VF-19

Oh I know. The GPUs on the 1900s are rated to around 90 degrees Celcius. Problem is, I don't think everything else on the card is rated to that high. When GPU-Z says the GPU is around 60 degrees, but the board itself is hitting 80... "Houston, we have a problem." Anyways, I've modifed the case and a spare 120mm fan. Right now, the GPUs on both cards are reading 30-35, and the cards themselves are reading 35-40. Much better; before it was 50ish, and 55-60ish. Thank god for dremel!

New problem cropped up in my system. Long story short, one of the GPUs is overheating and causing the system to crash. I only found out due to the fact that when I fired up Oblivion, it crashed within 5 minutes of playing. Basically, the lower videocard is getting proper cooling but the hot air that's rising off of the back of the card (which is very hot), is being sucked in by the fan on the upper card (aka bad). Solution: Stick a 120 mm fan to blow air over both cards, and thus modify my case to accept said fan. On the previous motherboard, the soutbridge had a little 40 mm fan on it, which I think helped get air moving around between the two videocards. The P5E is totally fanless on the motherboard, and thus it's allowing air to pool inbetween the two videocards... Good god, 1900s run VERY hot. You can almost boil water (or at least get a hot cup of coffee) on the back of the card while it's running at full speed.

Ok. Rebuilt my system. A few pains (but no sliced fingers this time), and overall, everything appears to be running quite nicely. A crapload of updates to install, and a few drivers, and I'll be good to go. Final Specs: Intel Wolfdale 8400 2xATI 1900 XTXs 2 Gigs of Ram ASUS P5E (X38 based Motherboard) Soundblaster Audigy 2 3 (or 4) Hard Drives... One of the drives isn't being recognized, and I think it's because it's SATAI only... Edit: Fixed the drive. It wasn't plugged in correctly. Silly me. Anyways, the computer is fully finished, and soon I'm going to put something demanding on it and see how it goes.

I think that has more to do with the lack of maturity on the hardware part. I mean, look at when DirectX 9 hardware came out, it wasn't all that great either. I think that within the next few generations (and driver revisions) of DX10 cards they'll get up to speed.

Nope. No Vista for this PC. Sticking with good old XP. Personally I think Vista is a huge misstep for Microsoft. That and they should have NEVER made Direct X 10 Vista only...

As a rule: Yes. But it really depends on the drive; some will be noiser, some will be quieter. I've got 4 hard drives in my computer (3 seagates, and 1 maxtor), and I barely hear any of them. The computer case is about 3-4 feet away from me as I type this. Oh, and you may want to consider 2 hard drives. A small one (40-80 gigs) that's just used to boot the computer, and a large one (320 and up) to store all your files. The nice thing about this setup, is that every time you have to reformat and install the OS, you don't have to spend time backing up everything to DVDs, just move them over to the storage drive. My computer is set up like so: C: 74.5 (80) Gb Boot Drive D: 189 (200) Gb Warehouse I E: 298 (320) Gb Warehouse II H: 298 (320) Gb Warehouse III If you're wondering why the gap between the E and H drives it's because the H drive got added to the system after I did the inital format about a year ago. I know it seems silly that I have a total of 920 Gigs of storage space, but it just happened to work out that way. Each 320/200 Gig drive cost $100, and the 80 Gig cost I think $50. Also, I too am building a new PC. I'm recycling my video cards (2x 1900 XTX), Optical Drives, Hard Drives, the Sound card, and I'm getting a new Mobo (ASUS P5K-E), CPU (Intel Wolfdale 8400), and RAM (2 gigs). Should have the whole thing built by next week. All for a cool $700ish (final pricing needs to be finalized). I'm still waiting on the CPU. Those wolfdale cores are rather popular... All in all it should be a major major step up from the Athlon 64 3700 I'm using at the moment.

Who made the drive? My only concern would be if there were two words on the drive: IBM Deskstar. If it's by Seagate, Western Digital etc... And you've taken care of it, it'll last you about another 5-10 years (maybe more), easy.

I wouldn't worry too much about sudden hard-drive death syndrome. I've got, and use, drives that are about 10-15 years old. They still work just fine. Then again, I pretty much baby my stuff, so it tends to last quite a while.

David, shrinking the hard drive will result in you paying MORE for what you get, on a dollar/cent per gigabyte. Recently (within the last 6 months) I spent $100 Canadian to buy a 320 Gig hard drive. Now it'll cost you about $90 Canadian. For about $120 Canadian, you can get a nice massive 500 gig hard drive. Ahh, progress! As for socket 775, I doubt it's on its way out soon. Intel just introduced the new Wolfdale cores, and they're using the socket 775 interface. It'll be a while before the socket is phased out.

Here's what you need to get started: Manditory Case Motherboard CPU Video Card Hard Drive RAM Cables Power Supply Optical Drives (CD/DVD, Rewriteable DVD, etc) Tools (Screw Driver, clippers, small wrench, plastic tweezers) Plastic Ties (cable management!) Cooling solution for CPU (aka Fan/heatsink) Optional Sound Card Second Video Card (SLI or Crossfire) Assembling computers is actually very easy. It's litterally like lego. Almost Everything is keyed to go in only one way (with a few exceptions), and with practice, you can have the whole computer assembled in about 1 hour. I built a computer for my mother a few months back, and I don't think it excceeded the $500 mark. Mind you it was pretty bare bones, but it's all she needed. If you can recycle parts from your old computer, it'll be about $1000 to build your own. Since you're looking to build from scratch, look more at $900-1200, depending on your final configuration. Probably what'll be the most expensive part in the computer is going to be the videocard, so be prepared to pay for it.

I'm interested in one.

Dunno, I find his Transmetal II figure to be pretty darn cool. Although, his original toy does leave something to be desired...

Why stop at one? It's a frigging C-17, so go with TWO!

Here's a quick few shots of the poses I worked out for my Revoltech VF-1S and VF-1J. Hikaru and Roy are doing a little gunfighting... I love these things!

Ah, I must be very very lucky then. But still this is good to know. Thanks for the info.

Really? I've got everything that's attached to the TV hooked up via S-video (PS2, Gamecube, Dreamcast, DVD), and aside from that bad cable that gave me the lines it works perfectly. At first I thought it was the DVD player that was going, as I use it all the time, but it showed up despite the input source. That made it a bad cable.

Actually, it also could be from a bad video cable. I had the same thing with my TV, and a quick switch of my S-video cables fixed everything back up.

A better choice would be a Sidewinder. You could just forgoe the whole radar problem and just point the missile at the Bear. But yes, taking down Tu-95s with 50 cals would be VERY satisfying. Despite the fact the P-40 wouldn't be able to catch up to it though... A Saber or a Mustang would be a better choice.

Probably. Besides, you should at least update to service pack 2 and the later security updates, if for nothing of the piece of mind... Windows is rather well known for the massive security holes in it, and not just the ones in internet explorer.

Game Over, man! Sweet dropship HWR!

I got my VF-1S a few days back and it's proably a one of a kind. One of the UN Spacy Lettering on the leg fast pack is upside down. Not really a big deal though. I love these things!

Superglue will do the trick, but you'll need to insert pins in order to get maximum strength. Just drill a hole into the broken part, insert a small piece of wire (a paper clip will do), then, you match up where the pin is in relation to the part's location, and drill a hole there too. Glue the pin to the broken part and the valk, and it should hold.

I'd much rather get this sweep technology right first, then work on reducing the RCS.

I've got all three of the energon gestalts. Personally I think Bruticus looks the best, followed closely by Devastator. Superion suffers from a floppy torso (at least on mine), and from weird looking limbs.

Pans? All I see are drip buckets...