I bought an 8800GTX last year because the card I had was near death. It was only three years old. I thought the 8800 was big. Boy was I wrong. I was working on my new build last night and it was time to unbox the graphics card after installing the 6-1/2 inch (192mm) all copper Zalman HSF coming in at almost two pounds (978 grams...or so).

The card I got is an EVGA Nvidea GTX275. I'm not one who is easily surprised, but it's OBSCENE how big it is. It is getting to the point where you'll need a separate case just for graphics. There is NO WAY you put two or three of these in a single case for SLI, unless you can drive a fork lift inside the case!

I'll post a picture of it all over the weekend. Amazing.

Honestly they have been huge since the 8800 series. 10.5" PCB is standard. Then you of course have the dual slot cards and if you add in a Zalman or other big HSF yeah, it's going to take up a lot of room.

I just got an HIS 4870 1GB with IceQ4+ cooling about three weeks ago. Factory OC'ed it runs quite cool. I have the fan set at 45% which keeps it in the low 40's idle and mid-high 50's full load. :)

There is no way you could SLI or 3-way SLI/crossfire these cards if you want to install a third party HSF on them.

By the way, on a whim the other day I picked up X-Men:Origins Wolverine video game. WOW! It's a blast! Utterly brutal and savage. :eek: Not for little kids, that's for sure. ;) Highly recommended. Most fun I have had playing a video game for awhile. Ranks right up there with Oblivion and COD4/5 in my opinion. :cool:

Wait till you see the picture. This thing could be classified as an assault weapon in most states. :D

I'll check out the X-Men game.

Get me a crane and a crowbar! :eek: :p

http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/9066/062609004.jpg

New Build:

Asus P6T Deluxe V2; I7 620 Quad Core; 6 Gb Corsair Dominator XMP DDR3 1600 RAM; EVGA Nvidea GTX275; Zalman ZPNS9900LED Copper HSF; SeaSonic 700 Watt PSU; Raptor Boot HDD; 1TB WD Black HDD; Plextor QFlix DVD Burner; CoolerMaster Storm Sniper case (2x200mm, 140mm, 120mm fans); floppy (yes a floppy); Acer 24" HD 1080p Widescreen LCD

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/8610/062609007.jpg

Final Pic:


http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/4015/062609001.jpg

Is it wrong that the first thing I noticed about your pictures is how there's not a single electrolytic capacitor in sight? 8-)

Dare I ask how much all this iron actually *cost*? ;)

- L.

Most any mid-range and up boards will have all solid state caps on it these days. Unless I am going for really cheap I wouldn't buy one that doesn't. ;) And it better at least have solid state caps for the MOSFETS and chokes, if not ferrite.

But yeah, that is a rather nice system.

Well...interesting you should notice. One of the "highlights" of the motherboard is the solid state caps...made in Japan and alleged to be able to last over 50 years at 65 degrees Celsius. Don't ask me how they figured that out. The CPU is running at 32 to 38C The kilo of copper in the Zalman helps :p and the GPU hasn't busted 44C yet.

I rebuilt the system today, actually just tweaked it a bit. I added the second Raptor and configured it in RAID0...yes, it's fast.

All that iron...and copper...and plastic actually came in way cheaper than what I built five years ago. The rig alone (not including monitor, speakers, and other incidentals) was just under $1700USD. With the other stuff right around $2200. All the software on it right now is free and/or open source. Windows 7 is looking good enough that I'll likely have to spring for it...when the time comes...or runs out.