Andre's Z77 Personal Rig

[andrevautour]

I'm thinking of getting usb and sound extetion cables so they´re all black maybe braided aswell... just for the little touch
I'm also waiting for led strips to be delivered... i 've ordered 5 metres of waterproof cutable led strip so i can cut them where i need to. something like this:

thats a thing i've never understood myself... maybe one day we'll get screwed in ones

sorry i completely missed the part about the lights when i first looked at this i only saw the part about the rubber feet.

i hope the stuff your ordered works out for you and creates the desired effect.

i had a 30CM bitfenix white strip and it's just completely unusable IMO. it's so bright it just completely washes out anything its even remotely near. no matter where you place it it just washes everything out and looks horrible.

i like a more subtle glow look myself when it comes to lighting so the nzxt kit is a bit more suitable for my liking. the bitfenix stuff always brads about how bright the LEDs are but i think they are far too bright for a computer interior, at least the white ones are.

I also have a couple of 12CM blue from bitfenix and those are ao very nice deep deep rich royal blue which is very pretty, but the problem with those is it makes all the hardware look monotone blue and i dont like that. it's also hard to get even lighting with only 2 strips youd need more like 4 to get completely even.

personally im still not a huge fan of leds for 24/7 but i like having some white ones in there that i can turn on to show the hardware of the case if someone comes by to see it for example. most of the time if i'm along i keep it off though.


do post lots of pictures once you get yours installed i'm excited to see what layout you come up with and how it looks in the end!

 

[andrevautour]

Uuuu, nice voltages...
Deffo something have to be wrong.
After I seen your picture, I checked what are volts on my, and they are fine.


MSI should replace it no problem.

yeah, i am assuming this is the reason no 2133mhz ram will run properly and also why the cpu wont do more than 4.4ghz. i completely expect both of those things to work perfectly once the board is replaced.


im sure msi will replace it but i want to get it replaced in store because i dont want to wait. there is a 30 day in store warranty and im currently 2 days over that but we know the guys in the store so hopefully they will be good about it and just replace it anyway that way i wont have to send it to msi and wait for them to send one back etc

 

[Mark3Max]

hey guys

i believe ive found out the problem with this current setup. i have no idea why i didn't notice this soon, but for some reason i did not.

the voltages for the mpower board are way off, the 12V is only at 9V and in addition to that all of the voltages have massive spikes.


this is a screenshot of the voltages for my laster motherboard, the sabertooth x58, everything looks pretty normal to me so that indicates that the power supply is working properly.

Now have a look a tthe voltages with the current mpower motherboard


as you can see the current value for the 12V is only 9V, but it has recorded a spike of 22.4V, 10.7V for the 5V, and 2V from the CPU vcore.

I am going to go on monday in to the store and see about getting the board replaced, if i can't get it done in store i guess i will have to send it to msi.

I glad you found out what the problem was Andre , it sucks that it was your motherboard though. I hope you don't have any problems getting it swapped for a new one. Hopefully that will bring your core temps down a little too . Good luck

 

[CPMFW]

sorry i completely missed the part about the lights when i first looked at this i only saw the part about the rubber feet.

i hope the stuff your ordered works out for you and creates the desired effect.

i had a 30CM bitfenix white strip and it's just completely unusable IMO. it's so bright it just completely washes out anything its even remotely near. no matter where you place it it just washes everything out and looks horrible.

i like a more subtle glow look myself when it comes to lighting so the nzxt kit is a bit more suitable for my liking. the bitfenix stuff always brads about how bright the LEDs are but i think they are far too bright for a computer interior, at least the white ones are.

I also have a couple of 12CM blue from bitfenix and those are ao very nice deep deep rich royal blue which is very pretty, but the problem with those is it makes all the hardware look monotone blue and i dont like that. it's also hard to get even lighting with only 2 strips youd need more like 4 to get completely even.

personally im still not a huge fan of leds for 24/7 but i like having some white ones in there that i can turn on to show the hardware of the case if someone comes by to see it for example. most of the time if i'm along i keep it off though.


do post lots of pictures once you get yours installed i'm excited to see what layout you come up with and how it looks in the end!

i haven't used the bitfenix led strips yet but they were looking really bright in toms video.

the stryker has got a switch for the led's of the fans, so i'll be using that switch to switch the led strips on and off...

will do loads of pics when they're all installed

 

[andrevautour]

I glad you found out what the problem was Andre , it sucks that it was your motherboard though. I hope you don't have any problems getting it swapped for a new one. Hopefully that will bring your core temps down a little too . Good luck

thanks man! i'm not to worried about it realy i always like having a play with hardware and things like this is just an excuse to do more stuff

i have a couple videos coming up where i talk about this very thing a bit more


i am expecting the memory and cpu to work properly after the board is swapped.

i haven't used the bitfenix led strips yet but they were looking really bright in toms video.

the stryker has got a switch for the led's of the fans, so i'll be using that switch to switch the led strips on and off...

will do loads of pics when they're all installed

hope you checked all your stuff to make sure it worked before you painted!

take a look at this all this time i couldn't figure out what the problem was with the CPU overclock and the memory not running at 2133

 

[CPMFW]

hope you checked all your stuff to make sure it worked before you painted!

take a look at this all this time i couldn't figure out what the problem was with the CPU overclock and the memory not running at 2133

actually i havent... thats a good point.
if the board is faulty i`ll just repaint it yellow
it's going to be a little harder on the gpu

 

[andrevautour]

i spent some time playing around with the build this evening and i will have an update with pictures from that soon.

i looked in the bios at the voltages and it was reporting 12.144V for the 12V there , and I had a look in AIDA64 and it reports those same voltages there. The CPUID HWMonitor is actually reporting 8V now on the 12V

 

[Etlar]

I know a friend that also have the same problem whit his MSI - Z77A - GD65, and he send it back to MSI and they say it was problem whit the software and not the board it was all good.

My board also show some time 8v in CPUID HWMonitor, but my board is useing 12 and when i restart the pc it is normal CPUID HWMonitor also..

 

[Etlar]

i spent some time playing around with the build this evening and i will have an update with pictures from that soon.

i looked in the bios at the voltages and it was reporting 12.144V for the 12V there , and I had a look in AIDA64 and it reports those same voltages there. The CPUID HWMonitor is actually reporting 8V now on the 12V

Have uset my time on MSI forum, and can see it is a normal fail in HW monitor to the MPower board. If you use control center and check the volts they and it is fine. Then it is a bug whit the HW monitor.

 

[dragoonk]

I have an MSI board as well and I haven't found an utility yet that will display my 12 Volts correctly but in Bios I have normal readings.

And it's not a MPower board , it's a cheap 760gm board.

 

[Etlar]

I have an MSI board as well and I haven't found an utility yet that will display my 12 Volts correctly but in Bios I have normal readings.

And it's not a MPower board , it's a cheap 760gm board.

The post from the MSI support :
"So long as you verify the problem is with HWmonitor, then you would have to wait for a new version. Might want to take a moment to report the issue to the folks that make that program.

The best way to make 100% sure is with a digital multi-meter. Also, keep in mind 8 volts and your computer would crash."

 

[dragoonk]

Ofcourse, I know the readings are wrong, I was making a point that not only the MPower mobos have this issue. Alot of MSI boards have been reported acting like this. My computer woks fine, I discovered this issue when I tried to monitos my motherboard's 12 V to see how much is dips down while I load the system. Haven't found a fix yet.

 

[andrevautour]

Ofcourse, I know the readings are wrong, I was making a point that not only the MPower mobos have this issue. Alot of MSI boards have been reported acting like this. My computer woks fine, I discovered this issue when I tried to monitos my motherboard's 12 V to see how much is dips down while I load the system. Haven't found a fix yet.

At this point I do know it's just HWMonitor that is not accurate because control center, bios, and AIDA64 all report the same 12.144V.

My dad said the same that it wound't even run at 8 or 9V, I was just hoping that might be the cause of my poor memory performance and bad overclock performance, but now I am assuming that it muse just be a poor CPU that is the problem.




As you can see everywhere else reports the same voltages except for CPUID HW Monitor.

I'm going to check the new 1.2 version of HWMonitor and see if that helps but if not it's not the end of the world since I have lots of options for viewing the voltages.

Update: I already have the latest 1.21 so no luck with the current version of HWMonitor.

I wonder if it is an issue on MSI end or on CPUID end. There have been 4 bios updates for the Mpower board already I'm currently on 17.5 and it came with 17.1 so if it was on their end I would think they would address it by now. But since everywhere else seems to be able to get he right voltages that makes me think it is a problem with the way CPUID gets the info because that seems to be different from how the other monitors get their voltage info.

 

[andrevautour]

Anyways enough of that voltage stuff I have some more updates on the way which I will post soon.

 

[dragoonk]

I don't think it's an overclock thing... I am using speedfan that shows all the other voltages correctly except 9 instead of 12V, and HWmonitor shows about 4-5V instead of 12V I noticed your Control center... well mine looks like crap and doesn't display crap compared to yours. That's what you get when you're on a tight budget...
Looking forward for your updates.

 

[andrevautour]

I don't think it's an overclock thing... I am using speedfan that shows all the other voltages correctly except 9 instead of 12V, and HWmonitor shows about 4-5V instead of 12V I noticed your Control center... well mine looks like crap and doesn't display crap compared to yours. That's what you get when you're on a tight budget...
Looking forward for your updates.

What was that about control center?

I know it's likely that it's just not a very good CPU and that's why it doesn't overclock very well and maybe why the memory performance isn't great, but it's no big deal since the 3770K doesn't need to be overclocked anyway.



I have a memory update coming and also some pictures I took last night when I was playing around with the layout of the hard drives and fans, nothing too exciting though but I enjoy taking lot's of pictures so I always take pictures when I'm working on anything.

 

[dragoonk]

The Control center for my board looks alot different than yours. I just installed it and , voila! It shows the exact same value you get for the 12V.

Now I don't know if this value is corect but it's closer than what HWMonitor displays.

This is my "Rig" btw.

The Case is .. a noname, When I bought it its contents was different. There is no cable management options, my motherboard is a mATX, my PSU has the shortest cables I have seen, there are cables everywhere, my HDD is suspended in elastic cords cause it makes unbareble noises when it's fitted directly to the chasy, I have a front fan that doesn't even have an opening to draw air from, I have two 80mm exhaust fans that are scavenged from a couple of old PSU's, a system fan that blows air towards my exhaust cause that graphics card can get very hot, and that's about it. I opened the top CD thing so it can suck air from the front , because alot of warm air acumulates at the top of the case and it becomes warm...

That's my pathetic so called "Rig", but I'm not ashamed with it really.

 

[andrevautour]

The Control center for my board looks alot different than yours. I just installed it and , voila! It shows the exact same value you get for the 12V.

Now I don't know if this value is corect but it's closer than what HWMonitor displays.

This is my "Rig" btw.

The Case is .. a noname, When I bought it its contents was different. There is no cable management options, my motherboard is a mATX, my PSU has the shortest cables I have seen, there are cables everywhere, my HDD is suspended in elastic cords cause it makes unbareble noises when it's fitted directly to the chasy, I have a front fan that doesn't even have an opening to draw air from, I have two 80mm exhaust fans that are scavenged from a couple of old PSU's, a system fan that blows air towards my exhaust cause that graphics card can get very hot, and that's about it. I opened the top CD thing so it can suck air from the front , because alot of warm air acumulates at the top of the case and it becomes warm...

That's my pathetic so called "Rig", but I'm not ashamed with it really.

yes the control center and the hw monitor must be getting the info using a different method, it seems clear that the hw monitor method can be less accurate for some boards.



i like your memory, we have a couple 12gb kits of the Kingston hyper x genesis stuff here and one of them is in my sisters x58 build at the moment the shade of blue that is it is even nicer than the intel patriot stuff im using now IMO

how do you find that 3870X2? does it still hold up fairly well with modern games?


i'm stepping out shortly but when i get back i'll show you some of the builds i've had in the past , definitely some not very powerful stuff and some pretty gaudy builds that i'm not very proud of ;p


your build looks just fine to me grey case interior and unsleeved colored wires just looks utilitarian to me which i appreciate a lot and i quite like the look of it.

some of my favorite builds ever are stuff like this workstation in a supermicro case which doesnt have a black interior or sleeved cables but yet it is pure power and i really like the look of that and appreciate it a lot theres something really special to me about pure functionality over flashy looks and i honestly love the look of this type of thign too

i also have an update about the new patriot intel extreme masters memory i just got over the weekend

here is a teaser


I'm stepping out for a few hours and when i get back i will have the full memory post and more with lots of pictures


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_5ERHNkIWY

here is it compared to the older patriot viper extreme

 

[andrevautour]

also here is a thread i have that i was working on posting all my various computers through the years i dont know how up to date it is but some of the older stuff is there if you want to have a look http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=45894

 

[dragoonk]

I totally understand that, I don't like flashy things myself... especially flashy colors.. like those green/blue/orange water cooling themes with the colored liquid. I have seen a Rig and the case was black and simple looking , something very similar to yours, and he had two white 120mm ( if i am not mistaking ) in the front that gave the whole case this powerful look like they were two turbines... and inside it had also white fans and carbon fibre touches on the CPU waterblock and the rad... I am not a big fan of carbon fibre being combined with computers cause it's a material that has more to do with aircraft and cars then it has to do with computers, but this one looked really good, the whole black and white combo. I love that.

My memory is HyperX Blu. I bought this cheap... this build, if you can call it that, was short of a graphics card. I got the 3870 X2 from a friend in Australia for free. He was upgrading at that time to a 6990 and before that he was running two of these Sapphire 3870 X2 in Crossfire. When replacing them he gave me one of them. this is the only high-end graphics card I have ever had. I had a few in the AGP days, but since PCI-E became more popular, I ran an integrated graphics on an AM2 GIGABYTE motherboard with an Athlon64 at 1.8 GHZ which then later I OC'd to 2.5GHz... the integrated chip also... it was running at 425MHz if I remember exactly, and I managed to get it to 700MHz.. lol that was a bit of a suicide move, but it worked, and later I got this.
The 3870 X2 is still prooving to do a decent job... I have experienced games at max setting with it, but not the latest names like, Crysis2, BF3, Far Cry 3 , but it handles medium settings The most stable OC on it is 857/1062, for whatever reason I can't find a stable OC above 900 forthe core and even a bit under 900, even if stabil during gameplay, it locks up my computer when alt-tabbing or quitting the game. BF3 it can go on Ultra decently, but without AA on. And the gameplay is sometimes brutalized by this massive stutter... Now I am not sure if it's the graphic card's fault, the lack of VRAM, or my hard drive ( an old 160Gb Excelstor that I have ever since I switched from IDE to SATA, haven't upgraded ever since ) but it's there and annoying.
At the same time, during BF3 I see almost 98% CPU usage on my Athon X3 and looking at the GPU and CPU working at the same time, it might be a bit of a bottleneck there, I am not sure.

I heard good things about the Patriot memory but honestly, the only high profile RAM I like are the Corsair Dominator , They looks shiny but futuristic, if you populate all of your RAM slots with them they all like form this giant Memory module, you can't tell it's 4 modules next to eachother, it looks powerful, I like that.

I watched those two vids reviewing your case, and it didn't take a brain surgeon to figure that you're not the happiest with it. I like the way it looked, I like that it doesn't have all sorts of plastic shapes and stuff... it's black, it has that front pannel aluminium look/feel to it if my eyes have not mistaken, plus that power button and that fan conntroler fitted perfectly with that black. But it's prolly gonna be a long time untill I will have to choose a case like that.