Project Gorthaur

Prologue

I have fought a lot of battles with my current desktop computer, Defiant, as anyone who reads my blog probably knows. As Windows computing goes, the system has been relatively "low maintenance", requiring a "mere" dozen or so complete reinstalls of the operating systems and all my applications, over its useful life. As a bit of personal history, Defiant first came on line June 21, 2000, and I fought it for months to get all my applications and games working. I had to swap out motherboards, twiddle with versions of the VIA chipset drivers, manually update the GART driver for my graphics card, and generally go through seven kinds of hell to achieve some semblance of stability under Windows 98.

Then in early 2001, I rebuilt the system and had even more trouble, discovering eventually that the source of the majority of my problems was the ABit KT7A-RAID motherboard and its nasty VIA chipset. I later rebuilt the system again in October, 2002, because of a near-unbelievable cascade of failures. I've since upgraded the audio, swapped video cards several times (switching to ATI, buying NVIDIA when ATI couldn't seem to ship product, and then going back to ATI when NVIDIA's drivers stayed broken), and installed some wonderful pro-audio hardware. In short, Defiant has changed so much over the last five-plus years that it probably isn't fair to call it by the same name.

Whatever the case, the time has finally come for me to build another complete system. In its current configuration, Defiant is simply too CPU-limited and too susceptible to thermal overload to run today's games well enough. At the center of both issues is its Athlon XP 3200 CPU, which is more than two year old technology. No matter how capable a heatsink/fan I use, no matter how many case fans I've employed, I just can't keep the system running stably in its default configuration when playing Battlefield 2 or F.E.A.R. No, to achieve stability in those games, I have to throttle back the front side bus from 200 MHz. to 185 MHz. That's not a huge sacrifice, to be sure, but it's a pretty noticeable drop when the CPU isn't capable of keeping up in the first place.

Decisions, Decisions

Since it is time for a new computer, I find myself with a good opportunity for a new naming system as well. I was more than a little bit Star Trek crazed in my youth, so all the machines on my home network have names any fan will recognize: K7, Enterprise, Excelsior, Defiant, Reliant, etc. I shan't be straying from Geekdom when I tell you that my new system is to be Gorthaur the Cruel. In the early planning stages, I decided I wanted a computer that would chew up and spit out any game I installed on it today and for at least one year into the future.

But that by itself wasn't enough. I didn't want a system that would merely run my games and applications. No, I wanted a system that would be downright mean to software, a system that would shuttle unworthy bits through its pristine logic with clearly discernable contempt. I wanted the kind of system that would arrogantly force its own themes into the music of the Ainur, and thus my concept for Gorthaur the Cruel, destroyer of software, was born.

The main problem was that I didn't want to take out a second mortgage to fund such a project. Thankfully, my home business has been blessed with a couple of good contracts over the last year or two, which have enabled me to stash away more than enough to achieve my goals. I was hoping to spend about $1,700 to $2,000 on the system, but the final number will probably be more like $2,500 when all is said and done. To be honest, I've spent roughly $3,000 up front, but that doesn't take into account the roughly-one-hundred dollars of rebates or the several-hundred dollars I should be able to make selling old components on EBay. I get ahead of myself with all that money-talk.

ATI or NVIDIA?

To begin, I knew I wanted a system capable of dual video cards, if not, in fact, a system with dual video cards. So my first decision was whether to go with NVIDIA's SLI or ATI's Crossfire, which really boils down to a choice between ATI or NVIDIA. Let me just say that it wasn't an easy choice. I've gone back and forth between NVIDIA and ATI several times over the last couple of years, and in every case I've ended up coming back to ATI for better performance and, far more important to me, better overall driver compatibility and support. So I really wanted to stick with ATI if at all possible. It's not that I'm an ATI "fanboy", or anything so silly, it's just that I've had better experiences overall with ATI technology.

But, frail and flawed creature that I am, I don't really want to wait another couple of months before ATI pulls out its collective thumb and puts its best technology on the shelves. I couldn't help but chuckle when I read this Anandtech article on ATI's Crossfire technology today. The author is clearly very excited about ATI technology, and he is just as eager to tell us that ATI won every single benchmark in direct comparison with NVIDIA, but he can't provide us any hard data! Why is that, you ask? Because ATI's products are all still largely paper/vapor-ware after months of pre-release and release announcements! Oh, to be sure, I can buy an ATI Crossfire motherboard today, and I could buy previous-generation Crossfire video cards. But I can't find a single ATI X1800 XT video card in stock on any site today and, even if I could, the corresponding Crossfire "master" cards aren't even announced yet!

I had to laugh at the article because it is positively absurd, not to mention a huge disservice for one's readers, to write an article that draws conclusions but presents no data, particularly when comparing products that exist in abundance with products that aren't available in retail channels or don't even exist yet. I like the Anandtech site a lot, and I read it all the time, but I have long since learned to take what they post with a grain of salt. In this case, I'm dismissing the article altogether. I have no doubt that ATI's X1800-generation Crossfire technology might well prove a better performer than NVIDIA's 7800-era SLI technology, but real products simply aren't available for purchase. Trust me, that means a lot to a guy who wants to have his nice new system ready for Christmas gaming.

Thus, despite my unhappy recent history with NVIDIA, I'm giving them another chance. I really wanted to find a newer motherboard, but I've settled upon the DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR. Given that motherboard, I'm going with one of the new Athlon 64 x2 dual-core CPUs and two BFG 7800 GTX OC video cards. Yes, that's two of NVIDIA's best offerings, so I'm planning ahead for good airflow and a great power supply. This round goes to NVIDIA. To ATI I say this: I love your products, but you have to ship them before I'll even consider them.

I'm not the only one to notice that NVIDIA has been kicking ass with all their recent launches, while ATI can't seem to get even a comparative handful of their latest and greatest cards into the retail channel. ATI really needs to stop fumbling product launches and focus on producing working hardware in quantity. It's simply not enough to be the king of paper/vapor-ware benchmarks, folks; a company must also follow up on its cool, pre-release press with actual, shipping goods. 'Nuff said.

The Final Solution

At any rate, I did a ton of digging around on web sites, reading reviews, chatting up people whose knowledge and opinion I respect, and generally nosing around to find good deals on the right stuff. In the final analysis, I settled on the following components for Gorthaur. I'm including links to the vendors from whom I purchased, not because they're necessarily the best vendors out there, nor because I'm getting any money or other compensation by doing so. I'm providing the links only to make it easier for my readers to examine the same products from the very sites I purchased. Without further disclaimers, the following are the components I ordered on Monday, November 14, 2005.

Those prices omit a couple of significant factors in the purchase decisions. First, I bought most of the components at Newegg.com because they have always given me exemplary service and turnaround time on shipping. To be clear, I would normally buy as much of my system from Fry's Electronics as possible, but they simply don't have the components I want this time around. I checked with them first, and they told me they couldn't get a couple of the components at all, whereas others wouldn't be on the shelves until December. I didn't want to wait that long, so I decided to go with Newegg.com instead.

Unfortunately, even though BFG Technologies is advertising a special bundle of Call of Duty 2 (CoD2), and even though the web page devoted to the offer clearly lists Newegg.com as a participating vendor, I could neither find the bundle on the Newegg.com site nor get one of their sales associates to honor it. So when it came to buying the video cards, TigerDirect.com won my business. The cards were a little more expensive coming from them (about ten dollars each), but I should be receiving two copies of CoD2, one of which I'll sell to a friend or on EBay to make up the difference, and I'll be saving roughly $79 in sales tax as well. In short, it made better sense for me to buy the video cards from TigerDirect.com.

Finally, there are a couple of special offers and rebates to be considered. Buying the Maxtor drive from TigerDirect.com gives me a fifty dollar rebate that I couldn't get anywhere else, making the net item price $84.99, whereas buying the CPU and memory at Newegg.com nets me a free copy of Nero 7 Ultra Edition and a thirty-two dollar rebate respectively. Oh, and I'll also get a free subscription to PC Magazine, because of my large-ish Newegg.com order, which I can subsequently cancel to receive another nineteen dollars back.

All things considered, the system clearly isn't on the bleeding edge of technology, or even the cutting edge for that matter. The power supply is absolutely top of the line, however, as is the audio card, and the video card is almost top of the line—in keeping with true Phil Luck™, the 512 MB version of the NVIDIA 7800 series was announced less than ten minutes after I placed the above orders—whereas the other system components are merely good enough. Sure, I could have bought a faster CPU, I could have spent a lot more on über-fast memory, and I could have bought two faster hard drives with an eye toward a killer SATA RAID 0 setup. But those changes would have pushed the price up into the $4000 - $5000 range, and I'd much rather spend that money on games, audio gear, and future upgrades.

The only thing that disappoints me, at this juncture, is that I couldn't find exactly the right case. I wanted a system case that (1) has a removable motherboard tray, (2) uses 120 mm fans, (3) does not have its own power supply, and (4) came in a black finish while being aluminum for good heat dissipation. I couldn't find any case that satisfied those requirements. I could find cases with removable trays, but those either didn't use big fans or had their own, dinky power supplies. Similarly, I could find plenty of cases with big fans, but none that had a removable tray and came without a power supply. I eventually settled on the Wave Master because it satisfied requirements (1) and (3) while being roomy enough to accommodate the Zalman CPU cooler—or at least I've read forum posts from people claiming to have it installed and working nicely.

Epilogue

For the moment I remain in a holding pattern, waiting for all the components to arrive. As usual, Newegg.com has absolutely kicked ass in shipping product quickly and efficiently. Even though I selected their cheap, three-day shipping I received all but the memory last night. Seriously, I paid a whopping thirty-three dollars in shipping for all the items I purchased from them; to receive all but one item the next day is great in my book. That's one of the two big reasons I shop at Newegg.com.

As to the rest of Gorthaur's parts, the video cards have shipped and should be arriving by Friday. That's a bit slower than I expected from three-day shipping, given that I placed the order early Monday morning, but it doesn't bother me as long as they're here by the weekend. The power supply is the big unknown. I didn't realize that Best Byte Computers was going to farm out my order directly to PC Power & Cooling, which means they can't (or perhaps won't) give me a tracking number. For that matter, I didn't realize that PC Power & Cooling is apparently located in the city "next door" to my day job; otherwise, I would have driven out there and bought it locally. I expect I'll have the power supply pretty quickly, being so close, but shipping can be something of a mystery.

Once everything has arrived, I'm going to proceed very carefully and deliberately. I'm going to do my very best to get this system right the first time. I don't want any of the monkeying around I've had to do in the past, so I've already downloaded the latest certified chipset drivers, video drivers, and everything else I expect I'll need. I've already gone through quite a few forum posts about various problems people have encountered with the motherboard, and I've got the list of solutions close at hand. In short, I'm about as prepared as I can be for building Gorthaur.

Step one is going to be getting the motherboard, CPU, one memory stick, and one video card installed, so that I can run DOS-based memory tests for a while. Once both memory sticks have been proven, I'll worry about getting the drives in place and getting Windows XP installed. Once I've got the system booting into a stock Windows XP SP2 installation, I'll take a drive image to simplify future installations and then get the other video card, audio hardware, and all the proper drivers installed. At that point I'll commence torture tests, running multiple instances of utilities to stress the CPU, memory, video, and audio systems until I'm confident that everything is working.

Given my history with such things, I can assume only that I'll have a solid month's worth of nightmares along the way, but I'm really hoping that all the effort I've put into planning and selecting components will pay off for me this time around. I'm really hoping that the torture tests will validate the system up front, and I'll simply be able to install some games and have some fun. Interested parties should keep an eye on the Phil's Thoughts web site and/or my blog for the details sure to follow. Wish me good luck, folks!

11/16/2005