New Gaming Rig ... maybe a dream but

[Craig Stevenson]

Oopppss!, You sure you didn't have the stiff drinks before ordering?

My order didn't turn up today. I emailed OCUK this morning because I had a mail confirming the order yesterday but that wasn't followed up with the despatch confirmation email. The reply I received said "The order has been delayed due to stock issues relating to the sound card, if this is amended or back ordered I can get the order sent out today", I knew the Xonar wasn't in stock and the order was supposed to be put through for next day delivery and the Xonar back ordered but Adrian (you Plonka!, get your discount calculator out when Fermi arrivesoke forgot to make sure of this and so it didn't get fully processed. I rang and spoke to them at about 14.45 and the order was processed straight away and in time for the 15.00 deadline for next day delivery, I received the usual despatch mail within a few minutes so it should be here tomorrow.

Regards

 

[Lee Downham]

^^ Adrian was the numpty who sent me the useless reply too ... by the sounds of it, he is not their best operator

... few drinks before might have sorted me out and made me spot this delightful screw up - was so fixed on all the other stuff that the DDR3 thing didn't even enter into my mind :doh:

... DDR3 Dominators are over a third more expensive and out of stock everywhere I looked down here ... also ... check the review, or at least the summary over here ... basically says very little in it between the two and the ripjaws are more overclocking friendly than the dominators ... that's me sold then

BTW ... check this ... ~4.5Ghz on a set of these sticks with an i5 and P55 mobo - if I get mine anywhere near that quick I will be laughing my daft butt off :wink2:


EDIT: just for a laugh I spent 5 or 10 mins messing with memory and fsb timings again - and after setting a 1:1 ratio, I just successfully overclocked my existing rig to 3.6Ghz without it burning up and dying shortly after boot :eek:
Seems stable at that ... did 15 mins Everest test with 100% CPU load ... CPU/cores got to a max of 70ºC ... which is a tad high I fear, but no bombing out like it did in the past when I tried this.
Ran Race On for 20 mins or so ... and CPU did not go much over 50ºC ... which seems cool and the gang to me :thumb:
As ever with the Striker Extreme ... there seems to be a black hole between 3 and 3.6ghz ... so dropping this overclock down a touch is not really an option I fear without a lot more testing ... maybe I can lower the voltages a bit but for now this will do, and when I hand it over to my wife, I will drop the timings right down to ensure its stable cos she ain't gonna need 3.6Ghz 99% of the time :wink2:

 

[Lee Downham]

Posted this in our BVM forum yesterday ... sorry meant to post it here sooner but forgot ... so here ya go, and thanks to the guyshh who helped me with all this ... :thumb:

"Mmmmmmm ... new system built ... yum yum :eat:

This case rocks, best thing I have had the pleasure of working in/on ... cable management an absolute dream, sound levels from the monster sized but slow turning (~700rpm) fans is minimal ... real quality build and just lush all round really ... savoured building this one like drinking a fine brandy :wink2:
Motherboard seems top notch, and the Corsair modular PSU is insanely and overly nicely done, with fancy little velvety black bags to protect the PSU whilst in transit and another bag to keep all the spare modular flat section cables in.

Had rather a disappointment though - plonkers who shipped the H50 CPU watercooler had it labelled up wrong, so it doesn't have a new style bracket in the box for 1156 CPU's.
Gonna see if I can get one from Corsair directly, but if not ... will have to return it for refund and see if I can get one elsewhere :sad:
For now I am on the original intel cooler - can't remember the last time I fit one of those to a system, but removing it should be quite easy as the case once more shows its class by having a big cutout at the back of the CPU to allow for easy CPU cooler replacement ... very nice indeed :thumb:"

Coupla pics of the "wee" beastie with the side off for yas too (like a house you could almost live inside that thang!) :kewl:

 

[Bruce Saltzman]

Beautiful case bud. I just built a new rig using the Antec 1200. Case is great and I added the two extra optional fans. However I think the cable management with your case looks much better. Very clean job. Nice work.

What model is that?

Also using the Corsair 850 PSU and I totally agree with your assessment of their product.

 

[Lee Downham]

Thanks Bruce mate ... case is the Coolermaster HAF932, and yeah, the cable routing totally rocks, that cabling job was done very quick TBH, no hassle and very little effort at all to get it looking that tidy - normally my cases look like someone chucked a bowl of spagetti inside 'em ... but this one I am way chuffed with.
EDIT: Forgot to mention how quiet and seriously cool this thing runs ... once I get the stock cooler off, its gonna be super chilled and super quiet :dance:

The Antec 1200 is supposed to be a great case, and full tower isn't it ... gotta love all that space, problem is, makes you want to buy more to fill em up with goodies eh? :wink2:

Can't wait to get the H50 watercooler going in place of that stock CPU cooler ... still not sure whether to return the whole thing and try to find it elsewhere or if I can get the bracket somewhere cheaply. My problem is that in Portugal, the latest technical gimmeckry are often hard to come by, and all the shops I checked with only had the old version, which does not include the socket 1156 version of the CPU bracket.
Here's a pic of the lovely lovely thing ...

BTW ... if anyone knows where I can get just the H50 bracket for Intel 1156 CPUs then please either post it in here or PM me :thumb:

 

[Bruce Saltzman]

Yeah, it's a full tower. I had to get something that big. I purchased a 5870 and that thing is a monster. Barely squeezed it in, even in the 1200. It's so wide, it covers whatever expansion slot is next to it.

 

[Lee Downham]

^^ me wants that card, no matter how big
... if I get good news from the taxman, I might still see if I can sneak one in to this rig, although I just tested the 5770 on Dirt 2 (and had a quick blast on Race On last night) and it does do an extremely impressive job for a fairly budget card ~€130 euros :good:

 

[Bruce Saltzman]

Since you already have the 5770, depending upon your MOBO, you might want to consider running a second one in Crossfire.

 

[Lee Downham]

That is indeed another option I was thinking of when I opted for this card ... found this test over at Guru3d which lines up most of the mainstream cards (both single and xfire/SLi).
Might not quite match a 5870, but not far off and around 2/3 the price.

Mobo will do xfire or sli ... which is nice to have as an option :thumb:

 

[Bruce Saltzman]

I just skimmed that test you referenced and I'll tell you what. It appears to me that at the very least, 5770X2=5870X1. In some cases, the Crossfired 5770s beat the single 5870 by a bit. Very good price/performace value.

 

[Lee Downham]

... yup - saw that before I bought it and is why I thought I would give it a blast - I kinda hedged my bets ...
- If I did't like the 5770, then I could go back to my 2x8800GT's, give the wife this card and only spend about 20 euros more than I was initially intending to ... but if I did like it, and needed more power, then for about half the price of a 5870, I could get near the same performance with two of these suckers :thumb:

"I like it when a plan comes together"

 

[Dave Stephenson]

good luck with finding the Dominator DDR3, I searched all over the show a couple of months back for mine. Cost and arm and a bleedin' leg. Think I got it from ebuyer in the end. Dont know if they'll deliver to you though.

Had a similar thing with the gfx too. Had been considering a 295 but ended up with a much cheaper 275 SLI config. And I've yet to find any benchies that show it wasnt a better deal on the bang for buck stakes.

 

[Damian Henderson]

Nice rig Lee, enjoy the beast, good set of parts to and that cooler will make you want to go towards a full watercooling set-up

2 X 5770 offers great bang for the buck but you maybe want to hold out before you get a second for Fermi to come and drop the prices of other cards and give you more options if you need more GPU power in the future.

 

[Lee Downham]

Thanks again Damian for your suggestions and stuff along the way ... the rig does indeed rock, and the case I cannot find enough superlatives for, its just a complete and utter beauty ... the motherboard seems likewise, although on the stock cooler I have not tried any overclocks as yet ... other minor point is that the gigabyte doesn't come with all those special little extras the likes of an Asus Striker Extreme / ROG series of boards comes with ... but I can live with that for the €100 saving and a good solid mobo

TBH ... not totally convinced by the ATI right now ... flickering on 2nd monitor in dual view when I even think about an overclock of just a couple of Mhz ... then in Race On I get some weird flickering of the trees/horizon objects - the overclocking is supposed to be rather handy on this card, have read lots of blokes talking of taking em over 1000Mhz, which has to be said is rather impressive for a card that costs a little over a hundred notes in the UK.
AA and AF I think are better than what I was getting on the Nvidia cards ... but these impressions might be being distorted by the rest of the system.
Dirt2 runs rather well, but with an overclock I did a couple of tests and it shows that I could get 40% or 50% increase in FPS with little to no effort, and temps were still only in the 50ºC's.

Am guessing from things I read elsewhere that the current release of catalyst drivers are not funcitoning the best for this card right now, so will see what the 9.12's and beyond will bring.

Question to you Damian (or anyone) ... if you see any 1156 brackets along your travels for the Corsair H50 cooler - drop me a link would you?? :thumb:

 

[Damian Henderson]

I'll ask about the brakets.

And AA/AF and general image quality will naturally be better going from the 8800GT, it's old generation. Been thinking of getting a 5*** ATi card to but might wait for Fermi for prices to drop and make a choice then, but Nvidia are taking their time releasing this one.

 

[Lee Downham]

Cheers for looking into it mate ... and don't get me wrong, I think the 5770 is worth the money and VERY impressive for the price ...
Not sure they can drop the price of these much more than what I got this card for ... should have been €170 but got it for €130 Euros ... it has an OEM / aftermarket style cooler on it too which looks like a Zalmann, and OK its from Sapphire not one of what I would consider the more luxurious gaming card manufacturers (XFX etc) ... but from what I see, these cards are all the same chip and PSB etc ... its just the packaging and card bios that is tweaked by the "manufacturer".

 

[Damian Henderson]

have you seen this?
https://shop.corsair.com/store/item_view.aspx?id=1150701

Seems they not in stock. Maybe have to wait a bit before you can get that bad boy cooler on ya rig and do a bit of clocking, but I asked a couple people see if there is anywhere else.

Will be for 775 to so maybe ill get one in future and try go past 3.6 on this e4500

The Gigabyte Mobo will clock the i5 like a dream, just read up some stuff about settings, will be straight forward, the intelligent tweaker in the bios is easy and nice to use.

 

[Damian Henderson]

Yo Lee contact Corsair support heard you maybe to get one through that way.

 

[Lee Downham]

Cheers bud ... yeah the link to that corsair page I posted earlier too when I was mumbling what a cock up that bit of my order was (see here), and I saw a couple of Swedish and Danish companies have em in stock.
I got a message in to Corsair support and registered to recieve an email when they are available ...

The dilemma is whether to return the H50 I already have here to the supplier cos they advertise it wrong and I should get a full refund ... the new H50's (-1 on the end of the part number) actually ship with the new bracket, I might be able to pick one of those up quicker than just a braket, and I won't have to pay any extra for it like I will getting one this way.

The cooler does look an absolute beauty though ... really looking forward to plonkin it on my CPU and seeing the difference it makes, and what OC's I can reach

 

[Mel Dixon]

if they advertised it wrong could you not ask them to give you the part?