A final update. 
BSOD's here, BSOD'S there, BSOD's every ******* where...
The two weeks or so leading up to Christmas were plagued by BSOD's, immensely frustrating BSOD's at that. Despite owning and building PC's for donkey's years I've had virtually no experience of faulty hardware (guess I'm lucky). This makes diagnosing both meaningless and always different blue screen messages rather tricky! Was it memory, was it CPU or was it the motherboard? I was praying it was anything but my precious motherboard.
In the end it was none of the above...
One problem was nailed with disabling the inbuilt wireless network card. The problems had begun shortly after enabling it and at least one problem was then solved. It's a shame, because it was a unique and tidy way of doing things, but the drivers appear to be plain iffy.
The next problem was purely GFX related.
My ATI driver started crashing every time any load was placed on the card and then the dreaded artefacts began appearing in 3D mark (at least when it wasn't freezing up). I now face the joys of RMAing. I'd only bought the XFX card because of the short length of the PCB and I was a trifle suspicious of the low price, but what could I do? Manufacturers give us all the crazy big numbers of what a card can do, but don't seem keen on telling us the boring things, like say how long their card is. 
Things had reached a bit of low at this point. I was in need of some Christmas cheer.
Tis the season to be jolly...
During the initial "planning" of the build my CPU choice was limited by the MiniX's TDP. 95w was upper limit, which ruled out the sexy quad and hexacore Phenom's and so left me using my old 720BE. This CPU was great and has served me well, but I wanted this system to be as good as possible, but what could I do?
Then while browsing eBay I found a seller who had some of these going. The Holy Grail!
I was giggling like a girl when I hit the buy it now button.
A 95w 2.8GHz X6! It wasn't exactly cheap, but at least I didn't have to buy a motherboard too.
Then just after Boxing Day I went completely mad and bought one of these to replace the cheap and nasty XFX.
Much to my considerable annoyance, the card was precisely the same length as the XFX (21.5cm). Had I have known this I could have saved myself so much trouble and stress. Anyway, at least I now have a card by a manufacturer I've used many times before, and trust. The Sapphire 6850 is very quiet and has a nicer feel to it than the XFX. I'm not happy with Ruby's apparent change in hair colour though. I like my redheads. Brown is just so meh...
One last screen to show a rather mediocre 3D mark score of 3341 and my WEI score. My SSD's can't make their mind up. They were at 7.7 a few days ago, but now we're back at 5.9. This doesn't matter though as they still go like the clappers in general use.
The CPU idles at 27'c and after a thrashing in DoW 2 - Chaos Rising 49'c, which given the cramped nature of the case and less than ideal air flow, isn't too bad. It's a shame I'm not in to overclocking any more...
Anyway that should be that. No blue screens any more, everything appears stable and well behaved. So apart from a new CPU cooler, replacement SSD's or a new GFX card, say if the 6900 series shrink in size at some point in the future... there's not much else I can do to with this rig. None of these upgrades are urgent though, or even medium term considerations.
My bank balance will be happy about that.
BSOD's here, BSOD'S there, BSOD's every ******* where...
The two weeks or so leading up to Christmas were plagued by BSOD's, immensely frustrating BSOD's at that. Despite owning and building PC's for donkey's years I've had virtually no experience of faulty hardware (guess I'm lucky). This makes diagnosing both meaningless and always different blue screen messages rather tricky! Was it memory, was it CPU or was it the motherboard? I was praying it was anything but my precious motherboard.
In the end it was none of the above...
One problem was nailed with disabling the inbuilt wireless network card. The problems had begun shortly after enabling it and at least one problem was then solved. It's a shame, because it was a unique and tidy way of doing things, but the drivers appear to be plain iffy.
The next problem was purely GFX related.
My ATI driver started crashing every time any load was placed on the card and then the dreaded artefacts began appearing in 3D mark (at least when it wasn't freezing up). I now face the joys of RMAing. I'd only bought the XFX card because of the short length of the PCB and I was a trifle suspicious of the low price, but what could I do? Manufacturers give us all the crazy big numbers of what a card can do, but don't seem keen on telling us the boring things, like say how long their card is. Things had reached a bit of low at this point. I was in need of some Christmas cheer.
Tis the season to be jolly...
During the initial "planning" of the build my CPU choice was limited by the MiniX's TDP. 95w was upper limit, which ruled out the sexy quad and hexacore Phenom's and so left me using my old 720BE. This CPU was great and has served me well, but I wanted this system to be as good as possible, but what could I do?
Then while browsing eBay I found a seller who had some of these going. The Holy Grail!
I was giggling like a girl when I hit the buy it now button.
A 95w 2.8GHz X6! It wasn't exactly cheap, but at least I didn't have to buy a motherboard too. Then just after Boxing Day I went completely mad and bought one of these to replace the cheap and nasty XFX.
Much to my considerable annoyance, the card was precisely the same length as the XFX (21.5cm). Had I have known this I could have saved myself so much trouble and stress. Anyway, at least I now have a card by a manufacturer I've used many times before, and trust. The Sapphire 6850 is very quiet and has a nicer feel to it than the XFX. I'm not happy with Ruby's apparent change in hair colour though. I like my redheads. Brown is just so meh...
One last screen to show a rather mediocre 3D mark score of 3341 and my WEI score. My SSD's can't make their mind up. They were at 7.7 a few days ago, but now we're back at 5.9. This doesn't matter though as they still go like the clappers in general use.
The CPU idles at 27'c and after a thrashing in DoW 2 - Chaos Rising 49'c, which given the cramped nature of the case and less than ideal air flow, isn't too bad. It's a shame I'm not in to overclocking any more...
Anyway that should be that. No blue screens any more, everything appears stable and well behaved. So apart from a new CPU cooler, replacement SSD's or a new GFX card, say if the 6900 series shrink in size at some point in the future... there's not much else I can do to with this rig. None of these upgrades are urgent though, or even medium term considerations.
My bank balance will be happy about that.
