Its here, and its a beaut - pics included

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cjc1984

Bronze Level Poster
Arrived at approx 12.30

Will add pictures as I go along, and will post a review/feedback in the suggestions forum.

Re the cable management, I have a JML direct cable tidy on the way in the post

Pic 1 - The computer its replacing - Done me proud but Apple got a bit greedy
Pic 2 - Box shot 1
Pic 3 - Boxshot 2
Pic 4 - Dodgy handwriting shot

Pic 5 - PC in the box
Pic 6 - Shot of the Interior - Unlike some of the other pics on here there was no interior padding, and no sign affixed to say that there was. However, still opened it up to check.
Pic 7 - Complete setup inc monitors and speakers - The monitor ans speakers were purchased seperately. Monitor is Viewsonic VX2250 LED, Keyboard is Logitech K340, mouse is Logitech M505, speakers logitech Z520
Pic 8 - Up and running

Will take more once the cabletidy arrives
 
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cjc1984

Bronze Level Poster
First thing that come to my mind :D

Added some more now, will take some more once my cabletidy arrives (*cough* add rep pls *cough*) :)
 
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Sleinous

Sleinous

Author Level
no rush, im at uni now lol :p and no room for me to play till i reassemble my 9800 GT, all the screws are neatly ordered on my mouse mat lolz
 
C

cjc1984

Bronze Level Poster
That wasn't just the monitor though, it was a mid 2007 imac (all in one comp). To be fair have had the imac for just over 3 years and haven't had a problem with it. Has been solid as a rock, and preferred working with Mac OS X over Windows XP and Vista any day, but always found the glossy screen a problem (pic here).

However, needed a windows laptop for uni purposes and got a lenovo with windows 7, and I took a shine to windows 7 immediately. That combined with the overpriced hardware from Apple, their reluctance to adopt Blu Ray (and probably usb 3.0) and refusal to put a matte screen, swayed me back to windows. Considering what I paid for my comp from PC specialist, and consider that it is probably twice the speed (maybe more) of an imac of the same price (which would come with either a dual core i3 or i5), and blows the low end mac pro out of the water too, I am happy I made the right choice.
 
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cjc1984

Bronze Level Poster
Couple of other things now that I have had a good chance to test a few things out.

Construction: As seen in the pics, PC specialist done superb job putting it together, and I think a good job has been done re keeping the cables tidy too. Regarding the Sileo 500 though, the case is a little bit flimsy near the bottom where the power on button is, but in general its pretty solid,

Boot Up Time/App Launch Time: From switching the computer on to having a usable desktop, approx 40-45 seconds. Most applications such as firefox, boot up in less than a second.

Handbrake: One thing I didn't know about Handbrake is that for the windows version you need a decrypter to get rid of the copyright on some DVD's (on the mac version you got one built into the software so it was a case of put the DVD in, scan for the specific title which contains the movie, then away you go). Downloaded the trial version of AnyDVD and that has seemingly worked so far. On my old iMac (mid 2007, 2.8ghz core 2 extreme, 4gb Ram) it would take anywhere between 45 mins and 1 hr 15 to transcode a feature film from DVD to MPEG 4. Takes approx 15 mins on this.

Noise Levels: Thought I would comment on this considering I opted for coolermaster sileo 500 (soundproof case), tripple copper CPU cooler and WD Caviar Black as boot drive (which according to some on here has a reputation for being noisy). When surfing the net and doing non intensive tasks its v v v quiet, as near as silent as your going to get I think. When transcoding, and the cooler fan kicks in, the noise level goes up a notch but nothing I can't live with. When gaming and the GPU fans kicks in it gets a bit noisier, probably about as noisy as one of the older xboxes, but I tend not to notice it when gaming.

Yet to test photoshop on it, as well as transcoding blu ray.
 
Gorman

Gorman

Author Level
Good stuff, thanks for the update.

As far as silence goes, the Sileo 500 with the few tweaks you made is about as quiet as it gets without getting some fairly specialist kit in there.

Glad you like!
 
A

Agonul

Bronze Level Poster
Nice, my PC is still in pre-production but once I receive it, I'll take pics - unbox it and upload it and write a review on PCS.
 
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