My i7 build

Bigbacon

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Jul 12, 2007
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Planning to order today while everything is in stock for once.

1 ASUS P6T -- $249.99
2X BFG GeForce GTX 280 -- $629.98 ($314.99 ea)
1 BFG Tech ES SERIES ES-800 800W -- $139.99
1 Intel Core i7 920 -- $294.99
1 OCZ Gold 6GB (3 x 2GB) -- $179.99
1 ARCTIC COOLING MX-2 Thermal Compound -- $6.99
1 Vigor Monsoon III LT -- $59.99

Subtotal $1,574.72


Selling my old stuff to my friend who can really use it.

If anyone wants the links to the products at Newegg let me know.

EDIT

This has been purchased, should arrive 1/13/09
 
Will you be gaming on a 24" or larger monitor at a resolution of 1920x1080 or higher? If so, looks like you're all set. Let us know how that HSF does w/ OC'ing. How many HDD's are you running? You could save some cash by going with a lower wattage PSU, if you don't need all that juice.
 
What PSU will work thats cheaper? I am all for less money.

I would like modular. I really don't want one that has lots of silly lights (none at all would be best)

running 2 HDs and 2 dvd burners.
 
well, I went with the BFG one. It's not modular but it should get the job done by all accounts that I looked at for the past hour or so. Saved me some money also.
 
well, I went with the BFG one. It's not modular but it should get the job done by all accounts that I looked at for the past hour or so. Saved me some money also.

Good. Excellent choice.

Oh you never answered Enginurd's monitor question....
 
Good. Excellent choice.

Oh you never answered Enginurd's monitor question....


Oh I completely missed that.

I got one of these for christmas as a second monitor to go along with my LG. The asus is now the primary.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236051

Sure beats the little cheapo 15in LCD I was using for the secondary monitor with a max res of 1024x768

Edit:

I am very glad to see the "good choice" on the BFG, I was kind of sweating over that choice all day. Glad I did it and it saved 100 dollars.

Very excited as is my friend who is buying my old stuff. Poor guy still has some 5 year old machine.
 
<edit> (post 11) ignore! </edit> Heh, 20" LCD? return/cancel one of the GTX280's... or else it'll be sitting there with nothing to do unless you play Crysis all day with everything on high. A single GTX280 would be fine for that monitor for a while.
 
Should be here tuesday but we'll see, the DC Metro area is going to be a mad house that day.
 
22in with a Max res of 1920 x 1080

Hm... I must've looked at the wrong newegg tab after clicking the link -- it happens when you have 50+ tabs open, lol. Thought I saw a 20" Samsung. Anyhow, 21.5" and 1080P? In that case, ignore my previous post. :p
 
Any premium heatsink you buy should come with some decent thermal compound. I would slash the Artic Cooling MX-2 out of your budget. Also I would settle for a TRUE or something a long the lines of that instead of the VIGOR since you already spending over 50 for a heatsink.

If you can find a 800 watt power supply for cheaping I would go with that as well. That could probably save you around 50 bucks.
 
Any premium heatsink you buy should come with some decent thermal compound. I would slash the Artic Cooling MX-2 out of your budget. Also I would settle for a TRUE or something a long the lines of that instead of the VIGOR since you already spending over 50 for a heatsink.

If you can find a 800 watt power supply for cheaping I would go with that as well. That could probably save you around 50 bucks.

Opps. I should have updatred the main post. I did end up with a different and much cheaper PSU.

Wow, the whole time I kept saying the Vigor was 49.99 and I off that whole time. I suspect it will be a quality cooler that may not be as good as the others but will be much better than the stock cooler, so im not going to sweat it.
 
Ok, I got all my stuff today and so far everything seems ok except WMP no longer works and I am having a weird issue with SLI.

When SLI is enabled there is a weird flashing on the screen and it look likes it flickers or I see crazy draw lines down the screen. Almost looks like an old TV that needs to be adjusted. Hard to explain.

I have not attempted to overclock yet. I tried once with the software and it froze the machine and reset the bios on me. I'll work on this tomorrow.

I also have to say tha the monsoon is HUGE. much bigger than I ever thought it would be.
 
id like a link to the products please, cause im trying to build one myself. this might be of some help
 
I did get my 920 OC to 3.3 (166) I didn't attempt any further as I want to read up more on all the CPU settings. It seems slightly more complicated to do with the i7 over the older platforms.

strange question with CPUz. Is it normal to see all your ram chips using different speeds and timings?
CPUz shows all my chips being completely different.

I did reinstall windows and I still have the issue with SLI making the screen flash.
 
strange question with CPUz. Is it normal to see all your ram chips using different speeds and timings?
CPUz shows all my chips being completely different.
Perfectly normal.

As for the SLI issue, can't help you there. Never used SLI in my life. Try playing a game and see if the flickering still occurs.
 
Perfectly normal.

As for the SLI issue, can't help you there. Never used SLI in my life. Try playing a game and see if the flickering still occurs.

My bad, the flickering occurs while in a game. Everything else is fine.
 
P1020701.jpg

P1020704.jpg

P1020705.jpg
 
I am going by the Asus probe program that came wit hthe board for temps.

Right now idle is show CPU at 48C

While playing STALKER Clear Sky, it sat pretty much stable at 56C

I have no idea if those are good temps or not.
 
Use Real Temp or Core Temp to get a more accurate reading of your temperatures. But under 65C is a-OK IIRC for the Core i7s.

BTW nice work!
 
Use Real Temp or Core Temp to get a more accurate reading of your temperatures. But under 65C is a-OK IIRC for the Core i7s.

BTW nice work!

Now it;s time to see if I can push the CPU further.

EDIT:

I may need some help here.

So far, I can run a BCLK of 180 without changing any other settings in the bios. I chose a DRAM Freq of 1443 (or something close to that)

Compared to the old way, this is really confusing at the moment, lots of voltages and what not.

I tried a BCLK of 200 and upped the CPU and QPI to 1.3v, set the DRAM voltage to 1.65v and the CPU PLL to 1.90 and tried to boot and it got stuck in an infinite looping boot.

Any suggestions? What about the using the turbo option to bump the multiplier up one?
 
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