Gigabyte GA-X79-UD5 First time build help needed

[malanick]

Hello,
This is my first time building a new computer
from scratch and need some advice.

First: Here is what I have to work with:

Motherboard: GA-X79-UD5
CPU: Intel i7-3820
Cooling: Corsair H100 twin fan water
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaw DDR3-1600 PC3-12800 4096MBx4 (16GB)
Boot Drives: (2 for RAID 0) Plextor M3 SATA 6Gb/s 128MB SSDs
Video: evga Geforce 560 TI Superclock
PowerSupply: Radmax RX-850 AE 80Plus Gold
DVD Drive: Asus from Newegg
Case: CoolerMaster 932 HAF Full Tower Advanced

Second: What I am concerned about is where exactly what
slots I should put the memory in.
Third: How to Set up the BOOT drive using the two
Plextor SSDs.

I am a little lost looking at the Gigabyte GA-X79-UD5
user's manual. Should the memory go in slots 4,2,1 and 3? It
is 4 channel Memory.
Setting up the SSDs in RAID 0 is what I am really lost
on. Here are the steps I plan on:

1: Plug the SSD drives on SATA3 0 and SATA3 1
Intel X79 Cont

 

[g-unit1111]

Second: What I am concerned about is where exactly what
slots I should put the memory in.

On a standard dual channel build you use slots 1 and 3, and then put your second set of memory in slots 2 and 4.

All the pairs have to be matched, I'm sure on a quad channel setup it's no different - what you would do is put your RAM in slots 1 and 3 on one side, then put the other two in slots 1 and 3 on the other side.

Third: How to Set up the BOOT drive using the two
Plextor SSDs

First off it's pretty pointless to RAID SSDs. You're not going to get any increased space, nor will you see a dramatic performance increase from the drives. Just plug your boot drive into SATA-0 and then plug your second HD into SATA-1, then your optical into SATA-3. Once your system POSTs, load the BIOS and set the boot order as 1. CD-ROM (for Windows install), 2. SSD 1, 3. USB

I'm not sure if the UD5 is different from the Z68 board I'm using but on the Gigabyte BIOS you have to order your drives so the SATA-0 drive is the boot drive.

 

[malanick]

I got 2 128 Gb SSDs on sale. I want to use them together and get the most space for a boot drive. I can load Office and Video editing software all on the SSDs.

 

[xtremegamer2da-max]

1 to find out what slots to put your memory in (they should be labled) look in the motherboards user manual and if its not there look online
2 when you boot up your computer it will look through the drives 4 anoperating system until it finds it in the cd-rom drive then u install win7
3 here is a video on how to setup raid 0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYBtmVMtH1g

 

[g-unit1111]

I got 2 128 Gb SSDs on sale. I want to use them together and get the most space for a boot drive. I can load Office and Video editing software all on the SSDs.

Yeah you should be able to - after formatting on the SSDs, you'll have about 95 - 96GB free. Formatting takes about anywhere from 10 - 20% of the drive's usable space.

 

[malanick]

Yeah you should be able to - after formatting on the SSDs, you'll have about 95 - 96GB free. Formatting takes about anywhere from 10 - 20% of the drive's usable space.

When do I format the Drives? I've always just added them (Data Drives)

 

[g-unit1111]

When do I format the Drives? I've always just added them (Data Drives)

All drives have to be formatted before they're used. If you use a data drive you have to format it in Windows. If you use, say an SSD, you have to do a quick format (no full formats) through the Windows installation program before they're able to be used. Windows 7 pretty much automates the process far better than XP did. When you get ready to install Windows you load the OS files onto your primary disk (Windows does this automatically) and you format the drive right before installation - on SSDs they're pretty much automated for the most part.

 

[BeenThereDude]

I just put my computer together with the same Mainboard, so I will tell you briefly what you need to do.

1. Put the mainboard and all your components in your case, should be very straight forward here.
2. Put your RAM in slots 1+3 and 2+4, this is plainly stated in the manual.
3. Make sure your SSD's are connected to the WHITE mainboard SATA connectors, these are your 6gb Intel SATA ports. Also make sure you use the SATA cables that came with your mainboard, the ones with the metal clips. These are rates for 6g/s SATA ports.
4. Hopefully you will not have any trouble connecting the power and reset switch, this is also in the manual on page 27 of the manual
5. Boot up the PC, hopefully it will work and you can press DEL to enter BIOS
6. Make sure you set your RAM speed to 1600 speed, this is done under MIT\Advanced Frequency settings. Set BCLK/PCIe Clock control to Manual, then set your Extreme Memory Profile to Profile 1, then set your memory to 16 (equates to 1600 Mhz speed)
7. Under Peripherals, go to Intel SATA Control Mode and set it to RAID
8. Save and Exit the BIOS.
9. Upon Reboot, you should see your RAID boot menu right after the POST screen. Press Ctrl + I to get into the RAID settings.
10. Create a RAID 0 volume, set the stripe size to 64K or 128K size. I think most people say 128K for SSD's, but Im not sure that it matter much.
11. Reboot again, insert your Installation disc, Windows 7 for example, then press F12 to get to the boot menu. Select your CD or DVD drive to boot from.
12. When windows tries to install, it cannot see your hard drives. Select "Have Disk" and get the Intel SATA drivers off the cd that came with your mobo. Should be in the directory D:\BootDrv\iRST\64Bit\IAstorA.inf, I think, just keep trying other INF files if thats not the right one.
13. Once windows is loaded, the CD that came with the mainboard can run and install all your hardware drivers, pretty nice.
14. I had lockup issues and had to upgrade to F9a BIOS. This is probably the most valuable advice I can give you, as it has kept my system running well ever since.
15. If later you want to overclock your CPU, you can do that because you have water cooling. Not sure what your CPU can do, I have an i73930k and I can overclock to 4.2 or so, but you have better RAM than me so you can probably go higher later. But honestly you should do research before trying to overclock at all.

Well thats all I have, any questions?