New Video Encoding/General Build...Clean & Simple

I think about the best feeling in the world is the day you arrive home to a stack of boxes for your new build from Newegg at your doorstep.

Finally, after two weeks dealing with rain, snow, and filth, the packages arrived to my humble abode in the Pacific Northwest (Thanks UPS 3 day shipping!!!)

Here are early pics. I'll post more as I put the pieces together. The goal of this built has been to create a nearly silent clean and black professional looking rig that is suited well for multitasking and for A/V/HD media encoding. I don't game very much (no time) but I am curious to pickup a good RTS (Company of Heroes?)...any recommendation would be helpful. My previous built was a AMD 3800X2, 2GB DDR, ASROCK Dual Sata, Radeon 9600, XP SP3 32bit.

Specs:
Case: Lian Li V1100B-Plus II Silent Case
CPU: Core i7 920 w/ Zalman CPNS 9700NT (goal is to OC to 3.5-3.8GHz)
MB: Asus P6T Deluxe X58
Ram: OCZ 6GB 1600DDR3
GC: Fanless MSI 9500GT 512MB HDMI
Display: Samsung 2693HM 26" LCD
PS: OCZ StealthXStream 500W
HD: WD Velociraptor SataII 320GB 10K Drive (Primary), Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB (Secondary)
Optical: LG DVD/RW (upgrade to BluRay burner in the future maybe)
Card Reader: Lian Li 25B 20 in 1 reader
Keyboard/Mouse: Logitech Desktop Wave Pro
OS: Windows7 64bit Beta (Vista Ultimate 64bit later)
HD Software: Sony Vegas 9 Premium or Cyberlink PowerDirector 7 Ultra (can't decide)






Cheers...

Greetings from sunny soggy Mount Vernon

Not sure how well any current RTS will run on the 9500GT. I don't do much RTS, but I found Medieval II to be good for a while:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6832203007

Hope that Zalman is quiet enough for you.

Does that shroud come with the case? The pics on newegg don't show much... It seems like a good case over all, although like most quiet cases the cooling isn't the best.

Here is a better depiction of the what the case would look like inside. This is the Lian-Li 1200 but has a similar internal setup as the Lian Li 1100. Although I think the 1200 is a little longer from front to back.

If you could mod the case to put another 120mm intake fan on the top, it might be perfect

Sure!!! Can I come down to Mt. Vernon and use your metal saw? lol.

Since you've only got that 9500GT, then you could look into Galactic Civilizations II--don't play it myself, but I think it's only 2D (and turn based, however), so it might work for you better.

Empire: Total War and Starcraft II are coming soon, but then you'd have to upgrade that video card... and Supreme Commander would have been great on your rig too--doh!

Thanks Shadow.

Yeah, I just bought a Canon HG-20 High Definition Video Recorder and got the CUDA enabled 9500GT specifically for transcoding. My original intent was to use it with PowerDirector 7 Ultra which has CUDA optimization. It looks very encouraging but I will also give Badaboom a try seeing as if the software is efficient than maybe I won't need PowerDirector and can go with Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere which are not optimized with CUDA. I would love to seen how transcoding would do on a pair of Nvidia G92 series chips (260 and up) but due to premium cost and the fact I don't game very much, I'll just stick to the reviews.

OK, I take back what I said about your 9500GT!