My upcoming super Gigabyte PC

[bhavv]

Soon to have -

2x Gigabyte 4870's
Gigabyte EX58-UD4
Intel I7 920 D0 revision
12 GB (6x2 GB) Patriot Viper PC3-12800
Asus Triton 88 HSF

- Will be overclocking it obviously 

The choice of motherboard was based because I need a spare PCI slot on top of two graphics cards as I still use a Creative X-Fi Elite Pro - I wish that there was a UD5 board with the better motherboard cooling and just two PCI-E slots with a usable PCI slot, but this was the only one I could find, and I wanted to try a Gigabyte motherboard (Already had plenty by Asus and MSI, and bored now). I still only look for boards with two PCI-E slots and a usable PCI slot because I need a good sound card for recording and audio work (hobby = piano).

My current board is an MSI X48c Platinum which was perfect for my needs, and I am sure that this new Gigabyte one will be even better, just a shame that I cant get uber cooling like on the UD5 motherboard this time around with a usable PCI slot

I'm going to have to reactivate Vista over the phone again, I hate doing that every time I upgrade.

More info, reviews, pictures when I have everything up and running

[bhavv]

I decided to change the motherboard to the UD5 instead, and am going to sell my X-Fi and look for a 4x PCI-E one instead that can be used for audio recording ...

I dont even know if such a soundcard exists yet

[Badbonji]

Do you really need 12Gb? I use about 3.5Gb whilst just gaming, and have never seen all 6gb under use from transcoding or anything. It might also hinder the overclock too and lower memory bandwidth. The more sticks, the more volts the QPI will need to get stable.

I wish there was a "step-up" for cpu's, I'd want a 975 D0

[runn3R]

Hello bhavv

so now waiting for the pictures of your rig assembled and running ...
which chassis you will use ? any modding planned ?

[bhavv]

The ram I got was well priced - 6 GB 1600 Mhz for £88, so I got two.

Gigabyte say that advertised memory speeds are reachable on this board with 6 Dimms installed.

Everything was despatched yesterday so I am waiting untill daytime for it to arrive, but I cant assemble it untill monday because I ordered an Antec P182 too late.

The only modifying I am now planning is 5 blue case fans and maybe Thermaltake Sorbs on the graphics cards, but I wont have a side window. Nothing too heavy, just matching heatsinks and lights. I also ordered two blue cathodes, but will send them back due to my case choice and just have the blue fans for pictures because the black ones that come in the case are ugly.
   
Untill monday I'll be busy trying to sell my current X48 equipment.

The graphics cards are here and I was thoroughly impressed with the nice boxes and packaging, much better then powercolor and MSI, but as stated in my other thread, the lack of memory heatsinks on a premium brand like Gigabyte is disappointing.

I dont normally buy Gigabyte or Asus products because they are expensive, but I am happy to finally have a premium brand. MSI = 4 - 6 phases opposed to 12 / 16 on gigabyte / asus, powercolour = 1 year warranty and very poor overclocking on the cards I have had from them so far.

[Badbonji]

Well usually if the cards don't come with any extra cooling at stock, it won't need it under normal usage. Maybe there is good airflow for them from the fan?

Dont forget to post some pics

[bhavv]

Pictures:








Installing the motherboard + CPU on monday when the new case arrives.

I found these 1 GB 4890's for £159 today and screamed:

http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/2719635/art/pixmania/radeon-hd4890-1-gb-ddr5-p.html?srcid=369

But they arent a UK supplier, if anything went wrong it would have to shipped back to France.

I got Scan installation insurance added onto my CPU and Motherboard - £10 for 28 days cover, if anything breaks while installing during this time they will replace it. I have had a motherboard and PSU die on installation in the past, so decided to take out the insurance.

[Badbonji]

Must have been unlucky then?

Is it working yet? What kind of overclock you got so far?
Gigabyte boxes are always shiny and nice to look at lol

[bhavv]

Its not working .

It boots up and all the components work, but I get a disk read error when trying to boot from my Vista CD, or a hang up when trying to boot from XP.

Seems to be the harddrives, and I didnt want new harddrives at all.

I will call technical support for the supplier tomorrow, and ask in another thread for help.

[RuiPereira]

Keep us updated, interested to see how this performs

[Badbonji]

Its not working .

It boots up and all the components work, but I get a disk read error when trying to boot from my Vista CD, or a hang up when trying to boot from XP.

Seems to be the harddrives, and I didnt want new harddrives at all.

I will call technical support for the supplier tomorrow, and ask in another thread for help.

What hard drives? In raid? Any external plugged in?
External USB drives tend to cause problems to raid configs whilst installing, unplug any externals just to be sure anyway. It sees the drive correctly? Tried flasing BIOS to newest?

It will not work booting on an existing partition, as hardware changes, especially cpu and motherboard will cause it to BSoD randomly and hang. You could try installing the OS from Flash drive see if that works.
Also what might help is unplugging any external hard drives.

[bhavv]

Sorry, it was my bad.

I didnt enable Legacy USB support so 'press any key' wasnt working to boot from CD.

It works now, but I already went and ordered a 1 TB Samsung F1. Doesnt matter though because I can just sell my 500 Gb ones and have a faster replacement.

So tomorrow I install Vista on the new drive and it should all be fine. I always forget to enable USB Legacy support.

[Badbonji]

Two 500gb in raid should beat a 1Tb, I would keep the 1Tb for storage anyway

[bhavv]

Meh, my current 500 GB drive with my backed up data seems knackered

I installed Vista onto the new drive, but when I intall the 500 GB, I get 'Disk Read Error'. So I tried going into setup to wipe the windows partition and temporailly install Vista onto it to boot and copy over my 300 GB of stuff, but when I try to format the windows partition or install windows onto it, the PC shuts off and restarts !!!

I will get my data back somehow, I hope

I should invest in an external hard drive.

Posting from the new PC


















It was shutting itself off after about 10-15 minutes of startup, I immediately noticed that the bios had defaulted the ram to 7-7-7-20 on 1.5v, and changed it to 9-9-9-24 and 1.6v for now, and now it has been stable for an hour

Will stress test it and overclock later on, first I need to figure out how to get my data of my old drive, I think I will have to reinstall Vista with both drives plugged in so that it boots up with the old drive still plugged in, so I'll have to start again with reinstalling drivers.

I'm not going to bother with raid, I just have two drives for back up and dual boot purposes, so will grab a second 1 TB in the future. Raid 1 would be ideal, but I dont know if I can dual boot with Raid 1

If anyone knows about that, then please let me know. Raid 1 and dual boot I would like

[Badbonji]

I think raid 1 should be dual bootable as it is just like using one hard drive (other is mirroring it), so you need to create two partitions on the raid 1 partition or however many OS's you are using. May want to look it up though as I never dual boot as I don't see the need to

I like those Blue LED lights :O

Good luck on the hard drive, and don't forget to overclock - it will be getting too hot to get decent ones on air soon!