I7-965:
Yeah I know its silly expensive but the exchange rate is most of the diference over the previously Extreme Editions. My take on this is that the CPU will last me at least 2 years so same cost as buying 2 lesser CPU's in that time (plus I wanted a new toy to play with
).
This thing is seriously fast as you can imagine. Did not bother taking any benchmarks on my old system before dismantling it as there are plenty of those around anyway. It was nothing special only a QX6850 on an Asus P35 mobo at stock speeds so only a mid range model nowadays.
Vista feels so fast its uncanny. Takes some getting used to as sometimes you feel like your playing catch up. Still took around an hour to put Vista 32bit + SP1 on it though. Bottlenecked by this as only using a Samsung 320J just not prepared to fork out for decent SSD's (Mtron are around £700-800) until they become a lot cheaper.
Intel did a fantastic job with the XE cooler. Not only did they bling it up with a Blue LED but its almost silent on Quiet mode (it has a dip switch on top which can go between either Quiet 1300RPM or Performance 1700RPM. May ramp up faster as well if need be on either mode its pretty quite so far (much quieter than the Zalman 9500 on my QX6850).
Not going to seriously overclock it until I get something stronger to replace the stock HSF. Zalman have a 9900 which costs $100 but not due until late Dec early Jan. Thermalright have a solution available soon which is around
£60. Noctua ship their 1366 model in week 47 so will wait and see whats best. Nexus have a £35 model now but even though its 1366 ready think it underspecced for my CPU as it was originally designed for low profile HTPC's.
So far I feel as though the stock HSF is good enough its so quiet and temps are low.
The CPU is currently using the Turbo mode so auto overclocks to 3.33ghz and the temps are amazing. Idle is around 40-42C on all 4 cores and under load never more than 50C.
Gigabyte EX58-UD5:
This motherboard is seriously cool & sexy. Man those multicoloured LEDs look great but more importantly its a fully featured SLI & Crossfire mobo (can also do either Tri-SLI or Tri-Crossfire). Comes with 10 SATA ports plus all the usual suspects you would expect including the now rare PS2 !! (on an X58 some have dropped this altogether). Has both a power on button, reset switch & Cmos clear switch built into the mobo as well. Then it has an external CMOS clear switch on the back as well (amongst the USB & other ports) which is very handy as saves opening the case to reset it when your OC fails!!
Unbelievable that its only £225 vs the £300 ish some of the others are charging (Asus I'm looking at you!!). The £75 difference is not worth it as performance is very similar and only the I7-965 can use it properly anyway as the others are more restricted in ocing. Gigabyte also do an Extreme version of this mobo with a couple of funky looking heat sinks but not convinced its worth the extra £35 for them as they block some of the PCI-E slots. Those cool looking LED's also serve vital functions as they can tell you diagnostics on:
Overvoltage
Overclock
Temp Indicator
They light up from slight green to yellow then red. There are approx 21 in all dotted all over the mobo. The manual give you the key info on what the colours mean.
Not going to benchmark for a few days but will update when I do and leave you some pictures to look at which speak for themselves
Overall this was very easy to do. No issues other than because I was using DDR3-1600 Ram the mobo auto overclocked it and had to clear CMOS then use stock settings for now as there are so many new options to play with its going to take a bit of time to find the sweet spot on this puppy
Yeah I know its silly expensive but the exchange rate is most of the diference over the previously Extreme Editions. My take on this is that the CPU will last me at least 2 years so same cost as buying 2 lesser CPU's in that time (plus I wanted a new toy to play with
).This thing is seriously fast as you can imagine. Did not bother taking any benchmarks on my old system before dismantling it as there are plenty of those around anyway. It was nothing special only a QX6850 on an Asus P35 mobo at stock speeds so only a mid range model nowadays.
Vista feels so fast its uncanny. Takes some getting used to as sometimes you feel like your playing catch up. Still took around an hour to put Vista 32bit + SP1 on it though. Bottlenecked by this as only using a Samsung 320J just not prepared to fork out for decent SSD's (Mtron are around £700-800) until they become a lot cheaper.
Intel did a fantastic job with the XE cooler. Not only did they bling it up with a Blue LED but its almost silent on Quiet mode (it has a dip switch on top which can go between either Quiet 1300RPM or Performance 1700RPM. May ramp up faster as well if need be on either mode its pretty quite so far (much quieter than the Zalman 9500 on my QX6850).
Not going to seriously overclock it until I get something stronger to replace the stock HSF. Zalman have a 9900 which costs $100 but not due until late Dec early Jan. Thermalright have a solution available soon which is around
£60. Noctua ship their 1366 model in week 47 so will wait and see whats best. Nexus have a £35 model now but even though its 1366 ready think it underspecced for my CPU as it was originally designed for low profile HTPC's.
So far I feel as though the stock HSF is good enough its so quiet and temps are low.
The CPU is currently using the Turbo mode so auto overclocks to 3.33ghz and the temps are amazing. Idle is around 40-42C on all 4 cores and under load never more than 50C.
Gigabyte EX58-UD5:
This motherboard is seriously cool & sexy. Man those multicoloured LEDs look great but more importantly its a fully featured SLI & Crossfire mobo (can also do either Tri-SLI or Tri-Crossfire). Comes with 10 SATA ports plus all the usual suspects you would expect including the now rare PS2 !! (on an X58 some have dropped this altogether). Has both a power on button, reset switch & Cmos clear switch built into the mobo as well. Then it has an external CMOS clear switch on the back as well (amongst the USB & other ports) which is very handy as saves opening the case to reset it when your OC fails!!
Unbelievable that its only £225 vs the £300 ish some of the others are charging (Asus I'm looking at you!!). The £75 difference is not worth it as performance is very similar and only the I7-965 can use it properly anyway as the others are more restricted in ocing. Gigabyte also do an Extreme version of this mobo with a couple of funky looking heat sinks but not convinced its worth the extra £35 for them as they block some of the PCI-E slots. Those cool looking LED's also serve vital functions as they can tell you diagnostics on:
Overvoltage
Overclock
Temp Indicator
They light up from slight green to yellow then red. There are approx 21 in all dotted all over the mobo. The manual give you the key info on what the colours mean.
Not going to benchmark for a few days but will update when I do and leave you some pictures to look at which speak for themselves
Overall this was very easy to do. No issues other than because I was using DDR3-1600 Ram the mobo auto overclocked it and had to clear CMOS then use stock settings for now as there are so many new options to play with its going to take a bit of time to find the sweet spot on this puppy
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I guess you can throw in a few more Gb's of RAM and another couple of 4870X2.
