Post Pictures and Specifications of your computer here!

[Maleko]

Question, what those 2 massive switch like things on top left of ur desk???

[Polarman]

My computer is on a Seperate 15 Amp Breaker. The line goes directly from the breaker box directly to my desk via a jonction box. Then it is split in the 2 switches that control 2 power outlet each.

One switch controls the UPS (PC, Monitor, internet) and the speakers. The second switch controls the printer, scanner and whatever. I only open the second when i really need too.

So when after i shutdown the computer, i switch the power off. This way, i know that there's nothing sucking juice for no reason.

I feel that the computer likes it better this way. It has it's own line of electricty that's filtered by the ups to make it nice and clean.

Never notice that some people who have wierd computer problems never questions the power outlet ?

[jftuga]

My computer is on a Seperate 15 Amp Breaker. The line goes directly from the breaker box directly to my desk via a jonction box. Then it is split in the 2 switches that control 2 power outlet each.

One switch controls the UPS (PC, Monitor, internet) and the speakers. The second switch controls the printer, scanner and whatever. I only open the second when i really need too.

So when after i shutdown the computer, i switch the power off. This way, i know that there's nothing sucking juice for no reason.

I feel that the computer likes it better this way. It has it's own line of electricty that's filtered by the ups to make it nice and clean.

Never notice that some people who have wierd computer problems never questions the power outlet ?

When I built my house 10 years ago, I also had a dedicated circuit for my compter equipment. This room is now the guest bedroom, because the other guest bedroom became my daughter's bedroom three years ago. I guess I can make it my office again in about 17 years.

-John

[bonestonne]

i just got them today, and i still have plenty of wiring to perfect, but i got a single 300mm cathode and a 3 speed lighted fan for my little PC...the wires are definately tricky...i had it on my desk for a good couple of hours trying to reroute all the cables, and i got somewhere...as soon as i can clean up my makeshift job [so i can see how it looks] i'll see what i can do about pictures, this time i'll use my sisters camera...6.1megapixel...i wish i had a nice camera like that.

[Jaqie Fox]

Two words - cable management.

The first PC is my main PC, Demia.

*AMD Athlon x2 3800+ retail

*DFI Infinity (non ultra) nForce4

*eVga 256MB PCI-E 16x nVidia 6600

*2x256MB Kingston PC3200 DDR

*Seagate 7200.10 320GB 16MB cache sata2

*Ultra Wizard case No, it is not an antec case, I hate antec cases!

*Lite-On DL-DVDRW w/ lightscribe and DVDRAM in a usb2/IEEE1394a case

*Sound Blaster MP3+ USB

*Sun GDM-5410 21"

*RCA RT2500 Home Theatre headunit/amp/radio system (I *HATE* computer speakers, they sound horrible!)

*Windows XP Professional RTM (32 bit)

*Windows XP Professional x64

*FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE i386

*FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE amd64

*MS-DOS 6.22

The second PC is my server, Phobos.

note: the picture is a bit outdated

*Tyan Patriot BX dual slot 1

*2x P3 600E Slot 1

*4x256MB ECC/registered PC100 SDRAM

*200GB Western Digital WD200BB PATA

*120GB Seagate 7200.9 8MB cache PATA

*ATi Rage 128 16MB AGP

*Sil0680 PATA

*Intel Pro/100+

*SB16PCI

*old minitower case

*Windows Server 2003

The desk picture shows Toshi, my faster laptop.

Note: The desk picture is somewhat outdated, I have moved and changed the look of some of my setup as well.

*Toshiba TE2000

*P3M 1Ghz

*256MB PC133 SODIMM

*20GB IBM Travelstar

*Windows XP Professional RTM (32 bit)

Other:

*Dash (Compaq Armada E500 P3-500 BX chipset laptop w/ 40GB HDD and 256MB ram)

*Taz (Abit BP6 w/ dual celeron 433)

*Roto-Router (WRT54GSv3 w/ DDWRT) (the only penguin I *EVER* care to have in this house)

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Cable management is really easy to say when you only have 1 h/d and 1 or 2 cd/dvd drives. try 3 cd/dvd drives an internal card reader, 4 h/d's a floppy and a zip drive. (I KNOW OVERKILL, RIGHT?) Plus throw in a huge AGP card and a couple of pci cards and your really getting a headache...

[CoffeeFiend]

Cable management is really easy to say when you only have 1 h/d and 1 or 2 cd/dvd drives. try 3 cd/dvd drives an internal card reader, 4 h/d's a floppy and a zip drive. (I KNOW OVERKILL, RIGHT?) Plus throw in a huge AGP card and a couple of pci cards and your really getting a headache...

Exactly! In a tiny system with a couple drives that you hardly ever change/modify, it's easy to do, and have it stay that way. His case is virtually empty.

None of my boxes have less than 4 HDs (still a bunch of PATA ones left) and a couple optical drives. Lots of PCI cards (extra NICs, sound cards, DVB cards, RAID cards, SCSI cards, you name it). And a bunch of extras (like the cables for a SB Live 5.1 Live Drive, SCSI cards for scanner, memory card readers or LS120 or such things...) It quickly becomes a huge mess in a very crammed case - there's hardly any place for your hands. And even if I did spend lots of time making it all neat, I'd be cutting all the tie-wraps like tomorrow (next time I have to dig in there).

Now if you have a bunch of such systems, and all kinds of stuff going with it: keyboard, mouse/trackball, 2 or more monitors, KVM switch, ethernet switch, 5.1 speaker set(s) with separate amp, earphones, UPS, laserjet, MCE remote, Intuos, mp3 player docks, external memory card readers, flatbed scanner, film scanner, a power bar or three, cable modem, embedded dev boards and such equipment (various mcu & eprom programmers, etc) plus other stuff you're using with it (stepper motors, breadboards, sensors, you name it), various lab equipment... Add to that the few odd PC parts, cables, 2 cameras (and related stuff), a couple spidles of burnable media laying around, remotes, a couple telephones, and more of that kind of stuff, and you've got a GIGANTIC mess - and not just the absolute spaghetti-like mess of cables behind the desk(s)! There's stuff all over the place too.

Only once you manage to maintain all this in a tidy manner for any lenght of time can you tell others "cable management!" (or how someone else's desk should be all nice and tidy)

[Jaqie Fox]

Exactly! In a tiny system with a couple drives that you hardly ever change/modify, it's easy to do, and have it stay that way. His case is virtually empty.

Don't you mean 'Her'?

And I modify my case constantly. I have had it just as neat when I had 3x HDDs, 1x zip, 1x fdd, and 2x optical drives in Demia. it is not much more work to keep it so tidy.

It quickly becomes a huge mess in a very crammed case - there's hardly any place for your hands. And even if I did spend lots of time making it all neat, I'd be cutting all the tie-wraps like tomorrow (next time I have to dig in there).

God, I know what you mean! every time I mod I have to cut all the zip ties and start over. It gets to be a pain, but I can't stand a messy case.

Now if you have a bunch of such systems, and all kinds of stuff going with it: keyboard, mouse/trackball, 2 or more monitors, KVM switch, ethernet switch, 5.1 speaker set(s) with separate amp, earphones, UPS, laserjet, MCE remote, Intuos, mp3 player docks, external memory card readers, flatbed scanner, film scanner, a power bar or three, cable modem, embedded dev boards and such equipment (various mcu & eprom programmers, etc) plus other stuff you're using with it (stepper motors, breadboards, sensors, you name it), various lab equipment... Add to that the few odd PC parts, cables, 2 cameras (and related stuff), a couple spidles of burnable media laying around, remotes, a couple telephones, and more of that kind of stuff, and you've got a GIGANTIC mess - and not just the absolute spaghetti-like mess of cables behind the desk(s)! There's stuff all over the place too.

My desk isn't quite that bad, because I tend to seperate the stuff as much as possible to keep the mess down. My server 'rack' (wire shelving and normal cases) runs as many of the cable-heavy devices as I can just to get them away from my desk.

Only once you manage to maintain all this in a tidy manner for any lenght of time can you tell others "cable management!" (or how someone else's desk should be all nice and tidy)

Uhm, I do. and I never said anything about anyone else's cable management either... It's just not my way to judge or get on or complain about someone else's way of doing things.

[Maleko]

cable management is important no matter how many cables/drives you got.

Ive seen many small systems with horrible cables, makes life hard wen trying to repair and you gotta rip all the **** cables out!

For me I get through WAY to many cables ties lol!

[bonestonne]

Cold cathode in rig:

thats what i did to it...the cables aren't the neatest, and i havent had the time to cut that plexiglas down to be the new side of the case, but all in due time, its been a bad month for me.

as for the cables that everyone will say are a mess, well, its got a celeron in it, im honestly not worried about it enough to care about the cables. once i get the server going, that will be when i worry about cables.

[thehofenator]

I am in the process of building a new computer, I have started out by buying a intel duel core processor, 3.4ghz NOT OVERCLOCKED and a brand spankin' new genuine intel motherboard that has built in sound and graphics cards, the graphics card can utilize unused memory in order to make itself have, lets say a one gig, while your game can run on the other 2 gigs, but that was my money ran out. so I'm workin' to get memory, a couple cd/dvd drives, a couple SATA hard drives, and a nicer case (I have a 100 gig ATA Maxtor hard drive, a cd drive, and an old beat up server case). if anyone has any good ideas as to where things are cheapest that would be great , I already use newegg and frys, but wtvr.....

[Jaqie Fox]

I am in the process of building a new computer, I have started out by buying a intel duel core processor, 3.4ghz NOT OVERCLOCKED and a brand spankin' new genuine intel motherboard that has built in sound and graphics cards, the graphics card can utilize unused memory in order to make itself have, lets say a one gig, while your game can run on the other 2 gigs, but that was my money ran out.

Cool! How bout pics or model & brand? You have piqued my curiosity.

so I'm workin' to get memory, a couple cd/dvd drives, a couple SATA hard drives, and a nicer case (I have a 100 gig ATA Maxtor hard drive, a cd drive, and an old beat up server case). if anyone has any good ideas as to where things are cheapest that would be great , I already use newegg and frys, but wtvr.....

If you want a heck of a hdd at a heck of a price, check this one out.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16822148140

I have one, here is a test on it.

All I can say is I am very impressed with this drive! If I had cash I would get four more and set them up in my server in raid5.

As for CD/DVD drives, I use Lite-ON. They have DL DVDRW drives for under $30 at the egg.

As for cases, I actually use the 'ultra wizard' and I got mine from tigerdirect. They have an outlet store near me. I got one without the PSU and ordered a PC Power & Cooling PSU direct from their site (the silencer 360).

[Zxian]

Here's my basic workstation - Lusankya.

Antec SLK2650-B case with 350W SmartPower PSU (120mm fan replaced with TriCool on low)

ASUS CUV4X motherboard

Intel Pentium III 700MHz

896MB PC133 SDRAM

40GB 5400RPM Seagate HD

Nvidia RIVA NT Video card

Some random CD-RW

And yes... it's running without a CPU fan. The coppermine PIIIs generate next to no heat, so it's crunching away at SETI@Home data and running at a cool 30C. B)

The loudest part of this whole rig is the hard drive, which you can see is suspended. **** ball bearing hard drives! *shakes fist* Anyone wanna donate a FDB drive?

[mark]

@Zxian(aka DroopieDrawers)- Have you posted pictures of you tower with the HDs suspended by underwear elastic yet?

DL

[Jeremy]

So THAT'S how those Zalman heatsinks go on... I had this all wrong.

Nice one Zxian. Is that an ISA slot on the bottom?

I can't wait to post pictures of the two *really old* computers my mother-in-law gave me.

Zxian is it just me or does that video card look like it's being slightly bent? The part on the left looks lower than the right.

Edited December 21, 2006 by Jeremy