After months of busting my ass.. finally.

Sabastian

Regular
I finally got one whole system home. I've been working for the last 2 months to build these two systems for the kids this X-mas. They cost $1200 each canadian.(after taxes.) I figure I've saved about $400-500 on each as opposed to buying a system outright. Instead I bought the parts and put them together myself. The kik ass parts of the systems IMO are the Radeon 9600 xt parts and the integrated soundstorm bolstered by the Logitech 640's surround sound.(heh, Dolby 5.1 rocks.) The integrated soundstorm helped to give me a reduced pricing. I'm disapointed the the nForce 4 won't have soundstorm. This spring I plan on building my own sytem,, more powerful then the kids systems of course. I got atholon XP 2600 and ASUS A7N8X-E DELUXE NFORCE2 ULTRA400 in both as well. Both have 512megs of system ram, 80 gig HD's with 8 meg buffers and 17 inch crt monitors. Operating system is XP on both. Prolly upgrade memory to one gig after christmas. In terms of performance they are more then twice as powerful as my own configuration.

Right now this system is at my neighbors who lives directly beneath us. Soon both will be there. He has agreed to let me pile my X-mas stuff up at his place for the next month.. He has an awfully small apartment and I don't think he understands my excessive materialism at X-mas. .. :oops: ;) I've already got a shit load of other items I want to get for X-mas in the queue.. I hope he sticks with the agreement.

http://img31.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img31&image=Im000285.jpg

Here we can see the other vid card for the other system that I've not fully paid for yet. The fellow who helped me buy these parts is a system builder who can match online prices without the shipping/RMA fees and the like. It really helped me a lot in terms of cost. Great guy.

http://img31.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img31&image=Im000284.jpg

A pic from downstairs.

http://img31.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img31&image=Im000283.jpg

new kitty replacing my old one.(rip)

http://img31.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img31&image=Im000278.jpg

the dog..

http://img31.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img31&image=Im000282.jpg

The lucky recipients of these two new systems unbenouced to them..

http://img31.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img31&image=Im000274.jpg

Man, I can barely wait for christmas. The kids are going to freak out.

EDIT:game suggestions are welcome.. I've already decided I will buy Codename: PANZERS Phase One and Rome total war. I've already purchased Half life 2 and rolercoaster tycoon.
 
Aw, eight and five are the kids? They're gonna love 'em, those systems are absolutely killer for kids their age!

I haven't even started x-mas shopping yet, we're trying to not get too carried away this year as we have a really bad tendancy to get carried away on our kids. (And every year we make the same resolution not to get carried away and we get carried away anyways. :rolleyes: )

Good Daddy, very good. You're kids are going to really get a lot of use out of those systems.
 
digitalwanderer said:
Aw, eight and five are the kids? They're gonna love 'em, those systems are absolutely killer for kids their age!

I haven't even started x-mas shopping yet, we're trying to not get too carried away this year as we have a really bad tendancy to get carried away on our kids. (And every year we make the same resolution not to get carried away and we get carried away anyways. :rolleyes: )

Good Daddy, very good. You're kids are going to really get a lot of use out of those systems.

The girl is 13.. the boy is 11. The pic is supposed to kind of obscure what they look like. But yeah everyone thinks the girl is younger. She is petit.

I an't done yet. I'm buying a remote control skidoo for the boy and a phone for the girl as well as some games for both. I've also bought one of the new PS2 consoles too replace my old xbox that crapped out.(one of the original consoles with a crappy DVD player.) I'm also looking at some home entertainment surround sound system.(heh, more Dolby 5.1!! ;) ) and something for the old lady.. << That is the tuff one. In the not too distant future (after xmas.) I want to put TV tuners in them PC’s as well as more ram.
 
I did the same thing for the girlfriend's kids, aged 10 and 14, but spent $1400 all told for them both. had 2 hard drives, one 19" monitor, one cd-burner and one dvd burner hanging around already though.

Specs:

Asus a7x8x nforce 2 uma/400, integrated graphics, gonna put a 9600xt in the boy's machine for games, the girl just does the msn thing and online games, soundstorm.. each
512MB ram each
60GB and 30GB hard drives repectively I had already.
cd-rw and dvd+rw drives repectively I had already.
400W power supplies, new.
$30 CDN mtx cases, big blue light in front.. lol
19" monitor each, got a black dell 19" from factory direct for $120 CDN taxes and shipping in, looks great. Had a viewsonic g90f 19".
Microsoft keyboard/mouse combo each.
wireless nic for each and an extra one.
wireless router.
Winxp each.

You can definitely choose the components and get what you want if you build it yourself, price wise, not a super amount of difference but they skimp on parts so it's not worth it.

Got the towers and keyboard kits wrapped and at the girlfriend's place, hard to disguise what it is though.. lol

So many big boxes on the go dunno where she is going to put them all, lol.
 
Himself said:
I did the same thing for the girlfriend's kids, aged 10 and 14, but spent $1400 all told for them both. had 2 hard drives, one 19" monitor, one cd-burner and one dvd burner hanging around already though.

Specs:

Asus a7x8x nforce 2 uma/400, integrated graphics, gonna put a 9600xt in the boy's machine for games, the girl just does the msn thing and online games, soundstorm.. each
512MB ram each
60GB and 30GB hard drives repectively I had already.
cd-rw and dvd+rw drives repectively I had already.
400W power supplies, new.
$30 CDN mtx cases, big blue light in front.. lol
19" monitor each, got a black dell 19" from factory direct for $120 CDN taxes and shipping in, looks great. Had a viewsonic g90f 19".
Microsoft keyboard/mouse combo each.
wireless nic for each and an extra one.
wireless router.
Winxp each.

You can definitely choose the components and get what you want if you build it yourself, price wise, not a super amount of difference but they skimp on parts so it's not worth it.

Got the towers and keyboard kits wrapped and at the girlfriend's place, hard to disguise what it is though.. lol

So many big boxes on the go dunno where she is going to put them all, lol.

Yeah, everything I bought was new. I didn't have a choice there. Both systems had to be identical bc the girl might be a tad upset should suddenly she become impressed by HL2 and want it installed on her system and I would have to explain to her that it won't work on her system. The killer was getting the two graphics cards. Your boys system looks similar too what I've built. You opted though for a lesser system for the girl which is something I considered to save cash but I decided to go hard and build identical. All toll for me both systems came too $2400 canadian after taxes which is a price I've yet to see an OEM match. They were the best price to performance config I could come up with. Anyhow that $2400 came pretty dam hard for me. I only wish I could have pulled it off for as little as you have.

I'm just going to wait for christmas and then bring both systems up from downstairs and set them up with different screensavers, themes and stuff I know they like. I think I am more excited then they are about christmas. I've been spending an inordinate amount of time downstairs at the neighbors I hope they don't catch on. Especially with them 640's cranked booming through the floor.. :devilish:

EDIT: There are prolly a few Americans scratching their heads wondering why I've paid so much for these configs. Well canadian prices on electronics are ridiculous compared to American pricing.. and then to add insult to injury you can add on canadian taxes..
 
NCIX is awesome, rivaled only by PCCanada (for those of us local in Toronto..). Great thing about ordering out of province is that you don't pay PST :p
 
Sabastian said:
EDIT:game suggestions are welcome.. I've already decided I will buy Codename: PANZERS Phase One and Rome total war. I've already purchased Half life 2 and rolercoaster tycoon.
Are these games for the kids or for you? I dont mean to be a wet towel, but i would only recommend the rolercoaster tycoon for the kids, the other games seem to be more appropriate for older kids.

Just my 2cents
epic
 
epicstruggle said:
Are these games for the kids or for you? I dont mean to be a wet towel, but i would only recommend the rolercoaster tycoon for the kids, the other games seem to be more appropriate for older kids.

Just my 2cents
epic

Bah, games have no effect. They are just games. We've all seen people murder or be murdered in movies games etc.. There is no measureable effect. They will be playing HL2 christmas day. nuff said.
 
zurich said:
NCIX is awesome, rivaled only by PCCanada (for those of us local in Toronto..). Great thing about ordering out of province is that you don't pay PST :p

Yeah, I bought my two celestica radeon 9600xt from them. My buddy has a different supplier and couldn't match the price. Everything else though was matched in price or slightly better .. .without shipping fees and RMA insurance levied.

http://img31.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img31&image=Im000283.jpg

You can see the box that the 9600's came in this pic. NCIX in big letters on the box.(over to the right.) They were great. I ordered the cards on Friday(of all days :rolleyes: ) and got them on Tuesday. I plan on hunting for parts there when I build my own system in the spring.
 
Slightly off topic, but I really don't see why HL2 is "M" rated (or "18" here).
I haven't seen any such violent scene there yet (I'm in Ravenholm).
The "violence" has been very cartoony, and not shocking at all.
Still, not suitable for kids around 10 maybe, but "M" rating is over exaggarated imo.
 
Sabastian said:
sytaylor said:
Close up dog pics rule

I couldn't resist posting that one. Honey is a good dog.. not too smart though.

OMG! I had a dog called honey (although she was a golden labrador retriever so she fit the name heh). Sweetest dog EVAR 8) Although my parents new rottie pup is giving her a run for her money... she paws at thigns a bit like a cat but with that innocent puppy manor.
 
I finally got one whole system home. I've been working for the last 2 months to build these two systems for the kids this X-mas. They cost $1200 each canadian.(after taxes.) I figure I've saved about $400-500 on each as opposed to buying a system outright. Instead I bought the parts and put them together myself. The kik ass parts of the systems IMO are the Radeon 9600 xt parts and the integrated soundstorm bolstered by the Logitech 640's surround sound.(heh, Dolby 5.1 rocks.) The integrated soundstorm helped to give me a reduced pricing. I'm disapointed the the nForce 4 won't have soundstorm. This spring I plan on building my own sytem,, more powerful then the kids systems of course. I got atholon XP 2600 and ASUS A7N8X-E DELUXE NFORCE2 ULTRA400 in both as well. Both have 512megs of system ram, 80 gig HD's with 8 meg buffers and 17 inch crt monitors. Operating system is XP on both. Prolly upgrade memory to one gig after christmas. In terms of performance they are more then twice as powerful as my own configuration.

Right now this system is at my neighbors who lives directly beneath us. Soon both will be there. He has agreed to let me pile my X-mas stuff up at his place for the next month.. He has an awfully small apartment and I don't think he understands my excessive materialism at X-mas. .. :oops: ;) I've already got a shit load of other items I want to get for X-mas in the queue.. I hope he sticks with the agreement.

http://img31.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img31&image=Im000285.jpg

Here we can see the other vid card for the other system that I've not fully paid for yet. The fellow who helped me buy these parts is a system builder who can match online prices without the shipping/RMA fees and the like. It really helped me a lot in terms of cost. Great guy.

http://img31.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img31&image=Im000284.jpg

A pic from downstairs.

http://img31.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img31&image=Im000283.jpg

new kitty replacing my old one.(rip)

http://img31.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img31&image=Im000278.jpg

the dog..

http://img31.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img31&image=Im000282.jpg

The lucky recipients of these two new systems unbenouced to them..

http://img31.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img31&image=Im000274.jpg

Man, I can barely wait for christmas. The kids are going to freak out.

EDIT:game suggestions are welcome.. I've already decided I will buy Codename: PANZERS Phase One and Rome total war. I've already purchased Half life 2 and rolercoaster tycoon.

It's been nearly 20 years since I post this. It's amazing to see. Shocking even. Hard to believe. was a different time/place I miss. It's like a time warp for me.
 
I can't believe you were crazy enough to spec 512MB of RAM for those PCs! ;)

The room in which I am sitting currently contains 5 devices containing a lot more RAM than that, not including my laptop.

That said, I remember when we paid GBP 1200 to upgrade a NeXTStation to 32MB RAM back in, ooh, 1991? That's the most gratuitously expensive purchase I remember (though the NeXTStation itself was over 3 grand, I seem to think which is around 6.5K in today's money = USD 9300).

Formerly cutting-edge PC tech seems so quaint in the modern era.
 
Yeah its crazy when I think the computer Im writing this on has nearly a million times the memory of my first one, nowadays just a simple jpg file would overrun my original spectrums memory by 10x
how the hell did they manage to write some of those amazing games
 
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