joeymac33

An Eagle Talon is an American made mitsubishi eclipse. Eagle Talon = Mitsubishi Eclipse = Plymouth Laser... same car, same parts, different brands. DSM made the eagle brand (Diamond Star Motors... Diamond as in the mitsubishi logo and star as in the chrysler logo) If you look at the front quarter panel right behind the front wheel is a Chrysler logo. But if you pop the hood: there a Mitsubishi 4G63 Turbo.

My daily driver. '92 TSI AWD (<45k miles)

Well, it's pretty much done. I had the computer up and running all last week, but I waiting on an AM3 mounting bracket for the cooler to arrive. I spent several hours last night tearing everything down, lapping the cooler and CPU, and then managing the cables before I installed the MB and cooler today. It's unreal what $10 at Home Depot can do for cable management (hole saw, zip ties, tie anchors). Ignore the empty ram slots... two more sticks are on the way, just back ordered. Specs: AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE (running stock 2.8GHz) ASUS M4A785TD-V Evo OCZ ModXstream 600w Corsair H50 Water Cooler (push-pull fans) 4 x 2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR3-1333 (6-6-6-20 @ 1.8v) ASUS Radeon HD 4870 2X WD 500GB Cavair Blue (1TB RAID 0) WD 250GB Cavair Blue Samsung Super Writemaster combo drive Antec 300 Illusion with a few cuts for better cable management. Click to enlarge:

Phenom II X3 720BE I bent a few pins when installing and had to straighten them. Would you reccomend I just worry about lapping the cooling block?

I'm assuming you have dual PCIe slots? 4870s are a very good value right now. Around $140 I think. You could crossfire two of them and still be under budget! Even running solo, the 4870 would be a good upgrade and should run any game with moderate (if not high) settings. $300 free shipping: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814102825 If I were you and wanted a single card: 4890 If I were you and wanted to CF: 2X 4870 Both assuming your limit is $300

So my watercooling kit mounting hardware showed up yesterday and I would like to get the most out if it - so I'd like to lap both the CPU and heatsink. I'll probably just use 600, 800, and 1000 because I suspect both to be reasonably flat. When I installed the CPU fo rthe first time the clamping arm on the socket seems to hold with a fair amount of force. It it safe to remove the chip after it's been mounted? The socket doesn;t deform the pins or anythings? Also, it's worth mentioning that when installing this CPU, I accidently bent (and then straighened) about 4 of the pins. I'm not sure if the weakened fixed pins will be an issue in unmounting the chip.

Well, since the system is setup already, do you think it would be worthwhile to go back and set stuff up on single disks? Everything seems to be running well for now. Also, could I even take a system image of a RAID array and then transfer that to a single drive? Once I got W7rc set up with all of my applications and base programs (no music/movies/games yet) I made both a recovery disk and a full system image. Transferring the whole base system setup to a single disk could be easy - only requiring reinstallation of games and media transfer.

So I have 3 hard drives. Two 500GB WD Cavair Blue (16MB Cache, 7200rpm) and one 250GB WD Cavair Blue (8MB Cache, 7200rpm). My motherboards supports RAID so I went ahead and set them up in a 2 disk striped with the 250GB as a lone drive. So my 1TB striped array is my primary operating disk with the 250GB disk planned to be a file backup and system image/recovery drive (just somewhere to redundantly store data I don't want to risk loosing). I understand Raid isn't always significantly faster than a single drive - but it's not generally slower. My question is: Is this a waste? Is there a better way to set up the disks? I figure if I'm going to have 1.25TB of hard disk, what's to hurt anything if I RAID for a little more speed? Same data capacity with more speed.

What's odd, is that it does it before any driver installation (understandable) and then only after I update the OEM drivers online using Catalyst. Updating drivers to the current ATI released stuff should not hurt anything. It's running HDMI (same as DVI, I suppose) with the ASUS supplied DVI>HDMI cable. Also, I've noticed the sound isn't really that smooth over the HDMI compared to the regular sound Output plugged into the monitor. AOL IM sounds, for example, are butchered over the HDMI if you hear them at all. This could be a monitor or PC problem though... to early to call.

I have an ASUS HD4870 sitting on an ASUS M4A785TD-V Evo and I've noticed the following: a) Initial boot up and Windows 7rc install - screen is smaller than LCD leaving a 1" black border. b) After I install the LCD driver disk and ATI VGA driver software/disk the image properly fills the whole LCD c) Installing the motherboard drivers and applications disk does not change anything from b. d) If I update ATI drivers/software using catalyst, the screen gets smaller again and has a black border. I know it is not the monitor because the monitor does have picture size adjustment at all, and work full screen with any laptop I plug into it. Also, windows says that even at the reduced image size, resolution is still 1920x1080p ?!? Montitor is a Hanns-G HH-221HPB, by the way. Is there any explanation of this? Right now I'm just running the boxed motherboard/VGA drivers and not updating online, so I have full picture and resolution.

4 days ago I was building my first system ever. Like an idiot only focusing on the processor and hole alignment I forgot about the locking arm sticking up. I mashed the pins right into the tip of the locking arm and bent like 4-5 pins. I could see $ signs flash before my eyes. I had to use a utility razor blade to lift pins off the bottom of the processor and aligned them with a CC. The whole time I was trying to figure out how to come up with another $130 if I snapped a pin. Nothing broke, booted up fine.

Yessir it is! Only Newegg has it for $35/stick right now. Sure it's not a 'kit'... but it will dual channel just fine. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820148226 So, using the bios, if I up the dram voltage straight to 1.8v and leaving everything else on auto will it time out to 6-6-6-20 on it's own? Or do I have to mess with that monstrous list of timings? I'll try this with 2 sticks installed tonight, because incase I fry something, 2 sticks is cheaper to replace. Also, is there a downside to running 1.8v instead of 1.5v? Will I kill my ram sooner or generate too much heat? Is there a way to monitor this? My MB has, like, NO room betwwn the DIMM slots. I'm starting to think pulling the heat spreaders may allow for more ram cirrculation. Thanks for the help!

I built my first system ever this weekend - very similar to what's being discussed. If I can figure out WTH i'm doing with this OC buisiness, I'll let you guys know how it performs. Other than that... it's working beatifully right now at stock settings. Way faster than anything I've ever used - then again, I've only owned 3-4 laptops and an eMachine in the past. See my system setup in my profile, and I'd be happy to answer any questions or try something! I'll be setting up the water cooler and cable management the rest of the week, so you'll have to wait until Saturday for pics.

Like the title and description say, I have some ddr3-1333 memory that is supposed to be 6-6-6-20 @ 1.8V, but as installed it is 9-9-9-24. I think my voltage is around 1.5V because I've never changed it. It's a completely new build (see my system setup). I've verified that it is running in dual channel and @ 667MHz (1333) Simply trying to input 6-6-6-20 results in imediat system hang and me having to clear the MoBo and reset the entire bios. Using AMD Overdrive, the best benchmark (through AOD) I have tested was the following. I only changed those clock values, left everything else auto and did not change voltage because I really have no clue what I'm doing and don't want to fry 4 sticks of DDR3. Tras - 22 Tcas - 9 (AOD wouldn't let me adjust this, but I can change it in the bios) Trp - 8 Trcd - 8 Can anyone shed some light on this or point me to some good reading about how to get my memory timings to the advertised 6-6-6-20? One thing that worries me is that if I try to adjust voltage to 1.8V in the bios, the number turns yellow (as if a warning). Once my memory is set up, I'm going to start working on learning about processor overclock. From what I already understand, the PhII X3 720BE is an easy overclock by just changing the multiplier and with my cooler, I shouldn't have too much trouble using AOD. I don't think OCing the HD4870 is worth it for me, as it's only driving a 22" 1080p... so should be able to handle most any game even on highest settings.