First Post!!

[ThomasLDS2005]

Hey everyone,

First time posting. Looking for some advice on how to proceed from those with more experience than myself.

Lil background about me, my cutrrent PC is a 3 year old eMachines P4 Northwood 2.4Ghz with 1Gb PC2700 and a 7200rpm Ultra 133 drive with an ATI Sapphire 9250. Memory, graphics card and hard drive are updates.

Not the best of machines power supply has about had it and case is hideous and scuffed up. Time to replace it, this time around decided to research it more rather than just opting for, the fastest processor and most memory the local PC shop has as I did first time around.

Much reading around later, I wask hooked. Decided to build my own PC from ground up and decided to make it look as good as it performed. I more or less have the component list sorted, the mod list is another story. Will detail spec list then ask for help regarding mods.

Case: Not sure yet thinking Lian Li V1200B
Power Supply: Power PC Cooling 850W SLi ATX 2.2
Processor: AMD FX 55
Motherboard: Asus A8N SLi Premium
Graphics: 2 x nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB Cards Core speed 430MHz
Sound: Creative Audigy Pro 4
HD Drives: 4 x WD Raptor 74GB Raid 0+1
Optical Drives: 2 x Plextor Sata DVD Drives one DVD R/W
20 in one Card Reader/ Floppy Drive
No ideas on water cooling yet more research required.

Ok pretty high end system want ultimate gamining performance, for DOOM £ Far cry Brothers in Arms etc. Downside is lots of pwer and heat.

Could do basic sort of mods. I.e windowed side panel blowhole, paint interior blue, blue cold cathode, blue wires dye water in watercooling, blue sleeving on psu etc. Just doesnt seem original enough for me, so I am thinking about building my own case from scratch, need help coming up with an idea, and implementing it. I've NEVER done a full system build or mod in my life before, but am thoroughly looking forward to the challenge, any and all comments appreciated.

Basically am after a system that will give best possible gaming performance, be smooth at heavy multitasking for work during daytime, quietish to not distract me from work, gaming doesnt matter so much use headphones most of the time. Must be original and stylish and as futureproof as possible investing £5,000+ in this rig time I purchase all components and 30" TFT and 7.1 channel surround sound system. So not looking to upgrade anything for at least a year lol give my bank balance time to recover.

*Apologies for verbose post lol :-)*

[Frakk]

that system you listed looks like its gonna kick some ass. especiall ure credit cards ass if you havent put a pc together, i wouldn' suggest building the first one from scratch, but it is up to you. if you feel confident about ure skills i dont want to discourage you. you can get a case for now and if everything goes smoothly you will have more experience and courage to do it. for me building a case starts with functionality and not the looks. with more experience you will know what you really need and what is best for you in a case. if you build one now and soon realize you should have done it totally different you will want to build an other one then again it is totally up to u

[ThomasLDS2005]

Putting components together should be fairly simple, only thing I see being a wee bitty trick is applying thermal compound/attaching heatsinks to CPU and GPU's. Other than that not anticipating any problems. Just the case, obviously has to keep things cool and store all this kit, just don't have any ideas really on what to do about desiginging a case and making it look pretty lol

[Frakk]

just don't have any ideas really on what to do about desiginging a case and making it look pretty lol

this is when experience is a must have designing a great case involves many aspects like size, airflow, number of bays, overall structure, easily accesible/repairable components and of course the looks. you have to know what you need in order to be completely satisfied.

[ThomasLDS2005]

i've always been big on WWII Games Brothers in Arms, Call of Duty etc. So I want to do a WWII theme PC. Ideas I ahve kicking around are a city landscape, easier to do but wouldn't get the message across I don't think particulalrly well. More promising ideas seem to be a scale model tank, PAnzer MkIV or similar or a larger aircraft like a lancaster bomber. How the heck i go about doing this I have no idea, HELP!!

[Frakk]

i guess you will have to make them ureself. as u said, it will be from scratch if you can find a big enough model of any of the vehicles u want, you can mod that. if not, better get familiar with all the materials you want to use to make the case