Andre's Z77 Personal Rig
- Thread starter andrevautour
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Vlada011
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I don't like too, guns, bullets, nothing, only Intel Skull is OK because specific techno all time design.
andrevautour
New member
i agree i dont like guns bullets knifes any type of design on heastsinks, i think it looks tacky.
andrevautour
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I was looking at your build thread, and your old hardware. The sabertooth still looks good by today's standards. It has that futuristic theme that you see in some games like... halo for example games if you look at the chipset heat-sink.
I am trying that new benchmark Catzilla and it's a pain.. it crashes ( some crashes could be cause of my overclock ) it won't start... it's buggy as hell.
the sabertooth board is actually fairly new, it came out in i believe november 2010 when intel was releasing their 6 core x58 chips like 980x 990x etc. i only had it for just under a year. i think it looks better than the mpower board, but the i7 920 i had was not getting the most of the the 7900 card but most of all it was just getting old and i was eager for a change. i thought about getting something like a 990X but i figured it would be better just to move forward to a newer platform instead.
before the sabertooth we used a p6t deluxe for x58 and that was a nice board too.
as far as the raid box the thing is made really well but the fan makes it really annoying. i was planning on getting a 4 or 5 bay which is what i actually wanted but i thought id give this a try first.
maybe intel onboard raid is more fussy but ive had drives that were the same in this and difference makes etc and both work fine with the raid contoller in this thing.
it has esata and usb 3. im not going to run it without the fan because i felt plenty of heat coming from it even without the top on, wither it was mostly from the drives or what it doesn't really matter because everything is in that enclosure and there is no ventilation without the fan so all the heat will just wallow there and that is where my images are so no room for messing around with it. i don't know exactly what i will use this 2bay thing for but if i do external raid again i want something at least 4 bay that is quieter. for now i will probably just use internal drives.
i have a few 1tb green drives from 2009 and they all work fine. prices seem pretty low for drives right now . i see 3tb drives for $129 even $119 some places.
i dont have any green 3tb green drives, only seagate so i dont know exactly how fast they are by comparison but the seagate ones are fast.
the sabertooth board is actually fairly new, it came out in i believe november 2010 when intel was releasing their 6 core x58 chips like 980x 990x etc. i only had it for just under a year. i think it looks better than the mpower board, but the i7 920 i had was not getting the most of the the 7900 card but most of all it was just getting old and i was eager for a change. i thought about getting something like a 990X but i figured it would be better just to move forward to a newer platform instead.
before the sabertooth we used a p6t deluxe for x58 and that was a nice board too.
as far as the raid box the thing is made really well but the fan makes it really annoying. i was planning on getting a 4 or 5 bay which is what i actually wanted but i thought id give this a try first.
maybe intel onboard raid is more fussy but ive had drives that were the same in this and difference makes etc and both work fine with the raid contoller in this thing.
it has esata and usb 3. im not going to run it without the fan because i felt plenty of heat coming from it even without the top on, wither it was mostly from the drives or what it doesn't really matter because everything is in that enclosure and there is no ventilation without the fan so all the heat will just wallow there and that is where my images are so no room for messing around with it. i don't know exactly what i will use this 2bay thing for but if i do external raid again i want something at least 4 bay that is quieter. for now i will probably just use internal drives.
i have a few 1tb green drives from 2009 and they all work fine. prices seem pretty low for drives right now . i see 3tb drives for $129 even $119 some places.
i dont have any green 3tb green drives, only seagate so i dont know exactly how fast they are by comparison but the seagate ones are fast.
Yup, you went for the highest end stuff, it shows in the history of the parts you've used. When I was looking for a board with a decent chip ( core unlocker for some AMD CPU's ) I thought the ones that were about $100 seemed very expensive to me... at that time I was looking for a Gigabyte board like this UD3 http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3423#ov and I felt so bad cause I really wanted one and it was out of my reach. A mini-ATX board like the one I have now was all I could afford, and to be honest, the MSI I have now I have it cause when I bought it it happend to be Black Friday, now it's quite a bit more expensive then it was at that time... lucky me I guess... I returned an AM3 board and I got an AM3+ instead for a little less.
I have never tried a RAID Config but I read about it, and people said that it's recommended to have both or more drives at about the same specs, RPM etc etc etc. I was asking you cause you seem to have more experience with it.
ABout the green drives.. at that time I was reading the reviews people were leaving on the comment section on the site they bough them from... so...
andrevautour
New member
I like the really bright blue around the CPU socket on that gigabyte board.
I recently used a moderate z77 gigabyte board for someone's HTPC i5 build i was working on and it had that same sort of blue theme to it, which i like a lot.
you can see what the board looks like on the back of the box.
for all the internal raid setups i've ever done i generally use two of the same drives (for example my dad's computer has a mirrored raid with 2 3tb drives just like those ones i posted pictures of a few days ago and before that he had a mirrored raid with 2 seagate 1tb drives which were the same specs) but for this external hardware raid thing i just stuck two random spare similar drives i had around and it works fine, no noticeable difference from using it with two identical drives.
i haven't heard much about the green drives, so i don't know-- these are the 1tb green drives i have here, both made in 2009 and they both work fine.
this is the drive that was in the raid enclosure with the older wd green drive
andrevautour
New member
Here are some pictures of my old Gigabyte 6950 card.
Yeah that's one of the reasons why I wanted a gigabyte board.. the whole blue color. I did use a few Gigabyte boards in the past, and they were solid. I still have one around here with a Sempron and 1 Gig of RAM in it but it's broken for some unknown reason or at least something on it is.
Yeah I don't know why people were saying that using two different drives will not work... maybe there is a bit of truth to that but I don't know, I am not experienced enough to say.
That 6950 is beautiful and huge! I think it's longer than the one I am using or the same size anyway, but that heatsink probably made it very cool and quiet right?
BTW, my 918MHZ OC on my cores proved out to be unstable, and whenever I would start furmark it would crash even with the slightest overclock. I first blamed it on that VCO PLL divider bug people were talking about, but it was the BIOS I was using so I flashed it with a Diamond 3870 x2's bios and it stopped crashing ever since in furmark. Bottom line is, it won't go higher than 905MHz/core no matter how much voltage I provide, no matter what the VRAM's frequency is.. no matter how cool I try o keep it. SO these are the limits of my card.
Yeah I don't know why people were saying that using two different drives will not work... maybe there is a bit of truth to that but I don't know, I am not experienced enough to say.
That 6950 is beautiful and huge! I think it's longer than the one I am using or the same size anyway, but that heatsink probably made it very cool and quiet right?
BTW, my 918MHZ OC on my cores proved out to be unstable, and whenever I would start furmark it would crash even with the slightest overclock. I first blamed it on that VCO PLL divider bug people were talking about, but it was the BIOS I was using so I flashed it with a Diamond 3870 x2's bios and it stopped crashing ever since in furmark. Bottom line is, it won't go higher than 905MHz/core no matter how much voltage I provide, no matter what the VRAM's frequency is.. no matter how cool I try o keep it. SO these are the limits of my card.
andrevautour
New member
Yeah I really like that 'classic' design from them i think it's nice.
Currently I really like the look of that dual thunderbolt board from them as well.
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Inte...F8&qid=1358533547&sr=1-1&keywords=Z77X-UP5+TH
i also have a mini ITX board here with the same color scheme.
I did a bit of overclocking myself yesterday and this is the GPU score I was able to get out of the pair of GTX 580s in Vantage:
the 6950 is a nice looking card for sure. it's about 10.5 inches which is the same as the 7900's. it doesn't have as good a of quality feel as the msi twin frozer because the heatsink cover is plastic vs very thick aluminum on the msi card, but not big deal.
i've found all of the aftermarket coolers i've dealt with are as good as silent when idle, but they usual have an auto fan profile that does spin up the fans a bit during gameplay, so it does get a bit louder. with cards like that though you can setup a fixed fan speed and it will get a bit hotter but they are fairly cool cards anyway so you can have it fixed fan and have it near silent all the time if you want.
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dalewakelin
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I also have a gigabyte board with the same colour scheme. It is just a sempron board but meh it does the job 
I have always liked ITX boards, if I can my next build is going to be a ITX form factor build. I think there is something interesting about a computer that is small and powerful ... and even if not that powerful being small it looks different than the same old ATX form factor that we are all used to.
Now that's a proper Vantage score. I only get about 9600 on my GPU and a little over 9000 for my CPU so, huge difference there, but you were using SLI 580's which are still fast.
Now that's a proper Vantage score. I only get about 9600 on my GPU and a little over 9000 for my CPU so, huge difference there, but you were using SLI 580's which are still fast.
andrevautour
New member
I also have a gigabyte board with the same colour scheme. It is just a sempron board but meh it does the job
I like them too and I agree about the small and powerful thought. I really like some of the silverstone options we talked about earlier. I don't know if I see myself doing a 'main rig' in mini ITX anytime soon, but i definitely enjoy working on them for other people etc and I would certainly consider doing one as a side project at some point.
that is a good store for the generation. the 4890's scored about the same and the pair of them would do 22,000 in vantage, which is actually the same score as the single 6950, but in real world use they were a lot worse than the single 6950 for most newer games.
this is what the single 7950 does --
andrevautour
New member
Here are a few additional details from last night.
Also, some small news -- my dad has let me know that he will be replacing his horrible H100 with the new Swifttech H220 when it comes out, so that is great. Let's just say I have a feeling there will be 2 swifttech h220's here in the near future
I added an additional hard drive and cables for 1 more
Also, some small news -- my dad has let me know that he will be replacing his horrible H100 with the new Swifttech H220 when it comes out, so that is great. Let's just say I have a feeling there will be 2 swifttech h220's here in the near future
I added an additional hard drive and cables for 1 more
That's a awesome score compared to my 9622 GPU a few minutes ago. The 7950 is a great card, these new cards are super overclockable, I am curious to see what the 8000 series cards will come with.
The Crossfired 4890's were scoring the same but usually Crossfire setups don't perform the same as single card setups, even if they score higher, frame rates look choppy, maybe that's why they couldn't be compared with the more advanced 6950 in games and etc. Hopefully I will change mine in the future and I will soon be able to enjoy a better gaming experience.
Have you seen the new Catzilla benchamrk? Catzilla Benchmark
It's still Beta and I didn't find it very reliable... other people on the forum have been using it without issues but it doesn't work very well for me.. it either won't start, or freeze along the benchmark. It did finish a couple of times and I only scored around 2500 which is very poor ( with the Cat preset ) of course.
I am glad your dad decided on replacing the H100 with that awesome Swiftech kit which, I think, looks fantastic and performs very well and it's also flexible with the additional loops you can add for GPU's. From Linus's vid when he tested for noise, the Swiftech was silent even at max compared to the H100i and I think that's really nice. And the way the pump looks is not bad at all, and it's pretty powerful too... it should perform good with that kind of pump. Can't wait to see a review for it more detailed like Tom makes them.
I have also heard that Corsair is releasing a new Hydro series ( H90, H110 ). The H110 is actually a re-branded Kraken X60 - I have seen a couple of pics and compared them side by side and they are the same. That's not a big deal though, I am glad the market is getting flooded by these type of watercooling products, it's a step towards the future when maybe the air cooling market will narrow down to big silent coolers and most of the cooling options will be mostly liquid coolers like the H100i etc etc. I am looking forward to seeing you mount your Swiftech kit and hear your opinion about it.
The Crossfired 4890's were scoring the same but usually Crossfire setups don't perform the same as single card setups, even if they score higher, frame rates look choppy, maybe that's why they couldn't be compared with the more advanced 6950 in games and etc. Hopefully I will change mine in the future and I will soon be able to enjoy a better gaming experience.
Have you seen the new Catzilla benchamrk? Catzilla Benchmark
It's still Beta and I didn't find it very reliable... other people on the forum have been using it without issues but it doesn't work very well for me.. it either won't start, or freeze along the benchmark. It did finish a couple of times and I only scored around 2500 which is very poor ( with the Cat preset ) of course.
I am glad your dad decided on replacing the H100 with that awesome Swiftech kit which, I think, looks fantastic and performs very well and it's also flexible with the additional loops you can add for GPU's. From Linus's vid when he tested for noise, the Swiftech was silent even at max compared to the H100i and I think that's really nice. And the way the pump looks is not bad at all, and it's pretty powerful too... it should perform good with that kind of pump. Can't wait to see a review for it more detailed like Tom makes them.
I have also heard that Corsair is releasing a new Hydro series ( H90, H110 ). The H110 is actually a re-branded Kraken X60 - I have seen a couple of pics and compared them side by side and they are the same. That's not a big deal though, I am glad the market is getting flooded by these type of watercooling products, it's a step towards the future when maybe the air cooling market will narrow down to big silent coolers and most of the cooling options will be mostly liquid coolers like the H100i etc etc. I am looking forward to seeing you mount your Swiftech kit and hear your opinion about it
.Here are some pics of my HyperX Blu memory, One of my Gigabyte M615ME-S2 with a Sempron 3200+ I think and 2x512MB DDR2 800MHz Kingmax but it broke after trying to fix my graphics card bios one day, took the card out and it wouldn't post... and kept beeping.
They look better in real life.. sorry about the picture quality.
It's a bit dusty but not too dusty
They look better in real life.. sorry about the picture quality.
It's a bit dusty but not too dusty
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andrevautour
New member
That's a awesome score compared to my 9622 GPU a few minutes ago. The 7950 is a great card, these new cards are super overclockable, I am curious to see what the 8000 series cards will come with.
The Crossfired 4890's were scoring the same but usually Crossfire setups don't perform the same as single card setups, even if they score higher, frame rates look choppy, maybe that's why they couldn't be compared with the more advanced 6950 in games and etc. Hopefully I will change mine in the future and I will soon be able to enjoy a better gaming experience.
Have you seen the new Catzilla benchamrk? Catzilla Benchmark
It's still Beta and I didn't find it very reliable... other people on the forum have been using it without issues but it doesn't work very well for me.. it either won't start, or freeze along the benchmark. It did finish a couple of times and I only scored around 2500 which is very poor ( with the Cat preset ) of course.
I am glad your dad decided on replacing the H100 with that awesome Swiftech kit which, I think, looks fantastic and performs very well and it's also flexible with the additional loops you can add for GPU's. From Linus's vid when he tested for noise, the Swiftech was silent even at max compared to the H100i and I think that's really nice. And the way the pump looks is not bad at all, and it's pretty powerful too... it should perform good with that kind of pump. Can't wait to see a review for it more detailed like Tom makes them.
I have also heard that Corsair is releasing a new Hydro series ( H90, H110 ). The H110 is actually a re-branded Kraken X60 - I have seen a couple of pics and compared them side by side and they are the same. That's not a big deal though, I am glad the market is getting flooded by these type of watercooling products, it's a step towards the future when maybe the air cooling market will narrow down to big silent coolers and most of the cooling options will be mostly liquid coolers like the H100i etc etc. I am looking forward to seeing you mount your Swiftech kit and hear your opinion about it
From what I understand older cards in Crossfire and SLI didn't scale as well, but newer cards scale much better. My guess is it might also have to do with the newer card being better optimized with newer games.
I have seen it and i started to download it but it got interrupted and i never got around to downloading it again, i'm planning to though.
I really like the look of the pump and the tubing on the Swifttech, I think it looks beefier and higher quality then the H100i. It also has a more utilitarian look to it which i like.
I have not heard of the new Corsair stuff, but I thought the NZXT stuff was actually based on the OEM of the older corsair stuff like the h50 and h70, but I don't know really.
I am also looking forward to the new Switfttech H220--I can't guarantee when we will be getting them though but i am planning to.
nice looking memory - i've seen the blu heatsink design and it's similar to the genesis, but a little different.
i like the yellow SATA and dimm slots on that plus the lime green IDE. we had an old gigabyte board for amd 64 and the dimm slots were bright orange on there.
you can see them a little bit in this picture but i don't have any good pictures of the board itself unfortunately
