Quick feedback on Sabretooth X79

M

Monkey God

Mangina Full of Sand
Joined
May 7, 2007
Messages
6,723
Bought a new setup recently.

3930K
64GB Ram
X79 Sabretooth
Corsair H80
Corsair 800D case
Corsair 850 modular PS (love modular!!!)

Wanted to give some quick feedback on this mobo. I have windows 7 installed, but haven't done Overclocking or burn in testing or anything. That will come this weekend. First glance... It appears to be solid. Booted up the first try. Liking the new UEFI BIOS.. Functionally, it appears it will meet *my* needs. However, the component layout...is odd. For people who intend to run multiple GPU's? I'd pass on it. Single GPU? So far, its a good board.

See picture. Note how I installed the GPU in the lower slot. If I put it in the upper PCI-E slot...the chipset fan would be completely covered...even with a more reasonably sized GPU setup. (Yes, the 5870 in there is a long mofo, but my 6950 covers it too). Thats just....lame.

Now, this won't bother me much, as I generally don't run a lot of video cards. Also, the little fan in the upper left corner...was blocked when I installed the H80 over it, which is why the H80 is currently installed up top. Another oddity.

I will post more details as I overclock and test the hell out of it. I like the mobo in general, has the features I want, etc...but if I had known about the odd fan placement...I would have passed it by.

Other feedback:
I like the H80 setup. Clean, simple, easy to install. We will see how it handles heat load on burn in.
I LOVE the 800D. Cable routing is awesome. Quality is awesome. Easy access to CPU backplane, nice touch. Its just too big. Shrink it down a bit. Had to buy an ATX EPS extender. Everything else reaches fine. More room than I know what to do with.

mobo-1.png
 
I wish they had kept the mesh over the board like the P67 series. I really like the look of mine, and had wanted a Z68 version, but alas, it appears they have dropped the look already. I wonder if you could buy the mesh cover separate?

I love the rig btw, and you right the fan placement is funky.
 
Well I believe those fans should be exhausting air, so I am not sure how much covering them up really matters, as long as they can pull heat away from the heatsink.
 
I've been running a system very similar to yours for a few weeks. I don't think the PCH fan needs much room to breathe. I'd just put the card in the primary pci-e slot.

A tip, use the BIOS or the thermal radar application to custom map the speed of those on-board fans. It makes a big difference in volume.

When you get to stress-testing I'll be interested to see the temps with the H80. I might have over-done the TIM because I think my temps are a tad high.

wlpq8l.jpg
 
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The H80 works great, until you crank up the voltage and overclock.
Right now I am having issues with stability...if I install SP1 for Windows 7, it wont boot anymore, and even windows repair wont fix it. On my 4th install :(

The problem with trailblazing is sometimes you fall off the trail.
 
I just barely started the overclock testing when I started having issues with Windows stability. Its back to stock settings until I get all that sorted.

I have yet to find the top OC, but I had it at 4.5Ghz, 1.25V, and temps were hitting 80C+ in prime 95 and I stopped. I am sure there is more in it if I can keep it cool. Trying to decide what solution I will go with. I have an older 2X120 setup on my I7-920 I may use, or may go to a new 3X120 rad setup.
 
Wonder if you're running into the 8-slot ram issue when over clocking? Seems like a lot of issues with memory over that 1333 speed and all 8 dimm filled. I'm using win7 professional sp1 and all seems well. This is with 2 ssd in raid 0 for the OS. Only issue I've had was one crash of the Nvidia driver which I've seen others have.


I just now upped the clock to 4.5 and chose 1.32v but judging by your numbers I'm a bit high heh.

I use intel burn test and I was at 67c or so in that. I got tired of re-booting today so I'll wait to mess with the voltages/multiplier until another time.
 
Yeah I ran into the 8slot / 1333mhz limit early in testing. No worries. I knew about it when I decided to go for big RAM. Ill play with timings later. I actually have no problems overclocking...the CPU/RAM core is running fine. Its windows/driver issues I think that are hampering me the most. Even at stock speeds.

I have an SSD for boot, and two RAID 0 setups for drives. The biggest issue seems to be centered around the Intel drivers and Windows itself.
 
Thanks for posting all this information everyone -- I'll almost certainly be upgrading to socket 2011 and at present the Sabertooth x79 is the board I'll likely buy. I'll be putting off the purchase for 1 - 2 months though as I'm not terribly desperate to beta test this motherboard with Windows + drivers :)
 
I agree Monkey. I keep getting some sleep/standby issue. Even with a power profile that has everything on all the time other than monitor it kills my USB ports over night....or so it seems. The lights inside keyboard and mouse go out and thus I cannot wake the system/monitor. Even if I unplug/plug in the devices.

Maybe the C-states all on auto in BIOS?
 
I dont use sleep standy....so no feedback on that. Theres definitely something going on with the disk subsystem...just trying to install Acronis True Image 2009 causes it to hard lock.

I think what I will do next is use windows to do a full backup and start installing updates (sans SP1) in chunks at a time.
 
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