Jabo

Looks good MT, three points though; 1) I suspect that a 450W power supply will have to run maxed out to power the kit you're proposing, thus shortening it's lifespan - I suggest a 650W absolute minimum - much bigger if you want to go SLI later (maybe 800 - 1000W) 2) Graphics card is pretty old now, what would they charge you for one of the new Nvidia or ATI cards? 3) The whole thing looks a little light on cooling - You might want to see if they can shoehorn an intake fan in at the front of the case Other than that though - nice looking rig, especially with the i7 and DDR3 RAM ~S~ Jabo

Have you got a webcam or something like that plugged in Andrew. I ask because on my system the webcam mike is the default, and overrides the headset mic (possibly because the webcam is USB - I dunno). I have to deselect the webcam mike in TS and in the Windows sound settings too otherwise my headset mike doesn't work ~S~ Jabo

Maybe, but it's still icky.

New Legends 09 website up! http://www.airshowbuzz.com/duxford/ Some really nice pics and videos from previous shows, plus info about this years installment. Check out the related videos link - especially 'Ed Shipley completes Bolero II'

Tuesday, Thursday & Sunday are our normal nights, but BA runs a server on Wednesday (generally starts about 23:00 GMT), and BG hosts ubizoo coops on Saturday nights too. Not sure how many of these you know about... ~S~ Jabo

Vac and compressor for me - I've just written a business case for getting both in at work - we go thru so many cans of air I reckon the compressor will pay for itself inside a financial quarter. Mind you, the state of some of the machines we get in...Urgh. I've taken to using a mask and gloves when handling the worst cases. Given what the major component in 'dust' is, I reckon that's just a sensible precaution. ~S~ Jabo

Lovely. Hot chick too...

I'll send you a contact phone number via PM deskpilot - that way you can find out where we are when you arrive - try to get to the Saturday show if you can m8. ~S~ guitarman, how're you keeping Nick? Will you be joining us this year? - Look at the weather we had last year - No Met Officer you see! ~S~ Jabo

Well, abandoned the Velociraptor idea in favour of a pair of 500gb WD RAID III SATA II drives currently running RAID 1(Mirrored) in the PC (the pair cost less than a 150GB VR). This setup now gives me a 5.9 in the Windows Experience Index (overall 5.5 from 5.2 - cpu's the bottleneck now

Regretably Jim, I could fill your 74GB drive with my photos, let alone the 50GB of music that I have, plus iso's of all my software etc etc etc. At present, I need around 200GB of storage, let alone the OS and installed software. I have no idea about the customs duty other than "a lot" LOL

That's what the thread was originally about Jedi, I hijacked it to ask a question about hard disk drives...

Maybe I've missed the point here, but what's the point of shelling out for a Velociraptor when a bog-standard SATA II drive hits the same 300MBps data transfer rate? So it's just the seek time which is quicker? Confused of Coventry

D'you think it's worth the hassle Jim? I'm not sure how much difference it'll make to my PC - The HDD is the bottleneck at present, but perhaps I'd be better off waiting for the prices to fall here and just getting a big standard SATA to tide me over... ~S~ Jabo

Wonder if I could possibly impose on one of my fellow DDz on the other side of the herring pond...I have a requirement (OK, call it 'want') for a WD Velociraptor (pref 300GB) and they're a LOT cheaper over there (despite the exchange rate). Do you chaps know of any suppliers over there who'll ship to the UK? I know Newegg are down to £150, but won't ship Any suppliers cheaper? ~S~ Jabo

One thing that we don't seem to have touched on much is the subject of cable management and the difference that can make to the internal temps of the hardware - Having had a serious go at this in my new case, I'm finding that both the CPU and GPU temps are significantly lower under load than before - Typically the CPU now runs at a steady 38 deg C as opposed to mid-40s and the GPU is some 10 deg cooler at 45 deg C and this is in a smaller case. Worth spending the time on I think. ~S~ Jabo

Now that's interesting, 'cos we're running cards with the same chipset (Mine's a factory over-clocked BFG unit) but the manual included with the card is very definite about not using the card with PCIe 1.0 and no mention of any sort of caveat re: SLI. It's not going to cost me much sleep given that my mainboard is running PCIe 2.0 anyway, but thanks for the intel. ~S~ Jabo

Yep, I use a grounded mat with sits on the bench top and a wriststrap which connects me to the mat. Probably overkill, but I always felt that was preferable to blowing things up. ~S~ Jabo

Yep use CPUID myself - nice little app.

Are you sure about this Falconise? - AKAIK my NV card won't run in a PCIe 1.0 slot. Admittedly I've not tried it, but then again testing anything other than the recommended solution with 180UKPs-worth of hardware is not my idea of a Good Plan.

Ditto - Nice to watch my flaming wreckage for 30 mins whilt I'm waiting for the next mission.

ROFL - You...You...You wouldn't dare call me drun' if I wash shober

Just downloading it now Crash - I'll let you know how I get on. Incidentally, you don't have to register on their forum, I just went on and found the post as a guest, and clicked the download link ~S~ Jabo