My New Computer: Cambria
Well, my system arrived Monday, and I basically had it up and running by Monday night, but even nearly a week later there is still a lot of configuration to do, mostly because I’m so busy at work (I even worked 11 hours today…). Strangely enough, after working on other people’s computers for 9 hours, I don’t always feel like coming home and fighting mine. After careful consideration, I dubbed the system “Cambria”, since my laptop has been “Coheed” for at least a year now.
The install went almost flawlessly, except for some confusion over the power plugs going into the motherboard, which prevented my video from working for a good 30 mins before I figured out what was going on. Also, nVidia’s integrated firewall was creating some weird networking issues with me (connectivity completely cutting in and out), but everything works fine after disabling it. Since I’m NATted, a firewall isn’t a huge priority for me right now, but will eventually probably install Zonealarm like I used to.
Oh yes, this system IS running Windows XP, for a couple reasons; one being that life without Photoshop wasn’t treating me well, and a system this powerful deserves to have some games thrown at it. I’m sorry, the Linux purists often don’t like to admit it, but Linux sucks for gaming. I’m not a HUGE PC gamer, but I may as well use this 7800GT for something. Whenever I can get around to replacing the CPU in my old system (assuming no damage to the motherboard was done), it will become my primary Linux computer, and this one will remain my digital photography/video and gaming workstation.
I also decided that since my old system isn’t going to be up for a while, and since I had a spare IDE channel, I threw my old hard drives in here, keeping my 300gb “shared” drive (ROMs, software, movies, TV shows, etc etc) as is, and dedicating my smaller 80gb to MP3 storage. Combined with my new SATA drives, my computer sports just under 1tb of combined storage. In theory, 980gbs, but hard drive manufacturers always round drive sizes up, and Windows steals 7 0r 8mbs…total USABLE disk space is 911gbs. I have recently ditched Bit Tornado in favor of uTorrent, and this incredibly powerful (yet lightweight) app has been doing an excellent job helping me fill my terabyte.
I’ve been so busy at work, I really haven’t had time to tie up cables inside, or really even take it for a spin. I have installed 90% of the applications I normally use, and I can say that Photoshop is a dream on this system, especially managing large folders of images in Adobe Bridge. Now that working with so many images at once is tolerable, I will be working Bridge into my workflow much more (too bad the purchase of my new camera has been pushed so far into the future…). Other than that, I threw Doom III on real quick which used to push my old system to the limit. If there was a tweak on the net to get Doom III to run faster, I was using it, and I still generally ran at 800×600 on medium settings. Just out of curiosity, before trying anything else, I set it to 1280×1024 on “ultra” quality with 2x anti-aliasing and the game ran beautifully. There was the occasional hiccup, but Doom III is an entirely different experience now, and I may actually FINISH the game, now that I get more than 10 frames per second when more than one enemy is onscreen.
Other perks on this video card include S-Video and Composite in/out (my old card only had svideo out), as well as HDTV support. My motherboard has 6 channel sound, as well as digital audio out. Also, not only did I specifically pick a case that had front USB ports, there is not a single USB 1.1 port to be found on the system. I HATED crawling behind my desk and fumbling around in the dust/cable rat’s nest/dark to stick a USB drive in, only to get back up in the chair (after invariably bumping my head) to find my computer telling me “This device can perform faster”, since I always forgot which ports on the back were 1.1 and which were 2.0.
My new case has MUCH better airflow, and the case/power supply run more quietly than my old system, but I make up for it by running 4 hard drives; the new system overall is just about as loud as my old one, but I still get to sleep just fine with it (it’s not THAT loud). Also, this is my first tool-less case, and I love whoever came up with that idea. The only screws I have to worry about are the two thumbscrews holding the side panel on.
Since I haven’t had time to really set it up (it’s not even physically located in its final position), I still haven’t gotten pictures. Once it’s in its final resting place, and I have my internal cabling bound up, as well as all cables running TO it grouped and zip-tied, I will be getting some pics up. In the meantime, here’s some internal shots.
March 19th, 2006 at 3:26 am
Hmmm…
So, about how much pr0n can your computer hold?
March 19th, 2006 at 10:47 am
Seven.
March 19th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Damn, that’s SO much space. How much of that is free though? Half? I know you’ve got a shitload of tv shows.
March 20th, 2006 at 8:53 am
Caleb, I hope you’re not talking about pr0n…