New PC Build

[IceT-Bag]

Built my new PC today, got to say the motherboard and video card are a work of art in the aesthetics department.

Spec (all at stock values):
:: Intel i7 930 CPU
:: Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Mobo
:: 3x2GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600Mhz 8-8-8-24 (TR3X6G1600C8D)
:: 1GB PCIe Sapphire HD 5850 Vapor-X
:: Lite-On Sata DVD Writer
:: 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 SATA II Drive
:: 600W OCZ PSU
:: GigaByte Poseidon Case (black)


Impressions:
I've not fired it up yet, but I can share the following:

From an aesthetics point of view, the motherboard is gorgeous, without doubt the nicest looking motherboard I've ever laid eyes on. The only issue I've had is the location, or rather orientation, of the SATA ports. You'll see in the following pics how awkward they are to access once the motherboard is in the case (and the case is pretty spacious!).

The retail cooler for the Intel CPU is rather nice, its wide but not big in terms of height and is of a good weight (I think its a copper/ali combo). Im sure there are better out there in the form of a Zalman or something similar, but if its good enough for Intel its good enough for me - and since I wont be overclocking this (as I use it for work also) it should do just fine (time will tell).

The graphics card is really shiny, a work of art in its own right and the pictures wont do it justice. It is without doubt the biggest damn card I've ever purchased and the location of the power connectors on the very end of the card pointing towards the front of the case leaves very little space. I had to connect the power connectors first and then fit the card which is a tricky job! I know its not a dogs bollox card but it should fair better than the Ati HD 2900XT I've been using which is still a great card in its own right!

So, aside from the SATA connectors on the motherboard and the power connectors on the GPU Im very impressed. I will install Windows 7/XP (dual boot) tomorrow and will hopefully it all working and benchmarked over the weekend.


Pics:

Sexy Mobo


Sexy GPU


Sexy Thing

[Sky]

Why would you want to cripple it by having XP? if it's for program compatability for work you'd be better off with MS VM2007 SP1 or Sun Virtualbox with XP installed on a virtual drive (no need for seperate partitions, only takes as much space as it needs) with cpu virtualisation turned on it runs at almost full speed and you can tell it how much ram to use, even supports Dos6.22 (haven't tried any older ones yet but 3 would probably work) and WFWG3.11 (and plays Cannon Fodder) The MS virtual hardware is very generic (old Intel/SB/S3) whereas the Sun is a little more contemperary.

[LuMbErJaCk]

I will install Windows 7/XP (dual boot) tomorrow and will hopefully it all working and benchmarked over the weekend.

Results HERE plz

Nice rig Ice, but no pics of the case
I've Googled for it but a picsearch for GigaByte Poseidon gave 3 different cases as a result

[IceT-Bag]

Why would you want to cripple it by having XP?

Im currently on XP and have various kind of software installed to aid me with developing websites on both IIS and Apache with SQL Server and MySQL databases, along with the Android and Eclipse SDKs for creating rich mobile applications. Some of these require some fiddling with regards to customisation.

Its all working fine in XP, plus if I dual boot and one OS fails to load, I can boot into the other to try to recover any important data. Another reason is I wouldnt want to risk my work data by gaming on the same OS, especially since some "no cd" cracks can be dodgy. Im still happy with XP (on a dual boot xp setup now), I've only gone for Win7 due to the dx9 limitation of XP for gaming.

With 500GB space, I dont think a dual boot will cripple me mate, its more of a convenience issue.

Results HERE plz
...
I've Googled for it but a picsearch for GigaByte Poseidon gave 3 different cases as a result

Will do mate

Case Info: http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/vi ... =1&id=1862

[Godz]

I will also try and place some results for my new pc i have here is a brief rundown of the specs.

AMD AM3 PHENOM II 955 BLACK EDITION 3.2GHz X4 Quad-Core PROCESSOR (3.5Hz overclocked)

8GB DDR DUAL CHANNEL CORSAIR XMS2 GAMING RAM WITH HEAT-SPREADERS

1TB (1000GB) SERIAL ATA S.A.T.A HARD DRIVE

ATI HD5770 1GB

Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 mobo

WINDOWS 7 ULTIMATE DX11

THERMALTAKE M9D CASE

[umbongo(uk)]

your all benders and i am the mushroomm(yes i partok in some extra boozingg but i swear im sober) bumm bags

[IceT-Bag]

Well, doesnt look like I'll get chance to benchmark this weekend, didnt realise how much sh*t I have to install, how many updates I have to download and how much tweaking there is to get certain apps working together.

For example, and this was a new one on me, if you dual boot Windows XP with Vista/Win7, unless you hide the Vista/Win7 drive from XP (via registry entry) it will delete all RESTORE POINTS on Vista/Win7 lol.

WinXP uses a different file structure for SYSTEM RESTORE POINTS and SHADOW VOLUMES to Vista/Win7. So, when it sees a file structure it doesnt recognise on the partition/drive that Vista/Win7 is installed on - it deletes them

[axeskyhigh]

Well, doesnt look like I'll get chance to benchmark this weekend, didnt realise how much sh*t I have to install, how many updates I have to download and how much tweaking there is to get certain apps working together.

For example, and this was a new one on me, if you dual boot Windows XP with Vista/Win7, unless you hide the Vista/Win7 drive from XP (via registry entry) it will delete all RESTORE POINTS on Vista/Win7 lol.

WinXP uses a different file structure for SYSTEM RESTORE POINTS and SHADOW VOLUMES to Vista/Win7. So, when it sees a file structure it doesnt recognise on the partition/drive that Vista/Win7 is installed on - it deletes them

ice you may also like to know that with that dual boot setup it appears that you can also only enter safemode into win7 !! or maybe thats just me!!

[IceT-Bag]

@Axeskyhigh: When you get the Windows 7 boot manager, highlight the OS and press F8 instead of pressing enter.



Just benchmarked my PC on stock settings using 3DMark06 on WinXP SP3 with Catalyst 10.3:



Also ran the same test on Windows 7 Pro with the same Catalyst drivers (64 bit):



Given that 3DMark06 is a DX9 benchmarking application, I was pleasantly suprised to see a better result in Win 7 than WinXP, maybe the extra system memory had an impact on the results????

[axeskyhigh]

@Axeskyhigh: When you get the Windows 7 boot manager, highlight the OS and press F8 instead of pressing enter.



Just benchmarked my PC on stock settings using 3DMark06 on WinXP SP3 with Catalyst 10.3:



Also ran the same test on Windows 7 Pro with the same Catalyst drivers (64 bit):



Given that 3DMark06 is a DX9 benchmarking application, I was pleasantly suprised to see a better result in Win 7 than WinXP, maybe the extra system memory had an impact on the results????

thankyou ice good tip dude