July 09, 2011 - Break

[Mycal]

Well I haven't done too terribly much since the last journal, but I wanted to give a small update on what is up with me anyway.

A while back I stated that I am building a new PC, I did that but haven't quite finished. It is built and I tested it with some memory I borrowed from my nephew's machine, but have since put the memory back and the computer has sat in a corner unfinished. It runs very well and is fairly fast, so I can't wait to see how it preforms when it is finished, but here are some updated specs:

CPU: Intel i7 2600K [HAVE]
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD4 [HAVE]
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) CL8 [arrives next week]
SSD: Can't decide if I want to use a cache drive or a boot drive so [undecided].
HDD: Samsung F3 1TB [HAVE]
Current Video card: 1x Galaxy GTX 260 [HAVE]
Future video card: 1x EVGA GTX 560 Ti [much later purchase]
Case: Corsair 600T White Edition [HAVE]
PSU: Corsair 850w HX [HAVE]
Heatsink: Corsair H80 [arrives next week] + 2x Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1850 Fans [not ordered yet]

Good news on this front is, that it is built, just waiting on memory and cooler to arrive. Bad news is, I've already moved a large chunk of my data from my laptop to the desktop. Silly me, I didn't think to leave a copy on the laptop for while I waited, so now my laptop doesn't have any of the game projects, or any real data for that matter. So I'm waiting for the memory to arrive until I can even touch this project again. Once my desktop is built, I'll begin posting pictures, hopefully, after having cleaned up my desk area since it is a giant mess right now <_<.

Also after it is built, I should start being online on IRC, in IM, etc more often since I can feasibly leave the desktop on more often than I can my laptop. Until next time

 

[krum]

have you seen the new hybrid drives with SSD?

they offer a on board SSD cache and they are A LOT cheaper.

that machine sounds beastly :-D

 

[Mycal]

Yea, honestly I'm not as impressed with the hybrid drives as I am the Smart Response Technology from Intel. It was a nice attempt on Seagate's part, but with only a small 4gb cache, it just doesn't seem worth it to me. Imagine this scenario, you do a lot of work on your PC, so it caches these programs for you, but you also play a lot of Steam games every day. Steam is considerably larger and you lose all of the cache to Steam and none to your programs that you would actually need the improvement for.

With the smart response in the Z68 chipset, you have upto a 64gb cache. Now the only part I can't decide on is, do I just want a large SSD (120gb or more) or a cheap 64gb SSD with fast read/write speeds as a cache.

I've argued with friends over and over about this but have only seen some small results published so am still a little undecided, but videos like this make me excited to try it out:

[flash=480,320]http://www.youtube.com/v/U83ED4FOWiw&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3[/flash]​

In other news, I've read some reviews saying the stock fans on the H80 are better than the ones that come with the H70, so I may put off the extra gentle typhoon fans. Hopefully the memory and cooler arrive soon though, it's killing me not having anything to do

 

[Mycal]

Wow, I am extremely tired now. I spent the better part of the afternoon and evening getting this H80 working properly. I reseated the cooler about 5x before the temps were normalized. After I first installed it, I was seeing idle temps of 90C. I removed/reseated to find that it only half seated on the CPU (thermal paste was only across half of it). So I cleaned it and applied some new Artic Silver 5 that I had laying around.

Then my temps dropped to about 80-85C idle. Still way too high. So I repeated this process about 2 more times before I totally disassembled everything and remounted, flipped the fans around so it was pulling outside air into the case, and very slowly and carefully remounted the cooler again. This time, it worked great. My temps are idling at 29-30C now. I'm going to setup a logger and run a burnin test overnight and hopefully we'll see some real results .

Overall it was a painful experience, but I'm very happy with the results so far. Oh, and the memory actually looks a little awkward in my system. I chose the Red Vegeance 8gb DDR3-1600 kit, and with a mostly black system, it didn't add the amount of highlights I was looking for. Also doesn't go well with the white LEDs of the 600T white. I want to add some LED tubes in the system, but need to find a good color scheme (and an easy way to flip them on and off).

So what I have left to purchase:
- LEDs
- SSD
- Video Card
- DVD drive (overlooked this somehow, but got around it for the initial Win7 install)
- Possibly a card reader..

I'll make some pics later on, I'm too tired after all this now.