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Medic's i7 Upgrade - Sept. 2010


MedicSN6
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So I had been planning an upgrade for some time now and had been putting it off for a while so I just decided what the hell. Last Saturday I drove up to MicroCenter in Vienna, Virginia (about 1.45 hours away) and picked up the parts.

 

From current machine:

 

Antec 1200

Rosewill Xtreme RX-850 - 850W

Samsung DVD Burner w/ LightScribe

WD Caviar Black 320Gb 7200 HDD

Windows 7 Professional x64

 

New Parts:

 

Gigabyte X58A-UD5 LGA1366 rev. 2.0

Intel i7-930 2.8Ghz

Corsair H70 CPU Cooler

X2 CORSAIR XMS3 6GB DDR3 1600Mhz 7-8-7-20

X2 EVGA GTX 470 1280Mb

WD Caviar Blue 500Gb 7200 HDD

8-pin CPU and ATX Mobo Power cable extensions

 

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Gallery Here

 

So far, I have been able to run BF:BC2 and ArmA2: OA with full settings at 1920x1080. I am still running some benchmarks and tweaking the BIOS to get everything right. It's a process to say the least. One lucky thing was that it posted and booted in to Windows on the first try.

The rig took a total of about 6 hours to disassemble the old one and then build this monster.

 

All of the lights inside except for some of the mobo warning and status LEDs are all blue which fit well with the blue scheme of the UD5 motherboard. The side panel 120mm fan actually was tough to fit on because it touches the H70 intake fan and flex it, so I had to Dremel the panel fan corner down a little bit to make it fit properly. Other than that, no real modifications to the case or components.

 

It has a total of 13 fans:

 

200m x1

120mm x 6 in case

120mm x2 for H70 Radiator

40mm x2 in PSU

2 fans in the GTX 470s

 

So if you are on TS with me and you hear a Helo taking off in the background, and were not playing ArmA... you know why.

 

I am really happy with the way it turned out.

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drewl..... one question though why only a 500 gig hdd? If I'd spend this amount I would pick up a SSD for the fast start up, and a whopping 2 tb for all the ahem well ehh you know what...lol

Good questions. I will be using my old mobo setup in a htpc setup with the big HDDs for news groups. This machine is mainly for gaming and web surfing. Easy enough to scrub and start over if I get a virus.

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wow !!

 

Very Nice build !

 

So, it looks like you have 13 fans, but your CPU is water cooled right? That is a good cool environment for those videocards.

 

I have only 1 question, where the second card get the air to cool down ?

It seems to be so stuck to the buttom of the other card that the only air coould get is the hot air from the master card. Did you monitor the temp it gets?

 

I think you did a good choice to not go SSD. Although is obviously fast, you would achive a great result just with a good array on RAID 0. SSD is way too expensive at the moment to justiify its performance.

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Good questions. I will be using my old mobo setup in a htpc setup with the big HDDs for news groups. This machine is mainly for gaming and web surfing. Easy enough to scrub and start over if I get a virus.

 

If you use ESET/NOD32 you will probably never get a virus, ESET has ZERO penetration since 1998

http://www.eset.co.uk/Compare/Competition

 

 

ESET U.K.

 

http://www.eset.co.uk/

 

 

 

ESET N.A.

 

http://www.eset.com/home

 

 

30day free trial.

http://www.eset.com/home/compare-eset-to-competition

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@Batwing, There are holes in the back of the PCB for the video card as well as about 3mm of room between the cards themselves so it provides enough air to the top card. The top card runs a bit hotter but it is doing most of the work as well. The max fluctuation is 3-5 degrees hotter in the top card. At idle they run at

 

GPU 1 Temp: 43 deg C

PCB 1 Temp: 34 deg C

GPU 2 Temp: 39 deg C

PCB 2 Temp: 34 deg C

 

Both have a fan speed of 60% which is higher than most people run them but the cards while running two instances of EVE with maxed settings would cause the fans to do a burst speed every couple minutes or so. They would go from 50% to 80 or 90% for a couple seconds and then back to 50%. This is VERY ANNOYING. So I figured I'd just run the fans a little faster and all is good now. I have also enable the automatic stepping protocol in EVGA Precision 2.0 which will move the percentage up a certain amount when the temperatures rise and then back down as they decrease.

 

@Viiiper, Download underway. I will give it a 30 day try and check it out. I have always been a fan of AVG and Kaspersky.

For those of you who want to try it but dont want to give an email...

http://www.eset.com/download/free-trial/license/eav

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So I had been planning an upgrade for some time now and had been putting it off for a while so I just decided what the hell. Last Saturday I drove up to MicroCenter in Vienna, Virginia (about 1.45 hours away) and picked up the parts.

 

From current machine:

 

Antec 1200

Rosewill Xtreme RX-850 - 850W

Samsung DVD Burner w/ LightScribe

WD Caviar Black 320Gb 7200 HDD

Windows 7 Professional x64

 

New Parts:

 

Gigabyte X58A-UD5 LGA1366 rev. 2.0

Intel i7-930 2.8Ghz

Corsair H70 CPU Cooler

X2 CORSAIR XMS3 6GB DDR3 1600Mhz 7-8-7-20

X2 EVGA GTX 470 1280Mb

WD Caviar Blue 500Gb 7200 HDD

8-pin CPU and ATX Mobo Power cable extensions

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why did you not buy the UD3-R rev2.0 board @ $100+ CHEAPER PRICE ??

 

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 Express 1366 Motherboard

 

 

does exactly the same.....

 

 

All UD boards

http://www.scan.co.uk/search.aspx?q=gigabyte+ga+x58a

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My mistake there are a couple of differences....

Gigabyte EX58-UD5 X58

 

1 x PCI Express x4 slot instead of a slot 1

2x Giga LAN instead of 1x Giga LAN

10x SATA 3Gbit v 8x SATA 3Gbit + 2 SATA 6 Gbit

8 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports v 6 USB2.0 /1.1 + 2x USB 3.0

 

The UD3+R lacks only 1x GBit LAN and has a different composition on the USB & SATA.

 

PLUS the UD5 has onboard on/off & rest switches.

 

 

But then there are various variants of the UD5 !!!

 

 

Your board is a v. good one, I do have the same but the UD3-R was not available at the time for me....

 

If you need DUAL GIGA LAN then UD5

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My mistake there are a couple of differences....

Gigabyte EX58-UD5 X58

 

1 x PCI Express x4 slot instead of a slot 1

2x Giga LAN instead of 1x Giga LAN

10x SATA 3Gbit v 8x SATA 3Gbit + 2 SATA 6 Gbit

8 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports v 6 USB2.0 /1.1 + 2x USB 3.0

 

The UD3+R lacks only 1x GBit LAN and has a different composition on the USB & SATA.

 

PLUS the UD5 has onboard on/off & rest switches.

 

 

But then there are various variants of the UD5 !!!

 

 

Your board is a v. good one, I do have the same but the UD3-R was not available at the time for me....

 

If you need DUAL GIGA LAN then UD5

 

Yeah, I plan on setting the dual LAN up in the next week or so. Not sue how that will work with Vonage though. I really like the on-board power and rest buttons. They came in handy when testing the BIOS settings. A must for any motherboard really.

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Hmm...

 

Monster board that UD9. Too bad a few of reviews as RMA issues.

 

Anyway, I am not totally sure its price is justified.

 

Major features are the 4 way SLI or CF, 2 USB 3 ports and 1 (but it could be 2, I think they made a mistake on the picture) SATA 6 GB port.

 

Well, true to say it provide the innovation for these new peripherals, but... it doesn t feel balanced to me.

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