you calling me black now?

I have to give Satis a little hell but honestly I am pretty good at staying out of his hair and just trying to keep him happy (by bringing him beer and cookies). Satis is really good to me the majority of the time. He is very generous, so I don't mind staying out of his way and keeping him happy. Unless he is being a bitch, and then I make it my goal to annoy the shit out of him in revenge.

I can't wait to hear about the two built boxes and how well they are loved.

god, I thought that last sentence was a euphemism, but I couldn't figure it out.

The patient awaits! Yes my old DVD drive is white. I can live with it until I get a new one.







My little helper.

I wish I had a child laborer to help out on my endeavors. Seriously tho, cool looking case, and even cooler looking kid. He'll have reached lvl 6 PC builder by the time he's 18 if he keeps gaining XP like this.

So I got my little box in yesterday as well. Didnt start putting it together till about 8:30 and started loading Windows about 11:00.(includes cleanup and putting our new printer together. Went to bed at about 12:00 only to get up at 3:45!!!) I do have a few pictures of all my stuff and the video card which is awesome.

Notes:
-First time I have every put together a system and everything fit, worked first time. Everything fit perfectly. For not doing any cable management the "cm" came out well.

-The case is awesome. Screwless hard drive system. Screwless video card lock in thingy. 3 fans and a TON of other spots to add fans. Overly pleased with the case. Very light.

-Video card is awesome.

-SSD is tiny. Took me double checking the cd that came with it to check to make sure I was installing the bracket correctly.

-Very very quite compared to my last computer. This shocked me.

Booting up
Ok so everything booted up perfectly. I checked the BIOS just to make sure I was getting full speeds on my CPU and FSB and what not. Gigabyte mb had plenty of stuff. Tons of options.

I flashed the BIOS using the q flash feature(update bios using a usb drive) Satis you will want to do this because they just released a new bios like this month.

SSD
I downloaded and burned the SSD firmware update tool but I could not get the firmware updated. It kept telling me that I needed to do 1 of 3 things.
#1 Disable password protection
#2 Enable legacy IDE for the SATA
#3 Enable SMART.

I tried all those and it still wouldnt work. I ran out of time so Ill try researching it today at work.

Windows
Got a hand me down copy of Windows 7 Ent. Dont know if its my old CD drive or the disk but it took FOREVER for windows to install. Last I left the pc it was sitting loaded on the desktop. Before I left I setup my 1TB HD to format. When I get home its time to update drivers and take her for a test run!

Awesome..I hope to be where you are tonight.

Damnit on having to flash BIOS on the motherboard and SSD. Damnit damnit damnit. I hate doing that. Especially when having to get creative with boot drives.

You dont HAVE to do it. Its so easy though. Download the .f4 file from their website. Put it on a thumb drive. Boot your computer and hit the "END" key. It will boot the Qflash util. Then select the file. Done.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Moth ... uctID=3305

Also, if you do try to update your SSD firmware let me know how it goes. Ill be on steam.

Apparently the problems I experianced with the slow loading of Window 7 is due to my old DVD drive? They are both Lite On drives. I got Windows installed then I made a "oops" and had to reload. Well the damn thing would not see my DVD drive so I put in my other lite on. It still was slow but it loaded so first thing I am going to do is update the firmware on those.

PC boots up after post in about 20-18 secs. With post 40.

Hate to hear about Satis failures.

I finally got Windows loaded and drivers loaded and everything running. Hot damn is it fast. So far the only thing I had time to load was WOW and Global Agenda. COD2MW is still updating.I installed Steam and WOW on the SSD and I still got like 90gigs of free space. WOW loads so fast, I got all the graphic options turn up. Yea its not much of a benchmark but it was a good test for the SSD and it passed with flying colors. I get in game so fast its not funny. Plus in Dalaran I get 40 FPS with no hicups. Everywhere else is 60 maxxed.Global Agena looks so much better than on my laptop. A full 60 fps the whole time in game max settings. Every now and then in Dome City the fps drop but comes back. Its like playing a new game.

What Im not so sure about is the SSD and Windows 7 trim. I read that its already enabled and running but I have no way of knowing other than running the Intel toolbox tool. The tool tells me I have to have updated the firmware, which I couldnt get to work. So the next step in this project is to get the firmware updated on the SSD. Im not sure where to even look if I need to update it.

Overall I am very very very pleased. Right now I see no need for a second video card. Friends where telling me to install Mass Effect 2, should look really good. I also got a free copy of Dirt that came with the card that I think has DX11. Ill have to check it out.

grats dude... glad you're digging the box. If you get the hankering for AvP, that supports DX11 as well, though you'd probably be best to wait for a sale on it. And DIRT does support DX11, but it's nothing major. I think Tom's wrote an article comparing dx11 vs dx10 (or 9, something) and the differences were pretty minor.

BTW I figured out that the Intel SSD toolkit will run a trim and does tell you how your drive is doing. Apparently my SSD has an updated firmware because it my ssd passed when it ran a check.

I cant stress enough how totally awesome the SSD is. SSD + ATI 5870 = BEASSSTTTTT.

I logged into CODMW2, the match loads in about 3-5seconds, 91 fps, maxxed settings, no blips. Unreal. And again on WoW I load into zones and dungeons SO fast. The game loads so fast. I really think the boss computer has increased my responsivness and rereaction thus = better DEE PEE SSS.

Im gonna wait on AVP.

yea, shit loads like crazy on this SSD. I'm stoked. For me it's left4dead and dragon age mainly right now, and the games just fire up in no time. Level transitions are fairly short, though I think DA has a memory leak that makes level transitions slower with time. It did on my old pc as well. Also, I figured up AvP just to the menu, and it was FAST. Before, it seriously chugged loading just the menu... now it's up in just a few seconds (not including the unskippable startup videos).

Of course, I'm still just on an 8800gt... looking forward to kicking my graphics card up a notch or ten in a month.