lolwut
Does the socket type on the motherboard match the processor’s? If not you’re fucked and have to return it/cancel and reorder.
I couldn’t have recommended better paste myself 
:hmph: See below.
Or did you forget that you posted that? 
Reading reviews on the mobo, they bring up a good point. The CPU socket is awfully close to the RAM slots. I guess I could always return and replace the CPU cooler if it’s too big
Yes, and by compatibility issues, I mean if the socket types aren’t the same then your processor isn’t going to plug into your motherboard and will be completely useless to you.
Got my parts yesterday, and took this afternoon to assemble it. It boots up fine, but unsurprisingly Windows freaks out when trying to boot from my old HDD. Going to see if I can get this “special” copy installed tonight, if not I’ll bring my computer in to work tomorrow and install a copy of Enterprise with their license.
I’ll eventually buy my own license, just not right now.
Yeah, Windows saves data about the computer you installed it on, so it’ll cause problems if you try to put the hard drive in another computer and boot from it. If you have an OEM license, it’s supposed to be bound to the motherboard forever, but some people have had success getting the license freed by calling MS and telling them their old board died. Regular or upgrade licenses can be installed on any computer, but it may freak out if you activate it too many times. And of course, “special” licenses don’t follow any of those rules, lol.
Also, I finished my own build about a week ago, so far everything’s gone nice and smooth. Decided to keep onboard audio. Sounds pretty good to me, especially with new headphones. The only thing I’m still thinking about getting is an Ivy Bridge CPU when they come out (or a 2500k, if the price difference after it drops is significant), and maybe a new GPU. My Radeon 4890 is still trucking along for most games, but the Mass Effect 3 demo made it wheeze a little I think. Plus it is a bit loud and hot - a newer, better cooled card would be nice.
I played the ME3 demo before doing any hardware changes. It looked great and ran well, I was surprised
Then again, UE3 is starting to show it’s age, so that could be it.
I have one last question about this build. I have my old HDD slaved up as the D drive, I’ll reformat it if that’s best, but I have a somewhat slow connection (peak is 300-400 KB/s) and don’t want to have to download all the Steam games I had installed again. I know I can get Steam working properly by deleting everything from the folder but steam.exe and the steamapps folder, but is that recommended? Will Steam automatically do everything it needs to for each game? And can I remove my Windows install from that HDD? Should I just delete it, or is there more to it than that?
Again, I’m willing to reformat, I’ve got almost everything important backed up.
Edit: I just reformatted. The Windows folder was just over 20 gigs, and I didn’t want to waste that space. I couldn’t find a way to remove it that worked. Soon I can actually test some games on this thing
Bear in mind that you would ideally want to use 1.5v RAM with a Sandybridge cpu. 1.65v is at the top end of sandybridge’s limits. It should be ok but definitely don’t increase the voltage to your ram.
You could have just moved the steamapps folder, that’s mostly what you really need. A few games might need to download a little bit, but most of the download would be spared. Also you would need to make sure to move any saves from where they’re located (for example, Bioware stores their save game data in My Documents).
Oh, and yeah, I couldn’t stop with my build as it was. It was probably against my better judgment, but I nabbed an ASUS monitor that’s on sale right now on newegg - $150 plus a $20 rebate for a 23" 1080p 2ms monitor that won 3 customer choice awards. What can I say, it felt like a steal, even if it’s not a whole lot better than my 22" 1680x1050. But then, TOR and the ME3 demo didn’t run as well as I wanted, and since I was now upgrading my screen resolution, I decided I’d better get a new GPU, so I got a 560 ti too. I would’ve gone with something a little more powerful, but I was trying to hold back a little on money, and also keep the noise and temps down. Hopefully this’ll be the last major money I spend on this rig for a while, I’m supposed to be saving money so I can move out of the proverbial parent’s basement
I would have moved the steamapps folder, but don’t have anything else in the house big enough to hold it I guess I could have picked the larger games, moved them, and downloaded the smaller games again. Oh well, no big deal.
On a side note, I’ve discovered Steam’s concurrent download limit. It can only download 9 games at once, with any others sitting there with their GCF/NCF ready, but no download going.
Edit: putting my new Windows Experience Index here. I’ve done it a few times over the last 24 hours, and the HDD keeps getting a higher and higher score, so I’ll have to do it with no downloads going at some point, see if that makes a difference. Also, I’ll do it again after OCing my CPU.
And Lukagerm, I hadn’t planned on messing with the RAM settings at all, thanks for pointing that out though, so I don’t mess it up.
Bumping this real quick.
My processor temps seem a bit high (mid 40s while idling, would my video card running hot effect my processor’s ability to cool? Running Prime95, the cores all get up to about 80, which I know is higher than I want to go, and almost immediately drop back down to 50 when I stop the tests, so I don’t think it’s a problem with the heatsink) and I think it may be my case. It only has two fans built in, with no room for more. Can anyone recommend me a nice case with good airflow? I don’t have much of a budget right now, but recommend anything with a reasonable price, I can save up for it if needed.
Thanks.
Edit: backed my clock speed down a bit and ran Prime95 again, each core gets to about 75, which is still too high IMO. Clock speed set to 4.0 GHz now instead of the 4.5 I had it at. I want to try and get my temps under control before running a long stress test.
My processor runs around 40 C while idle, though I don’t think it gets as high as yours does under stress. Yours is overclocked much more than mine is though. But it seems it’s a recent thing.
Mine is pretty heavily overclocked, with air cooling it idles at about 35-40 and under load never seen it go over 62.
Check yours out, probably to do with the paste? was it pre applied stuff?
I applied Arctic Silver when I put the cooler on the processor. I know having too much can be a problem, how would I know how much is good, and how would I remove the extra?
The point of thermal paste is to fill in the very tiny gaps between the metal of the heatsink and the metal of the CPU heat spreader. Therefore you only want a thin layer. There’s a guide on applying it over on Tom’s Hardware, but the basic idea is to just have enough to cover up the words printed on the CPU. Either spread it on evenly with something flat like a credit card, or just drop a little dab somewhere about the size of a BB or a lentil, and then then smash it down by installing the heatsink. If you do it right there won’t be any extra, that is, none should squeeze out. If you happen to get some anywhere but the CPU, just use a cloth or a paper towel with some isopropyl alcohol to wipe it off. And of course, do not “re-use” the thermal paste - if you take the heatsink off, take all the paste off too with cloth/paper towel and alcohol.
EDIT: This is the article I mentioned. Has more detailed instructions and pictures, and also has a lot more information about cooling your PC in general. See Part 1 also.
It’s likely that there is too much, then.
The person who helped me with the thermal paste (who I assumed knew what they were doing, since they’ve built a bunch of computers in the past) put a ton on there. I’ll have to clean it off and get another tube of Arctic Silver, since I gave what I had left over to a friend. I’ll use what you shared, Orpheon, when I go to do it.
What I did, and what the instructions told me to do, was put just a bit onto the CPU and spread it into a thin layer that covers the top of it. Then put another very small dab of thermal past right in the middle and then put the cooler on top of it. Works really well for me, ~40 C idle and 65 C while playing something like GTAIV.
I just got finished re-mounting the cooler, and it is about 5 degrees cooler now. Core 0 is about 66, and cores 1, 2, and 3 are about 70. I have a bit less than what’s in the second set of pictures here, and it doesn’t look nearly that pretty
The first thing I noticed was the cooler was firmly in place when I tightened the bracket this time. Before, it would still rotate when the screws were almost all the way in.
I would still like to get a new case eventually, but now I feel like I’m not going to break my processor by overclocking it.
Thanks for the help guys.
My i5 idles at 31
EDIT: Peaks at 60