New system finally

[ALBPM]

I have a SATA newbie question...... Never worked on a system that was all SATA before..

I will have 2 HDs and I assume these get connected to SATA E1 and SATA E2 on the Mobo and that SATA E1 is the primary for the C drive?????

The E1 and E2 SATA connectors are the ones that use the JMicron onboard controller for EZ backup and Super Speed.

Then the other SATA1 through SAT6 are for the CD/DVD and misc. drives.

[Evildead666]

sata are generic, like usb.
it doesn't matter which one is boot, you can usually set that in the bios.

JMicron controllers are much slower than the intel ones i've heard.

[ALBPM]

I finally put it together yesterday....

It booted right up with all 6GBs of memory and the WIN 7 install went really fast.
The only hard part is moving my email account stuff from Outlook 2007 to the new system.

I installed Outlook along with the MS Office Enterprise 2007. So, I'll get Outlook working before looking into the new Windows Mail program.

The cable management on the HAF case is really nice. This is most definitely the cleanest looking system I've put together so far.

[Mehen]

Pics!

[ALBPM]

LOL!!!! OK maybe I'll have time tonight to take some pics

[ALBPM]

Here's some pics finally....



The inside


Tooless drive bays, 12GB G.Skill DDR3-1600




Scythe MUGEN-2 CPU cooler and the 230mm fan on the top of the case.


Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 X2


Another 230mm fan in the side cover. No lack of airflow in this case.
It is quiet by my standards....

The castors that came with the case broke almost right away....LOL
They are too small for a case this size. I ended up buying a set of appliance
rollers at Home Depot for $13 which fit without any length adjustments.

I had no problems with the tooless drive bays or the PCI slot mechanisms

[J1NG]

Sweeeeet.....

What've you got the CPU to hit so far?

J1NG

[ALBPM]

I haven't tried any serious overclocking yet. I setup a comfortable profile with the AI tweeker at 2.9 but that's it for now. I did bump up the Memory speed to 1600 from the 1060 default.
The Radeons are running at 910MHz GPU and 1015MHz memory clock.

[J1NG]

From what I've been able to garner, the CPU speed and the GPU speed is all you need to worry about. The memory for normal usage is virtually no difference if you have it at 1600Mhz or 960Mhz (I did that once accidently, but does arrive at the point. )

You should EASILY handle 3.2Ghz with virtually no changes at all with that CPU just by upping the blck. More than that and it's down to the stepping of the i7. But my guess is 3.5 3.6 without overstressing anything seriously.

J1NG

[ALBPM]

OK....

Without any voltage increases this is what I can get out of this CO stepping 920....




All I did was change the CPU ratio from "AUTO" = 20 to 21 and then the BCLK Frequency to 185. I tried higher but was unstable from 190 to 200. I would need to increase the CPU voltage and probably increase the Dram bus voltage to run higher.

But 3.7GHz without a voltage increase is pretty good.... Arrrr

[J1NG]

Nice!!!

Got 3.6ghz on my C0 stepping but had to boost voltage to 1.3v AFTER the latest beta bios for the Gigabyte UD5. Originally stuck at 3.2Ghz. Wouldn't go higher no matter what I did.

Mine should be able to go higher, but afraid to push it due to lack of cooling (using old case).

RAM put at 1080Mhz, wasn't bothered enough to try to max it since there's no real advantage for me at this time.

J1NG

[ALBPM]

I've backed off to 3.6 just to be safe. I cannot make any voltage adjustments or mine crashes. Everything is on AUTO except the CPU Frequency and BCLK.

[J1NG]

You tried to Prime95 it at that speed for 3-4 runs yet (5-8 mins approx)? If there's any obvious voltage problems, it'll blue screen there quickly. If it holds at 3.6 without trouble. Consider the CPU fully stable and ready for use in anything you throw at it.

And, may I bring your attention to the Benchmark forum as well?

J1NG