System upgrade write-up – November 2009

[J_Th4ng]

Okay, now that I’m almost finished with my PC upgrade (there are a couple of bits still outstanding - I’ll cover these later), I thought that it’s about time that I wrote a report on the build and results that I’m getting.

It’s been almost three and a half years since I last upgraded the ‘core’ of my PC (motherboard, CPU and RAM). I typically do system rebuilds every two years, so this is quite a long time for me, and I therefore decided to make up for it by giving myself a really expansive budget for the upgrade, effectively building a top of the line system - saving money only where additional expenditure just wasn’t cost justifiable at all. An example of this was the CPU I bought – I got the Intel i7-920 where the top of the line is the i7-975 (at three times the price but not a huge amount more performance).

I replaced most of the components of the PC, the only exceptions being the case, my water cooling kit, and my graphics card (I upgraded this about a year ago).

This article will be fairly detailed, so I'll post it in a number of sections, covering different aspects of the process. A word of caution, this is a long article. I got a little carried away when writing it!!

You have been warned...



Part I: System architecture – a tough choice right now

As mentioned previously, my objective with this build was not to get the best price to performance ratio, but rather to build a high end system, utilising the best components I could find within reason. My budget was very high for this; the total cost of all of the bits that I’ve bought will be close to R30K (based on dealer prices from Frontosa – thanks to Denis ‘Skouperd’ Dell for letting me purchase all of my new toys on his account).

The first decision that I had to make was the age old AMD/Intel one. What architecture would my system be based on? I decided fairly early on that Intel was the way to go, because of the fact that they do have the faster architecture at this juncture, albeit at a bit of a price premium (although not as much as you might think). As it stands, at stock speeds, the bottom of the range i7-920 is faster than the top of the range Phenom2 965 Black Edition in most tests (although this benefit is admittedly marginal when it comes to performance in games).

At this stage, I must say that AMD’s Phenom offering is a very good one, price to performance wise it’s a great investment. Unfortunately, they just can’t compete with Intel at the highest level at the moment. Hopefully that will change with their next architecture release, Intel needs someone to put pressure on them again. Also, I can’t simply look at performance at stock speeds. I always look to overclock my CPU’s (hence the watercooling setup), so the amount of headroom the CPU has for overclocking is important to me when selecting a CPU. Currently, Intel i7 CPUs seem to have more range than the Phenoms, as will be illustrated later in this article.

So I was set on an Intel platform for the build. Job done, i7-920 is the way to go. Except... about a month before I put my purchase plan into action, Intel went and muddied the waters by releasing the ‘new’ i7 and i5 range, based on a different socket to the 920 (socket 1156 instead of 1366). To make my decision tougher, initial reviews showed the new i7 860 (priced about the same as the 920) to be as fast, if not faster than the 920 in gaming tests. This combined with cheaper motherboard options, and dual channel instead of triple channel RAM would mean equivalent performance, at a lower total cost of ownership.

After a fair amount of research, I went with my original choice, the i7-920. My decision was made for the following reasons:

• Future upgradeability – The socket 1366 platform is Intel’s ‘Performance’ architecture. Their new high end CPU ranges will be launched to this platform, not socket 1156.
• Triple channel RAM support – The Triple channel memory controller gives higher memory bandwidth, as well as giving me what I believe is the ideal amount of RAM for a 64bit system right now – 6GB (3x2GB memory modules). Using the dual channel setup, I’d be forced to go with either 4GB or 8GB.
• PCI Express x16 lanes – The socket 1156 platform has no Northbridge at all. Not only is the memory controller brought on-board the CPU (as with all i7’s), but now they have brought the PCI-E controller on board as well. This controller is currently limited to 16 lanes, meaning that a crossfire or SLI setup would be limited to 2x8, rather than 2x16. Although I currently don’t run dual card setup, I’d like to keep my options open. EDIT: It's a good thing that I did consider this, as I'm now running a dual graphics card setup!!
• Chipset maturity – I built my previous system at the same time that Intel originally launched the Core2 architecture. My CPU, the E6600 was one of the original Core2Duo processors on the market. At the time that I bought it, supporting chipsets were limited, and this resulted in me buying the best I could at the time (an Intel 975 chipset), which ultimately limited me in terms of overclocking capability. Socket 1366 has been around for about a year now, and motherboards and their respective BIOS versions are stable. Socket 1156, being new, is somewhat untested, and I’d much rather go with something that I know to be good.

So now I had chosen the architecture for my system upgrade, next I had to start choosing the components...

[J_Th4ng]

Part II: Components – choosing the bits.

So now I had chosen the architecture, I next had to choose the specific components that would be combined to create my new PC.

Chassis – Coolermaster HAF-932

This is not a new case, I bought it about a year ago, and love it. It is extremely well designed, and building a system into it is an absolute pleasure. It has great airflow, plenty of space for watercooling, and extremely good cable management to make the PC neat and tidy inside.

CPU – Intel i7-920

Probably the easiest decision of the lot. Once I had decided to go socket 1366, the 920 was the only CPU that I was ever going to buy. The 950 (next one up in the range) is over R2000 +VAT more expensive, and the only benefit it has is a 400MHz speed advantage. In percentage terms, it’s a 15% speed improvement, for a 71% price premium. The 975 is even worse, although it does have the added advantage of a slightly faster memory controller and an unlocked multiplier for good overclocking. However, it gives 25% speed improvement over the 920 (in pure clock speed terms), for a whopping 208% price premium!!

CPU Cooling – Coolermaster Aquagate MAX

Once again, this is not a new acquisition. I’ve owned the Aquagate MAX for about a year (I bought it with the HAF-932 chassis). This is a superb all in one watercooling kit, with a double bay radiator and pump unit, 2x12cm fan radiator and CPU block. It fits perfectly into the case, and enables very cool CPU’s and good overclocking capabilities. One fault with it, see next entry:

CPU Waterblock – Zalman WB5

One of the challenges about moving to a different socket was the fact that my existing waterblock didn’t have a mounting bracket for socket 1366. For that reason, I was forced to find a new waterblock. The one that I chose, the Zalman WB5, was not chosen due to its brilliant cooling ability, but rather because it was one of the only CPU blocks I could find on sale in SA. Watercooling is such niche gear that it’s very difficult to buy components locally. You can usually buy all in one kits, or you have to import the gear yourself. As it turns out, the Zalman block performs perfectly adequately for my needs.

Motherboard – ASUS Rampage II Extreme

Crucial to any build is the choice of motherboard. The motherboard forms the basis upon which the system is built, and making the right choices here can mean the difference between a stable, overclockable, well performing system that gives nothing but enjoyment to the user, and a system that causes endless frustration due to inexplicable hardware failures, random BSODs and general system instability. As such, my choice here was a little harder than deciding on a CPU, although I only had one choice of chipset – The Intel X58 is the only Socket 1366 chipset currently available. I had narrowed my motherboard choices down to two, the ASUS Rampage II Extreme, and the Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme. Both are enthusiast class boards, with extremely comprehensive feature sets and good overclocking capabilities. I was leaning towards the Gigabyte option, for the following reasons:

• Built in waterblock on the Northbridge. Simple to improve overclocking potential, I can just add a loop from my current system and keep the Northbridge nice and cool
• More SATA ports. Not that I need then ( I don’t have that many drives!!), but this board has 2 more SATA ports than the ASUS
• More USB ports – I seem to have collected a huge number of USB devices over the years, and have run out of places to plug them all in. The Gigabyte offers 2 more USB ports than the ASUS (and these are on the back panel, not simply an extra header on the board). A small feature, but one that I found appealing

As it turned out, I went with the ASUS Rampage II extreme. The reasons? Firstly, it was cheaper. The Gigabyte board was about R1400 more expensive than the ASUS board. Secondly, Gigabyte products are not available from Frontosa, they supply exclusively to Rectron, and I wanted to keep my entire build with a single supplier.

I must say, this motherboard is fantastic. The ASUS ‘ROG’ series (Republic of Gamers) is seriously top notch kit. The boards look good, have loads of features, are well laid out, are made of top quality components, demonstrate fantastic overclocking capabilities, and are equipped with a fair amount of bling to go with it . This is the first ROG motherboard I’ve owned, and in my opinion it’s well worth the price premium.

RAM – Corsair Dominator 1600MHz 3x2GB kit

The primary reason why an i7 system is not as frighteningly expensive as it was a year ago is the drop in price of DDR3 RAM. A year ago, a 6GB kit of DDR3 would’ve set me back between 5 and 6 gorillas. For this build, I got a Corsair Dominator triple channel kit for just over R2000. Not bad for 6GB of 7-7-7-20 RAM. My first choice would’ve been the OCZ Platinum RAM, but OCZ products are difficult to source locally, and the retailers that do sell it tend to put premium mark-ups on it.

Graphics card – Sapphire Radeon 4870X2

As tempted as I am by the new 5870 cards, I’ve managed to resist, and stick with my existing 4870X2 card. It’s more than capable of dealing with any game that I’m currently playing, with full details, and AA at 1920x1200. Having said that, if rumours of a 5970 release in January/February are true (that would be 2x 5870 GPUs on one board), and the price was manageable, I might just take the plunge...

EDIT: As it turned out, I was unable to resist the temptation of the HD5870 cards... I now have two of them in a Crossfire setup in my rig, and the performance is mind blowing!! The new cards are not covered in this article, but I'll write something on this setup soon.

System Drive – Intel X-25M 80GB SSD (G2)

One of the major changes that I had planned for this build (and also one of the major cost contributors) was the incorporation of SSD’s in the system for installing my programs and games on. I have spent a lot of time over the last few months reading as many articles as I can find on the subject, reviews of currently available drives, and the pros and cons of the different controllers that are used.

I wanted two SSD’s for my system, one for my Windows installation and applications, and one for games. Based on my research, there are currently two choices of SSD available if you want the best in performance. The first is the Intel drives, and the second is any other drive, as long as it has an Indilinx controller. Price wise, the Intel drives cost more, but they still hold a slight performance advantage. They also have higher capacities than the indilinx drives. Intel drives come in 80Gb and 160GB variants, and Indilinx typically come in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB.

For my system and apps drive, I chose the Intel 80GB option.

Games drive – Corsair X128 Extreme series SSD 128GB

This drive was not my original choice. In fact, it was kinda forced upon me, although I’m not complaining at this stage. I originally had an order in for a 160GB Intel X-25M for use as the game installation drive. However, there were some serious issues with stock availability, which meant that I had to choose an alternative. The happy side of this is that the Corsair drive is quite a bit cheaper than the Intel offering, and provides very similar performance. Or so I believe, as I haven’t actually received it yet...

As a matter of interest, the reason why Intel SSDs are hard (make that impossible) to come by in SA at present, is due to a change in European law that has recently been introduced that forbids the export of any item that contains encryption from the EU. Of course this includes all Intel SSDs, and co-incidentally, Europe is their primary warehousing for SSDs worldwide. So, getting an Intel SSD anywhere at the moment (except inside the EU) is virtually impossible. Intel is working on getting the law amended, but as you can imagine this is playing havoc with their SSD business.

I’ve been given an estimated delivery date of end of this month for the Corsair drive, so hopefully this is accurate. For now I have games installed on the Intel drive, which is nice and quick, but it’s also starting to run out of space.

Data storage drives – 2xSeagate 1.5TB 7200 RPM

Not much to say on these, other than stating the obvious fact that they are big, and are used for storing all of my media, and files that I don’t want to lose.

Optical Drives – LG DVD-RW and LG BluRay-R

The savings that I made on the Corsair SSD were quickly reallocated (and added to) in order to include a BluRay writer into the system. Currently not really necessary, but will be nice to be able to watch BluRay disks on the PC. Doubt that I’ll be using BluRay for data backups as yet, the cost of the disks is somewhat prohibitive.

In addition to the BluRay drive, I’ve also included a standard DVD-RW, with Lightscribe capability. This was only replaced because my old DVD drive was IDE, and I wanted to move everything to SATA.

Sound Card – ASUS Xonar Essence ST

Originally, I had no intention of replacing my sound card. I had a Soundblaster X-Fi Platinum card, complete with breakout box which fits in a 5.25” drive bay. It’s a great soundcard, and has served me well over the years. The issue is, ever since I installed Vista, I’ve had real issues getting teh microphone to work, or even be recognised by the system. This is largely due to the removal of DirectSound from DirectX 10. This removal also means that a lot of the X-Fi gaming advantages have now been lost, like all of the EAX stuffs, unless Creative write profiles for each game in their Alchemy software. Anyway, I struggled for several days to get my mic working in the new build and eventually gave up and decided to get a new, hopefully easier to use card...

I chose the Xonar card because of fantastic reviews that I’ve seen for it everywhere. It seems that this card is the audiophiles sound card of choice, and it also has good support for gaming under DX10/11. It emulates EAX natively so you don’t need any middleware with specific game profiles, and sounds great. The other thing that I found appealing on this card is the fact that it’s designed with headphone users in mind. I pretty much always use headphones when gaming, in fact I don’t even have my speakers connected any longer. The Essence cards have a built in headphone amplifier on the card, to ensure that sufficient power is provided to run any headphones at an optimal level. The card does also support 7.1 channel surround, but natively this is only available though a digital connection, unless you purchase an H6 add on card that will enable analogue speaker attachments. No issue for me, Headphones are where I’m at. The card also has Dolby Headphone support, for surround sound emulation on stereo headphones (I’ve always believed in high quality stereo headphones rather than sub-standard 5.1 units). I find the positional audio to be very good, and can certainly identify the direction of sounds in-game.

Power Supply – Corsair HX1000W

A probably unnecessary upgrade (I had a Thermaltake Toughpower 700W in my old system), I decided to get a high end modular PSU to power my rig and ensure maximum stability for my overclocking. This Corsair unit is superb. It has all of the connections that you could possibly need, and it is modular, so there aren’t loads of unneeded cables floating around in the case.

Monitor – Samsung T260

Anyone who was at rAge will have seen this baby. I bought it whilst there, because of a special they had at Incredible Connection, selling these off at R3000. It’s a beautiful monitor, and the 1920x1200 resolution means that my graphics card will be getting a reasonable workout running games. Also I am able to watch FullHD BluRay movies on the monitor.

Keyboard – Microsoft Sidewinder X6

Although not truly an upgrade, I decided that I’d had enough of my Logitech G15, and wanted something different. The G19 is just too expensive, and also it’s too similar to the G15. The X6 is a very nice keyboard, and has a lot of useful gaming specific functions. If you are one of those people who like laptop type keyboards, you’ll love the X6, as it has a similar tactile feel and response.

Mouse – Logitech G9

No change here. The G9 is the best mouse I’ve ever used, and I’m not planning on changing it for a good long while (or at least until Logitech tempt me with something new )

Software

For my Operating system, I chose Windows 7 Home Premium (64bit). I’ve been using Vista for a couple of years now, and have found it to be generally an improvement over XP (yes, I know I’m in the minority here, but I really liked Vista). Windows 7 takes the strengths of Vista, enhances them, and adds a lot of processing efficiencies to make Windows 7 feel more responsive. It also has a feature that is very important to me on my new build – TRIM support for SSD drives. I won’t go into the details of what TRIM is and why it’s important suffice to say that if you are planning on buying an SSD any time in the future, you will want to find out about it and make sure that your SSD and your OS supports it.

I also added a copy of MS-Office 2007 to the order, as I’m currently using it at work, so wanted to stay on release at home.

[J_Th4ng]

Part III: Assembly – Putting it all together

Okay, so once all of the components arrived, I was ready to start with the build. Being a typical PC geek, I thoroughly enjoy this part of the process, it’s one of the few activities where I am happy to take my time, and make sure that everything is put together exactly how I want it. I also tend to get very absorbed when doing this, as such I attempted to take photos to track the process, but it appears that I forgot for long periods of time during the build. Anyway, I’ll post what I have.

First, my rig as it was:



The first thing that I had to do was remove my old system from the case. Actually, this isn’t true. The first thing that I really had to do was make sure that the kids were all securely in bed, as the last thing I wanted were those extra pairs of ‘helping hands’ that invariably end up destroying fragile computer components.

Anyway, once they were safely locked up bedded down, I set to stripping down the old PC. An easy enough job to do, and one that always amazes me with the amount of dust and other crap that has accumulated inside the case over time.

Once I had removed all of the old components, I was left with an almost empty Chassis. I say almost empty because there was still amount of dirt and grime in there, as well as the watercooling unit, which I didn’t intend removing if at all possible.

This led me to my first unpleasant task. Due to the change in waterblock, I needed to drain the watercooling system. I also would not be able to close up the loop immediately afterwards, as it’s never advisable to have the CPU block piped in before it’s mounted on the CPU. What this meant was that I had to remove the old waterblock, drain the water into a bowl, and try and ensure that every lost drop came out so that I didn’t have any stray water droplets landing on my new motherboard as I mounted it into the case. This turned out to be fairly messy, but not overly problematic.



Once that was done, I set about seating the CPU into the motherboard, and getting the waterblock securely mounted onto the CPU. First step in the process was to attach the tubing to the CPU block (once again you don’t want to do this once the block is mounted on top of the CPU as it takes a bit of force to get the tubes securely attached to the mountings). Once completed, I attaché the backplate to the motherboard, so that the waterblock could be mounted. Once this was done, I dug out an old tube of ‘Arctic Silver 5’ thermal compound, and smeared a thin layer over the top of the CPU. Seating the CPU was a breeze, and the process was completed by placing the waterblock on top of the CPU, and screwing the retaining bracket into the backplate that I had attached earlier. The mounting bracket screws have spring tensioners, which is good as it ensures that you can’t over tighten the mounting bracket and thereby damage the CPU.



With the CPU and waterblock securely attached onto the motherboard, I was ready to mount the motherboard into the chassis. Fortunately, the alignment of the mounting risers was identical to my old motherboard, so none of these had to be repositioned. This time I also managed to remember to attach the motherboard backplate (that silvery thing with holes cut into it that covers all of the connections on the back of the case) before mounting the motherboard. My last build had me removing the damn motherboard afterwards to that I could put this piece in. Anyway, the board went in nice and easily, and it was then a simple job to attach the three RAM modules in their triple channel configuration. So far so good!

It was at this point in proceedings where the value of the HAF-932 chassis came to the fore. The case being a full tower design, there is plenty of space to work within it. Also, having a bottom mounted CPU means that there is space at the bottom of the motherboard to work in when attaching all of the peripherals which always seem to have their headers at the bottom of the board (USB, Firewire, SATA, IDE, Audio headers and all of the case switches).

Before I put all of the other bits in, I reconnected all of the piping for the watercooling unit. No errant drips had come out so far, but from this stage onwards I was going to be flipping the case around a bit to get everything else in, and didn’t want to take any chances.



Mounting hard drives into the HAF-932 is a doddle. Unlike most conventional cases, the drives are mounted sideways into the chassis, by means of clip and slide out trays that need no screws (thumb or otherwise). This sideways mounting has the added advantage of leaving the cable mounts for power and motherboard connection on the side of the case, behind the motherboard tray. The only slight complication that I had with this build was the fact that the Intel SSD is a 2.5” drive, not the usual 3.5” drive. Fortunately I had remembered to buy a special mounting bracket for the SSD, so it was easy to attach this to the drive, and then the drive was easily placed into one of the sliding HDD trays.

Obviously optical drives can’t be mounted sideways (unless you want the drive tray to come out on the side of the case). Even still these are easily mounted into the HAF with retaining clips – again no screws are required.

Once all of my drive bays were populated, I installed the graphics card and sound card. Originally this was the X-Fi platinum card and break out box, but this was subsequently replaced with the Xonar Essence ST.

Once all of these components were installed, but before mounting the PSU, I connected all of the cables. SATA cables to drives and motherboard. Case fans to the motherboard fan headers, the audio and USB front panel connectors, as well as USB backplates mounted to motherboard headers. Watercooling radiator fans connected to the watercooling main unit, and of course the power switch, power LED, reset switch and HDD activity LED.

Once all of the functional components were installed, I installed the PSU. As with most modular PSUs, there are a few cables that are hard wired to the unit, and a bunch of removable cables which are only mounted in the event that they are needed. Happily, all of the hard wired cables were needed for my installation, meaning no wasted cables left in the case. These were a 24pin motherboard power connector, an 8pin motherboard 12V connector, and two six/eight pin PIC-E connectors. That had my motherboard and graphics card sorted.

I needed two optional SATA cables, as I have six drives (2xSSD, 2xHDD, 2xOptical), and each of the cables have a choice of 2 or four connectors.

I also needed one optional Molex cable, to power my watercooling pump and for extra power required on the sound card. Once again, thanks to the design of the HAF, all of these cables were able to run behind the motherboard tray, well out of the way.



Once everything was properly connected and double checked, I closed up the back panel of the case. Or at least I tried to... There were so many cables running at the back, a lot of them on top of each other that the side panel couldn’t fit.

As with a lot of the world’s problems, this was quickly resolved with the help of a roll of duct tape, and some cable ties. Who cares what it looks like back there, that side of the case has no need for prettiness or airflow.

With all of the bits connected, and the case partially closed up, all that remained was to turn on the system and see how it worked. Well, not quite. There was one more rather crucial task remaining. At this point, my watercooling unit was missing the vital ingredient. Water. I unlatched the reservoir/pump unit, slid the unit forward out the front of the case, and opened the water entry plug. With the aid of a funnel, I poured the water back in to the unite, noting with satisfaction that it flowed fairly well into the pipes to fill the unit. Not completely, of course, but enough to be sure that there would be water in the system when I fired it up. What I now needed to do was to turn on the juice, and then top up the reservoir as the pump moved water through the system.

So I took a deep breath, and pressed the power switch. Nothing. I instantly panicked. What had I done wrong, why wasn’t it working? Had I cocked it up completely? Nope, it turns out that I hadn’t actually plugged it in. This super new PSU of mine doesn’t actually generate its own electricity, it still needs to be connected to the wall

After I corrected my error, I pressed the power button again. Light came on and fans started to spin. The inside of my case was bathed in a sickly green glow from the watercooling radiator fans. I started celebrating. Then I started panicking again. No water was circulating through the watercooling loop!! Effectively, I was running my new i7 CPU without any cooling.

Switched off the power, and started checking all of my connections. Everything was properly wired up. I knew that there was power going to the pump, because the radiator fans are powered from there, and they were spinning (and glowing green). Had I broken the pump somehow?

A short while later, I found the problem. Somehow, I’d managed to connect a molex connector to the watercooling pump the wrong way round. As anyone who’s actually read this far will know, molex are supposed to be shaped so that they can only fit one way round. I’d managed to force the connector in the wrong way around. Interestingly, this stopped the pump from working, but the radiator fans still worked just fine. Very odd.

Anyway, I turned the connection around, and fired it all up again. Success. The pump started pumping, and the air in the loop disappeared rapidly, replaced by green water. I breathed out again.

Bleeding the air out of a watercooling loop is actually quite a tricky business. The first thing that one needs to do is ensure that the reservoir is at the highest point in the loop. A basic knowledge of physics (or a tendency to fart in the bath) is enough to tell anyone that air likes to move upwards through water. If for example your radiator is at the top of the loop (as when it’s mounted in the top of your case), the air will travel there, and not come out. This will obviously mean that your radiator won’t work too well, as heat won’t be removed from the water. What one actually has to do is detach the radiator from the case, and put it at the bottom of the loop, shaking and spinning it around a bit to dislodge all of the air out of it. As you do this, the air will travel through to the reservoir, and be released (much like a fart bubble exiting the bath). Whilst doing this, the water level will drop, so you need to top up the reservoir while doing this, until no bubbles remain.

Anyway, so I did all of the above, and finished the hardware build by closing up the side of my case.

The entire process had taken me about 5 hours. It was now about 1:30am on a school night, so I packed up all of my stuff, moved the PC back into the study, and called it quits for the night.

[J_Th4ng]

Part IV: Installation and Configuration

The next day at work was tortuous. All I wanted was to get home, and get stuck into installing Windows, and see how lightning fast my new system was. I spent most of the day browsing the internet, looking for tweaking guides, downloading Windows 7 drivers for my hardware, and planning my evening’s entertainment (as I said before, I’m a geek and this is the most fun I know how to have).

One interesting thing that I did find (what an amazing coincidence that it was on the same day), Intel had released new firmware for their G2 SSD’s which enabled TRIM support under Windows 7. I downloaded the new firmware, and used the iso to create a CD that would flash the firmware. This is great, I thought. I’d heard stories of a previous version of the firmware that had caused data loss on application, and figured it would be a good idea to flash the SSD before I installed Windows 7, so that I wouldn’t have any data to lose...

So I got home, forced the kids into bed early, and settled down in front of the PC to get my geek on. I popped the firmware disk into the optical drive, and fired up the PC, being sure to press delete several hundred times so as to be sure that it would enter the BIOS.

My first scan of the BIOS left me feeling happy. Things were laid out in a very similar manner to my previous motherboard (also an ASUS), so I was quite at home setting up the boot sequence, turning off onboard sound, and browsing through the overclocking options. I did get a little nervous on the overclocking side of things, because there were a whole load of new BIOS settings, complete with TLAs (three letter acronyms) that I’d never heard of. The manual wasn’t much help in this regard, being like most motherboard manuals that just state the obvious, without telling you what it means. For example, there is a BIOS setting called ‘A.I. Overclocking’, and the options that you can set are ‘Enabled’ or ‘Disabled’. I look up that setting in the manual, and it says (I quote) ‘Enables or disables the A.I Overclocking feature’. No shit Sherlock. And of course, most of the manual’s descriptions are like this.

I won’t worry about this for now, I thought, Overclocking is a way away yet. First I need to get the system running, and then I can take the time to research all of these new and improved TLA’s.

So I set the boot sequence for my drives (SSD first, followed by DVD), save settings, and exit the BIOS.

A few seconds later, the PC finds the ISO image on the CD, and loads up the firmware update program. I let it run, and a couple of minutes later my SSD is updated to the latest firmware. All good so far .

I reboot, replacing the firmware update CD with the Windows 7 Home Premium DVD. Another few seconds later and I’m installing Windows 7.

I won’t bore you with the details of the install (I’m sure that you’re bored enough by now if you’ve actually got this far), suffice to say that it installs in much the same way as previous versions of Windows. What I will comment on though, is how quick the process was. I don’t know if this is a direct result of using an SSD, or if the install is just a lot more streamlined than Vista, but Windows was completely installed in about 20 minutes. Add some more time on for getting my device drivers all installed without any hiccoughs at all, thanks to some excellent driver work from ATi and Creative Labs. And I was ready to play.

A couple of issues that I do have with the system as it is:

Weirdly enough, Intel’s own matrix storage manager doesn’t support TRIM functionality. Additionally, you can’t run an SSD in RAID if you want TRIM support. I had no intention of running it in RAID (I only have one anyway!!), but I did want to run my 1.5GB HDD’s in RAID 1, in order to give me data security on those drives. However, the HDD setup in the BIOS of the Rampage allows for only one setting for all SATA devices. So, if I put it in RAID, I can RAID my HDD’s, but get no TRIM support for my SSD. If I put in AHCI, I get TRIM Support for my SSD, but no RAID on the HDDs.

At this stage, I’ve chosen to run in AHCI, and forgo RAID support on the HDDs. I’m running backups of my important data, backing it up to my second HDD. The upside of this is that I have more storage space, because I don’t back up everything. The downside is that I can lose data between backups. But hey, it’s something that I have to live with.

Incidentally, on the SSD firmware update thing. When I got to work the next day, I saw a news article on Tom’s Hardware about Intel firmware bricking SSDs!! . I opened the article to find that the new firmware I had downloaded and used has caused failure on a number of SSD’s, to the extent that Intel have removed the firmware from their website and have strongly encouraged all users who have not updated yet to hold back and not do so. The firmware was available for one day, and it just happened to be the same day that I built my PC. I have been lucky. My drive was fine, and I’ve noticed no adverse effects so far (touch wood). Intel have said that the problem either happens immediately or not at all, so I should be okay. Apparently the issue mostly happens when people already had Win7 64bit installed on the drive. Thankfully I decided to flash before installing Windows!!

Anyway enough on the installation and configuration. I’m sure that you want to know how the system performs, so I’ll cover performance and overclocking in the next (and final) section.

[J_Th4ng]

Part V: Performance and Overclocking

Once I had my system installed and configured, it was time to see how well it performs. Before I get on to gaming performance, I’m going to to write a few words on my general experience within Windows 7.

As previously mentioned, I’ve been using Vista 64 Home Premium for the last couple of years, and I have been happy with the stability and performance of the Operating System. Previously, my OS was installed on a RAID 0 array of two WD Raptor 10,000RPM HDDs (sold! To Jean - the only bidder), so the system was no slouch. However, it isn’t even comparable to my new system in terms of general windows performance. I’m not sure how much of this is due to the SSD, and how much to the efficiency improvements within Windows itself, but this PC has to be experienced to be believed. A cold boot of Windows takes about 20 seconds, from post to complete load. When I double click on an office application, the application is fully open and ready to work with by the time I take my finger off the button. Yes, it’s that fast.

Games load up super quick. Maps even faster. I haven’t played much BF2 since the install, but I’m pretty much guaranteed to be the first person in the map on load (shame I’m not a jet wh0re).

SSD’s are phenomenal. They are an improvement over HDD’s by a huge order of magnitude. In ideal circumstances (random reads) SSD’s are up to 50x faster than a Velociraptor drive (the fastest SATA HDD currently available). Without a doubt, the biggest performance improvements in my PC have come from the addition of this little technological marvel. I can’t wait until my second one arrives, so that I can get a few more games installed for some more testing.

Yes, they are expensive. No doubt you need a bit of cash to have one. However, it will make more of an impact to your general computing experience than any other upgrade. I can’t recommend them highly enough.

Anyway, enough waxing lyrical about SSDs, how about the rest of my system?

It’s fast. In fact it’s very fast. I’m limited with drive space for installing games at the moment, but I’ve played BF2, COD4, Borderlands and L4D2 (demo), and all run with maximum settings at 1920x1200 and full AA without any hint of slowdown. COD4 doesn’t drop below 125 FPS ever (it’s limited to this number so I don’t know how high it could go). BF2 is no use for benchmarking, my old system had it maxed out, so not much will have changed. As far as synthetic benchmarks go, I'll get to that in a bit

As previously mentioned, it was always my intent to get a good overclock out of this CPU, because I believe it has the headroom. The biggest challenge that I had overclocking the i7 was understanding all of the terminology. Overclocking a core2 is relatively straightforward. You can configure the FSB speed and the multiplier, to get a core speed. In this regard, and i7 is the same. Where it isn’t the same is in the voltages and other parts that work off the same clocks. One of the biggest changes in the i7 architecture is the incorporation of the memory controller onto the CPU. This means that overclocking the CPU is also overclocking the memory controller. Kinda. There are more voltages to look at, and more variables to consider.

For my part, I chose to research my requirements. I found a forum thread with specific instructions on i7 overclocking, with a target frequency of 4.0GHz (not bad for a 2.67GHz CPU - that’s a 50% overclock). I read up on the requirements, and applied the ‘quick and dirty’ methodology suggested, in order to get the CPU to 4GHz. I fired up the PC, and... it worked. First time. Using Prime95, I ran a 24 hour iteration of the mixed torture test. This had all 8 logical cores (4 physical cores) running at 100% for 24 hours. I didn’t get a single error. Temperatures were a little high, peaking out at 85 degrees on core 1 over the period, but considering the recommended threshold is 100 degrees, it’s still okay.

This wasn’t good enough for me, however. I don’t want my CPU reaching 85 degrees, even if it’s under non-real world circumstances (I’ll never have all four cores under sustained 100% load). So, I did a couple of things. First, I disabled Hyperthreading, as I don’t think I need it. Who really needs 8 thread processing capability anyway? Four is quite enough for now. HT actually slows down performance under certain circumstances. Secondly, I started lowering my CPU voltage in steps, in order to find the lowest voltage that the CPU would run at stably.

As a result of the changes, I was able to run a second 24 hour mixed torture test, again with no errors. My maximum core temperature on any of the cores was 72 degrees.

So I stopped right there. I now have a i7-920 running 100% stable at 4.0GHz, with perfectly reasonable temperatures. To put this into perspective, this is 666MHz faster than a stock 975, which costs almost 3 times the price. In fact, it is faster than the stock 975 by the same margin that the 975 is faster than the 920 at stock.

I’m sure I could get this CPU faster, too. But why? I have no need.

Summary of experience? Rather expensive, but I’m seriously happy with what I’ve got.

Oh yeah, those synthetic benchmarks...

The only one that I’ve run thus far is 3DMark Vantage. I can give comparative scores with this one, because I run it whenever I add a new piece of kit. However, because I have the same graphics card as before, I didn’t expect too much of a change. After all, 3DMark is far more concerned with your GPU than your CPU.

So, what did it score?

My old rig (E6600@3GHz, 6GB DDR2, 4870X2): H8379
My new rig (i7-920@4GHz, 6GB DDR3, 4870X2): H11342

A 35% improvement in overall benchmark score based on the changes made

The important bit is the CPU score though. So how did that fair?

My old rig: 9454
My new rig: 24384

Now that's more like it. A 150% improvement in CPU score. Now I'm smiling a bit.

One last thing of interest. How do my graphics scores compare between the two CPU's driving teh same card. I always felt that my 4870X2 was being constrained somewhat by my old CPU. Is this the case?

My old rig: 5094
My new rig: 10364

Now that really is something. My new rig scores more than double on the graphics score, despite having the same graphics card. Clearly, my graphics card was not able to work to it's full potential when driven by my old CPU.



And that's about it. A long article, much longer than I intended. Thanks to anyone who's made it this far, I hope it was worth the read

[Paul]

Holy shit Jarrod, that is one hell of a review. Must say a beauty of a machine.

[baselineac]

nice review
question...
What are the 2 candles for in the first picture?

[J_Th4ng]

What are the 2 candles for in the first picture?

Nice question, I'm pleased to see that you were paying attention.

The answer to the question is simple. They were there so that I could see after my 1000W PSU sucked all the juice out of the mains

[AuRoRa]

LOl!!!!
I wonder how much my 1100W would suck those candles??

Jarrod , man what a write-up! Well captured and very impressive! U built yourself a beasty there ! Im impressed with the complete setup , and the overall results are awrsome!

Clearly all the components are very well placed and balanced in your system and i think u did a great job of "spec-ing"

Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant...

[FlatspinZA]

That's an impressive setup, Dragonne. The only thing that really perplexes me is why you chose the i7 920 as opposed to the i7 950?

Yes, yes, I'm guilty of not reading all of your article - I'll get there when my eyes aren't going all screwy on me - Schnapps & beer will do that, you know.

How much did you get the 920 for, if you don't mind me asking?

EDIT: They dropped the price of the i7 950 at the beginning of November, or October - not quite sure. Knocked R3k off the price. R2065 excluding VAT on my pricelist.