Aaron's Big Ll64 Upgrade

[Solaris17]

^ dude that blows....are you going to wait?...send them an e-mail and say hey wtf?...when is this goin to be instock?

 

[wtf8269]

Ordered an x1800 XT 512mb from Zip Zoom Fly. It's $700 but my dad paid the difference between the $580 Sapphire that I was going to get on Newegg and this true ATI on Sapphire. Told you he was a computer nerd. Anyway I also ordered the RDX200 off Newegg. I'll get all that put together then whenever the Corsair comes back in stock I'll order that and see what kind of OCs I can get with this Opteron.

Can I get a w00t w00t!

 

[djbbenn]

Awesome, lots of pics.

-Dan

 

[Solaris17]

WOOT!!

 

[wtf8269]

She's a thing of beauty. I'll tell you what she's heavy too. Heavier than my x800. That white part I thought was plastic, nope, metal. Just waiting on my RDX200, should be here withen the next hour. Ordered the Corsair today too.

 

[djbbenn]

Very nice... very jealous too. Congrats...

So the whole cooler is metal?

-Dan

 

[wtf8269]

Yeah the only thing in the entire cooler that's plastic is that clear duct over the fan. I'm excited to see what kind of temps I get. And what kind of OCs too. I won't be able to OC the Opty until I get that RAM which could be as late as next week with Thanksgiving and all.

Figured I'd edit this instead of posting again:
My friend is coming over after dinner and we're going to put everything together and reload Windows. I'm backing up my files as I type this.

 

[djbbenn]

I take it that you got your board now? I want lots of pics.

-Dan

 

[Solaris17]

I take it that you got your board now? I want lots of pics.

-Dan

yes 12 pics.

 

[wtf8269]

Lol yeah I got the board. I'm having a hard time installing Windows though actually. The thing either has a hard time recognizing my hard drives, or something goes corrupt while loading the files for the insallation. It will boot to CD just fine, but after it formats and loads the drivers then reboots it won't go to the installation. I'll get it working though. Just a matter of time.

I quit last night at about 11:30 in favor of going to bed. Once I get home I'll have all Thanksgiving break in order to work on it. I decided not to take pics because I wanted to get started installing everything.

The ammount of cables on this board is insane. There the 8pin and the 24pin connections are right by eachother lol. It's like a frickin power cable for like a washer/dryer going to the board.

I'm in my Intro to Engineering class right now, we're doing some gay little pop-up paper turkey thing. Got it done so I thought I would give you guys an update. I checked the shipping on my Corsair and it's going to be here Friday.

 

[zAAm]

I found that whenever you find it difficult to install Windows, underclock the CPU a notch and the RAM and most of the time it'll run better. My brand new 900MHz Thunderbird did the same thing so I ran it at 800MHz and it installed great and was totally stable at 900MHz thereafter... I'm VERY VERY jealous of that setup you're getting wtf8269!

 

[wtf8269]

Yeah I'm still having problems. Everything runs smoothly when it's reformatting and installing the setup files. But it just sits and hangs on a black screen when it tries to load the actual Windows Installation. Any ideas? Anybody?

 

[Solaris17]

i had this alot when i was trying to install after i built this...try the folowing..it will take hours though.......down load deriks boot and nuke make a floppy or cd (you bust burn it as an iso image) and put the disk in the drive and boot....it will come up and just press Enter this will autonuke any drives......now my xp disk wont do it so i have a windows 98 disk to help me...what i do is i put my 98 disk in and boot it i make it format my drive...thats right drive dont format the other one....then i install 98 and right after it finally boots i put in my xp disk and hit "new installation" it installs xp brand new and it boots with no problems...this is a long process but its the only way I after i had that problem could do it....if you dont feel like doing that....try taking out your x1800 and see if it will boot with that out.

 

[djbbenn]

Your setting up a raid right?

-Dan

 

[wtf8269]

Yeah, I'm setting up RAID. The board came with the RAID drivers disk that you use when you press F6. I've got that, the hard drives are recognized by the setup. It formats the drives, preloads the installation, reboots great. Then the part where it's supposed to show the Windows loading screen then go to the installation. I just get a black screen and it hangs there for an eternity.

 

[djbbenn]

What controller are you using? I heard the ATI one has lots of problems and you should use the
sil3114 controller.

-Dan

 

[wtf8269]

I'm using the frist two ports. So I'm assuming the first set of four or two are controlled by the chipset, or are they all controlled by the Silicon Image chip?

 

[djbbenn]

Ones down the bottom I believe are controlled by the Silicon Image chip... not to sure as I don't have the board, just what I have read. Also I heard there are new raid drivers on the DFI web site.

-Dan

 

[wtf8269]

Alright, I'll try the new drivers and see what happens. I have nothing to lose. Except a $200 motherboard, $700 GPU, $190 CPU, two $180 hard drives, $130 PSU.

 

[djbbenn]

If anything, just don't set up a raid yet... I'm sure you can live without it for a little bit. And I highly doubt you will lose all that lol.

-Dan

 

[wtf8269]

Yeah me either, and I thought about just running without raid and seeing what happens. But even if that works, that doesn't help my RAID any.

Edit: I took a look at those drivers, and I don't think any of those are for the floppy drive. They look like they're all for after Windows is installed.

 

[djbbenn]

Yeah but at least you can figure the board out a little more. There should be a new bios out soon, and I'm sure that will help with somethings. The new drivers might help too, but I would just set it up a single drive, have a little fun, then tinker with the raid a little. Instead of sitting there ripping your hair out wonder why it isn't working.

You need the F6 drivers.

Well I'm out I think, it's lightning here, so...

-Dan

Edit: Here.

 

[wtf8269]

Well I tried the new drivers, they didn't help. Actually, they were worse. The hard drive didn't even get recognized with the new ones.

Meh...

 

[Solaris17]

personnaly dude i wouldnt even bother with raid....but it works for some ppl i guess i like my hard drives the way they are 120gig for Games and other programs like flash or photoshop and my 40gig For windows cd burning programs java Flash players srvice pacts...(basically important things directly related to windows in some way) but im sorry to here that dude i would just use one drive and test that baby out!!!!

 

[djbbenn]

Raid always seems to be buggy as hell on new DFI boards, I know with my board the raid caused a lot of problems at first. Just got to give it some time for some fixes, it's a brand new board remember.

-Dan