig, though! It's mainly for my wife and photohop / graphic design.
Two WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200RPM hard drives (I love these things--two plater, very fast, SATA2, highly reliable)

The Mac Pro is my dream desktop computer. The internal design is just amazing. And it's got two big 120mm fans on the front, which draws a lot of air in but at a low linear rate. It's very, very quiet, which I appreciate. The air goes straight through and out the back. The hard drives are in sleds that are easy to mount drives to, and which slide in and out just as neat as can be. The FB-DIMM's are on two memory riser cards which are pulled out completely for super easy access to the FB-DIMM's, and which just snap back in. The case is solid aluminum, and I find it very attractive, but others differ. YMMV. It has two USB ports on the front, three on the back, a FW400 front and back, a FW800 front and back, two ethernet ports in the back, and there are four PCIe 2.0 slots, the first one double-width for graphics cards. It's got a respectable power supply as well, but I don't think it would power two super-capable graphics cards, but I could be wrong. As I said, it's not a gaming rig. It's a server grade workstation that will take up to 32 GB of RAM. Which thrills me. I've noticed that the first limitation old computers come up against is not enough RAM, more so than even processing power. I bought it at a discount, after the 2009 Mac Pro's came out. I understand the appeal of designing your own PC from components, but if I did that, I'd design a Mac Pro, pretty much, so that's what I bought.

Laptop:

Pre-Late 2008 Macbook Pro, 15" matte screen, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, @GB RAM, GeForce 8600M GT graphics card with 256MB VRAM. This MBP model is the one right before the unibody ones with the chiclet style keyboard and glossy screens. And I love love love it.

Netbook

16GB 2nd Gen iPod touch.

Whats the most high speed RAM I should or can get with quad core i7 & 2x295's on 64bit vista PC?

The most my local store offers is 6GB (3x2GB) DDR1600

I want alot because I'm always multitasking alot of programs, & programs like after effects can never have enough RAM.