Core i7

[acstech]

Re: Core i7

Most new CR2032 type batteries last quite a while. I would have left it. Waste of money. Wait for it to die first, by which time the board will most likely be obsolete.

Had to get the 2.1v ram, didn't you?

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Core i7

No, no, the 2.1v RAM belongs to my friend. I won't be ordering anything other than 1.8, thanks to you guys letting me know about that

[Wizard]

Re: Core i7

I like you doing that battery swap for reputable battery. That's one potential problem gone.

Cheers, Wizard

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Core i7

Yup, those were my thoughts (regarding the battery). One less thing that could go wrong in the long term. I plan on keeping this board around for a while, hopefully as long as I had my olde Pavilion 753 around (almost 6 years). Especially since computers aren't getting better as fast as they used to.

I'm a senior in HS right now, and I've decided not to allow myself to do any major upgrades to this bitch until I'm through with college. I have better shit to be spending my money on. I tallied up the totals and when it's all said and done, I will have spent a bit over $600 on this box. I need to start respecting it as such. I've been building this biznitch by pieces, and I never realized how much money I've put in to her. If it wasn't for the fact that I already had a really nice LCD, it would have brought this into the $900 range.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Core i7

Arriving Tuesday:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231219

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136319

Buying an E7400 tomorrow at Fry's.

Thanks for the tips everyone. Especially acstech, thanks for letting me know about the timing/voltage issue!

[acstech]

Re: Core i7

Cool! Let us know how it goes.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Core i7

I ended up getting an E7500 instead of the E7400. It was only $10 more. Plus the E7500 is a lot less commonly used than the E7400, and sometimes it feels good to be different :p.

I was going to await the arrival of the new HDD and RAM on Tuesday, but I couldn't resist. My friend let me borrow 2GB of OCZ 1066 2.1v "ricer RAM" with chrome heatsinks on it and big "NVIDIA SLI" stickers for testing my board a few weeks back, and he still hasn't picked it up yet, so I put my new MB and CPU in my case and slapped the OCZ ram in there, along with my crappy old 80GB drive.

I loaded Windows 7 64 on there and started running Prime95. It gave me a bit of a scare because it BSODed on Prime95 overnight, but it turns out it was because it tried to go into hibernation and there wasn't enough disk space available. I let it run Prime95 for eight hours straight today while I was at work and she was still solid as a rock and crunching numbers when I got back home.

As soon as my stuff arrives on Tuesday, she will be running 100%, but so far so good. I mostly went ahead and installed an OS before I had everything so I could start stress testing. That way, if I have any trouble later, I'll at least know that my CPU and MB are known-good.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Core i7

Everything came in today .

I got the thing fully assembled. Unfortunately, I had to put hideous BEIGE DRIVES in my nice Antec Solo. Oh well. Maybe in a few months I'll spring for some new black drives. I've got a ton of drives laying around, as does my friend, but they're all beige.

Anyhoo, the cabling in there was a mess so I grabbed a bunch of the smallest zip-ties I could find and went to work. I think it turned out pretty damn good . The air my PSU blows out is noticeably cooler (it used to be warm, now it's lukewarm AT BEST). Turns out those 550W AcBel's run really cool if you let them breathe!

My friend sold me the OCZ "ricer ram" for $10. It runs great at 4-4-4-12/1.8v. So now I have 6GB of RAM

Anyhoo, here's the pics (the RAM isn't put in the slots properly for dual channel, I noticed it and fixed it after the pictures):



Cabling job shines in this pic:


I don't know guys... I don't think this board has enough USB ports .


My favorite PSU (need to order another 2 or 3 of them):


System Specs:
Core 2 Duo E7500
6GB RAM
640GB WD Caviar Black
XFX Radeon HD 4850 1GB
Antec Solo chassis
AcBel API4FS06 550W PSU

Runs Windows 7 like a dream.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Core i7

In with a quick sitting-at-desktop shot (still haven't loaded my RSS feeds into the news thingy):

[kc8adu]

Re: Core i7

i have repainted many opticals.
i remember buying a bunch of surplus sgi scsi cd writers for $5 each because they were a hideous pink/purple color and they were not selling.the dealer at computerfest wanted them gone.
if they were the common putty color they would have been $200 units back then.
these were plextors and yamaha's!

[acstech]

Re: Core i7

Looks good! I noticed the only icon on the desktop is L4D.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Core i7

Yup, first thing I wanted to see after all my upgrades was if gaming had improved. It improved a LOT. L4D is butter smooth compared to before. It also doesn't slow down when you get mob rushed, which is a huge plus for me (games that run choppy make me dizzy as f***). I guess I didn't notice it until now, but L4D ran pretty shitty on the Pentium 4.