Legit Reviews

Just dropped nearly a grand with NE for my new rig and a rebuild for my wife and mother-in-law. I thought about waiting for the new I5 but I've never been one to jump onto the bleeding edge. Don't have the budget or resources to have to deal with all the bugs. I'll be happy with my "tried and true" Q9550 which I may or may not OC. I'm putting 4 GB of G.Skill 1066 RAM along with a 150GB raptor for Vista 32 bit Home Premium and a WD 500 GB for data. I figure it ought to run OK.

I've got two or three 80 gigs I may utilize or I might put them in my wife's. I know I'm putting the 250 GB IDE in hers. All she does is surf web, yahoo email, pogo.com and word processing.

It'll all start coming in Thurs. so I'll have a busy couple of days I'm sure. Want to be finished before Sunday because wife and I are going to the DCI regionals at Rich stadium. I should be mostly deaf after hearing that much brass blasting away.

Jack

If that Q9550 doesn't overclock I'd be surprised, see sig.

Wow. 4 GHZ!! I was secretly hoping for 3.5 if I tried it. Is the Scythe your cooler? If so, I'm guessing it works pretty good. What did the cooler set you back and what would you recommend if what you have is not on the market any longer?

Thanks!
Jack

The cooler is actually the Xigmatek HDT-1284EE with the Crossbow backplate. You can get the 1283 and backplate cheaper and I think it actually cools better (higher RPM fan?).

With InspectahACE's help we ran an encode of the same CD and had identical conversion times. He has a Core i7 920 at stock and my Q9550 is at 4Ghz.

Yea I was surprised by that one. I honestly thought the 920 would encode a little faster, but nope.

Well I'm a mixture of depressed and pissed. Got everything in today and all was going well until my first boot attempt. Nothing. Sh*t. Checked all connections. They're all good. Know the PSU is good. So either CPU or mobo is not working. I banked on never getting a DOA Intel CPU and guessed it was the mobo.

This is the one I got, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128380, the EP43-UD3L. Since I'm having a second go round on the mobo's, anyone want to recommend another with front and rear audio outputs and (PCIE 2.0 or not). Don't care really. But it needs to be ~$80. Free shipping would be nice.

Thanks.
Jack

i've always had good luck with MSI's Neo series boards..in fact I rocked this one for awhile... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813130229 . ...

I was just looking over MSI. Not familiar with them. Have used Gigabytes forever. I'll take a look. Thanks a lot!

Jack

no problem..even better is, I paid $120 for that board when i got it at Fry;s at the time

prices drop as new stuff comes out but it's still nice to get a deal being as the 9550 didn't drop much in price with the I5's right around the corner. I'll never be able to afford to be right on the bleeding edge. I'll always be a couple of generations back. But that works for me. Think I'll give the Neo-F a try. Thanks again.

Jack

I might have goofed in my paranoia but in the end I opted for the GA-EP45-UD3R, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128359. I'm just too acclimated to GIGABYTE in my old age, I guess. I got down to "Submit Order" with the MSI and wussed out.

Now I've lost my sound. All 4 speakers were playing after the install now none are working. Can't figure it out. One of the plugs into the port on the motherboard was out by one notch but that shouldn't take out all 5 speakers, counting the sub. Or at least I wouldn't think so. Think I'll try the speakers in my monitor. BTW, I LOVE this 22" monitor. I didn't think there'd be that much difference from the 19" but holy cow.

Jack

Dumb questions but do you have the lastest Realtek HD drivers for your motherboard? Are you sure you have your 5.1 plugged into the correct ports on the motherboard? And most importantly, do you have the onboard sound enabled in the BIOS?

I figured it out and forgot to post the solution. As it turns out that jack being partially unplugged apparently tripped some kind of protection circuit in the Klipsch amp. On a whim, I unplugged the amp for a few minutes and voila! we got sound again. If only everything was that simple.

Hope I made the right choice in what to return to the egg. I'll find out tomorrow (I hope ) or Tuesday. Weird, after changing cases, I've had to drop my AMD cpu to stock speed of 2.4. It started acting all crazy. Hang at boot or the display would "tile" Guess the circulation in the Rosewill case is not as good as the Antec.

I ordered the Xigamtec 1284EE and backplate following your suggestion. Like the dummy I am, forgot to order thermal paste and I don't have any here. So I ordered some from the egg and I'll just have to otherwise amuse myself till it gets here.

unfaithfulsfan wrote:Weird, after changing cases, I've had to drop my AMD cpu to stock speed of 2.4. It started acting all crazy. Hang at boot or the display would "tile" Guess the circulation in the Rosewill case is not as good as the Antec.

It actually sounds like the CPU isn't making good contact with the HSF or the power supply running that box is flakey. If you have a decent multimeter check the 12V rail on the power supply in that case.

Thought I was going to lose my mind.

Got the new board in and installed it. Tried to fire it up and the CPU fan only hiccuped. I checked everything and tried it again. Same thing. I tried a couple of other fans thinking the fan was bad. Nope. So I was right at the point of ripping the board out and sending it back when I thought----reseat the CPU. Fired right up!

It's nice when it's something simple isn't it?

Jack

Easier the better is my motto. Probably why I got a business degree.

It's alive ALIVE!!! And ka-wick! Can't wait till I can OC it a bit. Had enough for today. Really tired and leg is singing Ave Maria. Gonna take a couple of Percocets and lie down. Hit it again tomorrow. Got to rebuild the wife's and maw-in-law's PC too

Hope your leg gets better when I was 15 (29 now) I broke my right femur and had to learn how to walk again. That wasn't very fun.

Major_A wrote:Hope your leg gets better when I was 15 (29 now) I broke my right femur and had to learn how to walk again. That wasn't very fun.

Jeez. I got lucky on that score, I believe! Is your leg ok now or do you have any residual complications? I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a limp. Both breaks are so close to my ankle it's hard to distinguish where leg ends and ankle begins.

At the risk of sounding like a total dweeb. I got the Zigmatec S1284 and backplate in and I'm just making sure. The back plate DOES mount on the "BACK" of the motherboard, right?

Jack

Yes the mounting plate goes on the back of the motherboard. It just provides a better platform to secure the cooler, instead of the God awful push-pin setup.

I have a limp, people who don't know me say I walk like a thug. I shattered about a 1/2" from my femur so the doctors had a guess how much I'd grow in a year. They were about 3/8" of an inch off so that's why I have a gangsta limp. Every now and then my leg will bother me but not very often and not for very long. How much hardware do you have in your leg and will it come out? Thankfully I had my hardware removed a year after the break so I don't have any titanium in my body.