Project Quad core - assembly has commenced

[WalkinTarget]

Finally got around to this upgrade, after Mount Mulch had been successfully conquered .... anyhoo, remember that sense of dread that I was feeling a few days back ?? Well, things did not go too smoothly, but nothing that can't be fixed.
First up, Warhead had warned me about certain .. quirks .. of this board. Things such as right angle SATA ports, flimsy I/O shields, Power LEDs that do not fit (case=3 pin plug, board 2 pin header), incorrect headers identified in the manual .. crap like that !!!
Well, the power LED was something I've gotten around before. Its just a matter of pulling a very tiny pin and repositioning it elsewhere. OOPS ... damn .. I just yanked the wire right out ! I even have a molex pin puller for this, but its for a full sized 4 pin molex end, NOT this tiny lil S.O.B.
OK, work around it, I thought. I went to plug in the SATA cables .. OOPS .. I have right angle SATA cables and they bang into the board when mounting in the lower port.

OK, just fit them where I can and go on ... urghhh .... blood pressure rising !!! I'm plugging everything in and find that the onboard Firewire header and the USB header are marked AS THE SAME THING in the manual !!! Off to the eVGA website to see what the hell is up ... manual has a misprint ...
Ohhhh, but if that were all, I think I'd count my lucky stars !! I go to plug in the included 4 port USB rear setup, but that has two headers on it ..
Read the manual again (the online one, the paper one is WRONG!!). Its worded as such:

The motherboard also contains one 10-pin internal header connector onboard that can be used to connect an optional external bracket containing four (2) more USB 2.0 ports

Well, yea .. that seems easy enough ..

Connect the two ends of the cables to the USB 2.0 headers on the motherboard

But didn't it say in the first quote that the board has ONE 10 pin header ?? How do I attach TWO cable ends to ONE HEADER !?????!!

OK, now that the hard part is at least done, here's a few pics:

Out with the old parts:



In with the new:



So, what to do with the old parts ... hmmm .. build another rig !!!



SWEET !! This is my first experience with a removable tray setup, and .. wow .. talk about EASY !! I am liking this one a LOT more than the first build. I know the Antec case will be better than the Raidmax in the long run, but it would have made things a LOT easier if I would have just put the new parts into the new case and called it a done deal. But noooo, that's not what us true techno-geeks do, kids ... we do it the hard way sometimes.

Ohhh, do you think my toubles are OVER yet ?? bahaha ... noooo .. here's one more for ya !



I boot up into Windows and it starts detecting ALL that new hardware. Three reboots (!!!) later, its all configured and functional. Now to check out those extra two cores and ...
<- sorry for the plethora of headscratch emoticons .. it was most appropriate given the strange circumstances that this build posed.

O------K ... so I uninstall the two older cores, reboot for a fourth time ... BSOD ....


Take another look after I reboot a fifth time ... and remove the last e6600 core and reboot a sixth time ... aannnddd .. THERE it is !! Four Q6700 cores !!
Check the temps .. 83c ?????? Ohh, that's the SYSTEM temp ??? Speedfan doesn't like this particular board. There is also a BIOS update necessary, so as soon as I finish this post, I will flash to that and then start overclocking. So I am functional at least, but several niggling issues made this not one of my finest hours in PC upgrading.

And once this one's done, its on to PC #2 to start getting that operational. I dunno whether I should be happy or sad that I have miles to go before I sleep ..

[WalkinTarget]

Overclock update:

The PC Gods have seen fit to relax their stranglehold on my PC upgrading luck today, and after a BIOS flash, I bumped the default FSB from 1066 right up to 1333, yielding a smooth 3.33ghz setting, up from the default 2.66. Booted right into Windows, temps on each core at 40c .. looking good so far. Goal is to hit 3.6, but I will closely monitor the temps and see what it does at load next

[juneau]

Looking good WT. I can see that little chipset fan being a whiney SOB.

Note to WT : Buy sata cables with 1 90 degree plug like juneau does.

[Trooper110]

Good luck with all the fun WT, I'm sure you'll get it up and moving though

[Rand{CLR}]

Other than still reading the older cores, did you have any problems getting Vista reactivated, and do all your programs still work without reinstall?

-Rand

[WalkinTarget]

Rand ... everything is working fine. Some general oddness with Winamp - I had to change it from what it has defaulted back to - Primary audio output device - to X-Fi audio output, but I remember doing likewise when I first installed the X-Fi, so no issues to report.
I'm still kicking around the idea of an in-place Vista upgrade to Ultimate from my current Business install, but I'd still be limited to max 3gb of RAM due to the 32bit Vista install. I'm showing 3070mb of RAM, so that by far better than my XP rig with 4gb, but showing only 2.25gb !

Ohhh, another update on build #2 ... I was waaay too early in saying the PC Gods were done toying with me !!! That removable tray that I love(d) so much .. welll, I swung it back into place after installing the PSU anndd .. crunchhh .. the big heatsink fan I have banged into the under/backside of the cage that mounts the PSU !!! So I pulled the PSU and FORCED THAT SUCKER INTO PLACE !! *PRIMAL ROAR*
It was only a little .. ermmm ... forceful bending .. and I'll be damned if I would do it the RIGHT way and pull the heatsink !! Ohhh nooo, the right way is rarely WT's way ...

Time to game for a just a bit and see if all the parts stay in place ... if you see me playing and suddenly I bail, you know things went not according to plan.

[juneau]

Time to game for a just a bit and see if all the parts stay in place ... if you see me playing and suddenly I bail, you know things went not according to plan.

LMAO !! Never heard of testing been put that way before.

[WalkinTarget]

That's just the basic stuff ... no Prime95 or Orthos until I let the thermal paste adhere completely. Orthos actually doesn't stress all cores, you have to fiddle with it to set affinity for each core and run four instances of it. I'm not that 'into' finding my max OC, I just want to get it stable and call it a day.
I've been building rigs since 8 AM and it'll be another 3 hours until build #2 is complete, so I am quickly burning out and may go outside and mulch some more.

Max temps at load are 49c, under that 50c that I wanted all along. Its an eye opener seeing how hot these quads get compared to the max 43c of my old dual.

Edit: Bahh, what was I thinking ?? Sunshine and food are for the WEAK !!! I finished building the Raidmax case, so I'll grab lunch and throw an OS on it in the meantime.

[{CLR}geneSW]

Wow, talk about P.C. troubles... Good luck with all of it.

[Donziboy2]

If your looking to stress all four cores try a program called OCCT.

OCCT

[WalkinTarget]

Thx Donzi .. I had downloaded that 2 weeks ago and forgot all about it !
More tweaking to get this box finetuned .. my hassle today is getting Vista SP1 on it. Apparently the two prerequisite patches before beginning the SP1 install were not installing properly.
I was running Vista Business, and with all of the hardware upgrading, decided to make the day even more traumatic and do an upgrade install to Ultimate. That screwed up the Windows Update so I had to delete the SoftwareDistribution folder contents, then manually install both prerequisite patches, THEN load SP1 on.

Stability notes:
Winamp was crashing when I would auto-tag music, so I installed the newest version and that's now fine.
Weird 'hitch' lag in TF2 every minute or so for a second ... ditched the old 163.69 drivers (from Windows Update) and went with the newest WHQL 177.xx drivers.
Speedfan does not report system temps correctly, so I unchecked the monitoring of the 'system' temps, but Speedfan STILL reports its temp in the tray !!

Otherwise, its running fine ... now all I hafta do is save up for that ATI 4870 1gb card that comes out in August .. it shall be mine !!

[juneau]

Grab this WT. Best hardware monitor around.

CPUID

[ChrisWW11]

Grab this WT. Best hardware monitor around.

CPUID

Juneau how do you get it to read the cpu temperature because its only showing me the hard drives and graphics cards temps?

[WalkinTarget]

Just installed it, Juneau. Its reading the same things incorrectly just like Speedfan, ie:

system temp - 83c
+12 rail - 6.58v

Not sure if its a problem with the specific Winbond chip reading, or something peculiar about the eVGA BIOS.

Edit: Posted in the eVGA forums and had this reply already:

The sensors on this board have been screwed up forever. Mods have told us they escalated our problems to techs and nothing gets fixed. I have completely given up on using any monitoring software. Everest comes close on a couple items but on the most part they are way off.

So, I guess I will wait for a BIOS fix for this and ignore the false readings. This does not make the overclocking process any easier, but I am running fine at 3.33, so nothing I do really even makes this chip sweat yet ...

[juneau]

Juneau how do you get it to read the cpu temperature because its only showing me the hard drives and graphics cards temps?

Just installed it, Juneau. Its reading the same things incorrectly just like Speedfan, ie:

system temp - 83c
+12 rail - 6.58v

Not sure if its a problem with the specific Winbond chip reading, or something peculiar about the eVGA BIOS.

No idea guys. Works perfect on both my boards. Maybe they just need to update the app.

Have you tried RealTemp WT? A lot of ppl use it for the wolfdale chips over CoreTemp.