New Gaming PC

I had the opportunity to acquire a new wolfdale CPU at discount and decided it was time to build a new PC. It's been about 7 years since I stopped building computers and my last two were pre-built from Dell over 5 years ago (hyperthreaded P4s!). They still work great, but are slow by current standards and won't keep up with the latest games. So here's what I've put together:

Intel C2D E8400 3GHz
Asus P5KC
Nvidia 8800GT 512
Geil Ultra 1066 PC8500 2x1G
CM 80+ RS-650W

Recycled an old ATX mini tower case and it booted first try. The Geils, however, don't run at the rated speed - the SPD is 800MHz cas5 and they will run at 950MHz, but not stable and they won't POST past 1GHz no matter what (even bumping to 2.4v with looser timings as Geil claims will work). They simply do not, so could have saved some money with cheaper PC6400 (since that's what they really are) or a more compatible brand.

During this exercise, I found what I really miss is the simplicity of the Dell clamshell cases. Too bad Dell uses all proprietary parts, so the cases can't be re-used. I've never felt cramped installing parts into the Dells, which are even smaller than the standard ATX mini tower, yet they feel so roomy when opened. Meanwhile, I swear up and down at the crappy ATX cases - if Dell would only design a clamshell that takes standard ATX parts.

The E8400 is a overclocking beast. It will run at 4GHz on air, but the cores run too hot for comfort without a better cooler. With just the stock cooler, 3.6GHz seems to be the sweet spot - the cores hit 65C under 100% load at 1.2v and passes Prime95 overnight. While in acceptable range, that's still a bit hot to me, so I'm going to try an Arctic Freezer cooler.

I'm already happy with the performance so far and total cost was $465. Now, off to re-install all the software..... ^^;;;;

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Installed an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro and bumped it up to 3.8GHz at 1.25v - the cores max at 60C on prime torture test overnight. Typical gaming load sits between 50-55C and it is very stable.

I was sad to see the PowerEdge 400SC get gutted though, so I decided to experiment with Ubuntu XBMC. I put the original 256MB and 40GB drive back into the box and installed Xubuntu and LXBMC. It streams up to 720p content at about 70% on both "cores" (hyper-threaded), but can't keep up with 1080p content. It also lags on some mkv subtitles with lots of text, but at this stage, it's quite usable as an extra network media player. I needs to get a little more stable though before I replace the xbox, as I can crash it pretty easily.