The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

I returned my bios settings to optimized defaults. See how it runs that way for a few days. Ram is at 1333Mhz. I read that my ram can be somewhat picky. And it IS supposedly designed for intel systems. I didn't hesitate to buy it because,
1.Thats silly. Ram is ram. Surely it doesn't care about the processor used...
2.most importantly, other amd users were also using the modules.
3.It's one of Gskills best modules

Somehow I doubt that the Ram is the issue, but I have to eliminate problems one by one. I have to be certain it's not the board, if I plan on exchanging it. Surely Southbridge voltage is ample at stock for most uses...

 

Oman7,
Maybe, but it won't hurt anything to find out! Adding +.1 or +.2v to the Southbridge voltage could make a difference.

Russ

 

The cooler is a Noctua-D14. To be honest I'm not surprised that the temps aren't that that good since I am very bad at applying TIM (went through and entire thing of AS5 without every getting anything usable lol). The 8C difference between cores is a dead give a way. I was surprised to see only a 24C rise in temp under linx, so realistically the core temp will most likely be around 50-55C.

The i7 930 only idles a few C warmer then the E6600 OC'd to 2.9Ghz on a AC Freezer 7 pro so if it weren't for one being at 36C and another being at 28C I probably would never have thought anything of it lol.

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Do you guys recommend software raid or hardware raid? It's going to be a RAID 1 array for my storage drives since I'm getting tired of keeping manual backups. I think software should be good enough but I'm worried about putting too much extra work on the cpu (I have no idea how much processing power it takes).

 

A proper hardware RAID control card would be most professional, but more expensive solution than the software RAID that comes with most mobo's and cheaper SATA interface cards. That being said, I've run an inexpensive High Point card using software RAID-5 (originally 3x500GB, now 3x1TB) for about 2 years, no problems. A multi-core CPU will have no problem with software RAID as it hardly uses any resources to do its job.

EDIT---My only negative with the whole issue is the fact startup is extremely slow due to RAID bios initializing the volume. there are extra steps involved that slow things down.

 

ok maybe im lost here. looking at the specs for my board i have the sata3 ports as well. or maybe im looking at it wrong. but i havent had any problems at all out of them. not since ive gotten the new board now on the EP45-DS3R i had tons of issues with the sata ports on that board. but on the UD3P none what so ever.

 

Omega: You only see 'designed for Core i5' because Core i5/i7s require strict voltage limits on the memory, 1.65V, no higher or you risk damaging the CPU. Since AMD CPUs don't have that restriction, earlier DDR3 was typically in the 1.8V range, thus incompatible.
Maw: I'm never very neat and tidy with TIM because I'm too paranoid about it ending up where it shouldn't. I use the 'line' method, and while my temps may not be the best they could be, even with my 4Ghz overclock I'm getting temperatures similar to yours, with arguably a slightly less powerful cooler (Ultra-120 Extreme Rev.C). What is important to mention is that your temps are by no means unacceptable, and if they stay that way will never cause you issues. They just aren't as good as they should be.
For what it's worth, even though the i7 930 is a 130W chip, it employs power gating such that, at stock, idle power usage is so low it bests that of almost any CPU, thus your temperatures should be minimal.
Software RAID can be a real risk, I tend not to bother. If the controller goes and you can't get a board with the same controller any more you're stuffed. Better either full software RAID (i.e. in Windows) or better still either not RAID, or a full-on RAID card that you can guarantee being able to replace in the event of problems.
Rob: The EP45-UD3P does not have S-ATA 3. To my knowledge, no LGA775 board does.

 

Since nobody answered my question on this before I'll post it again.

I installed not to long ago a secondary internal hardrive in my HP PC, with Russ'a guidance it turned out to be a brezze, of course both are sata drives, now if I ever need to re-install my OS would it be smart to disconnect my secondary drive before I do so, cause it sounds like I will run into problems if I don't.

 

You won't necessarily run into problems but it will AVOID possible "mistakes".

 

I did NOT know this.... thanks for saving me any future grief

 

GM,
Mistakes, My Aunts Fanny! There were no "mistakes" made on my part! I scan the partition before wiping it with Killdisk, to be 100% certain I have the right drive and partition, and install the OS to that partition. The problem occurs only when formatting the partition when installing Windows. I don't understand why it does it, because it shouldn't have any affect on another physical drive, but it does. Twice now I've formatted my C drive and it attempted to format drive F with no warning at all. When the format is done, it immediately runs chkdsk, and attempts to recover the data on F drive. It recovered the entire partition, but lost about 2/3 of the data in the process. It's not to hard to understand that trying to format a 116GB logical drive as a 38GB partition, doesn't do the partition or it's data a lot of good.

At first I blamed it on the fact that the second physical drive used to have an OS on it, so I wiped the entire drive with Killdisk and re-installed it, figuring that what happened was just a fluke, and happened because of the active boot sector on the drive. The second time it happened, the drive no longer had an active partition. Ever since then, I have always unplugged the data cables from my other hard drives when installing a new copy of XP-Pro. I wouldn't recommend doing it any other way! Far better to be safe than sorry!

Respectfully,
Russ

 

Fred,
Unplug the data cable from the second drive before you attempt to install Windows! You don't have to disconnect the power. Just unplug the data cable at the drive.

Russ

 

Fred, I wouldn't have recommended it before, but now that I've witnessed a slight problem, now I recommend only having the drive you wish to have the OS installed on present. For if you install an OS on a drive, in a multiple drive configuration, for whatever reason, a small amount of data is stored on one or more of the other drives. Don't know why, but it does. I did it, removed one of my storage drives, and it affected the master boot record...

I hate to jump the gun, but backing the Ram off to 1333Mhz, seems to have had an effect. Things are snappier, and I'm not experiencing the lag I once had. But I still have some tests to run. I'll be doing some printing today, and attempt to plug flash drives in while printing, to see if the same bug occurs. If it turns out that the Ram was the problem, I'll have to take extra care in the future.

 

OK, got it, thank you guys.

 

FredBun : Absolutely unplug it

 

Does the same apply to i3's? The ram I put in the i3 build needed 1.8v to be stable (the rams specification is 1.7-1.8).

Catch is your 4Ghz OC lol, my temps should be better than yours for now. Probably just leave it for now until I decided how I want to cooler oriented (exhausting to the 120mm fan at the back of the case or 140mm on the top) although it would be much better to see all the temps in the same range.

Thanks for info on raid Deadrum & sam. The point of it was data security but if it isn't going to do that I need to rethink it lol.

 

even i3. if it needs 1.8v you could be harming the chip (well the ICH part of the CPU) you need 1.65V ram max. there are even 1.35V ram out.

 

Tried it again. Inserted flash drive while printing. Same problem occurred. Printer stopped printing, because it stopped receiving instructions? I tried a different Drive. 2Gb lexar. No problem occurred. Tried the 16Gb Kingston again, Printer errored. I'm at a loss here. I guess I can attempt a Southbridge increase. would .2v be the safe maximum limit???

 

That isn't good, guess I need to contact Mushkin about that. Thanks shaffaaf.

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Putting the sides to my case on made the temps jump up 5C This is without the sides on:

 

what is that middle score on the 3dmark test? i have the same card and didnt get that high of a score. overall. my cpu score is higher also??? am i doing something wrong with the test?


think ill run it again and see what i get

 

Did I say something wrong?? I was telling him to unplug the data cables to make sure he doesn't "format" or "erase" the WRONG drive.