It has been a while since I calculated how much a computer for running Second Life might cost, and hearing about the 560 made me look once again into the question.
I've definitely splurged this time around, made worse by buying a case with power supply and then having to buy another power supply to meet the requirements of the system. (Please, Apevia, consider selling the X-QPACK2 without a power supply!)
Here we go:
- EVGA 01G-P3-1561-AR GeForce GTX 560 Ti FPB (Fermi) 1GB graphics card for $250. For the same price, Gigabyte has a more overclocked version, but it has heatpipes that stick out of the top, and I was afraid it wouldn't fit in the case because of them.
- AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition Deneb 3.5GHz Socket AM3 for $186. Can't really justify six cores yet.
- GIGABYTE GA-880GMA-UD2H AM3 AMD 880G SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 motherboard for $100. I doubt that a rotating hard drive can move 6 Gb/s, but SSDs will come down enough in price someday...
- G.SKILL ECO Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 for $75.
- Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB for $80. I feel guilty about the power consumption of the graphics card, OK? :)
- LG DVD±RW SuperMulti Drive Black SATA Model GH22NS50B for $16(!).
- APEVIA X-QPACK2-NW-BK/500 Black Aluminum Body/ Front Mask MicroATX Desktop Computer Case for $85. Anybody want the 500W power supply that comes with it? *sigh* I went to the Antec power supply calculator page, and the 560 is too new to have an entry there, so I said 570 to play it safe, and it recommended a 550W PS... and the Apevia PS with the case isn't modular, and... if I bat my eyelashes and say "pretty please", will Apevia consider selling just the case? *sigh* Probably not, but then, the other Micro ATX cases I looked at that didn't come with power supplies cost nearly as much or even more, and have their own issues.
- Antec TruePower New TP-550 550W for $90. It's (semi) modular, it is 80 plus bronze rated, and it suffices for our purposes.
UPDATE: The nVidia 560 was too new for the Antec Power Supply Calculator to know about it when I first did this, but now it's there, and I redid the calculations. Judging by it, the graphics card manual, and Apevia's description of the power supply that comes with the QPack-2, I don't think it's necessary to buy another power supply, if you can get away with one of those Molex-to-PCI Express adapters, since technically, the PCI Express power connector includes a voltage not available on the four-pin Molex connectors, though some cards using that connector don't use that particular voltage, so sometimes you can get away with it. If that's the case, that's $90 off the cost (and probably a significant hunk off the shipping, since power supplies are heavy).
2 comments:
Have you thought about going to a standard ATX? To fit in that graphics card? :)
Yes... but the Micro ATX cases are so cute, and small and light and easy to transport. (Not that I'm a LAN party denizen, but it is convenient.)
I admit, they're also so cramped and hard to ventilate, and I doubt there's any Micro ATX motherboard that will let you do SLI or whatever ATI/AMD calls their version thereof--but I can't afford SLI, and so far, the only time I had cooling problems was the time with that broken nVidia driver that didn't speed up the fan.
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