I had all the hardware for my new build in hand by Thursday and got the bits stuck together by Friday night. I used NLite to slipstream SP2 and the Intel SATA drivers onto windows XP and create an ISO that I burnt and installed from. I had some trouble getting the audio drivers to install correctly, I was missing some windows HD audio component. I flailed around enough that I’m not sure what fixed it, but I think automatic updates may have eventually installed the hotfix I needed.
I’m happy with the case, it’s easy to work in and very quiet. The board was also nice to work with. The asus q-connector (about halfway down the page here) is a small touch that made the build process much easier.
I did get a substantial (at least to me) overclock out of the rig as well. I’m running 3.0Ghz (9*333) with a 4:5 memory ratio for 833. It survived a dual-prime95 run overnight with no errors, and core temps somewhere between 65 and 70C. I was able to boot and run prime without errors at 3.3 (9*366) and the same memory ratio (900Mhz), but my core temps were pushing to 80C and above, and I think it eventually throttled. I’m pretty sure it could be stable at 3.3 with better cooling. I tried 3.6Ghz (9*400) with RAM at 1000Mhz just for kicks. It booted but prime95 failed immediately. The C2D OC thread in the forums was helpful.
I made some progress on jazz last weekend. The code was in better shape than I expected, and only required minor tweaks to compile (and link even). I scrapped a non-functional build system based on autoconf and automake and replaced it with a static Makefile. Once I get it completely functional we should be ready to move to some faster servers in pretty short order.
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