Hurican

Hehe, yeah I got the treatment also. But I'm getting out the towel and drying off the ol' wet-behind-the-ears look. BYOC is cool in itself, but when you actually get something accomplished by hard work and learn in the process, it is that much more rewarding. I know I sound like a frickin salesman, but I like diving into a challenge and DFI has what I like!

I use the Thermaltake RX Silent Cooling series. Besides the stock cooling fans on my system (which I may replace), all you hear is a light breeze. ~~ :angel: CPU Temp ranges from 32 - 39c (although I hit about 42 in a hot room during Oblivion so far).

It may work on default settings with a little research, time, and care put into it. DFI is not a board that is meant for plug & play if you want to get its full potential, that I know for sure. Many will toss it in, load setup defaults and go. Chances are it will work fine, but unbeknownst to them they are running with substandard settings. My problems "and rant" came with a bad chipset, bad PSU, uncooperative retailer, and non-functioning sound module... all of which contributed to the problems I had. The thing about "user related", of course one can never be sure about that. I read instructions, post for assistance, contact DFI, all the normal stuff that really needs to be done for a build like this. Did I mangle something? I don't know, but I sure worked hard as hell not to. I have rebuilt junk and performance systems for the last 10 years as an interest, not a job... and DFI was still a challenge. So I would have to agree more with wevsspot's comments.

Yeah, I needed to share that one. Don't get me wrong, I love to geek and tweek, and love DFI boards... (I have one still running like a tank from '98), but this was a little more pain than pleasure. I must be a maschoist though, for the next board will probably be another one, although I like Asus too.

Well, my system is finally up and running, after much hassle and gnashing of teeth. I will say that I got quite a bit of help through DFI support, so I appreciate their efforts and no-nonsense answers. I bought the final computer part 3/10/2006. I have a stable system on 5/9/2006. My first mistake was buying My SLI-DR from a retailer early on (I should have not gotten the board first.) My second, was the retailer I had bought it from. Amazon had a good price, but they ship from T*g*r D*rect (name hidden to prevent identity ). I would never have bought from them had I known. Anyway... I get all the pieces, I assemble the board and find this place for instructions. No boot, no post, no beep, 4 LED's. Days of hardware adjustments and CMOS resets later I contact DFI with the problem. After going through a stepped reset process (Courtesy RGone), I indeed had a dead board. RMA. T*g*r would not return the board, as it had already been over 30 days, and wouldn't budge on their decision, even though it was only a few days over. NewEgg was different, they actually went outside of their policy to help me out with a bad product (bad PSU in a good case). I RMA'd to DFI. They had it about a week before replacing the chipset and sending it back. Still, a long wait of 2 1/2 weeks including shipping as I am on the other coast. Get board back, it boots!! Go through the normal process, hook up all the hardware, grab a DVD burner and experience Oblivion. (No, I didn't get the computer just for that. :-) ). Really good, but occasional lockups with BSOD, restart fixes. I saw on the forums that it was a pretty common error, and to update the bios. I Winflash to the 4/06 release... computer doesn't shut down by itself afterwards. *sigh* I reboot, and get a beep, but 3 LEDS and no post. So, three resets later, 30 sec, 15min, and 8 hour, I finally get it to boot. The trick was removing the Karajan Audio module, which btw is a performance killer anyway. It never worked for me in the first place, but with the Realtek drivers installed, I could still see an additional 15 sec hang during boot. So now I'm running with Optimized Defaults, and will shakily get back in to tweak some of the settings as soon as I can get back on that horse. So there's my experience. A real test to the emotions and mental health. So thanks to all who helped and the wealth of information in these forums. I am excited to see how it will handle 10 Trk audio recording and some taxing digital studio software.

I am familiar with computers in general and have put many together. This is the first time I have assembled a High Performance Comp from scratch and need help / advice. I'm not sure if I should look at the PSU / Processor or Motherboard first. I have attempted the cmos reset as talked about here but no change. I haven't attempted 24 hour reset yet, wanted to get more advice first. I'm getting the 4 diagnostic lights, board power and fans, but that's it. PSU (Active PFC) fans have not come on at all. I don't know whether it is the smart fan control or whether there is something wrong with the PSU itself. I have attempted to boot with a single memory in the 2nd slot (orange), Video Card, and nothing else attached except the keyboard PS2... with the motherboard both outside and inside the case. All power connections followed explicity from teh manual. CMOS reset, removing the battery, nothing seems to help. Do I have to set custom voltages on the motherboard to provide sufficient power? Well, enough assumptions. As nothing else on the forums here has gotten me anywhere, does anyone have any advice for a first time builder of a performance system? :confused: Thanks