New Z68 system with Asrock

[N19h7m4r3]

I just recently ordered my m-itx system for both college, work and some gaming.

CPU: i7 2600k
Mobo: Asrock Z68M-ITX/HT
RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance Arctic White 1600Mhz 1.35V
HDD: 500GB Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid SSD
HDD2: Samsung F4 2TB Green
Chassis: Silverstone SG07B
GPU: GTX 470, one from my old system I have lying around.


I'm very happy I managed to find the Asrock z68 mobo instock in the UK, I was planning on getting the Zotac but I keep hearing about dead Ram slots and other problems.
Plus the Asrock is cheaper by a bit.

I just hope it all arrives the same day, although given I don't know the place I ordered the mobo from, I hope I get it at all haha.

Time to put my aging Phenom system to greener pastures, my mom can have it.

I'll post pics and a little review of the Asrock the second I get them all.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

From what I've heard Gigabyte said they aren't planning on having an m-itx z68 this year.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

Finally got some parts in the mail, sadly still waiting on the motherboard. Can't track it since the Royal Mail site seems to be down as well.

Once I get the mobo, I'll take some more photos of it all going together.

I can't wait to test the Asrock Z68 mobo. I also still need to try and find a Scythe Samurai ZZ cooler.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

Urmm Royal Mail site is up...

I get that ever time I go to Royal Mail site.

It's ok I called them up to trace it and my package is "Overseas" now.

How annoying when all the gear comes apart from one bit. Next thing will be a 'sorry, out of stock' email . Although I can only find this mobo on one site and they say they have it in stock so... .

Looking forward to hearing how all these bits work together. Surely Zotac are going to have to drop their prices on their small Z68 boards, as this one seems better and comes with a remote!

Well I only found it on one site as well, a small little place that seems new.
I payed £96.50 for the Asrock board so Zotac better lower the price, specially given all the problems people over at Hard Forums seem to have with it.

I should with some luck get my mobo tomorrow at same stage. I'm hoping in the morning since I'm working from home all day then.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

I'm fairly disappointed that OCUK ddin't stock it as well.

I'll have to see how this new little place is for parts though, they seem to get some odd little things in.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

I'll be installing Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.

I can't wait to get this system up and running.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

How the hell are you going to squeeze that Armageddon cooler into the SG05? You'll need some serious modding, since the PSU is directly above the motherboard.

On the note of the GPU, I'm sticking with my powerhog/space heater that is the GTX 470 until the new NV series comes out at least. I'll either grab an AMD 7xxx or NV 6xx.

I want a top end GPU so I don't have to worry about lowering graphical setting at 2560x1440 res. Haha

Also I'm still waiting on that blasted motherboard. An Post, the irish mail have their hands on it now, they're quite slow. A friend of mine waited over a week for them to delivery some parts out of the Hub in Dublin after it only took the parts 2 days to get to Ireland from Germany.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

I like the ram only cost me about £55-60 as well.


Oh yes the GPU is great, although I have had to lower some settings.
OH NOES! I lowered AA from x8-x4 or x2 in some games, the horror. Hahah

Since I upgraded my monitor from 1920x1200 to 2560x1440 it's a bit slower though, that's why I can confidently say I can wait for the new High end GPU's. It's a great card and I'm glad I got it for around £170 last October.



EDIT: I finally managed to find my motherboard, after calling 3 An Post pos offices and depots. It was found in the Dublin sorting office, it was there since yesterday morning but they missplaced it and so couldn't process it.
Earlier time of delivery is the next 24 hours, or failing that Next Monday.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

The hub sorts it all and sends it all to the relevent delivery depots.

Poor lad was getting anxious since it took so long. I'm glad I kept calling them to find mine, otherwise I might have had a similar situation.


Also you can still get s775 products? I haven't had one since my old x38 system.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

That's fairly cheap alright, and given how well the 8800GT still copes it's a good system.

I'm replacing my old Phenom 9650 system entirely with this SFF rig, it'll make it far easier traveling with it when I head back to college as well.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

Is the Corsair Vengeance actually low profile, or just Corsair decided to remove the pointless fins so now normal height?

It's normal height DIMMS, I think for corsair their RAM with those silly fins are "normal height".

I got these mainly for their speed and voltage usage though, 1.35v is very nice for ram that's running 1600mhz with the same timings as those "fin" kits running around 1.5 or 1.65v.

Once my mobo arrives, I'll take a photo of these "low profile" dimms next to some old Dominator ones to compare.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

Finally my motherboard arrives!

This is rather interesting for the graphics.

Windows Media Centre remote, audio cables and IR remote dongle.

As promised, heres the Low Profile ram ontop of Dominator.

As you can see it's actually is low profile there's nearly a CM difference in height, although it's more close to 7-8mm.

Here's the mobo inside

Cable management, or lack there of hahaha

View from the top

View from the top with the dvd tray installed.

The other side with the GTX 470 installed.

Don't worry lads, I gave the card's fan a good cleaning before starting her up.

Since I didn't get a slim line Blu-Ray drive I used an old external dvd one.
Sadly the bugger is USB 1.1 and it took quite a while to install windows with it.

After installation, and drivers being setup I have to say this system is amazingly fast. It beats the pants off my old Phenom 9650 and Phenom II 940.

I use the stock fan, although I applied some MX-2 to the cooler.

I left the pc on while I went into town, with the windows assessment for the windows index running.

Here's a shot of real temp from that.

As you can see it peaked at 50 degrees during the test, I assume that was the CPU one that did that.

I'm loving the idle temp though.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

Excellent, proper little gaming rig.

The motherboard looks good, going to go and do some reading on the benefits of this lucid gfx tech.

Slim blu-ray drives are very expensive, especially if you want a slot loader.

I'll need to get one though, I've quite a few Blu-Ray I want to watch.
Plus I'd prefer a slot loader since. Will have to look around for a good one, that doesn't break the bank.

The Lucid stuff is pants for gaming. If you have a use for quicksync its good but that is about it. When I was using Virtu I wasn't using any less power but was getting around 10 less fps which makes it totally pointless. For me anyway.

Loving that RAM. It is pimp!


Now hurry up and tell us how it OCs

I'll have to experiment with that Virtu then it seems.

I won't be OC'ing much at the moment, I'm still on a stock cooler after all.

I've been looking to get my hands on a Scythe Samurai ZZ cooler but I can't seem to find one.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

All these lovely new sff rigs threads making me want to get one sooner than planned must resist wish they had this motherboard in the new range of shuttles.
Might go for silverstone SG05bb-450 an Asrock Z68M-ITX would like to see how this board overclocks with cpu i5 2500k.

Get on the ITX bandwagon, it's amazing!

The asrock board is very good, much cooler at full load the Zotac that a friend of mine has. Although his board died 2 days after only running at 4.2GHz.

I also found myself slot loaded Blu0ray drive, I can't wait for it to arrive.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

I order the Sony BC-5640H-01 Slot loaded blu-ray reader.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

hey Spike, you need to setup your "trust" in order to messages.

There's a little trust button next to the quote button where you can do that.

Also I paid £96.50 for my Mobo, not including postage to Ireland. So if you can pick ut up for 92, that's fairy good.

The rest of the system looks alright, I like the SG05 chassis a lot.
I just wouldn't recommend watercooling the cpu if you wanna over clock too much, since the mosfets on the motherboard are bare and kind of rely on the cpu cooler to cool them as well a bit.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

That's a lot of computers. I usually give my old systems to my parents as that's their upgrade basically when I see them.

Also even at 104 it's cheaper then the Zotac z68 anyway by still about £30.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

Finally got my Slimline drive, sadly the slimline sata+power connecter it too short.

So I took the pocket knife and cut it in half haha, split the power and sata form each other and just trimmed the sides so that I could fit a normal length Sata cable in there.

Works great, now I just need to get WinDVD installed again and check the blu-ray playback of the drive. DVD's work a treat.

The only thing I HATE, is how damn loud the drive is. My pc was always near silent, now I hear the drive spin up on boot and the bugger is noisy when I have a disk in haha.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

Ah this is interesting. With DVD's the drive is very loud, although with Blu-Rays it's not bad at all.

It's spins up at first with a lound whirl then it goes into a little hum. Not too bad, I don't use that many DVDs unless I install something once in a while as I prefer digitial downloads.

I also have an external dvd drive, although it's USB 1, and my lord is that far far too slow for me.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

You lads might be interested in this, a vid of assembling an SG05 system using this motherboard and the same sony slim line drive.