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Need opinion on this shopping list

dvn

By dvn,
in Critique my Build List

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ikon

ikon 439

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I'm going to have to look for the setting. I have 3 EFI mobos. I've installed Win7 on 2 of them and Server 2008 R2 on the 3rd. As far as I could tell, it was a normal install. My curiosity has officially been peaked :)

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pcdoc

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IF you tell me what kind of MB you have I can point you to the settings. I have done it several times and on different boards.

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dvn

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Got my stuff, built the PC. Running with int video (HDMI) for now. Stock cooler, bleh. My old Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 doesn't fit this board. I'll pick up a CM Hyper 212+ for $25 in the near future.

 

Pulled OS SSD, installed it in the system and booted up. No problem. Currently installing drivers and getting updates. Sure beats XP days of resetting mass storage drivers to generic beforehand or using UBCD's mass storage driver reset utility. Getting the notification to activate within 3 days which is not a surprise.

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ikon

ikon 439

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Off the top of my head one is an Asus P8-P67-M (the desktop build I posted pics of a while back) and the other is the P8-H67-M (used in my HTPC build more recently).

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dvn

dvn 15

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So this is pretty cool. I can run 2 monitors off the int video. I was hoping/wondering, now I know. Not bad. Definitely not for serious gaming, but that's ok because I'm not really into that. Core temps at the moment (nothing much running except tray apps like Dropbox, Skype, Live Mesh and a few others) is 33 - 43 C. There are 3 case fans (front, back, top) on a controller running at the slowest speed. Kinda quiet without the 5770 and its noisy fan in there, but I need my 3rd monitor so I expect I'll put it back in.

 

From the couple minutes I spent poking around the BIOS, I have to say that the interface is quite nice. Looks like there's a ton of tweaks I could do, but I'll mostly leave it alone. Fortunately, I thought to check the IDE interface before booting the 1st time. It wasn't set to AHCI, but I corrected that along with the boot order, and it came right up. Before I do stick the 5770 back in, I think I'll do a Kill-A-Watt check. The Q9550 + 5770 system would draw about 110W - 120W when idle. Let's see how this does.

 

**Edit** So this system draws 52W - 55W @ idle. Doesn't seem to make much difference if I am using 1 monitor or 2 (on the int video). So now the question: should I use the 5770 so I can support 3 monitors? Or should I dump the to 17" monitors and get another 23" to match the one I have and go with the int graphics? Have to say, I'm liking the lower fan noise level.

Edited by dvn
- update on kill-a-watt check
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