Sandy Bridge (Builds, Discussion and Random Shit)

For work they'll want a warranty incase anything goes wrong, so no trickery there.

I'm more interested in how to hack a consumer card into a pro card for my own build.
 
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^ I think your GPU is fine ... I have had problems with nVidia cards over the years, but never with Radeons.
I wouldn't bother with a "K" processor unless you plan to overclock it .. in which case you will need a better cpu cooler. I also wouldn't get a Seagate drive. Again this is personal experience, but I have never had a Western Digital drive fail, whilst I have a number of Seagate drives in my "dead component" box .. along with some Maxtors and IBMs (Hitachi).
 
The "K" is $10 more expensive than the regular 2500 so that isn't a big problem. And who knows, I might OC it in the future. Found a WD hdd, though I never had any problems with my Seagate or my WD either. The power supply can handle it all, can it? Also, the mobo only has one PCI slot, maybe I should look for another one.
 
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GerFix said:
^ I think your GPU is fine ... I have had problems with nVidia cards over the years, but never with Radeons.
I wouldn't bother with a "K" processor unless you plan to overclock it .. in which case you will need a better cpu cooler. I also wouldn't get a Seagate drive. Again this is personal experience, but I have never had a Western Digital drive fail, whilst I have a number of Seagate drives in my "dead component" box .. along with some Maxtors and IBMs (Hitachi).
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Sandy Bridge run so cool on stock HSFs, that even if you OC it you are within a very good margin of temperature tolerances.
 
@Maxtortheone, nvidia are really the better company at this point. And 90% off all reviewers willa agree with me. The new GTX 560TI cards are WITOUT ONE BIT OF DOUBT the card where you get most performance for your money. You can easily OC it to 1GHz and at that point it beats a GTX 480 and almost stacks up with a stock 570!
Asus and Gigabyte are the ones making the best mobos s? the Asus is fine if you like that better but I personally like the Gigabyte UD4 better (I got it my self).
The K processor is a must for the $10.
I'm not a big fan of the PSU you chose wither. Stick to Cooler Master or Corsair :)

This is what I would do:
- I5 2500k
- Gigabyte UD4 (Or the Asus if you like it better)
- MSI GTX 560TI (Please don't take the 6850. Then at least a GTX 460)
- 4GB G. Skill 1600Mhz CL7 ECO (You can get them from here and you can easily trust them!: MemoryC )
- Corsair TX650 V2 (Best PSU ever. It will last all your life)
- Antec 300 (If you just want a cheap cabinet) // Fractal Design R3 (A bit more expensive but you get A LOT for your money. Can defiantly recommend!)

If you at some point want a CPU cooler theres at this point two choices: Noctua D14 (if you want to go all the way) Or Corsair A50 (If you just want moderate OC this is the best for the price!)

I think that was about it! :D
 
It's 2011 guys ;)
- Nvidia are the ones on top ;)
 
I've used Corsair PSUs for my friends builds, and they've been rock solid.
 
GerFix said:
^ why not? Commercial apparatus is generally way overpriced. Suppliers seem to think that just because you can claim a tax rebate on the stuff, they can gouge you. I'd say fck'em and hack it.
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It's a company. For any decent sized company 3 grand is not a lot of money, and it's an expense that can be claimed on tax. To the company, the fact that a quadro card will run 100% load night and day for years, comes with a warranty and lots of nVidia support is worth far, far more than saving a grand or two on a consumer card you have to hack and void the warranty and support of to get to anywhere near the same level as the professional line. You mustn't forget that quadro cards are built to a much higher standard the consumer cards that we buy.
 
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nsx_23 said:
Really?
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Yes

Cold Fussion said:
It's a workplace, they should not be hacking a geforce card into a quadro.
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GerFix said:
^ why not? Commercial apparatus is generally way overpriced. Suppliers seem to think that just because you can claim a tax rebate on the stuff, they can gouge you. I'd say fck'em and hack it.
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nsx_23 said:
For work they'll want a warranty incase anything goes wrong, so no trickery there.

Its only OS level registry edits that enable the hidden features, so they'll never notice/detect it happening, so it remains with warranty and all. You do get a very slight performance hit because of the extra featureset, but otherwise, identical.

I'm more interested in how to hack a consumer card into a pro card for my own build.
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Cold Fussion said:
It's a company. For any decent sized company 3 grand is not a lot of money, and it's an expense that can be claimed on tax. To the company, the fact that a quadro card will run 100% load night and day for years, comes with a warranty and lots of nVidia support is worth far, far more than saving a grand or two on a consumer card you have to hack and void the warranty and support of to get to anywhere near the same level as the professional line. You mustn't forget that quadro cards are built to a much higher standard the consumer cards that we buy.
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That is essentially all that enterprise-class hardware have over consumer-grade hardware: better binning and testing. In any case, quite a few companies/Unis/Research centres are using GeForces instead of Quadros or Tesla for heavy calculation (just ask skidd), so they're just about as reliable. Over the last few years the only thing Quadros have had over GeForces is VRAM: a GTX480 has only 1.5GiB VRAM whereas is Quadro 6000 twin has 6GiB of VRAM. And we're still waiting for GF11x (Fermi.b) Quadros.

EDIT: that and extra driver-level instructions
 
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Build v2

http://img847.imageshack.**/img847/8321/buildv2.jpg

I'll have to shop around though. I'll probably build it after I decide on a monitor.
 
^Well then you can't buy any GFX. The GTX 460 is one of the cards around that uses the least power. A GFX uses allmost no power at idle?
 
Newegg shipped out my replacement UD7-B3 today. I am happy.

As a sidenote:

I also ordered:
2nd 6970
Noctuna NH-D14
Another 2tb HDD.
 
Mine's done :)

Mine's done :)

Items arrived on Monday, put it together yesterday, got it working today.

i7 - 2600K
Asus Sabertooth P67
Corsair Dominator 16GB
Sapphire Radeon HD6970 2GB
Fractal Design Define R3 case
Corsair HX-850 Power Supply
Crucial C300 256GB SSD
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB SSD
2 x Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB WD2002FAEX
Pioneer BDR-206 Blu-Ray Disc Writer
Corsair Hydro Series H50 CPU Cooler
Shintaro Internal Card Reader 3.5"

I originally ordered an OCZ Revodrive 240GB PCIe SSD, but changed that to the Crucial C300 after a Google cross check of the Sabertooth MB with the Revodrive revealed many people with problems. Seems for it to work you really need more than 2 PCIe x4 capable slots. I was also a bit perturbed at the prospect of it slowing the graphic card slot to x8 and not supporting TRIM (which seemed like a potential problem).

As it turned out, even the Crucial drive was problematic for installing windows ... it threw up all kinds of errors on the first attempt, but installed perfectly after flashing the firmware and disconnecting the other drives.

The Fractal Design case is a dream. I love the simple cable management system it has. With all the fans on full, the system produces about 45 Db in the context of an ambient noise level here of 40 Db (according to a free iPhone app).

The Corsair H50 was as easy to install as an air cooler. It is very quiet too. I initially wanted to put the radiator at the top of the case, but it wouldn't clear the top heat sink on the MB. I read a few reviews on it, criticising the fact that it requires the fan to blow air from outside the case, meaning that air, warmed by the radiator is being pumped in, but holding ones hand over the radiator, the air that comes off it is barely above room temperature.

The 2 hard drives are in a RAID 0 setup on the SATA III ports of the Intel chipset. The Crucial C300 is on a Marvell SATA III port and I have a second 120 GB SSD on one of the SATA II ports of the Intel chipset.

Everything seems to be working now, the only rouge device (without a driver) was a PCI Simple Communication Controller, which was addressed by installing this package from the Intel website.

Don't hesitate to criticise :p

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GerFix said:
Don't hesitate to criticise :p
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It sucks. You should give it to me instead :p

Anyway, where did you source your parts from?
 
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