Omnis's X58: Jumped to SSD

Omnis · Jun 5, 2010

Hi guys. Built my PC today. Here are some pictures.

Case came yesterday:

Here's all the stuff that goes inside, minus the newegg bubble-wrapped OEM DVD drive and HDD:

A pic with the mobo on top of its standoffs. I put the Tuniq tower on the board outside of the case. The thermal paste they give you with that thing is like drywall putty. It's so ridiculously viscous. I tried spreading it like the directions recommend, but it just stuck to first the plastic bag pulled around my finger and second the old gameworks card I tried. So after those two fails I just did the standard pea squeeze method and hopefully that stuff spread out enough to seat properly. I found out my mobo has cool led temperature gauges. I don't have any windows on my case, but if it's possible to see a red glow from the front, I'll know the paste is a complete fail and I'll have to steal some of my dad's leftover shin-etsu stuff.

Speaking of the Tuniq tower, here it is in all its schwanz-waving glory:

So after I mounted it to the mobo I had to screw the board into the standoffs. I had to take the top off the case in order to fit my screwdriver in there. It was a real pain in the ass and I just about killed my back hunching over with the screwdriver like that. Then I put the top of the case back on, screwed it in, and went to get my mobo manual to see where each of the front panel connectors are supposed to go. Then I noticed something still in the motherboard box...

I forgot the IO shield plate.

So after another 15 minutes of back torture, the board was in with the shield plate in place. There, I fixed it:

Then I put the PSU and cards in, and hooked it up to the TV and got it to post. Excellent, except it couldn't boot anything of course. Also, why clean up when you can just mosaic?

She lives!

Cable management:

And the final profile before I put the sides back on.

Now I just gotta wait for the monitor. I'll install Win7 Pro tomorrow. Hopefully everything goes smoothly. Also, isn't there a way that I would be able to transfer my windows installation from my platter drive to a SSD if I get one in the future? Do I have to make some kind of boot/rescue disk or whatever?

Max Powers · Jun 5, 2010

I saw this thread title and thought that the McRib sandwich was back at McDonald's...boy was I mistaken.

Omnis · Jun 5, 2010

Max Powers
I saw this thread title and thought that the McRib sandwich was back at McDonald's...boy was I mistaken.

I take it you see what I did there.

nick09 · Jun 5, 2010

So you say you want to make a copy of the OS in the future? Well with a second computer you can make use of a program called Ghost. It makes an entire image of the hard drive and with the second computer you can send that image back to your newer PC to "Copy" the old hard drive to the SSD. Then you can just reformat the hard drive aand use it as extra storage.

NissanSkylineN1 · Jun 5, 2010

Woah wait.. you bought 2 graphics cards? And how much did this all cost?

nick09 · Jun 5, 2010

That second card is just a TV tuner card so you can watch TV on the computer.

Ibonibo · Jun 5, 2010

Max Powers
I saw this thread title and thought that the McRib sandwich was back at McDonald's...boy was I mistaken.

Hahhhahah me too.

If it wouldn´t be soo hot outside i would go eat one now.

Nice Rig BTW

What i7 do you got there??

Nice video card. Surly gonna have fun with it.

Omnis · Jun 5, 2010

NissanSkylineN1
Woah wait.. you bought 2 graphics cards? And how much did this all cost?

It's a TV Tuner card that I got for free. I probably won't use it, but I put it in for when I have to move my good TV out of my room.

The CPU is an i7 930. Hopefully intel makes cheap 6 cores for lga1366 in the future.

Thanks for the heads up about Ghost, nick. I heard about it but wasn't sure what it was. Norton Ghost, right? I was thinking about a Vertex 2, but then I saw this:

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/15584/sandforce_phoenix_specs_found_at_photofast/index.html

520mb/s back and forth hurrrrrr.

ROAD_DOGG33J · Jun 5, 2010

~~You can also clone drives using GParted, which should be found on the Ubuntu live CD among other places.~~

It appears that the drive won't align correctly. Some people online have mentioned something about Diskpart + ImageX so you might want to check that out.

icelt · Jun 6, 2010

Man that case you've got makes for a clean install, kinda jealous

. Also like the perp install orientation for the HDD 👍.

Omnis · Jun 7, 2010

OK, I got windows 7 pro up and running. Just gotta wait for the product key to get here. In the mean time, I'm doing Prime95 torture testing overclocked at 3.9ghz. It's been going for a while and there are no errors to speak of. Not yet anyway. I'm beginning to think that thermal paste that came with the Tuniq Tower is a POS though. My highest core temp is 89 degrees. One more and it sets off the temp alarm I enabled on the mobo. :lol:

I really hope it's the plumbers-putty-like crap they gave me and not the actual cooler.

Terronium-12 · Jun 7, 2010

Omnis
OK, I got windows 7 pro up and running. Just gotta wait for the product key to get here. In the mean time, I'm doing Prime95 torture testing overclocked at 3.9ghz. It's been going for a while and there are no errors to speak of. Not yet anyway. I'm beginning to think that thermal paste that came with the Tuniq Tower is a POS though. My highest core temp is 89 degrees. One more and it sets off the temp alarm I enabled on the mobo. I really hope it's the plumbers-putty-like crap they gave me and not the actual cooler.

The Tuniq Tower can handle it's own, believe me.

Are you using the paste that came with it? If so, I'd suggest using some AS5, or AS Ceramique. Yes, the latter is primarily meant for a water-cooled system but I had some left over from an old setup (which is dead by the way) and it does quite well, it even has the capacity to edge out AS5 after it's settled in.

Omnis · Jun 7, 2010

Yeah, I'm using the stuff that came with it. The putty. It's so thick and sticks to everything but the cpu. I hate it. If I ever have to take off the cooler I'll definitely be putting some shin-etsu next time.

I just got done doing an hour of prime95 at 3.91ghz and memory at 17xxmhz. CPU and memory look good... the only thing I'm concerned with is the peak 92C temp I got on one core. I should at least still be in the 80s... something must be wrong with how that thing is seated or something. I got two cores in the low 80s and two bumping 90 (one of those is the 92).

Next up is furmark for the 480gtx so I can really heat up my room.

cpp214 · Jun 7, 2010

Man, with the Tuniq, your temps should not be getting over 70--75C with Prime 95.
People OC the i7's to 3.91 on the stock cooler and the temps might not even get as high as what you are seeing.

A couple of thoughts: first, the thermal paste that came with the Tuniq is probably junk. I know it's a pain, but I'd think about re-seating it with some Arctic Silver 5. Secondly, you've got a great case, but that Lian-Li is not going to be the best at keeping a high-end system cool. The two fans it has would be more than enough for a dual core OC'd or even a quad at stock speeds, but with an i7 OC'd and the Fermi card, you're gonna be generating a ton of heat. And it's not a full tower either. It's just an average sized mid tower.

And that brings me to the graphics card--even idling, that thing is going to be throwing off some heat. I'm too lazy to look up the benchmarks right now, but I know the Fermi's run hot under load, and I'd be suprised if they idled at much less than 50C. That's gonna throw off a little heat to your CPU as well, maybe only 3 to 5C, but it's gonna make it warmer.

Omnis · Jun 7, 2010

Just finished playing the intro to Just Cause 2. My thoughts? It's hot in here.

icelt · Jun 7, 2010

Omnis
Just finished playing the intro to Just Cause 2. My thoughts? It's hot in here.

Ha

Omnis · Jun 7, 2010

Alright, I scaled back my overclock to about 3.5 GHZ, putting the memory right at the spec 1600 speed. Temperatures are much better now.

I also adjusted the fan profile of my 480gtx with Afterburner. What a difference that made. Now my GPU is at 78 degrees while in Just Cause 2 instead of the 90-ball-sweating-degrees it was before. It's easier to keep something cool than to cool it down. The stock fan profile waits until it hits 90 degrees before it cranks up the wind.

Omnis · Jun 24, 2010

Monitor came in yesterday. Looks like a got a good panel. The only "problem" is the color tinting at extreme angles which is typical of all the panels so far.

Some snapshots:

And what the new desk area looks like with everything finally in place. (Well, except for the stuff frame left)

Omnis · Oct 8, 2011

New SSD is in. But it's not actually "in" yet. I don't have any external drives or anything to dump my HD onto before I clone it. Derp.

Is there a way to get your windows installation and all that jazz onto a 128GB SSD without making such a fuss? My drive right now has about a terabyte of stuff on it, and my "Users" file is about 900-950GB. I didn't make an OS partition or anything-- had I done that I wouldn't be having this problem lol.

Omnis · Oct 9, 2011

Man, that was a royal pain in the ass to get working correctly. The only thing left to do is to wipe and configure my WDC Black as the applications/media drive.

bevo · Oct 9, 2011

About your temps. I built mine a few months back, and my i7 950 was rally hot too. I changed the paste bsfore I ever turned it on, and I was in the 90s with no OC at all. I ended up just going liquid on it and it finally fixed it. Now it idles at 30 and gets a max 79 during stress tests with a 3.8 oc. It seems some of these i7s just run really hot for some reason.

Grayfox · Oct 9, 2011

Omnis
My "Users" file is about 900-950GB.

What on earth do you have stored in the users?

Omnis · Oct 9, 2011

Grayfox
What on earth do you have stored in the users?

users file is where all your My Documents, My Videos, My Pictures, etc. goes. Lots and lots of iPhone videos (lectures) and downloads, if you must know.

Grayfox · Oct 9, 2011

I know what the Users directory is.

But 900GB?

I thought customers were bad with 200GB and wanting us to back it all up.

I would not like to meet a customer that has 900GB of data in their users directory.

bergauk · Oct 9, 2011

Grayfox
I know what the Users directory is.

But 900GB?

I thought customers were bad with 200GB and wanting us to back it all up.

I would not like to meet a customer that has 900GB of data in their users directory.

How bout the guy that has 60+ GB of dirty videos on his laptop that wants you to back it all up?

Omnis · Oct 9, 2011

That's why you stream those sorts of things these days.

I could save a ton of disk space if I converted all of my iPhone videos to H264. That takes forever though. I basically have a whole community college education on disk.

Korza · Oct 9, 2011

122GB is the combined size of the Users folder of 3 users on my family computer, so 900GB is huge!!

Saidur_Ali · Oct 9, 2011

Omnis, you do make sure you backup right? Will you be upgrading to Ivy Bridge next year and also 28nm graphics? Should give a huge performance boost for not much more money.

Omnis · Oct 9, 2011

I don't back up anything. Important stuff goes to the clouds. Everything else can be re-downloaded.

Also, no, I'm not upgrading my computer anymore. Things would have to become radically more advanced to the point where my computer couldn't keep up anymore for me to upgrade.

I'll be getting a new laptop when Ivy Bridge comes out though.

Casio · Oct 9, 2011

I can't recall what size my user's directory is, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was over 1TB.

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