HH and MSI Lazy Days Of Summer Sweepstakes!

I definitely want to win these.  I would evict my AMD platform from my cooler master storm scout, as the 5850 is pretty cramped in there.  One of the things i love about those 460's is that they are small enough to fit in just about anything.

I like how this has become the general chat thread... I need to go revive this longest thread...lol 

It would be a much better fit inside my Cooler-Master Storm Sniper Case. It's BIG, you could almost park a Buick in there.

rofl well it is a great gathering place. Well I am still in Vegas, and will be doing two stores in Utah (just over the border from Nevada), and 2 in Vegas tomorrow. Then on to California and Arizona tomorrow. As for this give away someone is definitely getting an upgrade. That board is a truly nice piece of work, and the Nividia 460's while not being the top of Nvidia's current platform in SLI will probably outdo there top of the line.

realneil:

bockwai:

Wow, that heatsink/fan on the Cyclone is just ridiculously uber kewl.

Welcome, bockwai,........those cyclone coolers are good for cooling the card, but some here have wondered if they would raise inner case temps because they don't exhaust their heat to the outside of the case. My CoolerMaster Cases would probably not be affected since they already move so much air around.

My brother has the 4890 Cyclone and the internal system temps aren't that much higher at all than a rear exhausting 4890.  He has the Antec 200 which has the basic 120mm front intake and rear 120 exhaust, although he does mount the power supply with the intake fan facing upward (Antec 200 has bottom mounted PSU but it has to exhaust holes for the bottom) so that might be helping with the system temps a bit.

The best improvement they did with the new Cyclones is that the masive heatsink doesn't block the SLI/Crossfire connectors anymore.

crowTrobot:

My brother has the 4890 Cyclone and the internal system temps aren't that much higher at all than a rear exhausting 4890.  He has the Antec 200 which has the basic 120mm front intake and rear 120 exhaust, although he does mount the power supply with the intake fan facing upward (Antec 200 has bottom mounted PSU but it has to exhaust holes for the bottom) so that might be helping with the system temps a bit.

The best improvement they did with the new Cyclones is that the masive heatsink doesn't block the SLI/Crossfire connectors anymore.

I don't see two of the Cyclone 460's together being a problem in a good case with adequate cooling in place, but in a case that's not designed so well, (and many of them are out there) the fact that they don't exhaust the heat out of the back of the case may matter.

Don't count me out guys and gals I have had PC problems but I am not giving up. I wanna win this set up!!!!

A Three Hundred should do just peachy.  I know mine removes a TON of air out the top of the case with the 140mm fan on the low setting.  The fact that I have all of the fan slots filled with after market high CFM/low noise fans doesn't hurt either.

I think I shorted my keyboard after drooling over that motherboard though.  What a monster!  I have been following MSI's offerings ever since they seemed to have stepped up their game to keep up with Gigabyte.  Big Bang, Trinergy...even their budget offerings are pretty sound.  I'm really impressed at the quality of boards for those of us who still have to pay their rent, car payments, grocery bills, etc.

Sorry I'm so late to the party on this one.  Family life is keeping me busy.  I'm a computer geek that likes to sit in one spot for long periods of time (my wife says I may have been a rock in a former life) so keeping up with a 1 and a half year old is hard!

Optix:

I have been following MSI's offerings ever since they seemed to have stepped up their game to keep up with Gigabyte.

Always like their Platinum Series Mainboards in the past. They had a lot of features built in to them.

Optix:

A Three Hundred should do just peachy.

I agree, that's a nice case.

MSI's Platinum series was great.  Out of my price range but great.  Their 790GX board was awesome!  A friend had one and I always drooled over it.  Oddly enough the thing that I always liked the most was the right angle SATA connectors.  Beefy video cards and small cases always made connecting drives a pain.  If it had have supported DDR3 it likely would have been my board but that coupled with the killer deal I got on my H55M made me stay with Intel.

Optix:

MSI's Platinum series was great.  Out of my price range but great.  Their 790GX board was awesome! 

My MSI Platinum boards were all of the 939 socket series! Dated, but I still have one of them and it still works with an Athlon 4000+ CPU in it. It's an SLI board with two 512MB GT6800 Ultra cards in it (SLI) and 2GB of ram. (4-512MB sticks)  Like I said, it's dated.

I'm not sure if we have to say if we are setup with Facebook, Twitter or your News Letter for some extra chances to win but I'm set with all three.  I didn't think about joining up with Digg though.

im sure they have their ways to find you on those sites :). i am on all of them :D

realneil:

My MSI Platinum boards were all of the 939 socket series! Dated, but I still have one of them and it still works with an Athlon 4000+ CPU in it.

My laptop has an Athlon 4000 in it and it works great. I loved those old socket 939 Athlons!

I love the Big Bang!......Count me in

I got an old athlon setup, with a socket 754 motherboard, a step down from 939 no?  waiting till I spot some cheap DDR memory, but I think It still works great

I have an old Athlon setup too. It's an Athlon XP on an MSI K7 nForce 2 motherboard with an MSI FX 5600. I think it still works but it's missing a power supply and a hard drive. It was my first AMD system and it was a beast at gaming.

The thing about these older Athlon systems that we can't seem to part with (LOL) is that most of them were built during the infamous 'Bad-Caps' time frame. This is what keeps me from using it (although it works fine right now) for something important. It's my second Linux test bed at the moment and it's had a number of distributions installed on it so far. It also has XP on a separate drive.

I did put a 350 watt SeaSonic PSU into it to provide it with good, clean and stable power, and I've got it cooling well with 6 extra fans too. Another consideration here is space. I don't have the room to keep it hooked up all of the time. So it may see a week or two's use when Ubuntu spits out another release, but then it's on the floor, back under a bench again.

realneil:

The thing about these older Athlon systems that we can't seem to part with (LOL) is that most of them were built during the infamous 'Bad-Caps' time frame.

I have an old Gigabyte GA-8KNXP mobo in my test rig that's giving me some trouble. It started making a terrible noise, but only intermittently, and I suspected it was the fan on the northbridge acting-up again. I put a drop of oil on the fan's bearing, but that didn't help. Now I suspect it's a bad cap that is whistling at me - and it's pretty loud! It whistles for maybe 10 seconds or so, and then I won't hear it again for a couple of weeks. Funny.

Super Dave:

Now I suspect it's a bad cap that is whistling at me

Inspect the board and see what's up. There will be caps that are bulging, leaking or both if you have that problem.

Remember that it could be in the power supply too. They suggest that you try a known good power supply first.

realneil:

There will be caps that are bulging, leaking or both if you have that problem.

LOL - Oh yeah, I know the routine...just gotta find the time to do it! I've got a radiator to replace on the wife's car and four carburetors from my Suzuki that need rebuilding. I used to like working on the cars and the bike, but not any more. Getting all greasy, crawling around on the ground underneath the car, and busting my knuckles doesn't appeal to me now. But I do like building PC's! At least whoever wins this Big Bang motherboard won't have to worry about leaking or bulging caps!

Super Dave:

I used to like working on the cars and the bike, but not any more.

No kidding, I do as little as I can get away with anymore when it comes to cars. It's worth it to barter for the work to be done for me and I'll do computer work for them.

Just get a new car/truck every 4 years and you'll not have that many problems to deal with. (Poop money to get this part done)

Building PC's is the way to go, and I'd love to build one with these parts that are to be awarded to somebody.

What a kick-ass system it would be!

I've had some terrible luck paying other people to service my vehicles, realneil! Imagine allowing the laziest corner-cutting slacker of a coworker of yours work on your car. [shudders] THAT's the kind of luck I've had! Pep Boys sliced the tire sidewall on one of my cars as they drove it into their service bay, and another time a mechanic left a rag under the hood after he serviced the AC. The rag later caught fire and burned the underhood wiring harness. Yeah, I'll regretfully do my own auto service, but I really enjoy working on computers!

Cars are like computers :), you got to do it yourself to be satisfied. Now time to go build a car bottoms up form scratch... Should integrate the parts from this contest in to it too :P lol

Inspector:

Now time to go build a car bottoms up form scratch... Should integrate the parts from this contest in to it to

Yeah, a desktop Car!    Why didn't I think of that?

Super: I have a few really good mechanics here in town that I trust. They also trust me not to screw up their kid's computers. It works out well most of the time. At least I know that They're gonna do the job right. I know what to look for when they're done if I feel the need to check their work out.