Contemplating building a new rig

burned some more hardware

[jatar_k]

been a bad few months

my nvidia card left me, so I had to switch back to ATI as it's really difficult to buy an AGP card anymore.

man waiting for the driver to download right now, forgot how much low screen res sucks

I couldn't justify a new rig this moment, though I may buy a couple pieces and see

was looking at a coolermaster cosmos 1000 for a case, huge but sweet and figured I could get a 650 watt power supply to start and drop all my old gear in it.

looking at maybe an nforce 680i for motherboard, the 700s are too new, a new sound card would be nice but my old creative still does a bang up job

not sure on my chip selection yet but there's the new intel chips I saw today, who knows.

this graphics card i just bought will be no good to me but I figure I can find something sweet.

[jtara]

I bought an Nvidia 6800 (XFX) AGP a while back. You should still be able to get one. Good enough, unless you are playing games or want to run Vista.

(I have another Nvidia 6800 PCI-e on Fedora 8, and it is more than good enough for Compiz. Why does Microsoft always make you buy new hardware?)

Consider rack-mount cases. I only have two machines (one Windows, one Fedora 8) but with the UPS, UPS battery pack, switch, firewall(s), shelf for cable modem, etc. control panel for the cold-cathode lights (yea, my rack looks like a Honda...) there's only one blank panel in a 1/2-height enclosed rack cabinet.

Sure is neater than all that stuff I used to have under my desk.

Note that I don't use the tiny 1U server chassis, as they make a lot of noise. 4U Chenbros, with plenty of room for expansion cards and airflow with big fans. (120mm on the CPUs). (The bigger the fan, the less the noise.)

Mounted LCDs on the wall, discreetly hid a wiring channel behind the screens, and pulled-off the impossible - a see-through plexiglass desk with no cables visible. (Except for my non-wireless clicky keyboard.)

Clutter be gone!

[jatar_k]

that sounds sweet actually, I've thought about going the rack route but just haven't been able to wrap my head around it and my work space is never in one place for long.

the one I burned was a GeForce 6800 GS, didn't seem to be any around here. My guess is that soon enough you won't really be able to buy AGP cards, or they'll be like old ram and the price will start creeping up.

>> Good enough, unless you are playing games

that would be my thing, I'm looking forward to a nice nvidia 8800GTX or some such, though by the time a new machine hits the priority list that could be outdated too.