albertareef

I like *F* the most outta the choices that are to be voted on.

 

However I didn't vote for any of them.......... I like reefgeeks the most!

 

As geek said thanks to all the hard work people put in but I think it should be something different as well.

Ok... I know I'm lame because I didn't actually spend any time trying to contribute a piece but.... I am with Geek and Michael on this. I don't know that any of these capture the club ideally. Perhaps, if Brandon were willing and he could be given a little more time, we could get some additional options??? No disrespect meant to those that contributed...

then I think I just get to set back and watch everything grow...

Forgive me, but I am highly skeptical about this part!

See if we can get this out of my house before I move... 250.00 takes it...

Arrgghh.... you're killing me Brandon! I want to buy this just because it such a screaming deal but I still have an unused stand sitting in my living room and I would be shot if I brought this home! Hope this works for ya.

Do you mean 6 x 39w? What's the price on them

Hey Ryan - you might want to PM him if you're interested... I don't think he checks the board much these days.

What are you thinking of asking for the aquapod with light and stand?

Looks like it has it's own thread.... and looks like a heck of a deal!

"AquaPod 24 w/70W HQI Sunpod and Biocube stand"

for sure! If that is all curtis has right now, he probably wont want to frag it.

 

I want the chrisp white pompom xenia, not the brownish.

I will bring you piece next time I make it out there - might be able to come by Sunday if you will be around. If it's not white enough for you it can go in the frag tank;) I think it is the variant you are looking for however...

bring me some of that xenia Curtis' date=' I need a piece of nice white xenia for my home tank![/quote']

 

Hey Joel, I have lots of that you can have if Curtis doesn't have extra... just let me know - I need to cull some anyway.

Congratulations! Awesome job on the tanks and the write-up. I have seen a few pics of your tanks before and always loved them. It's a nice change of pace from the warm water specimens and extremely impressive. Very cool...(rock2)

this is a steal for tis tank

mike503-659-7407

there are pics on the other posting

Wow... this does look like a great deal. If I hadn't already bought Lowman's system I would be all over this. Unfortunately, no more room (or time) for another one. Good luck!

May I ask what kind of wrasse that is? Tank looks great so far BTW.

Really nice job on the tank - looks like you are off to a great start. I like the aquascaping as well...

Looks like you got one of the nice male Potter's Wrasses from Rose City. They have had several come in lately. Unfortunately, I lost mine to some sort of infection (which I feel really badly about).... glad to see one of his mates doing well. They are beautiful fish.

Here are the specs on the card...

Model

Brand POWERCOLOR

Model 26PRO 512M DDR2

Interface

Interface PCI Express x16

Chipset

Chipset Manufacturer ATI

GPU Radeon HD 2600PRO

Core clock 600MHz

Stream Processors 120 Stream Processors Units

Memory

Memory Clock 800MHz

Memory Size 512MB

Memory Interface 128-bit

Memory Type GDDR2

3D API

DirectX DirectX 10

OpenGL OpenGL 2.0

Ports

DVI 2

TV-Out HDTV Out

VIVO No

General

Tuner None

RAMDAC 400 MHz

Max Resolution 2560 x 1600

CrossFire Supported Yes

Cooler With Fan

Dual-Link DVI Supported Yes

Windows Vista Certified for

 

Will I be ok with the whole power consumption thing?

I looked this up on TigerDirects site and it says "400 watt or greater power supply is recommended" so it sounds like you should be OK. Realistically, since you aren't gaming and not running a lot of other drives off of the power supply it will probably be just fine. As Nyles says, you can always upgrade the PS later if you find yourself adding additional drives or other power sinks later and run into problems.

Well I found a real good deal on the 6025's

Hey Ryan - care to share your source? Thanks!

Ok lets try this again...

 

Case-

APEVIA X-Dreamer II ATXB4KLW-BK Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 420W Power Supply - Retail

Item #: N82E16811144026

 

Harddrive-

SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD403LJ 400G/B 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Item #: N82E16822152085

 

Motherboard-

Foxconn C51XEM2AA- 8EKRS2H AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

Item #: N82E16813186098

 

Video card-

POWERCOLOR 26PRO 512M DDR2 Radeon HD 2600PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

 

Ram-

Crucial Ballistix 2G/B (2 x 1G/B) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT12864AA804 - Retail

Item #: N82E16820146565

 

CPU-

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ Brisbane 2.1GHz Socket AM2 Processor Model ADO4000DDBOX - Retail

Item #: N82E16819103774

 

With rebates 440.00

 

I could get a westerngate hard drive...for a little more and it comes with a 5 year warrenty, is it worth it?

Do I need anything else to make this run?

Hey Reefgeek, sounds like a good deal for what you are going to do with it. The video card choices are always tough with many criteria to look at (piplines, fill rates, core clock speed, memory bandwith etc.) but, unless you are going to play high end games, this should be a good workhorse card for you. Powercolor has been around for a long time and Radeon is a pretty solid chipset in general. The only other thing I would check before calling it good is the power requirements for this card. Most high end cards these days have their own cooling fans and require power directly from the power supply (as opposed to just through the card interface on the motherboard). If that's the case, they typically will recommend a minimum wattage capacity to drive the card. You can often get away with less if you aren't running lots of drives but if you end up having problems the card manufacturer will point to that as a possible problem. Also, I would support the suggestion by Nyles to upgrade to a WD drive as I have also had good luck with these and seen a lot of other brands fail in our machines at work. As for the OS question, I think Civicsit is correct on that - make sure you get a full version as opposed to an upgrade version (which is cheaper) as the upgrade requires you to load it on top of an already installed, valid version of the OS. If you don't already have an older version to install before upgrading to XP then make sure you are buying a full version.

OK... good luck man. Sorry this is so complicated. Looks like a great deal.

You had mentioned about the case needing alot of fans...all the cases with 3 or more fans are over 180 bucks...

 

also is it worth the extra 200 bucks to upgrade to the

 

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor

Geek, while I haven't specifically compared the two chips you are thinking about, in general, there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to clock speed and cache per $$ and, for what you are planning on doing, I think the AMD will be more than sufficient with significant room for growth. Honestly, I don't think you would be able to tell the differnce between the two all other things (RAM, video card, hd speed) being equal. Assuming you address the cooling issues that Impur pointed out (which are important) then the extra $200 could probably be better spent upgrading other components. For instance - going to a 10,000 RPM SATA drive (e.g. a WD raptor), going for dual video cards (if the board supports them), adding more RAM. I have used several AMD chips BTW and have been pretty happy with them so I don't necessarily buy into the inherent supperiority of Intel products. One other thing I was curious about.... you might want to double check the specs on your mother board vs. video card as you list the card as AGP and most new boards are PCIexpress - which aren't compatible. I thought the SLI boards (which support dual video cards) were pretty much all PCIexpress. Also, double check the socket compatability of the CPU and mother board (both 959 or other?). Sometimes you can get a better deal as a package on CPU/board as well then you don't have to worry about it. Sorry... if I had a little more time today I would check these out for you but I have a friends G4 laptop I have to crack open and do a HD and optical drive replacement on.... you have never seen so many different sized microscopic screws in your life!

Looks good. One thing that you really need to watch out for is that the processor that you have listed is a 64-bit. So you need to make sure that everything is compatable with it, esp. the motherboard and the operating system. You will need to get the 64-bit windows, and you may not be able to run all programs, since some aren't 64-bit compatable. Personally I think it would be better to stay away from the 64-bit, but that's just me, if you want it, then go for it. You might also want to include the price of windows in your budget though, since the price of windows is quite high.

HTH

Hi Civicsit, you sure about this bit? If so, it's something new (specific to the dual core chips?). The previous versions of the Athlon 64 series were 64bit capable but did not require a 64bit version of the OS. I am running standard Windows XP on an Athlon 64 as we speak (so to speak). Obviously, you can realize some enhanced performance from the 64 bit OS but then you will run into issues (potentially) with 32 bit applications. Many may run OK in emulation mode but others won't and you probably don't want to have to upgrade Photoshop etc. if you don't have to.

I may be completely wrong here since I haven't shopped for a dual core chip recently but I think Reefgeek's proposed setup would work fine. Actually, it's a really good price and makes me itchy to upgrade! My apologies if I am just out of touch....

Hey - congratulations! Our best to the whole family. And you thought keeping a reef tank was a lot of work:D

No word back yet..........

I could use a couple of these as well if you ever hear back from them... thanks for checking on this.

That does help...I was thinking just possibly finding a used computer with a good processor and then add the other stuff to it' date=' since that stuff tends to be cheaper then buying it from dell or other companies like that...what do you think?[/quote']

 

Hey Brandon, in addition to Civicsit's comments (which are all helpful) I would add a couple of things. If you are buying used and have a choice, pick something with SATA capabilities for the hard drive as that has better bandwith than IDE - if you are opening/saving large files it can make a difference. If you don't want/need DVD, you might want to consider adding a second hard drive to use for backups as the last thing you want is to lose 100 gigs worth of photos you have slaved over (believe me, I know how it feels). This could be an inexpensive external USB drive - which reminds me, make sure you have USB2 ports (not just USB1) if you are going used. As for CPU - unless you have a copy of photoshop that is actually optimized for dual core performance, there is no real reason to go there now. You might, however, want to pay some attention to what type of socket you have on the mother board - picking one that has the capacity to be upgraded to a dual core CPU would be good. OK... I will stop rambling. Hope this helps.

What is the petco sale this weekend????

 

Dennis

Hey Dennis - looks like it's a dollar per gallon on tanks up to 55 gallons - not including (officially) the Oceanic cube. Take a look at the ARGH!! Tank Leak! thread by dsoz for more details....

Just stopped by Cobalt's to pick up some coral and saw this tank - if you are thinking about one of these you should definitely check it out, he did a really nice job on the stand and it looks great!

Rock anenome. I have a bunch on a zoa frag. Cool little guys' date=' but spread quick and sting. Isolate them and you'll be fine.[/quote']

 

Yeah, I second this as I have quite a collection of these guys. They actually look really nice under actinic if they are the same as mine - a very bright vibrant green. They stayed isolated for a long time but... they went crazy during a period of time when I was having flow/nutrient issues and now they are a royal pain, crowding out other coral and poping up in weird places (including on one of my clams). So... enjoy but make sure you keep them under control!

A ray of hope!!!

 

I bought a 10gal box of IO salt today and some kent dkh superbuffer because i knew i would have to buffer this salt for alk and calcium.

 

Mixed up about 2gal at lunch. Got home from work and topped off with a little more salt, letting it run for 20 min afterward.

 

Ph of 8.1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll test alk/calcium later and buffer for those.

 

The first salt i've found that mixes up over 8.0 pH, i'm so happy. I'm $80 poorer from all the salts i tried, and i've lost about $500+ worth of livestock. But hey, i've got a salt that doesn't mix up to a pH that kills corals

Yea! Glad there is some light at the end of your tunnel. I have used both Kent supper buffer and coral builder over the last several years and had pretty good luck with stable PH - weird about the salt mixes though...

I should have said no dibs on free stuff' date=' but as reefgeek snuck that in, I guess he has first dibs on the salifert stuff[/quote']

 

No worries... my schedule is hellish right now anyway so who knows when I could get overthere. I mainly was just teasing geek a bit.

dibs on the saliert kits...you have PM.

Arrrgh! You're too quick for me...

When you folks say "Rabbitfish" or "foxface" are you referring to fish in the family Siganidae? Or is there an actual tang whose common name is one of these monikers?

 

This is meant in an educational light and not as nit-picking.

Sorry about the confusion... my fault. I introduced the Scribbled rabbit (Siganus doliatus) even though Reefgeek asked specifically about Tangs. I just haven't had a Tang go after the hair algae and thought I would throw this guy out there as an option as he is at least a similar size/shape. Likewise the Foxface. So... my appologies if this lead anyone astray.