chynn

Your Raptors will work just fine on the nVidia SATA ports. Do NOT use the SIL3114 ports for RAID0 because they are "write limited" and run through the PCI bus ... not the PCIe bus. Check the different RAID posts in here to get more "how to" info ... you can look up a couple of posts I wrote, if you want to.

If you're going to use one card, get the ATI X1900XT or X1900XTX. If you're going to SLI your cards, get a pair of eVGA 7900GTX cards ... and get a PCP&C 510ASL as the very minimum PSU for your system. If you think you need more power, then get the PCP&C 850W model. I checked with the eVGA techies and the PCP&C 510ASL should run two 7900GTXs without any problems ... 34A and 38A on the two +12V rails is enough. Yep, I found a couple of games that crater my 7800GTXs ... Oblivion is one of them ... so I'm looking to upgrade to the 7900GTX 512M cards. I think AnandTech's website (www.anandtech.com) has a couple of Oblivion articles on it. They like ATI (it's obvious) but they don't cheat on the numbers so you can look and make up your own mind.

Hello, all, Just a short post to let you all know my rig is still running just fine on the 12/07 BIOS. I can run all three 3DMarks (03, 05, 06) whenever I want to. I can play WoW, EQ2, and Eve-Online whenever I want to and for as long as I want to. I know it's only been a couple of weeks since my last post, and I'm certainly not trying to bust anyone's ???? over the BIOS issue, I'm just keeping everyone up to date with my rig's status. FYI, I'm not running anything overclocked. I am running the 84.21 nVidia graphics drivers now because they fix a problem with one of my games. Hope this helps ...

If you want a PSU that you KNOW will boot your Expert board ... If you want a PSU that you KNOW will run 2x 7800GTX 512s in SLI mode with RAID drives, and all the other goodies ... If you want a PSU that you know will deliver clean, stable power to your Expert board ... even when the PSU is hot and loaded ... My friend, you have one, and only one, choice ... and that's a PCP&C 510W ASL (or a bigger one ... but that's overkill, IMHO). I have one; I run one; I have three more 510s in other PCs I have built. I have had no problems with any of them. My Expert board has had none of the boot problems listed in these forums; I have had none of the 12/07 BIOS problems (it's a big topic on it's own); I play WoW, EQ2, and Eve-Online for extended periods ... reliably, which means NO crashes (but I am not overclocked anywhere). If you think 510W is a low output rating ... that's 510W of continuous, clean power with 34A on one +12V rail and 38A on the other at 50C (a very hot PSU temperature). And no, I don't work for, nor am I compensated in any form, fashion, etc. by PCP&C. I am an opinionated !#$!#$ though ...

FYI, I am running two of the 150G Raptors (plain black wrapper) in RAID 0 (SATA3, SATA1) and have experienced NO problems with the drives. These are my 3rd pair (37G, 74G, and now these); all run RAID 0. However, having defended the Raptor reputation as the BEST hard drives made ... some things I have learned while perusing these forums. 1. You need to run the F6 floppy disc drivers even though you're not running RAID ... something about SATA150 vs SATA300 drive timings in the driver; not in the chipset. 2. Do not load any of the nVidia firewall stuff off the DFI CD-ROM disk. 3. Enable all four of the nVidia SATA ports in the BIOS, even though you're only using one or two ports. 4. Disconnect (or unplug) all drives (including SATA drives) except for the floppy, DVD/CD-ROM reader, and the drive XP is going on. Windows setup does wierd things when it finds more than one drive during its install. I put a detailed post as to how to install Windows XP in a reply to another post like yours. Try to find it ... it might help you out. Hope this helps ...

It's not the 6.70 drivers that are at fault; it's the 6.70 install script and .inf files that are borked. If you copy the 6.70 driver (but not the .oem or .inf) files to the DFI drivers floppy, you will find your RAID drivers will load just fine. I downloaded the F6 drivers from the DFI site because the floppy disk that came with my motherboard was empty; not even formatted ... So I extracted the DFI files to another floppy disk to get the .oem and .inf files. Copied the 6.70 nVidia driver files and catalogs over to the DFI floppy to update the DFI drivers and ran it ... no problems. Hope this helps ...

Has anyone ever had a problem cold booting an Expert motherboard with a PCP&C 510W (or better) PSU??? The only boot problems I have ever had with the Expert and my 510 ASL were of my own making. Yeah, they're expensive but I have never had a problem cold booting or running any motherboard with this brand. OTOH, if I keep using a PCP&C PSU with different motherboards, I'm sure to find one that won't boot. And that's all I have to say about that ... other than I am an acknowledged, opinionated, backside of a south-bound mule ... Hope this helps ...

Well, my Expert is running soooo well, I just had to see what Eve was like in really high resolutions ... so I'm back. Signed up for a month to see if I can take being "podded" again and to see the universe in 3D. Have to admit, I'm amazed. CCP have changed the user interface(s) for the better, IMHO. I'm a Minmatar frigate pilot at the moment. Was playing the tutorial until the connection to London went down. You can find me in game as "Drakar DoUrden". Hope this helps ... P.S. Could not find either of the listed channels active tonight. I guess no one was interested.

Hi there, ledzep58 ... and thanks for the compliment ... Which OCZ memory are you using??? And did you use the "stock" 200MHZ settings for it?? Did you double-check your GENIE BIOS settings??? For example, my OCZ runs 2-3-2-5 @ 200MHZ but the GENIE BIOS wants me to put that in as 2-3-5-2 ... which I screwed up the first time around so one stick would work, but two wouldn't. And last, do you happen to have another PSU floating around?? I have seen some posts in these forums about the Seasonics doing wierd things at post. Don't know if that applies to your PSU or not. Just a thought though. Hope this helps ...

Is the retailer being a "pig" about RMAing the board because he/she knows he/she sold you a bad one??? Wouldn't be the first time bad stuff was rewrapped and resold ... Sorry to have to say this ...

Same for me; everything is running just fine ... once I stopped trying to shortcut the build procedures. If your box is running reliably now, then going to SLI should not be an issue provided you have enough juice in your power-supply to handle two graphics cards, the increased load on your dual-core CPU, and the increased load on the motherboard. I have had no, zero, zilch, problems to date playing WoW at maxxed out settings and EQ2 at Very High Quality + maxxed slider settings. Am also able to run all three 3DMark benchmarks without crashing. And I am gaming and benching with the "infamous?" 12/07/2005 BIOS. Hope this helps ...

I have seen that too. BH-5 chips like those in the Kingston and Corsair memories seem to like running in the yellow slots better. However, having said that, and since neither Kingston nor Corsair is in the "recommended memory" list, I would stick with using the orange slots first and using the yellow slots only as a last resort. And I'm not trying to start a PC or flame war with this post. If your system works with memory in the yellow slots, then, by all means, leave it there. Mine works best with the memory in the orange slots. And last, since the AMD64 memory controller was designed to work the fastest with one stick in one DIMM slot for each channel, why do all the vendors put four DIMM slots on these motherboards? Marketing??? Hope this helps ...

If your friend is looking for stability, then I would think CPU, board, and memory would be the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th choices. PSU would be my number one choice ... and as you can see from my signature, I have a bias for the best. Hope this helps ...

The title says it all. I'm up and running on the new build. I'm very happy with it. Game playing is superb. Very smooth and very clean ... no jaggies at all ... screen images look like digital photos. Everything that went wrong I could attribute to something I forgot to do or ignorred because I was lazy or in too much of a rush to get the box built. Hope this helps ...

Did you install the dual-core CPU fixes from AMD and Microsoft? You absolutely, positively have to do this if you're running any dual-core AMD CPU ... and I'm not kidding here, either ... Second, nVidia has officially released their 84.21 drivers on their website. I think there's a HL2 fix in the new drivers. Check the Release Notes for fixes and/or workarounds for HL2 problems. These are are only recommendations because I don't play HL2; however, I do play WoW and EQ2 at maxxed (WoW) or Very High Quality + maxxed sliders (EQ2) and I don't have problems or crashes while playing. Hope this helps ...