My first Intel experience in ~7 years

[Joe]

So I got my new rig put together... its specs consist of:

Core 2 Duo E6600
Asus 680i P5N32-E SLI
2x OCZ PC8500 EPP/SLI 1GB sticks
4x Seagate 7200.10 250GB SATA Hd's (for RAID 0 action)
2x Samsung 18x DVD multi writers (SATA)

and I put all this in my recently purchased Antec P180B Case with a Sunbeam NUUO 550Watt PSU and my 7800GTX vid card. (Which I may replace with a 8800GTX in due time if I start gaming again.) Also with a CFA-635 in it for prettiness.

I also put a Adaptec 39160 SCSI card in with a Seagate 300GB 10K U160 HD that I have kicking around just as some extra storage (1.3TB in this box).

All connected to a new Samsung 226BW monitor (22in Widescreen)

So heres my lil review of what setting this thing up was like:

The Asus designed (non Nvidia reference) 680i SLI chipset mobo is a beast of a device. Very non plug/play, it required LOTS of tweaking and reading online to get it stable. I made a mistake and had the pins for the CFA all wrong, I didn’t pay enough attention when putting the leads onto the Asus "Q Connector" USB header thingy... I put the +Data on the +5 from the USB and the +5 on the +Data from the USB. This didn’t damage anything but caused the machine to act VERY weird. Like not going into windows setup to load XP!

After a day of working through that I got it all loaded and running. I then started playing with overclocking a bit.

I tried the EPP/SLI deal and have to say I was less than impressed, it never would put it to a stable speed... that could be because the OCZ ram just isnt stable at 1066 like they claim. So I did all the settings by hand Here are the settings I found were stable with stock air cooling that’s silent and in a hot room.

VCore- 1.36 (CPUZ mis-represents it as 1.26 but I assure you its 1.36)
VMem - 2.0
(stock voltages for the rest)

CPU QDR FSB - 1333Mhz
Mem DDR FSB - 800Mhz
Mem timings 4-4-4-12 1T

LDT Freq = 4x (but I have been playing with it at 3x to ensure stability 5x is stock)

Spread Spectrum shut off, and lots of the other crap shut off.

Resulting in a CPU speed of 3Ghz on the intel stock cooler, and I have run StressPrime on the cores and mem for 2 days without a single error or lock up. it took a while to get to the point it was this stable, the 1.36v is what did it for the CPU to keep it stable, and dropping the v on the ram back down to 2.0 from 2.1 made it more stable and let me drop the timings.

The HD's are setup into 2 RAID 0 arrays and the speeds off them are acceptable (150 - 180MB/sec) Load times are almost nothing now.

The PSU runs at like 50C at full load in this hot room with 5 HD's so its good to know there’s more headroom there for an 8800GTX in the future. The CPU runs at 40C at idle, and 57C at full beat down load.

Now I have more power than I know what to do with, and my 4600+ X2 rig is going into my server to be a Vmware ESX box or just a Vmware server load on it with 4GB of ram (soon to be 8GB).

As far as cooling and noise goes, this machine is dead quiet even with the 2 rear fans at their middle position I cant hear it over the ambient noise in my apartment! The seagates are also so quiet that I cant hear them accessing. The lower air "tunnel" of the P180 is great and keeps the 4 drives cool to the thouch.


Some pics: (attached)

The CFA-635 pic shows the LED's on the side are set to react to different things. In this case the bottom 2 transition from off - green - yellow - orange - red depending on CPU core utilization, and the top 2 do the same for Network utilization from 0 - 200Mb/sec. I absolutely love the 635 for this! and it looks pretty dead sexy. its refresh rates are insane it updates prolly 10 times or more a second making it very reactive to system changes.

For the inside pics, the SCSI drive is in the upper drive bay while the 4 SATA disks are in the lower bay. All 6 SATA connectors on the motherboard are used (4x disk 2x DVD RW)

These pics were taken with my cell phone so ignore the crappy quality.

[Joe]

Oh and the reason for putting XP on and not vista is simple - I have Vista Ultimate licenses (as well as all the other versions through Technet) but Vista sucks so much that I will not run it on my machine... I had it installed and really just got tired of nothing ****ing working, drivers sucking, and just in general the OS not letting me do anything but make it look pretty.

Call me in 2 years when Vista may be ready to rock. Until then XP is doing it for me (and this is coming from someone who has been called a MS Zealot before... Ill call MS products shit when they are shit. But the inability to run almost any Adobe app, or the need to hack Adobe reader's install just to get it to load under Vista is complete bullshit. - thats just the easiest example of many similar issues I ran into).

[re3dyb0y]

Im VERY jealous....

Not fair that you yanks get everything cheaper....



Whats your full home network setup then Joe?

[jaydee]

Sounds like a power house. I just upgraded myself but with less modern stuff.

My first ASRock mobo: K8NF6G-VSTA
Althlon 64 3000+ & 2000mhz
2gig PC3200DDR
Radeon X1950Pro 256meg GDDR3
19" 5ms wide screen LCD.
200gig Maxtor 7200rpm EIDE drive.

This was all plug'n'play. Had to do nothing but turn off the onboard GF6100.

I can't find anything to slow this machine down. Also still running WinXp and have no intention of ever running Vista. I got Ubuntu Linux running on another machine and like it.

I have been tempted to buy a AM2 mobo and one of those $65 cheap AMD Dual Core XP3600+'s and try 64bit linux.

Also heat from the Radeon X1950Pro is nothing. The stock cooler running 40% keeps it below 55C running any game I throw at it.

Anyway I don't think we have to worry about upgrading anytime soon. Only concern is DirectX10. If WinXp isn't going to have it then I guess I will do without it unless I can get it to work in Linux.

[Joe]

My home network is not that crazy.

My workstation (see above)


My File/Print/Orb/VMWare/Lab server:
(Currently - soon to be upgraded)
P4 3.2Ghz
2GB ram
2.2TB of disk (4x 500GB 2x 120GB)
SDLT tape drive
Intel server class Gbit nic
(Post Upgrade)
AMD 4600+ X2
8GB Ram
The rest stays the same except for the nic as its not needed.


My HTPC: (It's old and also going to be replaced eventually with something that can do HD and cable card.)
AthonXP 2500+ clocked at 3200+ speeds
1GB ram
Hauppauge 150MCE
6600GT vid
320GB disk. (just used for recorded TV as all the other music and media is stored on the server)
Intel Gbit nic.

And my work laptop (Lenovo dual core).

That's it for my network. the P4 3.2Ghz may be moved into a second server role once I get the main server upgraded. I have like 6 extra cases, and 4 extra PSU's and a stack of extra 100 - 200GB HD's. So why not

[HammerSandwich]

Nice rig! I'm trying to hold off until the cheap quad-cores hit in the fall, but these price drops are making it tough.

Originally Posted by Joe

...this machine is dead quiet even with the 2 rear fans at their middle position I cant hear it over the ambient noise in my apartment!

Either you have the world's loudest apartment or you've spent too much time around unmuffled rally cars.

[Joe]

well the machine has a noise of air moving through it but you dont hear any fan noise or HD noise thats audible. my apartment isnt loud at all

[jaydee]

I know my DVD drive is way louder than the rest of my system when it spins up.

[HammerSandwich]

Yeah, optical drives are pretty damned loud. But that's what Nero Drivespeed is for.

Anyhow, I suspect the anti-noise obsession is like the path to Zen enlightenment: before you hear the sound of one hand clapping, you frequently fool yourself into believing you already have. Reading through my early posts at SPCR, you'll find a lot of "hey, this made a big improvement, and my PC's getting really quiet" posts. The first part was pretty accurate, but the second not so much. In my case, I kept silencing, and my PCs have become the quietest fan-cooled computers I've ever experienced. But they're not inaudible.

[jaydee]

Quiet enough for me is not able to hear it over the TV. Anymore is a waste of time for me.

[Spot]

needed more power for my rig, so i swapped my OCZ 420W for an Akasa 650W. I still can't get used to the noise that it produces after a month.

[Hallis]

I think I may be due for an upgrade before too long. I'm still on the same A64 3000+ socket 754 CPU and Radeon 9700pro that ive been rocking for YEARS. That 9700 Pro is gonna get encased in something and hung on the wall because it is the best video card ever. lol. It has lasted me through no less than 3 computers and i bought it used. For World of Warcraft it's fine. But i think i want to get into some more stuff.

Shane

[bigben2k]

I don't feel the need for an upgrade yet, but I have the need for more than one PC, since I discovered torrents: always in use(downloading), converting AVIs, or burning discs.

I'm also setting up various small servers for different applications, but I'm still stuck on a Linux firewall.