The B.F.R - Part II

The next day I went to Stryker's place in the morning and there was a plumbing problem, so our trip to Ritchie street got delayed by an hour or so. By afternoon 2.00 pm the plumber left with the condition of pipes worse than it was when he came. Anyway we set out to get the B.F.R, on reaching the shop he said to go the 4th floor and check out the system there. Stryker was developing a slight wheezing, and the walk to the top wasnt helping either, but the good news was the system was up and running, they told us that the motherboard was faulty and had to replace it. We were happy to know nothing went wrong from our side. We carried the system back down and caught an auto back to the house.

5) The setup

The rest of the day we spend installing windows on the new system. And finally after about 1 hour of fiddling around we finally managed to install Windows on the B.F.R. Here are the some, of the screenshots of the setup process. We had a little argument on which Windows to install. Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 were the choices. Even though there was a little disagreement in the beginning, I managed to convince Stryker Windows 2003 was the best of the lot, he had his doubts, we all waited eagerly for the setup to finish, I wanted to show him his choice wont go in vain.

The Windows setup	Copying Files...
Formatting...	Sweet Boot Screen
Setting Up The Default Account	Finally Windows Logon

Even though the windows installed successfully, there was a problem, the Windows 2003 RC2 version with P.J.M was not cracked, damn its real hard to find an activation crack around these areas. Stryker was a bit unhappy, he wasnt showing it though also the latest nVidia Drives for 2003 wasnt there, then we went to the nearest R.W.W where we downloaded the necessary files, we dint get the nVidia drivers. I myself had doubts of cracking Windows 20003 but to my luck it worked like a charm kudos to the guy who made it.

6) Finally!!!, let the games begin

We got the game CDs / DVDs out of the cover and began installing them one-by-one and then began running one-by-one with each one of the games we got an awesome experience that we never got before. Such things cannot be explained in words. I think the pictures will do the talking themselves.

• F.E.A.R
  

  F.E.A.R Start Screen	The settings...
  Jaw Dropping...	Terrific...

• Prey
  
  

  Prey Load Screen	Look at the Face
  HDR...	Yuck...

What can I say the graphics effects are stunning, I was so excited by the effects, I just snapped pictures of the games while Stryker played away on his B.F.R, so instead of taking actual screen shots I just put the image from my camera, I feel it gives a more accurate feeling of the game play. By The way if you dont have a strong stomach make sure you have a bucket beside you when playing Prey will come in handy at times, its a nauseating experience.

7) Conclusion

• A base configuration of E6300 Conroe + ASUS + Zebronics Cabinert & SMPS + 160G HDD + 1G RAM - 24000 Rs
• A 19" (16:10) widescreen monitor - 14600 Rs
• A Mid range- High End (nVIDIA 7600GT) card - 9000 Rs
• Jaw dropping experience of flicker free play of F.E.A.R in highest settings in the above configuration - PRICELESS

For everything else there is B.F.R

Everest generated Report for B.F.R - Click To Download

Concluded

(P.S: If you still dont know what B.F.R stands for by now, please get urself educated in gaming terminology, Hint: You can start in Quake 3 Arena ;-))

The B.F.R - Part I

Its been long time in chennai and I have started to miss the 6600 GT back at home, no major single player games in the past 2 months straight. So this was a big chance when Stryker decided to buy a new system from chennai, with a 7600 GT. We were planning it to take on a weekend, but chennai local elections gave us an extra holiday on 13th friday of october and we decided to go ahead and build our ultimate gaming rig so far and Christened it B.F.R

1) The necessaries

First thing we needed is the money. And this is what Stryker had.

Money, Money, Money...

Second, we needed a table, where else can we keep the rig so furniture was the 1st thing in our minds and we managed to get our hand on a foldable table for 500 Rupees from Royapettah

The Table	P.J.M Carrying the table to room

We then set out to Ritchie street were we went to near by shops to see our list of possible candidates, sorry no pictures of Ritche Street photography strictly prohibited. But for those who dont know how it looks like, in a sentence I can say that it looks like one of those highly populated back alleys from "The Matrix" with computer shops at every foot of your step.

We got the system from "Delta Peripherals" (www.deltapage.com), through Vingan's contacts.
(Vingan (this is his nickname) is a veteran overclocker and an NFS pro, hosts a company named "Reindeer System" that does DSP related driver programming). They offered us the lowest prices for the given configuration.

CPU - Intel Conroe E6300 (1.8 GHz) - 9250 Rs
MOBO - ASUS P5 LD2VM - 5050 Rs
RAM - Transcend 1GB - 4800 Rs
CABINET - Zebronics GeForce case4 - 1550 Rs
MONITOR - Samsung SyncMaster 940BW - 14600 Rs >:)
S.M.P.S - Zebronics Platinum 400W - 1000 Rs (with blue light from inside)
HDD - Seagate 160GB SATA (7200 rpm) - 2650 Rs
B.F.Graphics Card - XFX Geforce 7600GT - 9000 Rs (From Vingan :-D)

Stryker doing the Hardwork of carrying the Unassembled Computer

And ofcourse we needed refreshments for the hard day's work ahead of us. And games to see if the system is upto the mark

The Games >:)	Ahh...The Refreshments

02) Before Assembling

Here is the photos of the items before we started the assembly process.

This is the Zebronics Platinum 400W SMPS, as you can see there are two fans this thing is meant for over clocking.

Look @ The Power Ratings	Now Thats a Lot of Connectors

The power rating isnt that of a high end, but it is definily worth your money.

The Power Ratings

The mobo and the related accessories near it, as you can see Stryker opted for a microATX board since we wanted to build that is a compromise as a good gaming rig as well as the portability of a media center PC as well as for taking it to LAN Parties.

Mobo + Mounted Conroe E6300

The cabinet fulfills this purpose by complementing to the size of mobo as well as space. This cabinet is pretty spacious, even for an ATX board, also it can take a full ATX SMPS. The downside being you can only keep one HDD and for effective heat dessipation a single Optical Drive is recommended.

Top Opening Of Cabinet	Cabinet Front panel

The GFX Card is the topping, its a Geforce 7600 GT, its the king of all current mid range cards, it beat 6800GT SLI (2x 6800 GT) cards in many benchmark competitions. He got it at an unbeatable price of 9000 Rs

7600GT Front View	7600GT Back View

To complement the GFX card and to enjoy the capabilities that the 7600GT can provide Stryker brought a 19" widescreen (16:10). This was a real beauty.

The 19" Beauty

3) The Assembling

These are the pictures of the assembly process. We took extra care while placing the motherboard. The last two pictures are labeled for people who are not familar with components inside the computer. The rest of the section is pretty self explanatory

Clearing Up The Cabinet	Screwing The mobo in Place
Mobo's Final Placement	Placing The S.M.P.S
Labeled Picture Of Various Parts	Labeled Parts Around The GFX Card

4) Its Alive!!!!

This is the moment of glory. The B.F.R is alive. Here are the pictures.

You Dont Expect To See That in an Everyday S.M.P.S	Woo Hoo!!! The Boot Screen
The B.I.O.S	Processor & Memory Info
C.P.U Details	Temperature Details

But then came the big disappointment, we couldnt install windows or for that matter any sort of OS could not be run. Finally we had to go back to Ritche Street and had to give the system back to the vendor, the vendor took some diagnosing our B.F.R and finally said its late night and there was no way that he could repair so he asked us to come by the next day morning.

Stryker was pretty disappointed and I could read that from his face. Anyway after having our dinner. We went back to his place.

To Be Continued...