I apologize in advance for the story book, but I felt like sharing...
At the beginning of the year I decided it was time to upgrade my 4 year old PC. Acquiring a free copy of Windows 7 Professional 64bit through work was the catalyst. Due to budget constraints starting from scratch with an i7 build just was not possible. But if I was going to install Microsoft's new behemoth of an OS on my aging rig I would definitely need more RAM. After balking at the price of DDR2 for a while I picked out a nice 4 GB kit from Kingston. I then proceeded over to the SSD section of Newegg's site and selected an OCZ 60 GB Vertex drive for my shiny new OS. Both items arrived DOA. "Sigh". RMA with Newegg went as smooth as butter and after a week I had working replacements. I installed my new hardware and OS and was amazed. I never thought my old computer could be so fast. SSDs truely are the best upgrade for your money right now. I was satisfied with my upgrade choices, for a few weeks.
I had been thinking for a while, "I'm still running this old Dual Core cpu", and thought an upgrade to Quad was in order. Being on an older 975X chipset board I knew I would need to check the CPU compatibility list before pulling the trigger on a new CPU. I had my eye on a deal on the Q9550 from Microcenter for $179. I checked the ASUS website and sure enough with a quick BIOS update that 45nm goodness could be mine. The only problem was the nearest Microcenter was 3.5 hours away. I called my mother who lives in St. Louis and asked her if she would not mind picking it up for me and shipping it to me. Of course she said ok, problem solved.
So today was the day my new CPU arrived. I sent my mother a real nice mother's day card as a thank you. I add 'really nice' because she ended buying the CPU for me as a gift. I had to work today though, but since I work at a local computer store I just took my computer in with me to work on during the day. I dusted it out with the air compressor at work, removed my heatsink/fan assembly, cleaned off the 4 year old arctic silver 5, placed my new cpu in the socket, and turned it on. The computer posted with no problems. I forgot to clear the CMOS so I turned it off, cleared and went again. Booted normally again with the "New CPU Installed!" message. I changed a few of my basic BIOS settings, set HDDs to AHCI, etc. Left everything else at auto and it booted into Windows 7 no problem. Checked system properties and it showed "Intel Q9550 2.83 GHz 2.66 GHz". "Hmm", I thought, "Windows just has not installed the new CPU properly yet." Checked device manager and sure enough the four cores were showing up as unknown devices. I told Windows to check for an update and all was well in device manager, but system properties still said 2.66 Ghz. So I restarted and checked the BIOS. Defaults were set to 333 FSB with an 8x multiplier. I could not adjust the multiplier higher than 8. So I did the math and set the FSB at 354 but that left my RAM at 667 MHz. I could change the multiplier but that would clock the RAM faster than the boards 800 MHz rated speed and I have never had good luck overclocking RAM on this board. I tried overclocking the CPU, no post. Tried overclocking the RAM, no post. So I did the logical thing and researched it on the web, which I should have done in the first place, but I figured if it says it is compatible then it should work. What I found out was, yes, it will work on 975x, but not properly, and you would be lucky to clock it at its stock speed without issue.
Well, since I had already opened the CPU, and it would be a PITA to ship it back to my mom and have her return it with a 15% restocking fee the only option left was a new board. At this point I had run a bit short of patience and hastily ordered the best 775 mobo I could find on Newegg which happens to be the Asus P5Q Pro Turbo. In my haste I did not do much research on the board and Newegg reviews are not always very accurate.
So my real question is, is the Asus P5Q Pro Turbo a decent board? Hopefully I can get some feedback from someone who has some experience with it. Any other comments/critiques are welcome. In the end I spent a total of $455. RAM $114, SSD $212, Motherboard $129, CPU Free, Windows 7 Free.
Old Build:
Core2Duo E6400 @ 3.2 GHz
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
2 GB Kingston HyperX DDR2 800
Radeon HD 4850
Zalman CPNS9500 CPU Cooler
Assorted Seagate HDDs
Windows XP Pro
Updated Build:
Core2Quad Q9550
Asus P5Q Pro Turbo
4 GB Kingston HyperX DDR2 1066
Radeon HD 4850
OCZ Vertex 60 GB SSD
Zalman CPNS9500 CPU Cooler
Assorted Seagate HDDs
Windows 7 Pro 64bit
At the beginning of the year I decided it was time to upgrade my 4 year old PC. Acquiring a free copy of Windows 7 Professional 64bit through work was the catalyst. Due to budget constraints starting from scratch with an i7 build just was not possible. But if I was going to install Microsoft's new behemoth of an OS on my aging rig I would definitely need more RAM. After balking at the price of DDR2 for a while I picked out a nice 4 GB kit from Kingston. I then proceeded over to the SSD section of Newegg's site and selected an OCZ 60 GB Vertex drive for my shiny new OS. Both items arrived DOA. "Sigh". RMA with Newegg went as smooth as butter and after a week I had working replacements. I installed my new hardware and OS and was amazed. I never thought my old computer could be so fast. SSDs truely are the best upgrade for your money right now. I was satisfied with my upgrade choices, for a few weeks.
I had been thinking for a while, "I'm still running this old Dual Core cpu", and thought an upgrade to Quad was in order. Being on an older 975X chipset board I knew I would need to check the CPU compatibility list before pulling the trigger on a new CPU. I had my eye on a deal on the Q9550 from Microcenter for $179. I checked the ASUS website and sure enough with a quick BIOS update that 45nm goodness could be mine. The only problem was the nearest Microcenter was 3.5 hours away. I called my mother who lives in St. Louis and asked her if she would not mind picking it up for me and shipping it to me. Of course she said ok, problem solved.
So today was the day my new CPU arrived. I sent my mother a real nice mother's day card as a thank you. I add 'really nice' because she ended buying the CPU for me as a gift. I had to work today though, but since I work at a local computer store I just took my computer in with me to work on during the day. I dusted it out with the air compressor at work, removed my heatsink/fan assembly, cleaned off the 4 year old arctic silver 5, placed my new cpu in the socket, and turned it on. The computer posted with no problems. I forgot to clear the CMOS so I turned it off, cleared and went again. Booted normally again with the "New CPU Installed!" message. I changed a few of my basic BIOS settings, set HDDs to AHCI, etc. Left everything else at auto and it booted into Windows 7 no problem. Checked system properties and it showed "Intel Q9550 2.83 GHz 2.66 GHz". "Hmm", I thought, "Windows just has not installed the new CPU properly yet." Checked device manager and sure enough the four cores were showing up as unknown devices. I told Windows to check for an update and all was well in device manager, but system properties still said 2.66 Ghz. So I restarted and checked the BIOS. Defaults were set to 333 FSB with an 8x multiplier. I could not adjust the multiplier higher than 8. So I did the math and set the FSB at 354 but that left my RAM at 667 MHz. I could change the multiplier but that would clock the RAM faster than the boards 800 MHz rated speed and I have never had good luck overclocking RAM on this board. I tried overclocking the CPU, no post. Tried overclocking the RAM, no post. So I did the logical thing and researched it on the web, which I should have done in the first place, but I figured if it says it is compatible then it should work. What I found out was, yes, it will work on 975x, but not properly, and you would be lucky to clock it at its stock speed without issue.
Well, since I had already opened the CPU, and it would be a PITA to ship it back to my mom and have her return it with a 15% restocking fee the only option left was a new board. At this point I had run a bit short of patience and hastily ordered the best 775 mobo I could find on Newegg which happens to be the Asus P5Q Pro Turbo. In my haste I did not do much research on the board and Newegg reviews are not always very accurate.
So my real question is, is the Asus P5Q Pro Turbo a decent board? Hopefully I can get some feedback from someone who has some experience with it. Any other comments/critiques are welcome. In the end I spent a total of $455. RAM $114, SSD $212, Motherboard $129, CPU Free, Windows 7 Free.
Old Build:
Core2Duo E6400 @ 3.2 GHz
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
2 GB Kingston HyperX DDR2 800
Radeon HD 4850
Zalman CPNS9500 CPU Cooler
Assorted Seagate HDDs
Windows XP Pro
Updated Build:
Core2Quad Q9550
Asus P5Q Pro Turbo
4 GB Kingston HyperX DDR2 1066
Radeon HD 4850
OCZ Vertex 60 GB SSD
Zalman CPNS9500 CPU Cooler
Assorted Seagate HDDs
Windows 7 Pro 64bit
Last edited:
Facebook
Twitter