New EVGA System

[3darchie84]

I just ordered parts for my new desktop yesterday from newegg and tiger direct. They should be here soon. The last system I built was 7 years ago and this is only my second build. I was just curious when I boot up for the first time if there is anything I should change in the BIOS or if I should turn it on and just install the OS. I know I need to check that everything is recognized and set my boot drives and all that...but as far as memory or processor speed...is the default settings ok? I don't plan on overclocking as of yet I just want a stable system. If I adjust memory how do I know what the voltages and timings are supposed to be?? My specs are posted below

EVGA X58 Classified mobo
EVGA nVidia GEforce GTX 295 video card...I bought the 509.99 one...is there a diff between that and the 559.99?? should I have splurged the extra 60.00??
3 x 2GB Corsair Dominator ram 1600mhz PC12800 DDR3
Ultra X3 ULT40311 1000-Watt Power Supply
Intel Core i7 950 Bloomfield 3.06 ghz cpu
2 x Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black Hard Drive - 1TB, 7200 RPM, 32MB, SATA-300 (TSD-1000WD)

Also, I don't really know if i need to run RAID on this system I just want one harddrive for the os and all my programs and the second hard drive is simply for storage of data...do I just set one up as a master and one as slave?? Is this done in BIOS or how do I go about that? Sorry for all the noob questions..haha...but ya any suggestions would be appreciated...

 

[3darchie84]

I just ordered parts for my new desktop yesterday from newegg and tiger direct. They should be here soon. The last system I built was 7 years ago and this is only my second build. I was just curious when I boot up for the first time if there is anything I should change in the BIOS or if I should turn it on and just install the OS. I know I need to check that everything is recognized and set my boot drives and all that...but as far as memory or processor speed...is the default settings ok? I don't plan on overclocking as of yet I just want a stable system. If I adjust memory how do I know what the voltages and timings are supposed to be?? My specs are posted below

EVGA X58 Classified mobo
EVGA nVidia GEforce GTX 295 video card...I bought the 509.99 one...is there a diff between that and the 559.99?? should I have splurged the extra 60.00??
3 x 2GB Corsair Dominator ram 1600mhz PC12800 DDR3
Ultra X3 ULT40311 1000-Watt Power Supply
Intel Core i7 950 Bloomfield 3.06 ghz cpu
2 x Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black Hard Drive - 1TB, 7200 RPM, 32MB, SATA-300 (TSD-1000WD)

Also, I don't really know if i need to run RAID on this system I just want one harddrive for the os and all my programs and the second hard drive is simply for storage of data...do I just set one up as a master and one as slave?? Is this done in BIOS or how do I go about that? Sorry for all the noob questions..haha...but ya any suggestions would be appreciated...

I forgot to mention I plan on running SLI when I get a little more money...sometime next year...oh and I'm bought windows vista ultimate 64 bit with a free upgrade to windows 7...FYI

 

[Helloworld_98]

^ sometime next year even dual 295's will get owned by single cards.

 

[3darchie84]

haha...ya i don't doubt it...parts get better everyday...way to hard to keep up....if that happens I guess I will have to update to the new cards...spend another 500 bucks...fml

 

[Helloworld_98]

^ nah, $400 if AMD gets their way.

 

[tecmo34]

All you need to do is go into your BIOS to set your boot sequence to boot from your DVD/CD to install your OS... Everything else is just following the steps.

We could've saved you a lot of money on your build before hand... Example (Corsair RAM... Replace with OCZ Platinum... GTX295... Replace with two GTX275 & most important... i7 950... Replace with i7 920) this changed would be better improvements for less money.

 

[3darchie84]

I was going to buy the OCZ ram but Tiger Direct had a bundle deal of corsair w/ the motherboard...so I took it...I considered the 920 but reviews on newegg said the 950 was a significant increase and noticable...and I had the extra money so I said screw it...I guess thats what I get for being a noob...I know how to set the boot sequence I was just unsure about the memory settings...are they default to run at 1600 mhz or do I need to change that...if I do change it how do I know what to set the timings and voltages at or is this done auto...?

 

[waynec121]

Yea agreed with tecmo. if you have not opened any of your parts and want to go through with returning the parts we can save you a lot of cash and not really hinder performance at all.

 

[geofelt]

I just ordered parts for my new desktop yesterday from newegg and tiger direct. They should be here soon. The last system I built was 7 years ago and this is only my second build. I was just curious when I boot up for the first time if there is anything I should change in the BIOS or if I should turn it on and just install the OS. I know I need to check that everything is recognized and set my boot drives and all that...but as far as memory or processor speed...is the default settings ok? I don't plan on overclocking as of yet I just want a stable system. If I adjust memory how do I know what the voltages and timings are supposed to be?? My specs are posted below

EVGA X58 Classified mobo
EVGA nVidia GEforce GTX 295 video card...I bought the 509.99 one...is there a diff between that and the 559.99?? should I have splurged the extra 60.00??
3 x 2GB Corsair Dominator ram 1600mhz PC12800 DDR3
Ultra X3 ULT40311 1000-Watt Power Supply
Intel Core i7 950 Bloomfield 3.06 ghz cpu
2 x Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black Hard Drive - 1TB, 7200 RPM, 32MB, SATA-300 (TSD-1000WD)

Also, I don't really know if i need to run RAID on this system I just want one harddrive for the os and all my programs and the second hard drive is simply for storage of data...do I just set one up as a master and one as slave?? Is this done in BIOS or how do I go about that? Sorry for all the noob questions..haha...but ya any suggestions would be appreciated...

The more expensive card is a factory overclocked version. The stock GTX295 is already so strong that overclocking seems pointless to me. You can run anything out there well. There will be no real need to go sli in the future.

Sata has no master/slave. Just plug the cables in to the drive and to the mobo.
I would not bother with raid. It helps with sequential operations, and hurts with random operations(like what the OS uses)
Your plan to put the OS on one and use the other for storage is a good one.

Just use the default ram settings. Do not worry about ram speeds. It makes less than 3% difference in real application performance. To verify that your ram is good and running properly, download memtest86+ and run it for a full pass on your new machine. It should run with NO errors. Then, install the OS.

I would download the manuals for the motherboard and for the case now and read them cover to cover before the parts arrive.

 

[3darchie84]

The more expensive card is a factory overclocked version. The stock GTX295 is already so strong that overclocking seems pointless to me. You can run anything out there well. There will be no real need to go sli in the future.

Sata has no master/slave. Just plug the cables in to the drive and to the mobo.
I would not bother with raid. It helps with sequential operations, and hurts with random operations(like what the OS uses)
Your plan to put the OS on one and use the other for storage is a good one.

Just use the default ram settings. Do not worry about ram speeds. It makes less than 3% difference in real application performance. To verify that your ram is good and running properly, download memtest86+ and run it for a full pass on your new machine. It should run with NO errors. Then, install the OS.

I would download the manuals for the motherboard and for the case now and read them cover to cover before the parts arrive.

Thanks for the advice...I agree I dont think i would ever need RAID...IMHO....seems more for people w/ big buisnesses that cant afford to lose data...I downloaded the manuals this morning and have been reading all day now...haha...and a response to above I would consider shipping parts back for cheaper ones but the agony of having to wait even longer would kill me...I cant sleep at night as it is...i feel like a kid at xmas....haha

 

[geofelt]

They are very good parts. You should have no regrets.
"The bitterness of the product is remembered, long after the sweetness of the price is forgotten"

You might want to consider a oem cooler up front. It will make your cpu run cooler and quieter than the stock cooler.
It is a bit of a pain to remove the motherboard to install one later.

The value of raid-1 for protecting data is that you can recover from a hard drive failure quickly.
It is for servers that can't afford any down time.
Recovery from a hard drive failure is just moments.
Fortunately hard drives do not fail often.
Mean time to failure is claimed to be on the order of 1,000,000 hours.(100 years)
Raid-1 does not protect you from other types of losses such as viruses,
software errors,raid controller failure, operator error, or fire...etc.
For that, you need EXTERNAL backup.
If you have external backup, and can afford some recovery time, then you don't need raid-1.

 

[3darchie84]

They are very good parts. You should have no regrets.
"The bitterness of the product is remembered, long after the sweetness of the price is forgotten"

You might want to consider a oem cooler up front. It will make your cpu run cooler and quieter than the stock cooler.
It is a bit of a pain to remove the motherboard to install one later.

The value of raid-1 for protecting data is that you can recover from a hard drive failure quickly.
It is for servers that can't afford any down time.
Recovery from a hard drive failure is just moments.
Fortunately hard drives do not fail often.
Mean time to failure is claimed to be on the order of 1,000,000 hours.(100 years)
Raid-1 does not protect you from other types of losses such as viruses,
software errors,raid controller failure, operator error, or fire...etc.
For that, you need EXTERNAL backup.
If you have external backup, and can afford some recovery time, then you don't need raid-1.

Do you have a good heat sink in mind? I was looking at them on newegg and tiger but had no clue which one to buy...I asked the sales rep and he told me the intel would do just fine....

 

[geofelt]

Here is a link to a good comparison review of some top coolers:
http://www.frozencpu.com/resource/r24/Best_CPU_Cooler_Performance_LGA1366_-_Q1_2009.html?id=JqPuITTJ

Any of the top 10 would be good.

The Xigmatek dark night looks to me to be a good one that is reasonably priced:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233029

When the cpu heats up under load, the stock intel cooler fan will spin up and be noisy. A tower type cooler with a 120mm fan wil do a better job of getting heat from the cpu to the cooling fins. The 120mm fan will turn slower and be less noisy. If you overclock, the heat of the i7 is the primary limitation of how high you can go. A good cooler makes it easier to go higher.

 

[3darchie84]

new system up and running solid and stable....as far as I know...any one point me in the direction of tests I should run...I ran memtest86+....I've benchmarked with 3dmark vantage and aquamark...no crashes...all though my gtx 295 only scored a 12,000 at stock speed....I'm cooling it with stock heat sink....do I dare over clock it or is that good? Thanks again for all the suggestions