I've reached the point I can't really hold off on upgrading my computer much longer. I was going to wait for Ivy Bridge. But after recent events forced me to remove my water cooling parts, I found I could no longer run my computer at 3.9GHz anymore and had to drop the CPU speed down. While the air cooling was fine for the CPU, my motherboard was struggling with it's extra voltages.

Also I damaged some of my memory a couple months ago. And Patriot wasn't able to replace it with the same kind. So I have 2x2GB of Patriot DDR2-1000 and 2x2GB of Patriot DDR2-800 memory (they no longer make DDR2-1000). I'm not thrilled about mixing memory, but it does pass MemTest86+ at 900Mhz.

I lost some CPU speed, I got mixed memory, and I'm somewhat feeling a little bit of a CPU bottleneck in a few games. I figure let me just upgrade now.

Current parts:

Intel Q9550 (overclocked to 3.9GHz, now 3.6GHz)
Patriot 4GB DDR2-1000 and 4GB DDR2-800 (at 900MHz 2.1v)
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P

What I've just ordered:

Intel i5-2500K
Corsair 2x4GB DDR3-1600 low profile
ASUS P8Z68-V Gen 3

2500K because I really don't need hyper threading for gaming. And at high overclocks hyper threading may have to be disabled anyway. Also don't want to spend too much if I might be getting an Ivy Bridge replacement in 6 months.

Went with Corsair because it was only $40 and has low profile heat spreaders. Memory sockets looks a bit close to the CPU socket and I don't want something that might block the Hyper 212 EVO cooler I have.

I picked ASUS because their UEFI BIOS is said to be more refined. And it's been quite a while since I had an ASUS motherboard anyway. Also this "Gen 3" board includes PCI-E 3.0 and Ivy Bridge support.


Also, I ordered a third party graphics cooler for one of my 6950s. After I removed the water blocks from both cards. I discovered one of the stock heatsinks would not seat properly. I was thinking about just selling it on eBay real cheap. But changed my mind and decided to get an Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus II. Seems to be a 3 slot cooler, so I should still be able to fit this and my other 6950 on the motherboard, I just won't be able to use my PCI sound card anymore (not a big loss).

Installing the Accelero Xtreme Plus II. Oh m god, what a pain in the ass. And the instructions are just cave man drawings. Arctic Cooling hasn't developed a written language yet I guess.

See what excessive overclocking in high heat environments do to your computers, kiddies!? lol

 

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Hopefully that glue all over my PCB is non conductive.

I'm a bit worried about what the VRM temps will be like, because I had to use the thermal pads for the VRM heatsinks. I just couldn't get the heatsinks to stay in place with the glue.

I have a Core-I7 2600K running at 4.3Ghz with a Corsair H80 self contained water cooling kit and it works great.

I'm home. Got my computer on the floor. About to start tearing into it now to swap out the motherboard, processor, an memory.

You don't realize how much you miss a PS2 port until you don't have one. Ugh.

Windows 7 wants to run a consistency check on my 3TB drive, which will take hours. I can't get past this, because it doesn't recognize my USB keyboard at this point. Legacy keyboard support works during POST, but seems to shut off before Windows loads.

I felt the same way when I realized my new motherboard didn't have an IDE connection for my DVD/RW. Did it still have a floppy drive connection? Yes, yes it did.

Hmm, what make and year is your CMOS code?

Spent about 12 hours yesterday on the computer and pretty much come to the conclusion that the motherboard is defective.

Legacy keyboard support is very hit and miss. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. No real pattern on why it works or doesn't work. It's more a surprise when it does.

If I plug in 6 USB devices, I'll get a "USB over current" error and the computer will shut off. My old motherboard had no problem with any of these devices and the board supports 10 USB devices. Not sure why it fails with only 6 plugged in.

Motherboard sensors are garbage. CPU temp sensor is really low. While my CPU cores are running at 70C, the "CPU" sensor says 50C. This cause the CPU fan to run much slower than it should be. Also I sometimes see a second "CPU" sensor that randomly shows up and when this happens, the CPU fan will drop to minimum speeds, because this second sensor has a temp of 0C.

I can't run Prime95 stability test on this motherboard, because of that rogue 0C CPU temp shows up, my CPU fan will basically almost shut off, and that'll overheat my CPU.

Over 2 or 3 reboots, some of my SATA and USB drives will disappear and then be reinstalled by PnP after I logon to Windows as if they are new hardware.


It just blows my mind how many things are malfunctioning on this motherboard. I debating heading out and getting an MSI Z68 GD65 board from my local Fry's Electronics.