Zimm - I may have missed this, but what was the total cost of the rig?

I wanted to know the same thing.

Chris charged me $1,200 plus shipping. I'm sure if you call him he will build it for you for the same price...right Chris?

Frankly, I had not added it up post purchase, but I'll do that now.........

Looks like $3,080.50 before software. I think the last Dell version I built (online) was around $6,000, but that included some software, less RAM, and smaller screens. Not apples to apples, but the price difference is dramatic. Almost all my equipment came from Newegg.com and the process was generally smooth, but Chris handled all the customer support so I can't truly grade them.

Chris:

I had a question for you.

I am setting up my HTPC (Sony Vaio VGX-XL1A). I want to use my projector as the secondary display(connected using component video) and use a monitor(connected using HDMI) as the primary. I want to use the monitor, when playing content other than video. The PC has a Nvidia GeForce 6200 TurboCache. When i go to Nvidia control panel, i do see both the displays but do not see the option of clone mode..it only shows me single monitor mode.

any help is appreciated.

Regs,
Avi

Do you have the second display currently extending your desktop? I think that needs to be turned off in the Windows display settings, so the second display is not in use before it can be selected as a clone of the primary.

Other than that, I don't know. There are some limitations when using the component out--stupid DRM crap.

I tried a lot to get the clone thing working but cannot. I can only pick one.

I will try to test with 2 monitors on HDMI and Svideo. Just to make sure it is only on component out.

Avi

Zimm, do you have RivaTuner installed on your computer? It's an extremely useful program, and really a must have (I use it), that allows you to monitor the temperature of your video card and possibly other stuff.

Once you have the program set up, it will automatically change fan speeds based on temperature, or you can do it manually.

I don't have that, but the XFX Radeon HD 4870 X2 I use has a built-in software control panel that does all of that and lets you manually control the overclocking and fan speeds while monitoring temp, memory use, etc, or you let the system monitor those. I also think my CPU has a similar control panel but I'm not messing with upping the voltage on the i-7 CPU - at least not yet.

What motherboard do you have? I don't recall seeing that in your specs.

Here is the motherboard, it comes with the SuperMicro barebones set: Intel X58

I think the CPU voltage and temp controls are in the Bios setup screen. But I have not looked for them, just saw it somewhere on install.