The Beast Arrives - 28/08/09
PC arrived today. I was concerned about what state it was in as it had been to Basingstoke by mistake. They'd picked a Mark Allen and being an honest chap he'd refused delivery of it. As I'd had some bad experiences of CityLink in the past I wasn't holding out much hope. However, when I saw the box the PC came in, I was shocked. It was the size of a small house. Essentially a box in a box as the PC box was inside this. It was thoroughly well protected with bubble wrap and the like. After unpacking and plugging in I had a moment of panic when I thought Scan had forgotten the hard drive. I could see no flashing lights, nor could I hear the usual whirring and clicking. I checked the hot-swap bay to see where it was; however, I missed a few out. When I turned on the second monitor I saw Windows Vista sat there looking back. Hmm...I'd just plugged the DVI cables into the video card the wrong configuration. What a berk. It proved, though, that the hard drive was barely audible and that the sound proofing did the trick. There actually was a HDD light, but this was on the motherboard - which I could see through the clear side panel (I didn't have a choice in this 'mod'... honestly!).

'Now...' I thought 'what can I run to test out some of this 8GB of RAM' - which, by the way, had its own heatsinks. I settled for Race Driver: GRID - it wasn't going to use anything like 8GB of RAM, and certainly wouldn't use all 4 cores, but so what, it was close to hand. I turned everything on highest and it still ran smooth as a babies backside. Very nice.

Now, time to start editing the 1300 photos!

Holiday Over - 26/08/09
Got back from Majorca today. As far as my boss was concerned it was supposed to be yesterday, however, I got the date wrong. Well, I did and I didn't get the date wrong. Basically, the hotel was from the 18th to the 25th, but the flights were the 18th and 26th. Ross had booked the flight a day later as it worked out cheaper. One of the two lads who was out there with us was actually staying in an apartment with his girlfriend (actually, it's his girlfriend's family's apartment - all four bedrooms of it). So we had a place to stay on the last day, which saved us hanging around in the airport - of course, we wouldn't have changed the flight at all if it involved long periods of time in the airport.

First day there we just chilled at the hotel bar in the evening, sat round the pool, supping vodka, lime and lemonade. The lime was a must as the vodka tasted a like meths with it being 'local'. In actual fact the lime made the drink very nice, if a touch on the flourescent side. 8 or so later we wandered off into the night to find the 'strip' where the main bars were. One bar and 4 drinks later we were on our way back, at my request. I was tired and we had to be up early for the Barcelona trip.

Wednesday morning saw us up bright and early, making the most of the free buffet breakfast. I'd been impressed with the evening spread and was happy to find that the breakfast was just as good. After reading on a review site that the food was ropey I had my doubts; but was happy to find out it wasn't. A 30 minute taxi ride later and we were back at Palma airport. Later that day we'd landed in Barcelona ready for the Man City game. The game was great, partly because of the result, but also because of the size of the stadium and the atmosphere. This is where the fun ended though. From the start the plan was to spend a few hours in bars around the main strip in Barcelona, however, nothing was open past midnight - when the game ended. We decided to get a taxi to the airport, but nothing was around to pick us up. A walk across town had us at a taxi rank with about 40 other people...........................

Booked it, Packed it, (nearly) Fooked off - 13/08/09
Holiday is now fully booked. The plan is to scoot off to Majorca for a day, then off to Barcelona to watch Man City, finally back to Majorca for another 3 days, or so. Lads holiday, woo... I say lads, but there is only two of us as a lot of people talked the talk, but didn't walk the walk. I wanted to go back to Ibiza as that rocked, but I was out voted. Now everyone has ducked out the option of Ibiza had returned, but by that point we'd booked our flights, and it is not possible to change the cheapo ones, as you probably know.

Noo Pea See UPDATE2 - 11/08/09
Date of PC build start 12/08/09. Proposed completion 18/08/09. Delivery 19/08/09.

Editing photos on my PC is becoming a grueling task, taking ages for each photo. Even nagivation around the photo is time consuming making it seem as though the system has crashed.

Noo Pea See UPDATE - 07/08/09
After A LOT of emails back and forth with half my questions being answered by Scan I have finally got my invoice through with the updated specification as follows:

* Silverstone Fortress
* 1000w Corsair HX
* MSI 790 GD70
* AMD Phenom II X4 955
* Scythe Mugen 2 Quiet CPU
* 8GB Corsair 1600 Dom
* 1GB Asus GTX 285 TOP
* Blaster X-FI Titanium Fatal1ty
* 1TB Samsung F1 7200
* Akasa 3.5 AK-ICR Memory
* LG GGC-H20L
* Acronis True Image
* Kaspersky 2010 Internet Security
* Logitech X-540
* 120mm Akasa Case Fan x2

What has been changed? Well, I soon realised that the memory configuration on the previous specification would not work with an AMD. Only Intel chips can handle triples. AMD are still in pairs. So instead of going down to 4GB I bumped it up to 8GB - I found that the 2GB I had for my previous system was nice when I first got it, but rapidly turned into being recommended spec. for Windows Vista.

Next up was changing the video card to the TOP version, which is essentially a factory overclocked card. I made sure I picked a card with 3 years warranty this time - my last card died after 2.5 years.

I then changed the motherboard because again I'd noticed it wasn't going to work - I have new 1xHDD, 5xHDD of my own, plus the LG GGC-H20L DVD, and the ASUS motherboard only comes with 5 SATA connections. The MSI comes out just below the ASUS for performance and look better on overclocking, so I was happier with the final selection. It was dearer though. As the plan was to use 6 HDDs I thought I better bump up the power, so I changed the PSU from a 850W to 1000W and also paid extra for the PSU to be modular for expansion potential and more tidy cabling.

Realising I had only a 2.1 speaker setup I added the Logitech X-540 5.1 surround system. I am really looking forward to using this with F.E.A.R. as it was scary enough on 2.1 speakers.

I removed the sound proofing option as the case already comes with it's own. I also asked about the two case fans as the case has 3 of it's own, but they seem to have stayed. Not that fussed really. The money I had spare from the sound proofing I swapped out for Kaspersky 2010 Internet Security

So all in all I think I have a bit of a wee beast of a system. Looking forward to having a tinker.

Lads Holiday - 01/08/09
Flights all booked to Majorca for a 'last' lads holiday. Not booked the hotel yet as we're hoping the recent bombings in Palma will bring the costs down.