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So I got my new X58 board from newegg.
You may not have caught the first board I got from mwave.....so lookie here:http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1376950
Needless to say the first board I got was DOA.
Current setup:
X58 SLI
i7 920
Corsair Dominator 1600 Hz 6GB kit
BFG GTX 280 in SLi
XFi PCI card
Ultra 1000W X3 PSU
Swiftech GTX Apogee water cooling
Box arrived a day late, newegg gave me all my shipping back......a good omen to start.
Unboxed, just like Kyle's video. Just enough goodies, nothing extra or free. Standard amount of cables, all black of course.
920 installed easily, the new hold-down plate for my GTX Apogee was a bitch to fit onto the block, but it got done.
For initial start-up I put the board on the bench and used the stock Intel air cooler.
RAM installed
One GPU installed
Power installed.............lights, power button.......POST......yowzzzzzar. After my first board, it was almost time to celebrate.
Went into the BIOS and looked around, alot of new terminology but standard Award BIOS.
Board shipped with the latest SZA1 BIOS so I didn't have to do anything there.
Set the DIMM voltage to 1.65 and basically left everything else alone, put the SATAs on IDE and enabled all the controllers.
Got Vista x64 HomePremium loaded and SP1.....this deal is wicked fast, windows + SP1 in less than 30 minutes.
Rechecked the cold boot/restarts..............put everything in the case and assembled my watercooling. Installed SLi and my sound card.
What I like:
Installation. easy.
BIOS. simple. Lots of little tweeks if you like that sort of thing.
Board layout. very nice, very clean. Plenty of room for my waterblock, everything is low profile.
SLI with two 16x PCI-e slots is a bit crowded, it was easier to install the lower card first.
This board is the ONLY board I could find that would allow double-wide SLI 16x X 2 and still allow a PCI sound card......which was a deal breaker for me in looking for an X58 board. Of course, I cannot use the PCI card if I choose to go to Triple-SLi.
Overclocking this board was the most straight-forward thing I've done in a year or two, more on that later.
The BIOS has 8 profile slots that are really handy when you're overclocking.
What I don't like:
The EVGA method of BIOS flashing, I wish they would adopt a method like ASUS or Gigabyte's EZ_Flash. To need to use a CD-R is dumb in the age of flash thumb drives.
The AUX CPU power plug is guarded handily by this tall silver heatsink.
The USB port plugs for the front and rear are most likely going to be very difficult if I ever use three video cards.
The little northbridge fan doesn't have sleeved wires.
Those are really minor points.......the board is just about right on all points as far as I am concerned.
Software:
The E-Leet thing is based on CPU-z. It's nice, but I prefer to adjust things in the BIOS, always have. I don't think it reports CPU temperature correctly.
OverClocking:
You need to know just a handful of terms to achieve a pretty impressive OC.
Read this for starters:http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=642527&mpage=1&key=��
So here's what I looked at:
CPU Host Frequency (BCLK)
CPU UnCore Frequency: should be set at 2x the memory multiplier
QPI
VCore
VDimm
Memory Frequency (PWM Frequency)
Memory Multiplier
My computer is rock stable at 3.8 GHz CPU and 1450 Hz memory at 9-9-9-24 1T
All I did was set CPU Host Frequency to 185, VCore to 1.35V,VDimm to 1.65V,UnCore to 16x,PMW frequency to 1067,QPI to 4.8 GT/sec,and memory multiplier to 2:8.
I started at 150 BCLK and worked my way up by 15, running Orthos for an hour after each increase. No freezes, no hiccups, no nuthin. I'm sure I could go to 4 GHz or even higher, but I had a very conservative goal of 3.8 GHz and I made it with no sweat and minimal work and no aggrevation at all.
My Core Temperature is 30C idle and 58C under Orthos x 8 instances; one for each core. Hyperthreading is enabled.
My idle temp with the stock cooler was about 40C.
Man, I like this board......alot.
I would not hesitate one minute to buy one if you plan to run multi-GPUs or you want a system that is just faster than anything you've seen. The speed and smoothness of this board are just fluid, period. Everything works, it just flat out works.
Yes, my first board was a dud. It just wouldn't POST. It was broken, shit happens. This board was NOT an RMA from EVGA. I sent the DOA back for a refund and bought another board retail from newegg.
I'm very impressed with this new X58 technology, it is polished and rock stable right out of the box.
Buy one. Oh yes, the EVGA support is excellent. When my first board had problems, they were available within 2 minutes; when the tech realized I knew what I was talking about; there was an instant offer to RMA and the paperwork was filled out on the spot. (as I said I sent it back for a refund because it was a faster way to get a new board).
Thanks for listening.
You may not have caught the first board I got from mwave.....so lookie here:http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1376950
Needless to say the first board I got was DOA.
Current setup:
X58 SLI
i7 920
Corsair Dominator 1600 Hz 6GB kit
BFG GTX 280 in SLi
XFi PCI card
Ultra 1000W X3 PSU
Swiftech GTX Apogee water cooling
Box arrived a day late, newegg gave me all my shipping back......a good omen to start.
Unboxed, just like Kyle's video. Just enough goodies, nothing extra or free. Standard amount of cables, all black of course.
920 installed easily, the new hold-down plate for my GTX Apogee was a bitch to fit onto the block, but it got done.
For initial start-up I put the board on the bench and used the stock Intel air cooler.
RAM installed
One GPU installed
Power installed.............lights, power button.......POST......yowzzzzzar. After my first board, it was almost time to celebrate.
Went into the BIOS and looked around, alot of new terminology but standard Award BIOS.
Board shipped with the latest SZA1 BIOS so I didn't have to do anything there.
Set the DIMM voltage to 1.65 and basically left everything else alone, put the SATAs on IDE and enabled all the controllers.
Got Vista x64 HomePremium loaded and SP1.....this deal is wicked fast, windows + SP1 in less than 30 minutes.
Rechecked the cold boot/restarts..............put everything in the case and assembled my watercooling. Installed SLi and my sound card.
What I like:
Installation. easy.
BIOS. simple. Lots of little tweeks if you like that sort of thing.
Board layout. very nice, very clean. Plenty of room for my waterblock, everything is low profile.
SLI with two 16x PCI-e slots is a bit crowded, it was easier to install the lower card first.
This board is the ONLY board I could find that would allow double-wide SLI 16x X 2 and still allow a PCI sound card......which was a deal breaker for me in looking for an X58 board. Of course, I cannot use the PCI card if I choose to go to Triple-SLi.
Overclocking this board was the most straight-forward thing I've done in a year or two, more on that later.
The BIOS has 8 profile slots that are really handy when you're overclocking.
What I don't like:
The EVGA method of BIOS flashing, I wish they would adopt a method like ASUS or Gigabyte's EZ_Flash. To need to use a CD-R is dumb in the age of flash thumb drives.
The AUX CPU power plug is guarded handily by this tall silver heatsink.
The USB port plugs for the front and rear are most likely going to be very difficult if I ever use three video cards.
The little northbridge fan doesn't have sleeved wires.
Those are really minor points.......the board is just about right on all points as far as I am concerned.
Software:
The E-Leet thing is based on CPU-z. It's nice, but I prefer to adjust things in the BIOS, always have. I don't think it reports CPU temperature correctly.
OverClocking:
You need to know just a handful of terms to achieve a pretty impressive OC.
Read this for starters:http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=642527&mpage=1&key=��
So here's what I looked at:
CPU Host Frequency (BCLK)
CPU UnCore Frequency: should be set at 2x the memory multiplier
QPI
VCore
VDimm
Memory Frequency (PWM Frequency)
Memory Multiplier
My computer is rock stable at 3.8 GHz CPU and 1450 Hz memory at 9-9-9-24 1T
All I did was set CPU Host Frequency to 185, VCore to 1.35V,VDimm to 1.65V,UnCore to 16x,PMW frequency to 1067,QPI to 4.8 GT/sec,and memory multiplier to 2:8.
I started at 150 BCLK and worked my way up by 15, running Orthos for an hour after each increase. No freezes, no hiccups, no nuthin. I'm sure I could go to 4 GHz or even higher, but I had a very conservative goal of 3.8 GHz and I made it with no sweat and minimal work and no aggrevation at all.
My Core Temperature is 30C idle and 58C under Orthos x 8 instances; one for each core. Hyperthreading is enabled.
My idle temp with the stock cooler was about 40C.
Man, I like this board......alot.
I would not hesitate one minute to buy one if you plan to run multi-GPUs or you want a system that is just faster than anything you've seen. The speed and smoothness of this board are just fluid, period. Everything works, it just flat out works.
Yes, my first board was a dud. It just wouldn't POST. It was broken, shit happens. This board was NOT an RMA from EVGA. I sent the DOA back for a refund and bought another board retail from newegg.
I'm very impressed with this new X58 technology, it is polished and rock stable right out of the box.
Buy one. Oh yes, the EVGA support is excellent. When my first board had problems, they were available within 2 minutes; when the tech realized I knew what I was talking about; there was an instant offer to RMA and the paperwork was filled out on the spot. (as I said I sent it back for a refund because it was a faster way to get a new board).
Thanks for listening.