Asrock Z68 Extreme 7

Hamster · 7 Sep 2011 at 16:21

fowler002 said:
hmm a 1.2kw psu for a h100, soundcard, optical drive/s, hard disk/s and a lousy 5450?

Nicely put. I am upgrading my graphics card very soon; I've been buying parts over the last 3 months and that's next on the list. Also proper watercooling is on the agenda at a later stage. And Mr.V you guessed right as I did get the PSU at a very good price

Crezzlin · 7 Sep 2011 at 16:27

PakJai said:
You should set drives in bios to run on AHCI mode not IDE, then you install windows. This way you have both drives setup as RAID and windows installed on both your drives under RAID 0 and be able to recognize and boot up properly.

Thanks will try setting it to AHCI 1st then setup raid, I didn’t have this problem with the extreme 4 and the bios looks identical, :S Thanks!

Crezzlin · 7 Sep 2011 at 18:26

fowler002 said:
just realised I'll have to upgrade my sound card, it's a pci(creative xfi extreme gamer) and there is only 1 pci slot which'll get blocked by the 2nd 6950.

I have logitech z5500 speakers so not wasting them on onboard sound

what to get? will be mainly for gaming with watching iplayer etc, DVD/blueray will be done on the ps3.

This is the card i have with my Z5500

Love it!!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-001-AS&groupid=701&catid=11&subcat=

Mr.V · 7 Sep 2011 at 18:55

That card looks the Biz!! Added that to the wishlist, oh and respect to all the logitech Z5500 owners out there

Mr.V · 7 Sep 2011 at 21:50

managed to get the motherboard fitted to the case, cpu in, ram in. all thats left is the dvd writer, hard drive, psu. a few shots

fowler002 · 7 Sep 2011 at 22:11

Crezzlin said:
This is the card i have with my Z5500 Love it!!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-001-AS&groupid=701&catid=11&subcat=

what's it like compared to the creative titanium? which is better for gaming?

I've got everything I need except for the ram(the i2500k arrived this morning), trying to decide between the red ripjawx 16gb(2x 8gb kits @ ~£72 unless the price jumps back to ~£75) but unsure of the clearence for arctic freezer 7 pro rev2 and future cooler upgrade(not decoded if watercooling), 8gb corsair vengence lb black or 8gb kingston hyperx genesis grey.

Crezzlin · 8 Sep 2011 at 00:01

fowler002 said:
what's it like compared to the creative titanium? which is better for gaming?

I've got everything I need except for the ram(the i2500k arrived this morning), trying to decide between the red ripjawx 16gb(2x 8gb kits @ ~£72 unless the price jumps back to ~£75) but unsure of the clearence for arctic freezer 7 pro rev2 and future cooler upgrade(not decoded if watercooling), 8gb corsair vengence lb black or 8gb kingston hyperx genesis grey.

Hi im not sure but when i was looking for a sound card i was told asus was the best and creative have software problems.. i had a creative card with a asus rampage formula back in the day but had problems with that aswell.. never had a prob with this card, also have the pci version in my brothers pc and he loves it to.. Have my ps3 going into it then out again for effects etc

Crezzlin · 8 Sep 2011 at 00:02

Mr V your PC will be quiet

wish i went down that root..

Mr.V · 8 Sep 2011 at 00:35

Crezzlin said:
Mr V your PC will be quiet wish i went down that root..

eventually, still long way away from the watercooling kit. going to be noisy to begin with with 4 x 12mm fans.

next step is modding the case and paint job, once i know all the bits are working. got lots of stuff to sell first too to fund the rest of the project.

I'd take your rig anyday

Crezzlin · 8 Sep 2011 at 18:23

Anyone had any problems yet?

Mr.V · 8 Sep 2011 at 18:40

Crezzlin said:
Anyone had any problems yet?

Lol funny u shud say that! Just fired mines up ready with win7 pro, went in to bios and noticed the CPU Temp at 55 and rising!! :eek:

is that normal?? All voltages have been left on auto! Actually everything is on auto other than hard drives being changed to AHCI. I've checked heatsink and I can't push the pins in any further.

Any advice? I'm without a pc as I've taken the velociraptor out of main pc so will keep checkin on blackberry for a response

Crezzlin · 8 Sep 2011 at 18:45

Yes its norm, as the new i7 runs a the minimum voltage and clock speed in windows until you give it something to do like a game or prime95 then the clock speed goes up and the volts to what the max voltage its set to, my bios temp is 50 with the H50 on so that’s normal once in windows it will be more like 30

at idle

So when your in the bios it will be giving the cpu its max voltage, sorry I’m crap at explaining things lol

Crezzlin · 8 Sep 2011 at 18:51

Just download Realtemp and see your temps in windows.. she be fine

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/Real_Temp/

Mr.V · 8 Sep 2011 at 18:56

Crezzlin said:
Yes its norm, as the new i7 runs a the minimum voltage and clock speed in windows until you give it something to do like a game or prime95 then the clock speed goes up and the volts to what the max voltage its set to, my bios temp is 50 with the H50 on so that’s normal once in windows it will be more like 30 at idle

So when your in the bios it will be giving the cpu its max voltage, sorry I’m crap at explaining things lol

I understood so you explained it well lol, thanks mate ill continue installing windows 7 without panicking. Thanks for the quick reply

Mr.V · 8 Sep 2011 at 18:57

Crezzlin said:
Just download Realtemp and see your temps in windows.. she be fine

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/Real_Temp/

Thanks mate, will do

Windows 7 took 20mins to install not bad, pioneer sata dvd writer sounds like its about to take off!! Lol

Installing driver from asrock dvd, almost there

Crezzlin · 8 Sep 2011 at 20:30

Mr.V said:
Thanks mate, will do

Windows 7 took 20mins to install not bad, pioneer sata dvd writer sounds like its about to take off!! Lol

Installing driver from asrock dvd, almost there

Nice, the free software package for video/music/pic's etc is good just had a play with it

chigley · 8 Sep 2011 at 20:33

Mr.V said:
managed to get the motherboard fitted to the case, cpu in, ram in. all thats left is the dvd writer, hard drive, psu. a few shots

A beautiful motherboard like that with a stock cooler, really?

Hamster · 8 Sep 2011 at 21:26

I didn't particularly much care for the instant boot software. It made my PC do strange things like restarting when I wanted to shut down.

Crezzlin · 8 Sep 2011 at 21:30

Hamster said:
I didn't particularly much care for the instant boot software. It made my PC do strange things like restarting when I wanted to shut down.

Yeah i had problems with that 1st round, would give me a blck screen on reboot sometimes.. lol No need for it really

Mr.V · 8 Sep 2011 at 21:45

Crezzlin said:
Nice, the free software package for video/music/pic's etc is good just had a play with it

cool

whats the software called?

chigley said:
A beautiful motherboard like that with a stock cooler, really?

lol i know it doesnt do the board any justice but it eventually have a nice shiny waterblock on it

finished pic, ignore the messy cables system will be transferred to my silverstone TJ07 until the stacker is modded

ram reporting as 1333? do i need to manually set the ram timings? at the moment its running on XMP i think?

have i missed any drivers?, having ATA Channel there is scaring me lol. can anyone else confirm they have the same thing showing in Device Manager?

System feels helluva lot faster than my last Q9550 quadcore, all thats missing is the SSDs

thats all for today, Mrs wants to watch Fast Five she ordered on blu ray. If anyone has any questions or wants to cross reference anything id be happy to help.