Hey all!
If you have followed my trials and tribulations over the past year and a half, you will know that my new build has been a long time in the making.
To set the stage, I was gearing up for a new build a year and a half ago when i was struck with a job loss. at the time, My main system was a dell SFF PC with a pentium D 820, 1 gb of ram, and an 80GB hard drive. as the year went on, I was able to drop in a C2D E6600, 4 gb of ram, 1.5tb wd green hdd and a low profile radeon 5670. the system did remarkably well over this timeframe, enabling me to play some newish games at 720P, and hook the pc to a flatscreen tv for some HTPC Duty. This machine became the "office" computer doing office type stuff, media streaming, and continues to serve us well for this!
Now my next attempt at a build happened about a year ago when I purchased a C2Q 8200, ecs mobo, and 2 gb of ram off a forum member. Through the generosity of yet another forum member, they basically gifted me a Geforce 9600GSO, and I was on the verge of getting a 720p gaming rig together for my bigscreen tv in my basement. I had the system all but built and had it connected to my home theater reciever, added in a blu ray drive i got off my brother in law for cheap and was ready to rock, then my parents ended up needing a system. so for all that they had done for me, I swapped out the vid card for my older radeon 3650, and repurpoused it for them.
My basement sat barren, and my home theater reciever went quiet as all i had now was my office computer with no opttical output (no hdmi on reciever either) and my netbook... With the holidays approaching we wanted to start watching christmas movies and basically using and entertaining in our basemnet again... My wife was going to have friends over and wanted to watch movies and was shocked to find out we did not own a DVD player... I thought "F that!" I will build something 10x better than any dvd player! and this started the build!
I turned to the forum because funds were tight, looking to purchase a combo, but with S775 showing its age and having dreams of a "modern" computer I decided to take a gamble that I hope will pay off! I was sick of buying dead platforms, just to enjoy "new" to me levels of performance for around 6-9 months only to be frustrated down the road.
Last year I purchased a Coolermaster Storm Scout case on sale for 55$ and stashed it in my utility room for my "Basement Build" hoping that by early spring I would have it complete. I awoke the case, still sitting untouched in the box and was amazed at the sheer build quality of it. This is the first time i have ever owned a "nice" case, it is solid not wobbily, and i did not slice myself open on it!
I also purchased a coolermaster hyper 212 plus, and an antec earthwatts 650 around a year ago as well, all on sale, waiting for such a build, however, I have those components sitting in my parents rig which i will be switching out for a stock intel HSF I have, along with a generic 500 watt PSU that has served me well for 6 years (just replaced 1 of the 2 fans in it)
I purchased 8 gigs of GSKILL Ripjaws DDR3 1600, which was on sale, and I was able to pricematch both an I3 2100, as well as a Gigabyte GA Z68x UD3H-B3
I cracked open an Ice cold Budwieser, installed this all in the Storm Scout, added in my old 500 watt PSU (that will be swapped out for my Antec 650 the first chance i get, added my spare 80 gig sata HDD not buying a hdd with these crazy prices, and I will be streaming all content from the "office PC") Put in my blu ray drive , connected all my basic connections, held my breath and pressed power...
NOTHING!
Oh no.... I checked all components to make sure they were seated, they were... I proceeded to open another beer, and then noticed on the motherboard an 8 pin connector close to the CPU. after consulting the manual, I realise that i needed to plug this in to get additional power to the CPU. herein lies the problem, I only have 1 4 pin connector that "barely" fits, as in it is stretched tight across all my expanson slots with 0 slack. so i will be using the HD3000 video until I get my earthwatts back and then I can slap in my 9600GSO.
on a side note, do i need an 8 pin connector to the cpu? will i damage anything by just using the 4 pin?
I plugged it in, hit power and the system roared to life with all it's glory!
Rewarding myself with another Bud, I installed windows 7 64 bit, applied all the updates, itstalled my dvd player software, and WPC HC and then connected my optical out to my reciever from my motherboard hoping to get my surround sound going...
NOTHING!!!
Argh! i took a step back, consumed a beer, realizing i probably need to install drivers for the SPDIF to work. 2 Budwiesers later I had the drivers downloaded from gigabytes website, installed and configured.
I threw in 300, crossed my fingers, and hit play... the next thing i knew, thundering around me i heard... SPARTANS... PREPARE FOR GLORY!!! all 5 lights lit on my HT reciever and I was back in action!
My first impressions of the system are well... Amazing. For the lowest end Core I series, this thing easily beats me e6600 and "feels" noticebaly faster than my old Q8200.
To think I almost chose AMD to save a few bucks... I used to roll AMD exclusiveley back in the day for the proce to performance ratio but this thing is just too sweet!
My goal of choosing the Motherboard I did leaves me with a Clear upgrade path to IB, as well is PCI 3.0 and USB 3.0 compatibility. I basically went with the lowest end Core CPU to force myself into the IB equivalent of the 2500k when released, however I am pleased with the general performance of the system so far! It felt awesome to put this thing together, bringing back fond memories of the 440BX days!
Next on the list will be A radeon 7xxxx series card, Ivy Bridge, SSD, and a case of beer.
thanks for listening guys! I appreciate your comments/suggestions to make this thing better!
If you have followed my trials and tribulations over the past year and a half, you will know that my new build has been a long time in the making.
To set the stage, I was gearing up for a new build a year and a half ago when i was struck with a job loss. at the time, My main system was a dell SFF PC with a pentium D 820, 1 gb of ram, and an 80GB hard drive. as the year went on, I was able to drop in a C2D E6600, 4 gb of ram, 1.5tb wd green hdd and a low profile radeon 5670. the system did remarkably well over this timeframe, enabling me to play some newish games at 720P, and hook the pc to a flatscreen tv for some HTPC Duty. This machine became the "office" computer doing office type stuff, media streaming, and continues to serve us well for this!
Now my next attempt at a build happened about a year ago when I purchased a C2Q 8200, ecs mobo, and 2 gb of ram off a forum member. Through the generosity of yet another forum member, they basically gifted me a Geforce 9600GSO, and I was on the verge of getting a 720p gaming rig together for my bigscreen tv in my basement. I had the system all but built and had it connected to my home theater reciever, added in a blu ray drive i got off my brother in law for cheap and was ready to rock, then my parents ended up needing a system. so for all that they had done for me, I swapped out the vid card for my older radeon 3650, and repurpoused it for them.
My basement sat barren, and my home theater reciever went quiet as all i had now was my office computer with no opttical output (no hdmi on reciever either) and my netbook... With the holidays approaching we wanted to start watching christmas movies and basically using and entertaining in our basemnet again... My wife was going to have friends over and wanted to watch movies and was shocked to find out we did not own a DVD player... I thought "F that!" I will build something 10x better than any dvd player! and this started the build!
I turned to the forum because funds were tight, looking to purchase a combo, but with S775 showing its age and having dreams of a "modern" computer I decided to take a gamble that I hope will pay off! I was sick of buying dead platforms, just to enjoy "new" to me levels of performance for around 6-9 months only to be frustrated down the road.
Last year I purchased a Coolermaster Storm Scout case on sale for 55$ and stashed it in my utility room for my "Basement Build" hoping that by early spring I would have it complete. I awoke the case, still sitting untouched in the box and was amazed at the sheer build quality of it. This is the first time i have ever owned a "nice" case, it is solid not wobbily, and i did not slice myself open on it!
I also purchased a coolermaster hyper 212 plus, and an antec earthwatts 650 around a year ago as well, all on sale, waiting for such a build, however, I have those components sitting in my parents rig which i will be switching out for a stock intel HSF I have, along with a generic 500 watt PSU that has served me well for 6 years (just replaced 1 of the 2 fans in it)
I purchased 8 gigs of GSKILL Ripjaws DDR3 1600, which was on sale, and I was able to pricematch both an I3 2100, as well as a Gigabyte GA Z68x UD3H-B3
I cracked open an Ice cold Budwieser, installed this all in the Storm Scout, added in my old 500 watt PSU (that will be swapped out for my Antec 650 the first chance i get, added my spare 80 gig sata HDD not buying a hdd with these crazy prices, and I will be streaming all content from the "office PC") Put in my blu ray drive , connected all my basic connections, held my breath and pressed power...
NOTHING!
Oh no.... I checked all components to make sure they were seated, they were... I proceeded to open another beer, and then noticed on the motherboard an 8 pin connector close to the CPU. after consulting the manual, I realise that i needed to plug this in to get additional power to the CPU. herein lies the problem, I only have 1 4 pin connector that "barely" fits, as in it is stretched tight across all my expanson slots with 0 slack. so i will be using the HD3000 video until I get my earthwatts back and then I can slap in my 9600GSO.
on a side note, do i need an 8 pin connector to the cpu? will i damage anything by just using the 4 pin?
I plugged it in, hit power and the system roared to life with all it's glory!
Rewarding myself with another Bud, I installed windows 7 64 bit, applied all the updates, itstalled my dvd player software, and WPC HC and then connected my optical out to my reciever from my motherboard hoping to get my surround sound going...
NOTHING!!!
Argh! i took a step back, consumed a beer, realizing i probably need to install drivers for the SPDIF to work. 2 Budwiesers later I had the drivers downloaded from gigabytes website, installed and configured.
I threw in 300, crossed my fingers, and hit play... the next thing i knew, thundering around me i heard... SPARTANS... PREPARE FOR GLORY!!! all 5 lights lit on my HT reciever and I was back in action!
My first impressions of the system are well... Amazing. For the lowest end Core I series, this thing easily beats me e6600 and "feels" noticebaly faster than my old Q8200.
To think I almost chose AMD to save a few bucks... I used to roll AMD exclusiveley back in the day for the proce to performance ratio but this thing is just too sweet!
My goal of choosing the Motherboard I did leaves me with a Clear upgrade path to IB, as well is PCI 3.0 and USB 3.0 compatibility. I basically went with the lowest end Core CPU to force myself into the IB equivalent of the 2500k when released, however I am pleased with the general performance of the system so far! It felt awesome to put this thing together, bringing back fond memories of the 440BX days!
Next on the list will be A radeon 7xxxx series card, Ivy Bridge, SSD, and a case of beer.
thanks for listening guys! I appreciate your comments/suggestions to make this thing better!
