ColdFire's Live Space

Ahh the smell of new silicone, I don’t think it will ever get old.

I had been dying to build a Core i7 900 series system for a while, so as the opportunity has finally arrived I could not help but jump at it.  So first order of business was to decide what parts to keep from my existing system. I had just recently picked up an ATI Radeon 5850, so that would stay, as would my 2 hard drives (a 1Tb for main storage, videos movies etc & a 500Gb for installing games to),  I also opted to keep my LG Lightscribe DVD-RW, it was SATA and has worked without any problems. 

So it came down to figuring out what I wanted for my new build.  I decided I wanted it to have a color theme, I opted for black theme with color accents on parts like Video Card, RAM etc.  I also wanted it to be over clocked.  So I began researching cases, they needed to be black on the inside as well as the outside, which turned out to be more difficult then I had imagined.  I found a few cases that fit the bill.  I would have liked to gone with the Corsair 800D, which is just an awesome case, but I did not want to spend close to $300 on just the case.  I had a budget to work with.  So I opted for the Antec Ninehundred Two.  Next I began to look at motherboards, they needed to be black, preferably without brightly colored slots and have good over clocking capabilities.  I ended up settling on the EVGA X58 SLI LE.  It was black, with black slots, black heat sinks, over clocks well and supports SLI & CrossFire.  For the CPU I chose the Core i7 930, its the newest member of the family, people have had great luck with over clocks and it was under $300.  For memory I wanted at least DDR3-1600 with XMP support, and decided I would pick out the exact one when I got everything else.  I turned to cooling next, obviously that little flimsy heat sink & fan they give you with the CPU was not going to cut it.  While doing some research I found the Corsair H50, its a all in one liquid cooling system, self contained, performs well and was even black.  This was just a win win, and I decided to go with that.  For power I once again turned to Corsair for their 750W PSU, they have a great reputation, and are black!  So with my list in hand I proceded to make the long trip to Fry’s in Sacramento (about 100 miles from my home).  Upon arriving I was able to find all the parts on my list and a great buy on Kingston Hyper-X DDR3 1800MHz with XMP in a triple channel kit.  I even found a new keyboard I liked.  So after procuring my components I headed home, too tired to build the system that night I let it wait till the next morning.

So the next morning I began to assemble the system.  All in all it went very smooth, until I hit one snag.  The case has a mounting bracket for a Fan on a section of the window.  The plastic clips that are used to hold the fan on were conflicting with the placement of the H50 cooler.  I ended up having to unscrew that part of the side panel and remove the window from there, not a big deal but a little annoying.

Got the system completed and up and running.  I found the motherboard BOIS did not recognize the 930 quite right it was treating it like a 920, but a quick update fixed that.  I have to say I really like the Corsiar H50 cooler, right now my CPU is at a cool 23c.  In a few days once the thermal compound has sealed fully i will begin the over clocking. 

Next update - Benchmarks