SBE time ...or "I'm building it at last"

[gbcrush]

It seemed a little quiet here over in SBA land, so I thought I'd pour a little life into the forum by saying...

YAY! I finally pulled the trigger. All necessary parts for my new build are now in flight (figuratively) and on their way over.


I'm sure many a gerbil here understands that mix of joy and anticipation when you've finally committed to a build and you're waiting for everything to come in. Thanks to some good advice from these parts, I just kept waiting. Mostly. For a year! I was originally tempted to build sandy bridge, but that turned into SB-E, which turned into "wait for the new GPUs to come out", which turned into "wait for ivy". Well, I was waiting so long that I started leaning towards a nice fat SB-E build (I've been fortunate, and being able to sock extra cash away for an additional year tends to make build ambitions grow), and now it seems recent rumors and leaks were enough just enough to tip me over the edge more definitively in favor of SB-E.

Bottom line: If I'm wrong, and I build an SB-E rig when IB turns out all right after all, I would still be happy. If Ivy turns out to need a bit of work, I would have ended up building SB-E anyways. That put it all in perspective, so I bought.


Also, the wife has asked to help me build the rig. Yay! I actually asked her last time (or was it the time before last) if she wanted to help me put together a computer. She said yes...and then fell asleep before I could start because it was late. In my geeky impatience, I ended up putting like 96.7% of the PC together that night while she dozed.

This time, though, since my current PC is still happily functional, I can take the time to put the new rig together with her, on the weird islands of time that work for both of our schedules I'm guessing it might mean that I can also take the time to do some proper new-build bake in, and testing instead of going full-bore "ZOMG GOTTA USE IT NOW". Maybe. So:

Question #1: Do you guys have any favorite tests, benchmarks, rituals you like to do with a brand new build? I always run a good long session of Memtest, but beyond that, do you have any suggestions?

Question #2: In the year+ of collecting parts, I have ended up with three (3) 6Gbps SSD drives, and only two intel blessed 6Gbps ports to run them on. You can chide me for having more money than sense in this case, sure, but things are what they are. What would you do?

1. Run the 3rd SSD on a 3Gbps port
2. Enable the 3rd-party Auxilary 6Gbps ports and take a performance (stability?) hit on one of the SSDs
3. Save the 3rd SSD for the inevitable (and upcoming) HTPC refresh build
4. Save a 3rd SSD as a spare, ready to go (like one does with mechanical HDDs).

I'm kind of leaning towards some combination of 3 and 4 myself, but as always, advice from my fellow gerbils is appreciated.

[JohnC]

Question #1: Do you guys have any favorite tests, benchmarks, rituals you like to do with a brand new build?

Well, some people like sacrificing animals/virgins, some people sprinkle their first build with Holy Water, I personally prefer Shamans to perform their "protection" rituals before powering new system on:

Question #2: In the year+ of collecting parts, I have ended up with three (3) 6Gbps SSD drives, and only two intel blessed 6Gbps ports to run them on. You can chide me for having more money than sense in this case, sure, but things are what they are. What would you do?

1. Run the 3rd SSD on a 3Gbps port
2. Enable the 3rd-party Auxilary 6Gbps ports and take a performance (stability?) hit on one of the SSDs
3. Save the 3rd SSD for the inevitable (and upcoming) HTPC refresh build
4. Save a 3rd SSD as a spare, ready to go (like one does with mechanical HDDs).

I'm kind of leaning towards some combination of 3 and 4 myself, but as always, advice from my fellow gerbils is appreciated.

I'd use it as a spare... Or save it for a future laptop purchase or something like that.

[vargis14]

Well i do not know what SB-e motherboard you purchased but i thought most of them had more then the 2 intel provided 6gb,perhaps a asmedia chip or something in that nature just like non intel usb3 and esata ports.But i think 2 SSDs are plenty.
You and your mate enjoy your build!!! If she falls asleep a cold splash of water will wake her imm sure,just make sure it does not splash on your new toy:)
And do yourself a favor....don't just let her watch you do everything.....but i do recommend you install the cpu.Would not want her to bend any pins on the MB.
Wish my wife would have helped but its not her cup of tea,Plus i tend to get a bit snippy when she does not follow simple instructions,so she has learned to refill my drink,put my dinner off until i am finished and stay out of the way.But it is fun sitting indian style with computer parts surrounding you until they are all gone and you finally push that power button.
Does your wife play games also?Mine is limited to lame stuff like solitaire and ipad/iphone idraw and such....i draw is not too bad but my big fingers dont work well on my iphone,though i do draw complicated stuff for the wife on her ipad here and there.Once i get my own ipad i will play with her.

[gbcrush]

Well, some people like sacrificing animals/virgins, some people sprinkle their first build with Holy Water, I personally prefer Shamans to perform their "protection" rituals before powering new system on.

It's not my first build by any means, but along those lines, I've never really considered a full build complete unless I've shed a little blood trying to put it all together.

Then again, this would be my wife's first build. I wonder if I can get her to juggle the heatsink a little bit.

[frumper15]

Is your intention to RAID the SSDs? What make/model are they? I would start with a single SSD running on the Intel port, but make sure you have the ports set to RAID mode before you install Windows. I'm assuming the 6Gbps ports will have the same/similar options as the 3Gbps ports I have on my board. If you're looking for maximum stability from the beginning I would start with a single drive and if everything checks out with the rest of the hardware you can use the intel software to migrate to a RAID0 array. I don't know how the faster ports integrate with the rest of the Intel software, but you could theoretically migrate to a RAID5 array of 3 SSDs if you wanted to, but I don't think you'll want to have a mismatch between the 6gbps and 3gbps ports. I think the best use would be to put a 3rd ssd in another machine that doesn't have one (like your existing machine) but if you have the freedom to goof around for a while, why not try some fun combinations? That's why we do this, right? For fun!

[Chrispy_]

ebay the two smaller SSD's (they still go for a good price) and buy a single drive of the combined capacity.

[gbcrush]

Well i do not know what SB-e motherboard you purchased but i thought most of them had more then the 2 intel provided 6gb,perhaps a asmedia chip or something in that nature just like non intel usb3 and esata ports.But i think 2 SSDs are plenty.
You and your mate enjoy your build!!! If she falls asleep a cold splash of water will wake her imm sure,just make sure it does not splash on your new toy:)
And do yourself a favor....don't just let her watch you do everything.....but i do recommend you install the cpu.Would not want her to bend any pins on the MB.
Wish my wife would have helped but its not her cup of tea,Plus i tend to get a bit snippy when she does not follow simple instructions,so she has learned to refill my drink,put my dinner off until i am finished and stay out of the way.But it is fun sitting indian style with computer parts surrounding you until they are all gone and you finally push that power button.
Does your wife play games also?Mine is limited to lame stuff like solitaire and ipad/iphone idraw and such....i draw is not too bad but my big fingers dont work well on my iphone,though i do draw complicated stuff for the wife on her ipad here and there.Once i get my own ipad i will play with her.

I think my wife has normally stayed just a bit out of the way when I tinker with something (though she's often asked if I needed help once the cursing starts. I want to get her involved though as she likes putting things together (she has a degree in technical theater, and therefore is the one in the house that likes to drill things, install nights and stuffs).

As for playing games, she does. I told her before I probably wouldn't have asked her to marry me if she couldn't share in my love of games. Game time for us in on the console though, as we find big-screen shoulder-to-shoulder game play tends to work best for us, not to mention she does better with the 3rd person camera style of things.

[gbcrush]

Is your intention to RAID the SSDs? ... I think the best use would be to put a 3rd ssd in another machine that doesn't have one (like your existing machine) but if you have the freedom to goof around for a while, why not try some fun combinations? That's why we do this, right? For fun!

I've got a 120GB Intel 510 I picked up last year (kind of cheapish) when I originally planned to build.

I was shooting for a 512GB Samsung 830 just a few weeks ago when they were nice and fairly discounted on Newegg. I saw them on coupon sale beyond the discount and work, and made the mistake of waiting till that night to try and buy. Lo and behold, the went back up to "beyond full price". Heh.

Then, a few weeks ago, I saw the 256 830s on sale for 299, realized it two of them were cheaper than the 512 model even when it was on sale and said "Great, I'll take two and make one volume out of it" forgetting that I only had 2 native 6gbps ports. Lesson to self: dont shop newegg late at night when my inhibitions are lowered.


I was thinking one volume JBOD style, or maybe with the second drive mounted as a folder in the first drive (as opposed to its own volume), or some voodoo like that. And you know what, I may still be crazy and try something like that, even on the secondary 6gbps ports. Just to see what happens. Just because...like you said... we do this for fun. Amen.

[gbcrush]

The case arrived yesterday. One day early. Go Amazon!



This thing is huge. I mean I thought the box for the P183 was obscenely large, but this one has a whole head above it (at least, as far as case boxes go).



And just for comparison's sake, I did a little line up of case boxes, with my "otherbrand" Matrix Case that I did for my second full build. That's a "normal" mid-tower size apparently.


I'm currently wiping the drives and tearing the PC apart in that last case. Now that I've more experience under my belt I can clearly say that the case wasn't grand, but I was awfully fond of the P4 Northwood in that one, 2.4 Ghz OCed to 3.0 as easy as sneezing. *Sniffs*

[Forge]

Use the two Samsungs, sell me the 510.

Grats on the build. I'll be comparing to yours in a few months when I do the same things.

FWIW, it looks like SBE is not getting any meaningful updates soon. Latest leaked Intel roadmap shows nothing but SBE speed bumps till mid-2013, so Intel must know something about IB that we don't, that doesn't make IBE a good fit. LGA2011 is go!

[gbcrush]

FWIW, it looks like SBE is not getting any meaningful updates soon. Latest leaked Intel roadmap shows nothing but SBE speed bumps till mid-2013, so Intel must know something about IB that we don't, that doesn't make IBE a good fit. LGA2011 is go!

That was my line of thinking. If IB is trouble, why bring that on myself. Where as, if SBE is going to be stable for a year+ into the future I don't have to feel obsoleted quite as fast.

As for selling you that 510, I just might. Give me a few days to mull it over then bug me in PM or something.

[gbcrush]

Rest of the parts came in. Here are the parts, from last year up to today.

[Forge]

Rest of the parts came in. Here are the parts, from last year up to today.

I'll take it. You can box it up and I'll come by to pick it up.

Seriously, though, congrats. I envy you a bit, and should be following suit in a few months.

[shaq_mobile]

Grats man! Looks like fun.

Haha, I should show you guys the next build I do, if I ever get around to one. You'll probably throw up. I do some ghetto stuff. People i met at lan parties years ago still come up to me and talk about my computers. I try to avoid buying new cases if i can help it, so i usually just find one sitting around and use that.

Anyways, looks like a beauty!

[Forge]

Rest of the parts came in. Here are the parts, from last year up to today.

Hey, nice mouse. I was just re-looking-at the picture and noticed it. That's the RAT7, right? I just got one of those a few weeks back, love mine. It works ~85-90% without software loaded, and the software is fairly inobtrusive and light, which are big prerequisites for me. I moved all the adjustable bits to the largest/widest settings, removed all auxiliary weights, and it's still a little smaller than I'd like. The many tiny teflon feet look like they'll be a PITA to replace, too, but these are small things when a mouse is so close to perfect.

Edit: Also, massive, mega, huge, gargantuan kudos to Mad Catz for making the drivers and software available as independant downloads. ALL mice should be this way.

[gbcrush]

. People i met at lan parties years ago still come up to me and talk about my computers. I try to avoid buying new cases if i can help it, so i usually just find one sitting around and use that.

Anyways, looks like a beauty!

What counts as ghetto stuff? Now I'm intrigued.

Gerbil puke doesnt take up a lot of space. Go ahead and show us next time you build

[gbcrush]

Hey, nice mouse. I was just re-looking-at the picture and noticed it. That's the RAT7, right? I just got one of those a few weeks back, love mine. It works ~85-90% without software loaded, and the software is fairly inobtrusive and light, which are big prerequisites for me. I moved all the adjustable bits to the largest/widest settings, removed all auxiliary weights, and it's still a little smaller than I'd like. The many tiny teflon feet look like they'll be a PITA to replace, too, but these are small things when a mouse is so close to perfect.

Edit: Also, massive, mega, huge, gargantuan kudos to Mad Catz for making the drivers and software available as independant downloads. ALL mice should be this way.

Yep. RAT7. Have heard a ton of good things about this. Read a Maximum PC article on it (I think), and Geoff did a little review here, both instrumental in putting this on my want list for a while. Funny, like the FT02, the price of the unit has held pretty steady over the past few years. I suppose that's another good sign.

Glad to hear you like it--I know some people don't, but between the looks, the customization to fit your palm, and they layout (thumb wheel? sold), I figured I wanted to give it a spin. Here's hoping I like it as much as you do!

[gbcrush]

Grumpy time!

Well, not really. Started the build last night. Wife got involved for the first part, but fatigue set in for her because we were sitting and assembling on the floor (lots of back bending and twisting). I managed to "finish" the build a bit last night (was just going to put it together well enough to test, but the fool in me insisted on making a good attempt at cable management, etc).

3 sticks of ram show up, instead of four. BIOS says Slot b1 is "abnormal." Well, crap. After reaching and scraping and trying to unseat the RAM and re-seat it, I finally gave in, realized there was no room to reach around things because the cooler is so big. I remove the heat sink, re-shuffle the RAM into different slots and...

viola. SLOT b1 still abnormal. Looks like I've got a mobo with a bad DIMM slot. Newegg is processing my RMA now. I suppose I did say I could try to be patient and take my time with this build right? Here's to another few more days.

[Forge]

Thoroughly inspect the CPU socket before sending it back, then take a bunch of pictures. With LGA CPUs with the memory controller on the CPU, funky memory slots come from bent socket pins about 8/10 to 9/10 of the time.

If you're lucky, have a genuinely bad board and pristine pins, you'll want to document that, as I've heard bad things about newegg RMAs starting with no bent pins, getting rejected and returned because they have bent pins. On return receipt, sure enough, tons of bent pins that weren't there when you shipped.

[gbcrush]

If you're lucky, have a genuinely bad board and pristine pins, you'll want to document that, as I've heard bad things about newegg RMAs starting with no bent pins, getting rejected and returned because they have bent pins. On return receipt, sure enough, tons of bent pins that weren't there when you shipped.

Oh, that's a good one. Thanks for the advice.

[gbcrush]

Forge: Thanks for the heads up on the pins. As I was doing some more testing last night, I decided to take a look at the socket. After lifting the CPU out, what do I notice?

1. In the middle of a field of pins, there's a slight variation in the pattern, especially if I move my head so that the angle of the light changes.

2. The pins are so small, close together, and shiny that I cant tell for certain if these are bent pins or not! (its time to go to my eye doctor anyways)!

That's a little bit of self-deprecating humor to lighten the sinking in my heart when I noticed what might be bent pins. I expressed my concern to my wife who was able to identify the region I was talking about without having seen the socket at all yesterday. I asked her how and she said "I saw it on sunday, when you were putting the CPU in."

Oh.

So, apparently, my wife (who is way more observant than me on fine detail) noticed that the socked had been like this coming out of the package. She was sorry she hadn't said anything because as a building novice, she thought that might have been by design. Ha! There's nothing to be sorry about, it wasn't her fault...and now, possibly, it wasn't mine.

But the pins are bent, and that's the way it is. Quite likely causing the memory error like Forge said. Anyways, I did the only thing I could actually be comfortable doing. I contacted newegg this morning and sent them a customer service email, asking them to amend my RMA, letting them know that the socket has damaged pins and that I had reason to believe it shipped to me that way.

We'll see what happens. Meanwhile, I've learned a very important (and potentially expensive) lesson. With something as complex and fragile as an LGA 2011, I'm going to be documenting the opening of the socket on the next motherboard I get. Yikes!

[Arclight]

Rest of the parts came in. Here are the parts, from last year up to today.

I have the weirdest boner after seeing that pic.

[Left_SHifted]

Well, some people like sacrificing animals/virgins, some people sprinkle their first build with Holy Water, I personally prefer Shamans to perform their "protection" rituals before powering new system on.

It's not my first build by any means, but along those lines, I've never really considered a full build complete unless I've shed a little blood trying to put it all together.

Then again, this would be my wife's first build. I wonder if I can get her to juggle the heatsink a little bit.

'Grats on the new build, sorry about the RMA, you should take your initiation rituals more seriously next time

Might I suggest a little sacrifice to the gods of Intel, I like to do a little thing where I fling a little sand (which represents the point of origin of silicon ) out my window with a wish and a prayer before first boot

[gbcrush]

Woah. I missed that there were a few more replies here. Thanks folks.

I guess today is "Wooh, part 2". Last week my motherboard was accepted finally accepted by NewEgg and my replacement should be arriving at my door today. So Wooh!

Also, of all the accessory pieces to include back in the box, how could I forget the largest one, the I/O shield??

...

Anyways, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'm hoping (maybe if I'm crazy) to get through some RAM testing tonight and maybe start OS install for some burn-in tests. That of course leads me to my next question:

What settings do I want for using an SSD again?

I seem to recall Win7 should automatically disable unneeded features (such as defrag, and something else), right? What about at the BIOS level. I want this puppy in AHCI mode? GPT is a manufacturer option, so there's nothing for me to configure there, right? And what sort of byte sector do I want to go with if I get the option? 4K, or that just for larger drives?


Thanks gerbils.

[gbcrush]

Well, isn't that ironic? I go from 12 out of 16 GB of RAM to.... 12 out of 16 GB of RAM.

Got the board in yesterday, everything looked good. No bent pins, and all four memory channels recognized and saying "OK" with my RAM in it.

But Memtest found errors with one of the sticks. BAH! (It didnt seem to do that last time, so I guess I have a little more digging to do tonight). Looks like its RMA time again. Fortunately memory is cheaper and newegg has been throwing a ton of coupons my way, so I'm not waiting another month to complete my build

Also, my fan controller went to pot it seems.

Annoying as that is, I'm very glad it was the FC and not the fans. And since ASUS boards have like a bajizillion well regulated fan headers, I ended up hooking the fans straight to that. Not only was the rewiring easier and tidier than I expected, the defauly fan profile in EFI actually kept the fans fairly quiet. +3 to Morale on that one.


Seriously, I should have thrown some sand out the window or door before getting started yesterday.