Ironically (I guess more coincidentally) I’m looking to upgrade my current PC. I’m actually thinking of just buying a pre-built system but haven’t decided yet exactly I’m going to do.

You should really get Steam and download/buy the Orange Box if you haven’t already. That’ll put the machine to good use.

Yeah I usually advise against the slim line cases for heavy work. This is because of how close everything is in the case, and PCs tend to be… HOT. So I usually go for the BIGGEST case I can find in order to avoid this complication.
However, the slim case you have seems to have enough vents in all the right places to correct this problem and still be a slim bodied beauty. I’ve never bought a slim line optical drive though, but it looks pretty cool.
Also, I have personally ran into A TON of trouble with the Seagate drives. Every single one I’ve ever owned has died or turned into what I like to call a “mud runner” (where it slows down to the point of some one running through mud) after about 6 months or so. I would recommend at this point, buying an external HDD to back everything up on, and if you encounter any problems with the Seagate drive, for your next drive, go with Western Digital.
Granted I haven’t even TOUCHED a Seagate since like 1998 so they may have improved… but who knows.
Good luck!

Agreed about the art software, it’s sad that those companies aren’t supporting macs very well anymore.

On Seagate HDs, both of my older brothers, computer and electrical engineers, have had good experiences with Seagate drives, but if BAMikeyD’s prediction becomes true WesternDigital HDs are excellent. On that note, I’m sure you know this, backup them files!

Interestingly enough, you can now (with Tiger) install os X on a home built machine. I understand you could do that before IF you could do some pretty advanced meddling with the system, but now you don’t need to.

Watch out for overheating!

Nice work. I loved how the 4 hour transition turned into you sounding tired and exhausted. I’ve built / tinkered with many a PC in my day, and I can tell you, the power switch is pretty good. Still, excellent work for a first timer.

Hope you’re happy with the machine. It’s a full on number cruncher, not really an intense gaming machine, but it will do you well. Aside from the drive capacity, the Seagate was a good choice (still have never had a problem with their drives).

Personally, since you’re doing more 3d graphics with the little tyke, I would have put in double the ram you have in there. If anything I would say tweak your swap cash too if you’re going to bigger graphics projects.

All and all, have fun with the new system. There’s lots of help around if you want to tweak your machine and settings.

My opinion for your next “upgrade” or whatever in the future…go with AMD processor. They’re so much more powerful and stable than intel for the same price, sometimes even cheaper. The motherboard and video card I like though. I usually prefer ATI for video, but I have to admit to running an NVidia card because of cost and ease. The HD i’m gonna have to agree with BAM and say get a Western Digital when you get a chance. Other than that it sounds sweet. An extra fan won’t hurt to keep everything nice and cozy. I read a research showing that a buttload of fans does better than a lot of the other cooling systems like water and such, it’s just that they’re noisy and make everything else hot. You could always get extreme and use that gel stuff though. So yeah. I use both a mac and PC btw. I started on PC but got used to mac at school. Now I have both and am looking to add a linux box.

well that was funny .
I am preparing to building a gaming pc
any suggestions ?
Im thinking of getting the skulltrail board
and a core 2 duo processor

Don’t say fuck vista if you haven’t had to use it for a little over a year. Now that I look back at W:XP, XP has a cr4p-load of stuff and complicated things compared to vista. The only bad thing is that when you get vista, you have to change around a lot of settings to make it quick and easy, but thats only about a 1 time job. (And I don’t say fuck mac, because I’ve never used it for a year before.)

Ugh…jumpers. Absolutely despise those fiddly little fuckers with a passion. I recently had to reconfigure the guts of my old PC in a new case with a few new additions, and it took me forever to get them set up properly because the motherboard was too old to have one of those handy little slots that you slide all the jumpers into, and then just plug the whole thing into the board. Aside from the tension of mounting the CPU and heatsink (always feels like I’m gonna break something with the amount of pressure required) that is my least favourite part of assembling a rig.

So yeah, do NOT feel bad for messing up one jumper, those things are just obnoxious. And yes, fuck vista.

Used both Vista and XP. Vista has some really nice features and organization systems and the search boxes are awesome but the general bugginess and slow speed aren’t worth it what with all the gui converters out there for free. If microsoft doesn’t release a vista service pack that makes vista a truely epic OS I plan to wipe my machine and put XP with a converter on it.

@RealUnimportant, Hawk asked me the same thing, but both of my Macs are old 800 something G4′s so boot camp isn’t an option for me.

Wow man, look at all the PC love! Should have asked for help sooner! HAHA!

Boot Camp…-faints- Can you guys just stick to one side lol btw ..yea.. fuck vista..lol aw man…omfg…..you got that graphic card? dude… lol PNY’s GX card is sexier and theres another graphic card out by Nevidia? i forgot that company…lol if can’t play crysis..it sucks..lol

>BAMikeyD
>I have personally ran into A TON of trouble with the Seagate drives.

Interesting thing to note. These days quality control at seagate is among the best in the business. And theres that whole 4-5 Year (thats years not months) warranty that beats the crap out the little 2 year ones other people give you.
P.S.: I have had 2 seagate drives ever fail. one was an external that i dropped over 8 times and only died after 7 years of punishment and the other was my dad managing to short on out in the computer i built for him… getting an RMA for that took a total of 15 seconds.

And for the record, that was all with Windows Certified drivers provided by the Manufacturer, and the tabletPC is known good – note the Ubuntu and Leopard installs that worked fine.

So, while the “At least a year” motto is GOOD – It doesn’t hold if you can’t install it in the first place. Most other OS’s install from a livecd – so you know how the OS is going to work before it wipes your HDD.

Truly tragic…a Mac user switches over to the dark side. There is no turning back. It’s kind of weird, though. It’s supposed to be the other way around with PC users switching to Macs. Couldn’t you have gotten help from a form, or Apple tech support before giving up?

Well, you could go to the wine side.
Ops! Wine still doesn’t work with OpenGL on Mac OS X’s X11.
*sigh*

no freakin way. before you even said that it wasnt working i was like “he’s probably gonna forget to connect the case plugs” and then u said thats what happened and a L.LOL’d (literally laughed out loud)

welcome to the dark side, we have fuckin’ huge cookie jars w/ cookies in them.

I hate you!

Bloody Van Damme song will not go away. Everyone I shown it to seems to spontaniously burst into song! Its just so Damme catchy!

Right now I’m training a group of tiny monkeys to come and sing it to you whilst you sleep!