New Gaming Rig

[Hdale85]

Just ordered some parts for my new gaming rig, here's what I've ordered.

Cooler Master HAF 922 Black Case

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition

MSI NF980-G65 AM3 NVIDIA nForce 980a SLI

XION 90+ Gold Series AXP-700W14FG 700W ATX 12V v2.2

A-DATA Gaming Seties 4GB (2x2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (Qty 2)


And for the real goodies


GIGABYTE GV-N560OC-1GI GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 (Qty 2 for SLI)

Acer G235HAbd 23" WideScreen LCD monitor (Qty 3 for triple screen setup)


I might try and work in an SSD....and still shopping for a racing wheel. This is all going into a sim racing cockpit and so forth. Will sort of be universal gaming setup though as I will have a little desk top there for a mouse and keyboard as well.

[Chris D]

Cool, dude. I look forward to seeing the finished product, and then hear all about how it's working for you.

(FYI, looks like you posted the same link for the 2nd and 3rd products you list in your post)

[Hdale85]

Ah I'll fix it. I hate when that happens.


Edit: All fixed. Thanks for the heads up Chris.

[krips]

Post pics when you're done. I just finished a new HTPC for myself a few months ago.
I've not heard of that PSU brand, but it looks like it's good quailty. Have you used their products before?

[Hdale85]

No I haven't, I have heard of them a little though. It's Gold certified though so that's 90%+, with the certifications as long as you stick to one that's certified usually you're ok.

[impala454]

MSI has been around forever. Should be a good board. Nice lookin specs Dougie.

[Hdale85]

Yeah I've had MSI boards before, although for a while they were a bit flaky a few years back. I'm hoping to use the onboard GPU as a Physx engine.

[krips]

Yeah I had bad luck with a few MSI boards a few years back. I went intel/gigabyte and have had numerous builds since then. All builds were rock solid.

[Hdale85]

Well a few years ago MSI had a big issue with a bad batch of capacitors they were using on boards.

[Hdale85]

Looks like all the parts should be here Friday. LCD's arrive tomorrow, the rest comes Friday.

[Hdale85]

This is the huge fan that's on the top. 200mm, bigger then my hand, one on the front as well. The one on the front lights up but there is a switch to turn it on and off right next to the power button.



This is the inside after everything was installed, there is a lot of nice area's to tuck wires into as you'll see in the next pic.


Here this is behind the motherboard tray where you route all the wires.


All in all, it's crazy fast, the case is awesome I love it. There is one issue, I have a faulty SLI bridge connector so I have to order a new one, either that or I have to send the whole thing back in but apparently MSI boards are notorious for having faulty SLI bridges so I'll just grab another for 10 bucks.

[Hdale85]

I definitely need to upgrade to an SSD at some point as it's the slowest part of this system for sure.

[krips]

I have a SSD is the PC i built, but i can't comment on its performance as i havent used it since i built it . That case looks awesome for cable management. I find it funny that you have ata cables though! h:

[Hdale85]

It's an older DVD-RW drive so ....not much need to upgrade.

[Hdale85]

Got the 3 23" LCD's setup temporarily on a table for now until I get my cockpit built. I have to say it's going to take a little getting used to as it's crazy wide! I probably have the screens at ~45 degrees at the moment. A lot of people seem to like 30 degree's for racing sims.

[Hdale85]

[Chris D]

Whoa, dude... that's serious.

[Kevin P]

SWEET setup there Dougie! :T I like the lighted keyboard!

I still remember when I built my "performance" system 6 years ago and called it the "Trevor Trouncer" because it outperformed the system of a bigtime forum participant at the time. Trevor isn't active here anymore, and my "performance" system is a bit dated now (single-core Athlon 64). It still works fine for what I use it for though.

[krips]

I remember when i built a couple athlon 64 systems with IGPs on the mobo. ATI X300 or something like that. Was it really 6 years ago already?
Those triple monitors look wicked. Whats the advantage to those over say a 32 or 42" lcd?

[Hdale85]

Yeah things certainly go obsolete very fast in the computer world.

I went to Summit Racing today and picked up a seat for my sim. Excuse the mess in the room moving stuff around to make a space for the cockpit I'll be building shortly.

[Hdale85]

krips, with 3 LCD's you're getting 3 times the resolution of even a bigger display, there for you can SEE a lot more.

With a large display you'll still be at 1920x1080, I'm running 5760x1080 right now, there for I can see A LOT more on the screen then the lower resolution. Also for racing games with the screen's on the sides they are giving you peripheral vision so you can see more when you're going around corners and such and when people are passing you. Further more it envelopes you more and you feel a better sense of speed.

[Chris D]

Dougie, are only certain games/programs useable on all three displays? Like for a car game, does it have to have an extra capability programmed into it, to display the side shots in addition to the front shot?

Also, could I ask what the seat set you back? That's pretty sweet. I'm really interested to see what you build for a racing rig, especially if you're putting together your own pedals and such. I use a G27 wheel on a Playseat Evolution racing rig.

[Hdale85]

The seat was 122 bucks. The pedals I'm building are CST Pedals or Cannon Simulation Technology. I bought his DIY plans but going to make them more like his commercial offerings which look like these.



They use a load cell for the brake which is quite a bit more realistic and are almost infinitely adjustable. With the load cell instead of having a completely soft brake like the G27 you get a little bit of soft and then it gets hard to press like a real brake pedal in a car. It's also got A LOT more resolution then a standard pedals so you can really apply just a tiny bit of brakes, or a ton.

The wheel I have for now is the Fanatec GT3 RS V2, I just got it today actually. It's pretty nice, I haven't used it much just a little to make sure it works properly. I really want a GT2 but they are sold out for a while and Diana wants a wheel as well so I figure I'll upgrade later and give her the GT3.

http://www.fanatec.de/webshop/new_usa/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=80&osCsid=9fcde6466f802558ec68ea36ddab50d7

It feels a lot nicer then the G27 IMO, and the wheel is a bit bigger so closer to real size. It's a 300mm wheel, I think the G27 is like 270? Although one thing is with the G27 you can actually swap the wheel with a real wheel, so that's definitely a big plus.

I was going to build the cockpit out of 80/20 aluminum extrusions but funds are starting to run short for this project lol, so it'll be an MDF cockpit but should still be pretty darn nice. I spent a bit more on the new PC's (Diana got one as well) then I had planned but oh well. I'm going to keep this thread updated with the SIM stuff as I get it built.

[Hdale85]

Oh I forgot, most modern games will scale to any resolution as it'll just show more of the map or what not. Newer games can render any resolution where many older games are limited. Even games like COD, Battlefield, and so on can do 3 screen resolutions and give you a much bigger field of view.

Now the trick here is there are only a couple ways to do triple screens with games. One is the Matrox Tripple Head, there is also the ATI Cards that have Eyefinity, and then with Nvidia now you can do Nvidia Surround. The down side to the ATI's eyefinity is you either need to have 1 displayport LCD, or have an active converter. With Nvidia the downside well sort of, is that you need to have 2 video cards running in SLI. While it's a down side cost wise, it's an upside in performance. With Nvidia though you can use standard DVI displays, or even VGA.

[dyazdani]

I looked at those pedals a few years ago when I was racing - they seem really good. Interested to see the DIY build...

[Hdale85]

They are supposed to be some of the best within the reasonable price range, there is the Frex Hydrobrake which uses a real hydraulic brake, but it's over a grand.

[impala454]

We use 80/20 a ton around here building simulator cockpits. Really nice stuff, but pretty pricey.

[Hdale85]

Well they have a surplus store on ebay, those prices aren't all that bad. Would be about 100-200 in 80/20 for what I'd need probably. I think what really starts adding up costs are all the nuts and bolts and little "extra's" you want to add on, like hinges and pivots and so on.

[P-Dub]

;x( I now bow to the new monitor king! That is such a cool looking setup!

[Hdale85]

I don't know about that, you have much nicer ones then I do. These are just cheap Acer's. They were only 146 a piece. I wish I had the budget for some nice Dell's or something. NEC's would be even sweeter

[Coconutout]

hey dougie, thats a sweet rig. have you ever tried hooking it up to your home theater setup? i bet gaming would be awesome on those tower speakers in your pic.

[Chris D]

This is very, very true.

[Hdale85]

hey dougie, thats a sweet rig. have you ever tried hooking it up to your home theater setup? i bet gaming would be awesome on those tower speakers in your pic.

Well, it's in my bedroom. No room to put my SIM setup down stairs really.

My friend has a set of Logitech 5.1 speakers (a step below the Z5500's?) that I'll use for the SIM rig. Although much of the time I'll probably be using headphones.


So I got the load cell for my brake pedal. Except....2 identical boxes showed up from the same place. Turns out they sent out 2? They came from China. I'm not complaining I can use one for an E-Brake or something they are like 40 bucks a piece with shipping. Pretty interesting devices.


I'm sitting here unable to sleep so trying to decide how I want to build my cockpit and how I want to build the pedals and so on. Depending on the cockpit design I may change up how I build my pedals some. If they are going to be hidden I don't really NEED to build them all metal like that. I can put them in a wooden box and use uglier parts. I can design a speaker box in CAD, and other things, never really done a SIM rig.

[Hdale85]

I got my other bunch of parts from Todd the owner of Cannon Simulation Technology, a bunch of these parts I could of went a lot cheaper on but I like the looks of his setup. I could of used cheaper pots but these are very high resolution pots, same with the retainers for the springs. Todd uses some custom made brass pieces and he sold them to me because I love the way they look rather then plain washers.

[Chris D]

Cool, dude. I'm interested to see how this turns out for you.

And it looks like I'm going to be building my own PC when I come home in June, so I'll need your advice when the time comes.

[Hdale85]

Sure no problem! I'm sure you're excited to be getting close to going home.

My cockpit may end up being 2" PVC, I've seen some rigs built this way and it looks pretty nice, so I'm not completely sure yet.

[PewterTA]

Saaaawhhhheeeeeeeetttt.

Just get 2 OCZ Agility 2 or Vertex 2 drives (if you don't care about rebuilding the system ever) then do a RAID 0. AMAZING speeds.

Though not as good as their PCI Express drives (unreal there)...but the Agility and Vertex give you enough of what you need. And Raid 0 with two 60GB drives and a "data" drive for random things will give you amazing speed.

I love all the OCZ SSDs I have now. :T

[Hdale85]

Yeah some day I will add those, for now it's just standard SATA 3.

[Chris D]

Pewter, I didn't understand a single fragment of any of the sentences you just posted!

maybe I should rethink this "I'm going to build me a PC" thing.

[Hdale85]

Nah Chris building a computer is cake. Hardest part is deciding what to order.

[Chris D]

Heheee. Yeah, I'll need help picking out my stuff. But honestly, though, what Pewter just wrote there, as I read through it, could very well have been written in Spanish or something, talking about "doohickeys" or such. The only thing I even close to understand there is that Raid 0 is a type of hard drive configuration.

[Hdale85]

He was just talking about a certain brand and model of solid state drive.

[Hdale85]

Here's a shot of 99% of the parts for my pedals, I'm just waiting on a dampener for the brake pedal, and then I need to get a small project box to put the controller board into.



Excuse the crappy photos, a family member borrowed my camera for a trip they took. So have to use my iPhone, which is terrible in low light.

[Hdale85]

Some pics of my current progress from today.

[Hdale85]

Well I ended up trimming down the main body of the pedal a bit more because it was still a bit long. Got the angle of the pedal arm better. I'm much happier with how this one turned out in the end then where I started. I did change it up about 4 times but hey that's how it works





I still need to drill holes for the supporting rod that'll connect all 3 pedals together and the mounting brackets, other then that it's pretty much done so just have 2 more to go!