New Desktop PC

[albert]

Finally ordered!

Went for the Corsair H80. For less than £20 more, better system, extra fan.

Went for the 2000MHz RAM as the board supports it and it will o/c.

OCZ 120GB Agility 3

Corsair 600T Ltd Edition girlie White case. Call me a pansy if you like!

2600K i7, Asus P8P67 Deluxe

No GFX card for now. That's Christmas :-)

£850 total approx. Wife still loves me.

Scan arrives tomorrow. Ordered the mobo off Amazon as £20 cheaper and H80 was in stock, 3 weeks wait on Scan.

Joy,

Sent from my MZ601 using Tapatalk

[albert]

Ok so I thought again and cancelled the motherboard.

Not that is doesn't look the business but is P67 not a bit old now? (Ok 6 months old) Z68 is coming out as a viable more up to date option.

What's your views on the newer chipset?

[albert]

Went with a Asus P8Z68-V Pro from my local shoppe, Novatech.

This review decided it for me: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/42933-asus-p8z68-v-pro-z68-sandy-bridge-motherboard-review-20.html

[Penfold]

That's the mobo PC Specialist just recommended for me

[albert]

It smells nice, if that sort of thing matters to you :norty:

I thought about the deluxe version but £50 more for a front facing dual USB 3 bay and an extra heat sync didn't do it for me.

In fact I see the next 24 hours being a drool and smell fest. Then I shall endevour to build the thing.

The H80 cooler is quite splendid. I'm baffled about what all this technolgy does on these new motherboards. In my day it was a North and and South and a graphics card was extra!

[smilodon]

Call me a pansy if you like!

Ok, you pansy.

Someone is going to have a fun weekend.

[albert]

Job done, the Corsair H80 was simple as you get in installing. I went for a Push - Pull Fan config like Corsair recommend, and found that for sure Fan Filter is required otherwise you end up with a radiator full of dust. I'm looking at getting one of the magnetic ones and just dropping it over the grating.

The ASUS P8Z68-V Pro is really something else. It has Features galore but the main ones, the Intel Smart Response Technology where you can install a "cheap SSD" (do they exist?) and use it as a cache between your normal HDD's and the system, is pretty much redundant if you buy an SSD to install the OS on.

The On board Integrated GPU. I used this initially whilst I installed the OS and it actually holds its own with a dedicated GPU. It uses the CPU/ RAM to process graphics and can run really well. I never tried the Boost feature but out of the box with the latest drivers, using the Windows System rating thing I got 6.7 for graphics. My dadicated card only gets 7.1. I may try the LucidLogic Virtu thing where the motherboard switches between the On Board and Dedicated GPUs based on requirement.

After a run in of 24 hours and doing an Auto overclock from inside Windows the CPU is running at 4523MHz  on a 103x44 setting. The idle temp of the CPU is 22°.

(I did make the schoolboy error of clocking the RAM to it's stock level manually without noting the effect on the CPU and not upping the voltages, that worked well for 2 seconds on Black Ops :blink:).

Happy days.