Well the mammoth rig I've been using for a year and half still maxed all my games and ran great but sucked down a decent bit of electric. I will most likely be moving out of my parents house by the end of the year (and therefore paying my own electric bill) so I decided to pull the trigger and build a gaming HTPC. A lot smaller than my previous build but still decently powered and a whole heck of lot quieter.

Specs:
Intel Core i5-2500K with all copper heatsink (went entirely passive for noise reduction)
ASRock H67M
G-Skill 4GB DDR3
HIS Radeon 6570 (again passive cooling)
WD Caviar Black 500GB
Apex HTPC case with 250W PSU
Noiseblocker 80mm PWM fan




Had to make my own low profile e-Sata bracket for my external


Can barely even hear it when its on. Just what I was aiming for

And if anyone is in the market for a high powered computer, selling my previous build for $1k




Specs:
Intel Core i7-920 @ 4GHz
EVGA X58 Classified (E760)
EVGA GTX285
Corsair Dominator GT 6GB (3x2GB) 1866 DDR3
Corsair 1000HX 1kW Modular PSU
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB HDD
Dual DVD burners
5.25" Stoarge tray between burners

Full watercooling system for CPU

wow, nice comp

Nice comps. I just made my own low powered gaming rig (well I don't have a graphics card yet, holding out on a job). Mine is a little dated because it has a dual core amd athlon II @ 3ghz (was 45 dollars and only eats up 95 watts too). I wanted to spend 300 dollars, but I didn't want a PS3 or an Xbox because of all the power they consume so I decided to build a PC (since I can also do work on it as well)

I went Apple years ago. Regardless, these two boxes of gorgeous hardware still make me drool.

Errr yea Apple about that... can it run Crysis?

Well played.

I've never tried it, but I believe the answer is yes.

Get on my level!


Nice rig though, I've got the twin of your old one sitting on my desk at home except its got 6 drives and 2x(gtx285ssc) and I hardly ever use it now that it'* warm out. After about 10 minutes I'm sweating my nuts off and the AC can't keep up. I mainly use my micro atom machine for watching TV. Would be nice to have a machine like your new one. Easy to carry around, quiet, plenty powerful.

I have a macbook from 2006, and by 2008 it had problems playing spore. Thats why I'm building a pc. That and I think new macs are just nice looking and expensive toys with ipad like interfaces.