hmmm, not sure how they could have taken a shot to do that, but you'll have to take my word that they must have gone out of their way to deceive you, its quite literally very wide and the airflow is perfectly placed, you can at least see its rather large from the that shot? It even has a channel so that the cpu fan blows air out to a 120mm fan. Keeps everything extremely cold which means you can get larger and slower fans. You've also got the tray that slides out and the cabinet is extremely light and on wheels, so it makes it perfect for opening up the case. Infact speaking of which ever panel comes off and you have a seperate compartment for the psu which means its seperate and cool, if your not into pcs or take them apart that doesn't mean much of course.
Its plain black though, quite big and has no flashing lights or anything silly like that. it has one bright blue power light like the ones on the fans on that 'best case ever', but i have to cover it up when i watch something on my pc, pisses me off
Which seems to be a trend with the lights, the look cool aslong as your buying a piece of furniture, its like this stuff:
http://forum.dead-donkey.com/viewtopic. ... highlight=As for your adversions to my comments, opinion is opinion, but i'm not going to delude/deceive or be diplomatic about it at the same time, i never have or will. Its paramount to lying, i don't know why people should expect it. i really would not ever buy any of that gimmicky stuff like case lights, or choose a product without reading reviews on the pros and cons on every single bit of kit and check more than one shop. Maybe that's because i'm a fagin with my money, but if its not one of the best for the buck, its not worth it for me. I'm honestly trying to make sure its not pot luck window shopping, and there's been a bit of thought behind the hardware choices, and if i'm wrong or you don't agree, i'd like something that's going to change my mind, which i rarely get, so it helps my hardware choices. We are talking about rather expensive products.
There's a thread somewhere with justificaiton for some hardware choices i made on my last machine if you want some opinion on products although its a bit old now. if you need advice there's some there.
As for your motherboard, best idea I'd recommend is forget dabs if it doesn't have the product you want, its unfortunate; choose the board then find a site that stocks them. kelkoo or another price search are rather good at this, infact you might find the odd product cheaper. The gigabyte 'only make to buy' is a vast crock btw, there's loads of boards that are well worth buying, gigabyte do lots of good ones and lots of terrible ones, particularly if you want the performance first and foremost its all down to the specific products in the market.
Consider one of these if your spending the cash, they do things like bios backup, hardware firewall, etc. They are a geek mainboard maker:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Socket_939.htmlThe DFI lanparty is a very good product, highquality. They also have all those flashing lights and stuff like that if you want them since its a product for custom pcs. If you need cutting edge tech though, they've been out for a while.
Gigabyte do some decent enough boards, there's some here if dabs is pissing you off, they are probably a bit more money but overclockers tends to give you more info if your doing quick comparisons before reviews (of course reading advertising material isn't the best way to get a view of how good the board is):
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/ ... t_939.htmlEpox are worth a look, another overclocking board which means they're a better build:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/ ... t_939.htmlI wouldn't shop at overclockers sometimes its more expensive, but use the details then google for stores stocking it in the uk
As for ATI vs Nvidia. if your buying something now, a top end to mid end card. nvidia has the best high/mid end card, so if you haven't bought one yet, at least do a bit of research and see if ati is the brand you really want. There's a list of hardware review sites somewhere. I don't know if this is based on people like me saying ati was far better, this was some time ago and the markets unfortunately turned round again.
I think this sums it now, since you didn't like me putting it bluntly on the graphics card, i'll quote a top hit of a review from google:
| Quote: |
No matter how you cut it, NVIDA has hands-down taken the last two matches in the ultra high-end enthusiast and mid-level enthusiast computer graphics game with their 7800 GTX and GT cards, respectively. If you are a gamer interested in the highest levels of game play performance and image quality, but don?t want to break the bank doing it, you have just found your video card. The only question remaining is whether ATI is secretly brandishing a hidden rock ready to pound NVIDIA's scissors, or if ATI are simply going to forfeit the final round in this game. |
They all have the same gist to it and its ~?150 of your money.
I notice that you are buying a low end card though, i think its about even steven except for the driver issue of course. For Rome Total War you might want to look at a bit more cash on the card, Rome wasn't conquered on a ati radeon 9000... not looking good anyway
I can't think of anything more annoying an ugly myself, sure it looks cool for a minute or two, but its annoying and the flashing lights are there just to cover up the crappy/noisey standard base unit if you don't pay enough for the parts.
What on earth do you have in it. Motherboards these day have as a bare minimum:
so i dont know how that will effect capping (never capped from tv/vhs before)