How to test my new rig???

[BigTom209]

I just finished putting together my first build in probably 10+ years, I had some fun and likely overkill in a few things but here is the setup

Win7 Ultimate 64bit
Intel i7 960
Gigabyte G.1 Guerrilla
Corsair Vengeance 12GB DDR3-1600 Tri Channel
Zotac GeForce GTX 480 AMP! Ferni 756Mhz 1536MB 3800Mhz GDDR5
(2) WD 2TB Sata2 HDs 64mb cache
Azza Hurrican 2000 ATX full tower case
Cougar 850W PS
Noctua NH-D14 massive f'in heatsink



Again been ages since I did a build so consider me fairly green, I know I cheaped out on the HD's but to try and compensate this is how I set them up, first I built a Raid1 partition of approx 1.2TB, then made a Raid0 stripped with whatever was left. I read on this forum doing it this way if the stripe fails you can still recover the mirrored section of the HD and I'm only going to use it for pictures so hopefully that's OK. Someday I'll likely step up to SSD's in Raid0 purely for the OS but that's later on.

Anyway again, I got this thing built... getting it setup with latest and greatest drivers for everything... what can I do to test it out? I google benchmarking software but get alot of old posts from various forums and I've scrolled through some but thought might as well ask for some up-to-date software to try out.

 

[asantesoul]

well..depends what your gonna do with it..first and foremost, do some stress testing on the cpu to determine its capabilities and ensure that everything is running smoothly..you'll get an idea of your temps..as well as determine if anything needs to be fine tuned...get prime 95, or intelburn test (intel burn test places more load than prime)...you can also do some benchmarking with your gpu..get furmark or cinnebench and see what your new rig is capable of...

I love the motherboard you have btw...I want to make my next build with one

 

[Dyers Eve]

Play some games and use FRAPS to find out your fps and compare them to Tom's builds.

Here's a fun tool benchmarking your system for FFXIV

Other demanding games include GTA IV, Metro 2033 and the Crysis games. Other things to do are folding@home, seti@home and encoding a 3DSmax video. Very demanding stuff.

 

[heyhihowyadurrin]

Benchmark the games you have with fraps, and then compare your results with similar systems. Nothing a little google magic can't fix.

 

[misry]

QCCT for an hour and you are good. Prime95, (has been updated for multicore), overnight and you are golden.

 

[BigTom209]

I like the benchmarking ideas and will likely give those a try tonight if I have a free moment. Games wise wifey won't let me get anything good until the bathroom renovations are finished

I had to start rebuilding it this morning, last night I got it up and rolling so was letting the windows updates run and left the computer, this morning came downstairs and the screen was black, figured must be in sleep mode but nothing would wake it up. Hard boot and restarted... nothing? No boot screen, bios, numlock nothing just totally dead besides the 14 fans or whatever the hells in the thing spinning away. So I killed the machine, had a shower, restarted and this time it I got the boot up screen and it came up resuming windows... then froze.

So, as with any fresh install not working 100% wipe the drives and start over

Hopefully this isn't a hardware issue and more a software install issue...




asantesoul: There was a package deal on the CPU and mobo so couldn't pass it up, although the following week they had the same combo deal except with the assassin version which I would've liked more for the better audio chipset... but oh well. The heatsink on the motherboard that looks exactly like a rifle mag even with bullets sure made me laugh when I saw it!

 

[asantesoul]

must have been from ncix, right? I was paying attention to that, but was already stuck with an 1155 cpu...you got it for about 500 ish dollars right...man..I love that board

 

[BigTom209]

So question, I got the computer setup and seems to be running like a dream so I'm happy there. Figure I'd try using the OCCT v3.1.0 and one thing is I don't think it supports up to DirectX11 so can't really stress my GPU at all but running the tests I notice it says my 12V line often drops to like 4V and right now it's hovering around 10V... the others are staying rock solid but that 12V sure seems whacky.

And what's acceptable CPU temps? Highest I've seen is 58, I'm assuming it's temps...?

 

[asantesoul]

that's fine..depends on what the cpu is currently at..is it at stock? or did you overclock it?

 

[BigTom209]

It's all stock, not really interested in OC as again 99% of this things life is going to be cruising the net. I might try OC a bit if I ever get a pretty intensive game just to see the difference. I think this system is good enough stock to run most games pretty decent?


So what about that 12V line though? Why would it register so low all the time?

 

[asantesoul]

what are you doing when it drops..is this under load? during testing? idle?

 

[BigTom209]

Just pressing the GO button on the OCCT test, once it's done after an hour or whatever it comes up fine.