Anyone else here built their own computer?

[jwb]

Hawaii is a great place to live if you can stay there permanently. They make it hard to live there even for Yanks on the  mainland. Guess they have to keep the numbers down on that island paradise.

What are you talking about?

If you have a green card or are a citizen you can live in whatever state you want.

[Vince B]

Maybe I was thinking about the University of Hawaii. Anyway, not easy to emigrate there. Do you have your Green Card?

[jwb]

Maybe I was thinking about the University of Hawaii. Anyway, not easy to emigrate there. Do you have your Green Card?

Yeah I married an American and had a kid. Just got my permanent green card after 2 years as conditional resident.

Not sure about UH. I know it is cheap for native Hawaiians but only about 9% ever graduate.

Honolulu has the greatest variation in wealth of any place I have ever been.

Awesome weather though it never gets cold nor very hot. 27-33 every day. Still don't know Fahrenheit!

[Vince B]

Have you seen Ledward Kaapana perform? Sensational guitarist in slack key.

I'd love to return to the Islands to photograph the place. Beautiful and colourful.

Do you live in Honolulu? If so do you hang out at any of the beaches there?

[Nomad]

I see.  Well... that sucks

Anyway, I agree with adonis.  With a computer like that, no reason not to game!

You mean I'll need a liquid cooling system if I go mini-itx?  Anyway, thanks for the feedback.  I've 99% given up on the idea by now.  Finding a nice-looking case like the Define R4 just made the decision that much easier.  I'm planning on picking up a 4670k + GTX 770 4gb.  I do want to go too crazy... I'd rather just reign in the spending a little and upgrade more frequently.

There's one thing that still gives me pause.  While looking for the thinnest bezel monitors, I read that some zero bezel monitors were shown off at a recent trade show, and are possibly going to make it to market this year.  If I could get a real zero bezel triple screen setup within the year, that would definitely be worth waiting for.

ooohh...if thats all then you might be able to get away with an minitx. I was thinking that you were going to go 4770k & dual 770s or a GTX 780 if you wanted to drive 5760x1080 for all games. This also depends on whether you want to overclock your cpu and or the graphics card.

[jwb]

Have you seen Ledward Kaapana perform? Sensational guitarist in slack key.

I'd love to return to the Islands to photograph the place. Beautiful and colourful.

Do you live in Honolulu? If so do you hang out at any of the beaches there?

We take our daughter to the beach right outside the Hilton in Waikiki at sunset quite a bit.

It's a good place to live if you really like your privacy like I do. Nobody cares who you are or where you are from since they just assume you are are tourist if you are white and speak with an accent.

Racial tension can be quite high if you don't live in a good area.

[DroppingPlates]

Yep, I've made 2 desktops. Why would I pay 3x more, or pay for things that I don't need like advanced graphic cards? 

[Vince B]

It's a good place to live if you really like your privacy like I do. Nobody cares who you are or where you are from since they just assume you are are tourist if you are white and speak with an accent.

Racial tension can be quite high if you don't live in a good area.

Reverse prejudice can happen, too. Anyway, when I visited there in the late 60s I was surprised how many people of Japanese origin lived there. They kept the business scene quite formal unlike the casual scene just about everywhere else. Being in a tourist city is great for taking photos because no one seems to bother. Have you been on any of the other islands there? There is a lot of different scenery I hear.

[rocket]

4K is quite expensive.

For that I'd be after either the 4670k or the 6 core Intel cpu around the same price.

I'd also expect something over a 570, but I'm guessing you're not exactly gaming (and GPU has very little to do with photoshop work).

Massive overkill on the power supply. I have a gtx680 and I'm running nothing like 1200 watts.

"High fidelity" sound card needs "high fidelity" speakers and if I had 4k to burn on a box, I'd be looking at maybe half that going on speakers.  When I did, I did exactly that and boy am I not sorry about that.

7 external drives is terrible, you should have got a QNAP (or alternative).

[Vince B]

We all accumlate devices over the years and that is true of external hard drives. I have 16 of the critters so when I hook them all up I want to make sure I have enough power, etc. Besides I wanted the new connectors on the Cooler Master Silent Pro 1200. Makes working inside the computer much easier.

I have a good speaker system but wanted the Hi Fi card for head phones. When making the decisions I had to juggle price, availability and quality. Of course, I prefer the state of the art but such components cost double or more. The motherboard I wanted was too popular so unavailable for immediate pickup. Sydney is quite good for parts but few keep a lot of stock. All the best places were run by Asian looking people. I had to get a network adapter card because my computer said I needed one. Easy enough to add a wireless USB device and go. I learned a lot about computers doing this and no longer am awed by them. Well, putting them together isn't rocket science. They are still marvels of technology.

[rocket]

For one thing, a hd uses approximately 12W (max) per device.

For another, most of those external drives are likely powered by external power adapters.

And if they aren't they are subject to the very low USB bus power requirements that exist (from memory up to 5V 1A - ie 5W).

[Army of One]

I wanted to upgrade my computer but couldn't find what I was looking for. So I decided to replace my motherboard and CPU. During installation I decided to replace the lot and keep my old computer as a spare.

Computers look complicated but are really components put together so it isn't that difficult to do. I got a Cooler Master case with many blue coloured fans. What else! New 1200 watts power supply.

Asus motherboard that accepts up to 64 Gb of RAM. I have 48 Gb installed to do photo processing and panoramas. 2011 pin CPU is required. A good graphics card as well. Then I got a Solid State Drive as well.

That was a pain to install because I had to reinstall Windows 7 then call Microsoft to get my numbers approved. Lots of USB 3 ports with hubs. 7 Tb hard drives with about 30 Tb external drives. 16 external drives in total.

New high end Asus sound card for high fidelity. DVD player of course. Really simple and straightforward to assemble. I didn't need any help and did it all by myself, like I do building gym equipment.

Works well. However, lots of problems installing all the software and sorting everything out. Finally, after a couple of weeks everything seems to work fine.

It was necessary to have a connection to the internet to get help for problems. My iPad saved the day there. Cost about $4000 for everything plus the software and new external drives.

On what planet do you need 48gb for photo processing? ( been building pcs for 20 years)

[_aj_]

Two words: cable management.

The last one that I built for my son looks like a spider web in there. God help me if I need to swap out components. It's decent, an i5 with 16gb of RAM and an decent ASUS accelerated video card for about $750.

[Vince B]

On what planet do you need 48gb for photo processing? ( been building pcs for 20 years)

I am a bodybuilder so tend to overdo things. Not protein or supplements. I sometimes do huge panoramas and if they have over 100 raw photos the files can be huge. Over 5 Gb. If there are 10 rows of 12 photos that challenges most processors. So, yes, overkill but I now can't blame my RAM. 16 would have been sufficient and 32 more than enough.

[DroppingPlates]

Why is it that esp old men like to hold long conversations about computers?

[dostu]

I am a bodybuilder so tend to overdo things. Not protein or supplements. I sometimes do huge panoramas and if they have over 100 raw photos the files can be huge. Over 5 Gb. If there are 10 rows of 12 photos that challenges most processors. So, yes, overkill but I now can't blame my RAM. 16 would have been sufficient and 32 more than enough.

What software do you use for your panoramas?

[Vince B]

The best I have used, having tried them all, is Autopano Giga. This software allows all manner of editing and re-editing. Tutorials available as well. It handles the largest panoramas.

Sometimes I will use the one in Photoshop.

[dostu]

The best I have used, having tried them all, is Autopano Giga. This software allows all manner of editing and re-editing. Tutorials available as well. It handles the largest panoramas.

Sometimes I will use the one in Photoshop.

Thanx.
Also I've noticed you have a Canon 5D MK II. Do you have an EF 17-40 F/4L and if so what do you think of it.

[_bruce_]

IPC wise Intel has the edge, they have the best engineers and production facilities. Their Intel C/C++/Fortran compilers are the icing on the cake -> Vince, should you ever develop your own path finding algorithm for white vans evading the police... use these tools... it's C on steroids.

AMD was cool when they had the A64 as their flagship product. They've officially entered neckbeard territory where it's cool to root for the "underdog" - that funnily doesn't exist anymore.

[The True Adonis]

We all accumlate devices over the years and that is true of external hard drives. I have 16 of the critters so when I hook them all up I want to make sure I have enough power, etc. Besides I wanted the new connectors on the Cooler Master Silent Pro 1200. Makes working inside the computer much easier.

I have a good speaker system but wanted the Hi Fi card for head phones. When making the decisions I had to juggle price, availability and quality. Of course, I prefer the state of the art but such components cost double or more. The motherboard I wanted was too popular so unavailable for immediate pickup. Sydney is quite good for parts but few keep a lot of stock. All the best places were run by Asian looking people. I had to get a network adapter card because my computer said I needed one. Easy enough to add a wireless USB device and go. I learned a lot about computers doing this and no longer am awed by them. Well, putting them together isn't rocket science. They are still marvels of technology.

Most motherboards already have very high quality onboard audio (8 channel) to where you would not need a Sound Card at all.  I didn`t realize people still bought soundcards really anymore.

[Vince B]

Thanx.
Also I've noticed you have a Canon 5D MK II. Do you have an EF 17-40 F/4L and if so what do you think of it.

I have a 17-40 that I used twice. I have the 16-35, 8-15, 24-105, 70-200 F/4is, 70-300Lis, 50 macro, 100 macro, 200 F2.8, 400 F5.6, 500 F4, two extenders.
Two 5 D II, 60D, NEX7, OMD-EM5, adapters and special additional lenses. An expensive hobby for sure. I use the NEX7 a lot. Sharp sensor and great for closeups.

[manuelsonn]

I have a 17-40 that I used twice. I have the 16-35, 8-15, 24-105, 70-200 F/4is, 70-300Lis, 50 macro, 100 macro, 200 F2.8, 400 F5.6, 500 F4, two extenders.
Two 5 D II, 60D, NEX7, OMD-EM5, adapters and special additional lenses. An expensive hobby for sure. I use the NEX7 a lot. Sharp sensor and great for closeups.

shouldnt u be in a home?

[jwb]

Reverse prejudice can happen, too. Anyway, when I visited there in the late 60s I was surprised how many people of Japanese origin lived there. They kept the business scene quite formal unlike the casual scene just about everywhere else. Being in a tourist city is great for taking photos because no one seems to bother. Have you been on any of the other islands there? There is a lot of different scenery I hear.

Only ever been to Maui, lived there for 2 years until six months ago. A lot more rural. Has a cool volcano you can drive up. Gets pretty cold at 10,000 feet above sea level even in Hawaii. Lived at 3000 ft up for a year was lovely and mild all the time.

[dostu]

I have a 17-40 that I used twice. I have the 16-35, 8-15, 24-105, 70-200 F/4is, 70-300Lis, 50 macro, 100 macro, 200 F2.8, 400 F5.6, 500 F4, two extenders.
Two 5 D II, 60D, NEX7, OMD-EM5, adapters and special additional lenses. An expensive hobby for sure. I use the NEX7 a lot. Sharp sensor and great for closeups.

My collection includes a 5D III, 7D, 24-105L, 100 macro, twin macro flash, 70-300EF, Sigma 150-500, 2 older "C" bodies, a few lenses to go with them and other odds and ends. Plus 2 older telescopes with T mounts - Celestron C8 (2000mm f10) and a Criterion 4000 (1200mm f12). The Criterion is used occasionally, the Celestron because of size, never.

[James28]

That's what I do for a living. Antivirus is very important what product are you running on this computer and version? Yes software can be a bitch pending license and updates.

Antivirus is NOT important unless you're old or a moron. Not run an antivirus full time since the 90's and never found a virus on the occasion I did install it and checked. Don't run dodgy executables, don't open any email attachments that came from an unknown sender, ignore popups on websites, don't install any programs unless it was developed by a reputable company. Follow those rules and use a bit of intelligence, and you'll never have any issues. However, your average person is a fucking moron therefore the proliferation of antivirus software.