Also see this forum thread on the motherboard:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=123227

Most of it is "Greek to me" but I am thinking about the RAM voltage: 2.1V I see from Corsair (I think)

The last board I was thinking off required an initial boot with 1.9V RAM. It was said that after booting with 1.9V then you could change the BIOS to take higher voltages.

Is this an issue with this current board?

This was a comment from a Newegg buyer:

Other Thoughts: In M2N-SLI Deluxe, this had to be manually set to 1.9v 5-5-5-12 AND 2T. 1T renders the system unable to boot. Non hard set 5-5-5-12 (auto) comes up with 5-5-5-18 and system boots but is unstable. At anything other than 1.9v the system is also unstable. Now, having all this set correctly... seems to work great. Just putting this info out there if someone needs it. Cheers

...

Originally Posted by jephree

Motherboard

ASUS P5N32-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131073

The issues with it are if you're overlocking high and you have IDE drives. They are supposed to then be unstable. The other isues are that the Phoenix-AWARD BIOS "may" not be set correctly for 2 voltages - the southbridge and the 1.2vHT. Its only happened once as far as I've seen, but if it happens a manual change to 1.20v (1.2vHT) and 1.50v (southbridge) corrects it all.

CPU

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Kentsfield 2.66GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115011

Ovelocked stable to 4.5GHz per core in air!! (haven't tried anymore)

GPU

2x(SLi) XFX PVT80FSHD9 GeForce 8800GTX 768MB 384-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 XXX Version HDCP
Video Cards

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150214

The best out there ATM. GPU's are upgraded very quickly though. I can expect a few better than that to be released in and after May, esp by ATI.

RAM

2x(4GB) CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145590

RAM is an iffy game. There are new major releases every other 2 weeks. However, I think your mobo allowing 1333FSB is enough for all the future upgrading yet. I found a better stick of RAM at Newegg but I don't think its compatible with your mobo:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220161

PSU

ENERMAX GALAXY EGA1000EWL-DXX ATX / BTX 1000W Gamers Edition Power Supply

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817194016

Can't beat it! Excellent reviews all round.

Case

Thermaltake Armor Series VA8003BWS Black Full Tower Case w/ 25CM Fan

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811133021

Wow, now thats nice.

Cooling

ZALMAN RESERATOR 1 Plus Fanless Water Cooling System

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835118120

That is the core setup as of now.

Will do you perfect for even overlocking. Remember, most of the people on the site (xtremesystems) were overlocking a Conroe Dual Core and RAM with standard fans all the way up to 3.67GHz and DDR2-1333 which is PC2-10664

With the monitor and keyboard/mouse and all the drives (2DVD)(floppy)(multi-card reader)(4x 500gb Maxtor SATA II) the present cart is about $7,000 USD (delivered).

Talk about $$$$$ in the eye balls.

Oh BTW, an addition I made in September was a Blu Ray Recorder... and LG one that I was given for free by their company execs (friends) as gift but a scandal broke out where 9 of them had been missing suddenly and though it had nothing to do with me and I was all clear, I decided to pay for mine anyway To make up some of their losses.

They work fab! With your recent endeavors and I can already see that you've got a new hobby of Videoing coming on now (I do that too and photography - time dependent tho) it would be an excellent addition.. although yet again pricey.

Plus $250 more if I get Vista Ultimate upgrade for it. I am assuming I can use any previous Microsoft CD to qualify for the upgrade version? This was the case with XP upgrade versions.

As long as you have a CD yes. You mean the XP CD right?

I guess that is my last dilemma. I want to leave my current XP on this computer so it is either buy another XP or Vista. I hate the Vista restrictions but if I buy another XP it will be the 64 bit edition.

Just curious what you think of Xandros Desktop OS Version 3 Business Edition
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16832106511

I also use Ubuntu but it lacks a lot of what I've come to expect from XP.

Personally jephree I've never used it. I've seen it running 3-4 times and read a little on it but thats it. As far as I heard, it was one of the best paid-unpaid ones out there. Its Windows compatible and allows Win software to run on there as well as read/write to it. It also does your partitioning and dual booting automatically. I'm not fond of KDE it uses but still it actually competes very well with Win in comparison to other distro's. It include some top notch software right out of the box including Star Office and an Anti-virus.
Here's an old review link I had in my bookmarks since March 2006:
http://www.xyzcomputing.com/index.ph...sk=view&id=382

In terms of Linux I've ran and tested Edgy Eft, Kubuntu, openSUSE, Dapper Drake, Edubuntu, KNOPPIX, Xubuntu, Red Hat, Gentoox, Vine, Fedora Core, Zenwalk, MEPIS, PCLinuxOS and Slackware. Basically the one I decided to keep as main one was Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft. At one time I had 8 dual booted on one drive. Now I have 4.

I have very little time to play about so I just do side things pretty quickly and leave them a little late.

Originally Posted by jephree

Also see this forum thread on the motherboard:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=123227

Most of it is "Greek to me" but I am thinking about the RAM voltage: 2.1V I see from Corsair (I think)

The last board I was thinking off required an initial boot with 1.9V RAM. It was said that after booting with 1.9V then you could change the BIOS to take higher voltages.

Is this an issue with this current board?

Basically the board is highly overlockable and accepts a massive range of voltages. It will accept the 1.9V needed for your DIMM modules and all the way up to 3.5V easily, which are needed if you OC the RAM. If you OC'd it, you'd increase the voltage, the cooling and the FSB. So you'd get more than the 6400 bandwidth. You could take it all the way up to 9000GB/s (or more) while its yet at 6400GB/s with a Dual Core E6300 1.8GHz on there. On the site the fella was overlocking this CPU to 3.67GHz for his testing with standard cooling and fans and running the RAM upto DDR2-1333!! Thats why the errors can occur when increasing voltage. Lower base voltage is always better for your system as it allows high overlockability and stability you see. Your motherboard is perfectly suited to this RAM because your mobo loves to run RAM at 1.9v default while your RAM is also set to run at 1.9v

In any case, those guys are actually talking very nitty gritty and zehr hardcore. :P You can expect that there is no single board that they haven't found faults with .. and as you'll see, this particular mobo the tester loves but for its vcore drops and this was also back in November.

Ill quote the early confusion:

on my P5B Deluxe, I use to need 2.8 volts to run 1200 mhz stable with my Mushkin PC6400, cas 5-4-4-12. (i.e. DDR2-1200)

on the Asus 680i, I am doing the same thing... at 2.45 volts now.

I was getting weird results, cause I was bumping the volts to 2.65 volts and it was almost stable, then 2.75 and it became even more unstable... then 2.8 and it got even worse.

so I, for the hell of went the opposite way... and just set 2.4 volts in bios (which cause of the overvolt, gets 2.45 volts real)

so far, this board has a huge learning curve, but the results are very good.

That is actually very very good

oh my god...
you guys arent gonna believe this.
its now running 1300 mhz cas 5-4-4-12, TRC 6, at 2.45 volts.

!!!!

1333 mhz is the top I got.
unstable.
cas 5-4-4-12, 2.45 volts.
gonna try cas 5-5-5-15 see if 1333 mhz can get stabilized.

This is what you call high end OC'ing. Which bears no resemblance to the average or higher than average user.

This was a comment from a Newegg buyer:

In M2N-SLI Deluxe, this had to be manually set to 1.9v 5-5-5-12 AND 2T. 1T renders the system unable to boot. Non hard set 5-5-5-12 (auto) comes up with 5-5-5-18 and system boots but is unstable. At anything other than 1.9v the system is also unstable. Now, having all this set correctly... seems to work great. Just putting this info out there if someone needs it.

Well it seems like an odd occurence as other users such as in the OCing link was running 1.9v 5-5-5-4-12 pretty perfectly. That depends entirely on what RAM the above reviewer had.

To summarize from an extreme overlockers VP:

Asus 680i Pros: (non Striker board)

Great Vdimm option.

All voltages except Vcore Overvolt, so you get alittle more voltage when you need it, which is better then undervolting as far as I am concerned.
Great Memory Overclocking options and stability. Far Higher then the P5B Deluxe, and the P5WDH isnt even a comparison for this board when it comes to Memory Overclocks.

Certainly capable of 500+ FSB's.

Great Stability.

Great Ability to recover from a failed OC, about 90% of the time you can recover from a failed OC just by resetting and waiting a few seconds.
sometimes you can recover by powering down and powering up.
rarely you will still have to clear the CMOS though.

Cas Latencies all go as low as 1, so theres no limit on how much you can tweak your latency.

1T is very OC friendly on this board.

1200 mhz is very easy with this board.

Asus 680i Cons:

Horrible Vcore options. 1.6 max from bios gets you 1.47 volts tops. Needs a Vcore Mod Real badly.

Chipset voltages go all the way to 2.75 volts, but nothing above 1.6 volts will boot.

high learning curve will definatly get alot of people posting "my board cant do 500 FSB"... not cause the board can't, but cause they dont take the time to figure out the board. it's definatly a board for the advanced types.

runs VERY HOT. Fans are a must. chipset seriously burned me when I touched it. not just warm, painful burned me. This board absolutly needs better cooling, and I now see why theres all them heatpipes on the striker extreme, 100% absolutly needs better cooling for the NB and PWM's.

Very High Price...

Originally Posted by page 3

I've tested every inch of this board that I could to find any bug I could, and the results are predictable, repeatable, and stable.

1300 + appears to be really really easy with this board, if you have some high quality ram for it.

The RAM you are planning to buy jephree, is known as the top dog; about 5 places above (if not more now) the RAM module he was testing with.

Its all OC related "wishful" negatives. They want better BIOS options for OC'ing. Also to note that a lto fo computer sensing software doesn't working (or not accurately) with it such as EVEREST. New chipset you see and if you contact the developers and they will incorporate it into the next release gladly You have nothing to worry about and much less than you would with any other system.

In the end anything can happen, I mean many boards are even faulty when you buy them etc... but according to general users the board, RAM and whole set is premium pro class. For this reason its more complicated than lower models too.


Any questions please let me know and I'll try helping where I can

BTW you can clone your current HDD onto another HDD and have a perfect backup aswell as a perfect computer up and running - fully legal.

I cannot express my gratitude to the time and effort you've taken here.

Not only am I learning a lot but you are helping me build this beast!

I am about ready to hit BUY. Just still thinking about the OS.

This is the first I've heard of Blu Ray recorders. These are what Newegg has:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...corder&Ntk=all

What exactly is the difference between this and DVD? I know I should look it up and I will. I am getting lazy here with your wonderful replies!

Blu-ray recorders

As more and more people upgrade to HDTV to enjoy the benefits of digital television (DTV), the need for recording high definition content will rise. Blu-ray was designed with this in mind and uses the same MPEG-2 compression standard as DTV, so it is highly compatible with the global standard for digital broadcasting. To handle the increased amount of data required for high-definition video, Blu-ray employs a 36Mbps data transfer rate, which is more than enough to record and playback digital high-definition broadcasts while maintaining the original picture quality. In addition, by fully utilizing an optical disc's random accessing features, it's possible to playback pre-recorded video on a disc while simultaneously recording high-definition video being broadcast on TV.

Perhaps this one?

PHILIPS Black 12X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 4X DVD+R DL 12X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 2X BD-ROM 12X DVD-ROM 32X CD-R 24X CD-RW 32X CD-ROM SATA Blu-ray DVD Burner

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827248005

As to the In$ane dollar$ I am being repaid an old debt. Rather than ca$h I was offered this purchase.

Well, I first heard of Blu Ray technology in 2001. Heard bits here and there even saw glimpses and a proto model in 2003. By 2004 I had bought one for $4k from Asia but it could only read BD, HD-DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW. I ended up selling it for $8k to an EU fella as they're double the price in EU. The main thing I as well as many needed (especially in multimedia, business and IT departments) it for is storing data; as backup over night or some holidays or storing/transferring large amounts data quickly with ease on a 120mm what looks like a DVD. All business departments are now using it to store server data on rather than having it crash and loose everything.
Blu Ray technology functions in the 405nm spectrum of light, so it uses the blue laser rather than the red that DVD uses. Due to the smaller wavlength of light used more quantity is able to be cramped into the same size. The maximum capacity of a one-side one-layer blu-ray disc is 33 GB (25GB normal) against 4.7 GB of DVD-ROM. 50 GB is the capacity for dual layered blu-ray discs. HDTV content with maximum 72Mbit/s (9MB/s is 2x) stream rate is what excels BD technology over any other with its HD content capability aswell, allowing it to record 9 hours of HD video content on a dual layered disc. At 2x it can burn 25GB in one hour at max.

The transfer, read/write rates on these drives are the fastest you can imagine - better than any other out there. In 2nd Qrtr 2006 a few manufacturers released the BD drives in PC's (such as Sony) and some that can read/write single and dual layer discs.

Nowadays the players cost $400-$2000 and most top end laptop Viao's come with them already in and the PS3 can play BD media. Here's some players: http://www.blu-ray.com/players/

BD-R's are different. Some can play dual layered but many can only play single layer. Some cannot record dual layer but only single layer BD's. These are usually hidden notes in the tiny print. Here's a list of good recorders: http://www.blu-ray.com/recorders/

From Newegg listings; this drive was released late December but although it features fast read/write speeds and SATA interface, it cannot record dual layer, which is soon to be released globally and will be the major hype in this market.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106037

Here's a little comparison table and read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc

Panasonic and BenQ have a Blu-ray Drive made for internal PC closure that I'm pretty sure can record and write to single and dual layer BD's.
I think this is one of the drives:
http://panasonic.co.jp/corp/news/off...n060421-5.html
Here's more very good ones you can purchase:
http://www.blurayseller.com/bddrives.html

As for OS.. well thats kinda entirely your choice. TBH I don't think there is a direct competitor to Windows yet. Linspire aka Lindows is supposed to be very near as is Xandros. They actually mimic Windows 9x but Xandros is more professional whereas Linspire has many other great features and a totally Windows like API so you will see many aspects being exactly the same. You can just clone your present OS onto another HDD to be fully bootable and working drive -- as perfect as anything and dual boot with a Linux or Vista installation if you want


Hope that clears something out and you're very welcome

Thanks again! I just ordered the pieces of the beast to be. Will photograph and document the process of building and testing and post ASAP. Looking forward to it!

As to the OS I finally went for XP Pro 64 bit.

Sorry I'm very short of time and some family issues here.

Anyway that'll be very nice to know and see jephree!

All the composition and final product as well as first thoughts. Let alone the testing stage. It'd be interesting to benchmark the system i.e. memory bandwidth.

Thanks

Kazna3, you have become a very valuable member of this forum. Your time is truly valued here but we all understand that we have lives that take precedent. Hope you and your's are well!

..................

Well nothing ever goes easy for me (especially buying stuff)

Long story short I was having so many problems ordering with Newegg that I went back to the original retailer. All the pieces remain the same except the motherboard and RAM. I hope I didn't waste all our efforts and had to settle on a lesser product but I reached my breaking point and took what I could get.

So this is the motherboard:

http://www.xpcgear.com/evganforce680i.html

eVGA nForce 680i SLi 122-CK-NF68 Core 2 QUAD 1333MHz FSB Dual Channel DDR2 800 LGA775 Socket 775/T ATX Motherboard w/ SLi Ready 2x PCI Express x16, Overclocking Extreme, Audio, Dual GB LAN, SATA 3G/II, RAID, USB 2.0, Firewire 1394

And the RAM:

2x Kingston KHX6400D2K2/2G DDR2 800 PC2-6400 2GB HyperX Memory Kit CL5 HyperX DIMM PC Memory RAM

http://www.xpcgear.com/khx6400d2k2g.html

The rest remains as last noted and I should have it in a week.

It's alive!



Took like 30 hours to get all the pieces together.

Then the moment to push the button!

No go.

The PSU has a beep code system and I had to unplug the AUX PCI_E plug from the motherboard as I had already independently powered the two 8800's with two 4x4 leads each direct from the PSU.

Then it woke up but no display.

I removed the SLI bridge then it lived!

If I am correct I need to install XP and the motherboard drivers before I can run the cards in SLI.

Anyway it works and I just share my relief and joy!

Never thought a BIOS Setup screen could be so beautiful! Will post more soon.

Well done Jephree - very nice!