Sonata III

So here is the case. It's an Antec Sonata III. I have owned several Sonata II's and have been pretty happy with them. Mostly I ordered the III this time just to see how it was different.

It is basically the same as the II. It does not come with the fan shroud thing that the II came with. It was supposed to channel air away from the CPU, but if you don't use the stock fan it wont fit. So, I never used it before and did not miss it when it was gone.

Like the II the III is easy to mark up with fingerprints, so keep the cloth it comes packed in for a while to wipe it down, unless you don't care about fingerprints.

As a side note, the reason I buy these is for their short height. I keep my computers in an armoire that wont let me use anything over 19 inches tall. These fit great, and look great.

Paperwork and Folder

One of the other things I really liked was this folder that came with the motherboard. This is a good place to put all of this stuff after the system is built.

The Motherboard!!

The EVGA nForce 680i motherboard arrived and here it is.

It is a good looking board, and I chose it because of its proven ability to over-clock well. This board also has the round IDE cables which are nice, and I have had to buy separately before.

It also has to full x16 PCI Express slots. I guess that isn't totally necessary, but its nice anyway.

The box has a lot of accessories, one of the nicest I thought was the raid driver disk that is included.

I have often had to make this disk myself before I could install the OS, and it's nice to have it already there.

I do have to say that if I was not building an SLI system I would have probably looked hard at one of the Intel chip sets instead of this. But here it is now, so lets see how it runs!

Once the rest of the components arrive I'll post the preview of those as well.

Core 2 Quad / 8800GTS SLI Overclock

This blog will detail my build of a Core 2 Quad Q6600 system with 2 8800GTS graphics cards. I hope this will help anyone trying to build such a system learn from my experience.

It is my intention to run a mild overclock of 3.2 GHz on this particular system. It seems that most people are able to achieve this on air cooling with minimal voltage adjustments. My goal is for this system to be fast, stable, and provide excellent longevity.

The motivation for the build is Crysis. I received this game for Christmas and my current computer is not capable of running it at an acceptable frame rate and resolution.

So, I hope you enjoy this blog as I build the system over the next week or so.

Also, when the system is done I will be offering copies of it on eBay for the cost of the components plus two hundred dollars to assemble and overclock it.

Please leave any questions in the comments.