General Advice on New Set Up

Phooey

Phooey

Phooey

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Joined
11 Feb 2007
Posts
11
Well, first of all thanks to those folks who gave advice on my new set up, the beast has been born, and despite a couple of hiccups ( thought I had a £2000 brick this morning >.< ) it all seems fine for t'interweb.

First, a resume of the spec build

Antec P180 EU Aluminium Super Miditower - No PSU
Hiper 580W Type-R Modular PSU SLI/CrossFire Certified - Blue

BFG 680i SLI nForce Intel socket 775 DDR2 ATX
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Quad Core 2.67GHz Socket LGA775, 8MB
2 of Corsair 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400 (TWIN2X2048-6400C4D) DOMINATOR ( yup thats 4Gb total!! )
BFG GeForce 8800GTX 768MB GDDR3 HDTV DVIx2 PCI-E
2 of Western Digital WD5000KS 500GB SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Cache ( Gif terabyteage! )
Sony AW-G170AB2 18xDVD +/- ;RW/RAM Dual Layer Writer Black - Bare Drive

All running on

Windows Vista Home Premium


Points of note for anyone who thinks about building a similar machine:
As far as I can see, they PSU and Case are not entirely compatible, Ive had to remove the additional 120mm case fan which is supposed to pull through the HD bay and through the PSU. Also, while the PSU is good, it doesnt have an 8pin ATX, only a 4pin, which is a bit of a crippler. Also, without a degree in ELectronic Design Engineering, I cant for the life of me see how I could get another BFG GeForce 8800GTX in there and get power to it!

So anyhoo, the issues Ive had so far, and some tips for anyone who *may* come up against similar issues to me.

Drivers
Well.. Vista is barely a month old, so all the drivers that came with the components you can more or less sling right in the bin. nVidia do have 680SLi nForce drivers available ( Beta ) as well as a beta driver for the GeForce 8800GTX. If your board ( like mine ) has the new realtek HiDef sound chip the driver for this can be grabbed from http://www.realtek.com.tw/ for the full 5.1/7.1 effect.
Well, thats the stuff I have got sussed covered.... here's the stuff thats causing me to loose sleep.

Memory
Fitted 4Gb of Corsair DOMINATOR. BIOS & POST See 4Gb of RAM. SiSoft Sandra reports 4Gb of RAM. Windows Vista Home Premium reports 2.75Gb of RAM, WTF?!? and has the cheek to declare that this is what is holding back my system. I dont know if this is simply a reporting issue, or if Vista isnt using all the available RAM. Anyone got any thoughts on how this could be checked? ( I have run all the modules seperately in all the memory banks on the Mobo, they are all pukka )

Gaming
You know that horrible "beep" you used to get when something was on the verge of dying a horrible, smelly silicon death? Well everytime I play a 3D game.. thats what I hear. System temps look to be ok to me... CPU up to about 50°C, System 36°C and GPU between 80° and 90°C. Again, anyone got any thoughts, either what is causing it, or what I could use to diagnose it?
EDIT Oh yeah, and then occasionally, and for seemingly no reason, my character in what ever game Im playing will continue running in the direction I last pressed ( eg left ) despite me not touching the keyboard...

CHeers Folks

Phoo
 
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Regarding the memory issue - do you have the 32 or 64bit version of Windows? Im thinking you need the 64bit version to use all 4Gb
 
From the website of The Great Beast of Redmond:

"All editions of Windows Vista 64-bit provide increased memory support beyond the standard 4 gigabytes (GB) available with 32-bit editions. Refer to the specific edition of Windows Vista 64-bit to determine maximum memory capacity."

So... it should run with 4Gb......

That said..
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929580/en-us

does talk about issues with systems that have 4Gb installed, and recommends that /PAE is put in the boot.ini file, which is found in the root of the boot drive. Course, this is Vista, so as far as I can see there is no boot.ini
 
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I could be missing something but I still can't see whether you have 64bit or 32bit Windows and I don't think if it is a 32bit version you will get it to see a full 4gb as it is a limit of memory addressing inherent to 32bit OSes. While Microsoft have worded it a little confusingly they are also saying that. I think the PAE will also refer to server hardware only which 'fools' the OS into seeing all the Ram. :)
 
Running all that on a Hiper 580 would terrify me! but if the rails are stable under load...
 
Phooey said:
well it seems to be running stable enuff... what PSU would you ahve gone with?
Click to expand...

Let me get this right. You're using a Hiper 580W to power 2 8800GTX and those above?

Treat yourself better and buy a 850W PSU.
 
Interesting, a bit of searching about has revealed a number of people getting the "beep" and sticky keys issue. It does seem to be when the system is doing a lot of work ( eg when gaming or when encoding avi's is when Ive seen it ) and seems to be related to PS/2 Keyboards. The place I was reading had it "narrowed down" to only EVGA 680 SLi Boards ( it was the EVGA forum ) and microsoft keyboards.

I would propose it is a potential issue with all the 680i boards... I'll be out to get a USB Keyboard tommorrow I think :-)

Keep the thoughts coming people!

Edit 10 mins later
Seems it is a "known" issue in the community with the 680i board
Boo, but thankfully Mrs Phooey has allowed me to spend more of my money on a new USB keyboard and mouse :)
 
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I believe the majority of 680i boards have had PS/2 issues, but I think a BIOS update resolved that.

I'd still be terrified of the Hiper PSU so don't say we didn't warn you :p
 
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