First time building in a long time! Here's what i've got inbound...


Gaming (Fallout3, Civ4, Sims3, CoH, COD) and Photoshop rig

Intel i5 750
Gigabyte P55 UD5
GSkill Ripjaws 4 x 2gb DDR3 1333
Gigabyte HD5750 x 2 (should have got a single 5850)
WD Caviar Green 1TB x 2
Corsair Pro HX750 PSU
Zerotherm Core92 CPU heatsink (I've seen reviews by people using this on 1156 but manufacturers website doesnt mention 1156, supplier says it will fit)
NZXT Panzerbox Case
Win 7 Home

Will it all work? Did i miss anything? Any input (good or bad!) would be appreciated.

i387? Wow I think thats older than a lot of the people here.

holy crap! i387!?!? wow! props dude, you got a genuine relic right there!
..can it play crysis?


WELCOME TO OCC!!!!!!


That build looks pretty solid.
are you going to be RAIDing those WD Greens?
i agree on the 5850 part just too bad they're having issues with 40nm fab..
what are the timings on those mem sticks??
and i haven't heard of that cooler, but i'm sure it'll do the job.

you going to be OCing at all???

Unfortunately i don't have the 387 anymore. Would love to have all my old PC's! Especially the lightning fast 2400 baud modem!

Undecided on RAID0 or 1

8-8-8-24

New to overclocking but i'm planning on it once ive done some more research. 4.2 GHz can't be that hard, can it?

While you may have been joking 4.2Ghz is gonna be hard to get without an epic cooler like the true 120 or prolimatech megahalem or water and even then... but 4 is probably definitely a possibility.

Looks like a nice build disregarding the above


Welcome to OCC old timer

Aloha!

Welcome To OCC

What should i be aiming for w/ RAM? Any suggestions?

Thanks

8-8-8-24 seems a little loose for 1333mhz but in gaming and photoshop, any "performance loss" will be pretty much negligible.

you wont notice the difference between 8-8-8-24, 7-7-7-20, and 6-6-6-18 unless your benchmarking..

plus, loser timings can equal lower price tag...

Not every i5 750 will do 4.2 GHz with easy, mine maxes out around 4 GHz

Personally i would just got with the i7 920 if you plan on manually overclocking. The 750 is great if you are using turbo boost but i think you will get better/easier results with overclocking if you use the 920. It will only cost a fraction more and the triple channel memory is faster. Also this way you could get 3x2gb and see if thats enough, then if not upgrade to 12gb. Also i would go for a single better GPU rather than 2 worse one's. That way you do not rely on games to work with crossfire and they will consume less power

It is helpfull if you give a budget for your PC; the i5 does not have two x16 PCIe lanes, only one, so it's a little weird to see two 5870.
Besides, you would come out much cheaper with two 4890 in crossfire (the performance the same as 5850); two foe 400 dollars.

Caviar green is slow; take Samsung F3 or Seagate 7200.12.

take Scythe Mugen 2 heatsink; cheap and top!!

The i5 does have 2 PCI-E 2.0 lanes at x8 each, and the HD5870 won't be saturating those slots.

Budget is something i'm not concerned about at this point.

And i'll have 2x5750 x8/x8 not 2x5870's. Together, they were a lot cheaper than $400 btw. Still, i wish i had gotten a single 5850 to "future-proof" although the system isn't really future-proofed at all so there's not much point.

Oh and the Caviar Greens were cheap. I have several other HDD's i'll be adding too.

My bad about the HD5770, but what do you think about a beefier heatsink, such as the Xigmatek HDT-S1283?

Don't let the tiny price tag fool you, it's one of the lead heatsinks on the market today.

Other then your underpowered heatsink, I think it's a great build!

I just put a Titan FenRir on my brothers i7 920 rig yesterday and it is to be honest pretty darn good. He also got a really nice i7 920 that does 4.0 with 1.27125 volts!

Two 4890's wont give you directx 11 though, and i forgot about the duel x8 bus. This would proberbly bottleneck the new 58** cards

Everything arrived today!

Wish me luck!

Nope.



Good luck! Post back with results and pics.

Looks like there's no Crossfire bridges in the 5750 boxes from Gigabyte. All crossfire connections require the bridge right? There's no super-special MB's out there that don't need an external bridge? I need to order a crossfire bridge don't i? Sigh.

Gigabyte did include an SLI bridge with the MB though.

Good luck, post pics!


More then I need

Progress so far...

What happens if you have 2 vid cards not in crossfire? Can i leave the second one in there until i get a bridge?

Well i got it running; no problems at all! Just need to wait for another Xfire bridge so i can add the second 5750. So far it's running great with just the one though. Fallout 3 is maxxed at my TV's 1300x768 resolution. Sims 3 is a little bit choppy at max settings. The Sims 3 load times are a helluva lot faster though.

Still waiting for my Optical drives (old ones are EIDE) , another HDD and Xfire bridge.

Haven't OC'd much at all. Right now CPU idle temp is 32C. Max temp so far has been 37C. Still need to learn some things before i start changing settings. I did try the overclocking software that came with the Gigabyte board. Used the Turbo setting which brought my i5 up to 3GHz but the system wasn't completely stable so i set it back to stock for now.

Will add some pics once i'm done with everything. Didn't want to post pics of the inside of the case cuz of the EIDE cable. Fugly!

Still waiting for the bridge. Hopefully it gets here soon so i can finally finish the build off (for now anyway) and manage some cables.

So far it's pretty impressive compared to my E6600. OC'd to 3.9 it's stable but CPU temps are a little too high for my liking. At 3.9GHz at full load max CPU temp was 75 C.

I've got it running at 3.33GHz now. CPU fan squeals when at 2000RPM or up and at 3.33 the fans stay at 1997RPM at idle. (Gotta replace that little guy) 100% load is a comfortable 63 C. Idles at 43 C.

Once i get a quieter fan i'll probably set it at 3.7GHz for good.

Love the NZXT Panzerbox but i definitely needed a fan controller. Got the NZXT Sentry LX and it makes the Panzerbox look like one wicked machine!

Pics to follow once that 2nd 5750 is installed.