New Z68 system with Asrock

Bane said:
Is the Corsair Vengeance actually low profile, or just Corsair decided to remove the pointless fins so now normal height?
Click to expand...

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.
 
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Finally my motherboard arrives!

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This is rather interesting for the graphics.

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

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

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Here's the mobo inside

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Cable management, or lack there of hahaha

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View from the top
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View from the top with the dvd tray installed.
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The other side with the GTX 470 installed.
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Don't worry lads, I gave the card's fan a good cleaning before starting her up.

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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.

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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.
 
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.
 
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 :D
 
Robbie G said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.

gropingmantis said:
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 :D
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
 
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spike2011 said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
Can get silverstone sg05bb-450 for £83.99
2x4gig corsair vengeance LP in black for £44.39
i5 2500k retail for £153.59
All from good retailer with free delivery so just need the motherboard Asrock Z68M-ITX where did you get yours N19h7m4r3 could you send me the info private message on this forum not sure how it works on this site.
Not sure what cpu cooler to get only want a mild overclock might see how the stock cooler performs if its too noisy an hot will change it.
Seen this motherboard selling for £91.58 +postage so around £100 mark.
 
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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.
 
Ok N19h7m4r3 I setup trust sent you email.
Price I saw was £91.58 +7.99 postage using TNT shipping so £99.57 total for the motherboard they have 7 in stock would be good price if it was free postage.
Think I know where you got yours going by the price you paid would cost me £104.00 using DHL shippping from them.
Will wait to the end september before buying anything though have five PCs already thats if I include my mac mini an handheld PC an laptop lol.
All my PC systems are all over 2 yrs old now but still can use the gpu asus 5850, intel ssd an other hard drives for the new build.
 
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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.
 
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.
 
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Darn hate noisy dvd drives you would think after paying what you did for the Sony BC-5640H-01 it would'nt be so noisy but the drive case is so thin there is nothing to block the noise. Think I will stick to my usb2 external slim dvdrw drive its fairly quiet save money too.
Stupid short connecter too aleast you fixed that problem.
 
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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.
 
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