PCA Forums

Well the time has finally come to start the build. These first pics are just the packaging and pics of the hardware. As I get the build gets going I will add more to the thread. Gotta go to a tee ball game in a few so for now this is what we have. Stay tuned for more fun

Package as it arrived from Newegg


Bottom of the box


The motherboard exposed


Motherboard parts


CPU box


Out tha box


Heatsink box


OEM and Noctua comparison


Another one..vertical scale


Noctua components


Hard drive packaging


Tha storage


I forget what this is


Huh?


Thats is for now. Ill get the others up as soon as I get to building.

Looks like a great weekend!

I remember when I put together my first build. I didn't really know what I was doing, but a well-detailed motherboard manual got me through the process with no error. Set up everything, hooked up the cables and pressed power. Up came the screen, starting up with ease

After that, it was a piece of cake to do every one after it.

I feel I have to start fresh with my build and a Core i7 processor. My comp is about 3 months shy of being 2 years old.

Not a bad choice there with the Western Digital drives. Seagate has kind of pushed me towards them with recent reliability issues and them reducing their warranty when faced with those reliability issues.

Oh btw, don't forget to install the floppy drive! :lol

Oh btw, don't forget to install the floppy drive!

I always install a floppy in my builds. I just always regret it 6 months down the road when I got to use some app that some friggen company only allows onto a floppy.

Alrighty guys...finally got 'er up and running. The build went really smooth. Although I will say I wish now that had gotten a bigger case as this one is just stuffed and my cable management looks like crap, Overall this rig is blazing fast. Everything just feels so snappy. I'm running Win7 64 bit but I cant figure out why it only shows 8 gigs instead of the 12 gigs I have in there,Another thing to ask...how on earth do I begin overclocking?? There's so much going on the bios that I'm completely lost. Anyways..on to the pics

Here is the somewhat empty case before the stuff went in


Ram and cpu installed


Hard drive cage. I really like this design


Motherboard mounted


Noctua installation


Different angle


Everything in and ready for OS


I dont like the fact that I had to run the 8 pin mobo power connector across the video but it was too short to fit any other way. The rest of wires jumbled up really annoy me but they had to go in there. Too get both fans on the cooler. I had to remove the plastic fan assembly on the case side otherwise it hit the cooler, but its no big as I wasnt using a fan there anyway but that cooler definitely takes a ton of room. Now to trouble shoot my missing ram and figure how to make it bleed.

blade_146 wrote:I'm running Win7 64 bit but I cant figure out why it only shows 8 gigs instead of the 12 gigs

Did 7 install in Home Basic Mode? That would be the only reason that you can't see the 12 in the BIOS is seeing it.

By the way, NICE BUILD!

Are you sure your mobo supports 8Gb? Some don't, although I would think any decent i7 mobo would.

Maybe you need a BIOS update.

Actually the board supports 24 gigs. I updated to the latest bios which went out like the 5th of this month I believe. But even the bios only sees 8. Gotta get this figured out. Plus so far..avg wont install, office 07 wont install, adobe reader wont install. I may have to go back to vista if I cant get those running.

blade_146 wrote:Actually the board supports 24 gigs. I updated to the latest bios which went out like the 5th of this month I believe. But even the bios only sees 8. Gotta get this figured out. Plus so far..avg wont install, office 07 wont install, adobe reader wont install. I may have to go back to vista if I cant get those running.

Since that's a triple channel board, is there a BIOS setting that needs turned on in order for triple channel mode to operate? If it's set to dual channel, it may ignore the 3rd bank.

blade_146 wrote:Actually the board supports 24 gigs. I updated to the latest bios which went out like the 5th of this month I believe. But even the bios only sees 8. Gotta get this figured out. Plus so far..avg wont install, office 07 wont install, adobe reader wont install. I may have to go back to vista if I cant get those running.

i have all of those apps on my W7 install...but i'm running the 32-bit version. even so, i doubt it's due to a 64-bit incompatibility.

nice rig. i may have missed it, but what case are you using?

antec 900

that's right...sorry...you had a different thread about it...now i remember. don't you have the cable management area behind the motherboard tray? you can pick up a few extensions for the various power cables and it'll clean that up nicely.

regarding the RAM issue:

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?boa ... uage=en-us

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview ... id=2250308


hmmm...seems like it might be an issue with the board...at least according to other people's experience. good luck!

I dont like the fact that I had to run the 8 pin mobo power connector across the video but it was too short to fit any other way.

That's why I don't like the bottom mount power supplies. All the motherboards & power supplies are designed with the PS on top in mind. I'm kinda anal though & would either get an extension (to keep warranty good) or solder in some extra wire.

I finally got it to see all 12 gigs of ram. Ihad to take all the ram out and install 1 stick at a time, reboot, shutdown and start over. Why on earth I had to do this I dont know but at least it sees it all now. Also Im currently running at 3.7 with 1.25 volts on cpu and 1.25 volts on QPI. Ran Prime 95 for about 8 hours at this speed. Temps average 65C at 100% load and around 35C at idle. Not too shabby. Ill try for higher later. One thing though, if I set it to run at XMP wont even post. This is with the latest bios. On the original it would boot fine. Weird. If I could get the memory up to 1600mhz I'd be happy.