Well it wasn't "LOL rumours" the nForce i series of motherboards were utter crud.
Oh and drivers don't cause coil whine, Your GPU usage probably just went down.
Coil whine is a hardware issue so it could either be your PSU or GPU.
Nforce boards were crud across the world though. Didn't make them cheap or poorly made they just had awful drivers. At the time they launched they were the most expensive boards available. They would be, they were Nvidia !
Alienware usually go with high end parts. That's why I've had so many. The coil whine is coming from the PSU yes. This is the same PSU that powers a Dell Poweredge server with up to quad Xeons though, so I'm really not concerned about it. If it dies I get them out next day to replace it, can't ask for more than that. Must say I'm not terribly happy that the board is MSI but at the end of the day I'm not overclocking and Alienware actually hold parts in stock so it would be easily replaced.
Spec wise though dude? triple SLI with two gaps between each card, Killer E2205, Soundblaster Recon3D. Oh yeah and Intel Proset wireless. It really is decked out rather well. And it's a godsend to me, because before I was using a dedicated sound card (SBZ) Killer E2100 (I like the software and firewall) and wireless PCIE card. So now I got loads of slots free
Just lessons learned. No more stupidly priced hard to sell on computers for me. Until I bought that stupid honking thing I had a Area 51 ALX (the one my wife's got now) and before that I had a Aurora and I loved them both. They accounted for nearly five years of hassle free computing so I really can't complain.
And I don't think the price was that bad either. Not considering that it only costs about £250 more than a similarly specced PC from elsewhere and unlike any of those custom builders (OCUK for example) has onsite warranty so you don't lose your bum sending it back.
Last time I'm buying high priced parts and overclocking. Everything is staying stock now, I just can't afford to keep losing money every time something breaks and you don't get a like for like replacement.
These companies are too fickle and move on too quickly, without worrying about the poor buggers who spent £300 on a board. Had I not reigned it in and put on my sensible hat I'd have replaced that board with a 5930k, new board, new ram etc.
I'm happy, and that's all that matters to me. I'm also in awe of how such a powerful rig can get by on three 120mm fans that never spin up. It's so, so quiet. In contrast my overclocked rig needed 10 fans all screaming out their lungs to keep the overclock stable in weather like this.
Never again.
)
