New AMD 64 System Advice

MissilemanMissileman Orlando, Florida Icrontian
edited October 2004 in Hardware
I need some input. I'm gonna order an AMD64 3500+ retail tomorrow and I'm looking at this motherboard : http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-123-222&depa=0

I will reuse my Corsair RAM (2x512 - 3700) or switch it to my GEIL 3200 golden dragon stuff. My 9800Pro will move to it.

Power Supply will be my Antec True Control 550W.

I run 6 hard drives. 2 RAID-0's of 2 drives each. 1 Sata JBOD and 1 Maxtor PATA drive. This kinda limits the motherboard selection. I also run a Plextor CDRW and a LiteOn DVDRW.

Cooling is gonna be my Koolance Exos-AL with the 300watt water block. Gotta order the 939 adapter for it.

I have had Epoch boards before and they were very stable and seemed good quality. I know the MSI board has some serious issues and I'm just completely over VIA chipsets and there design and/or driver problems. The Nforce2 boards I have are good and thought I'd try the 3.

What do you guys think. Do I come back from the "Dark Side" or should I just redesign for a 925 based Pentium system. This IC7-Max3 is my first Intel system. My other 20 or so were all AMD or Cyrix based.

I guess I should ask Thrax 's permission to come back to AMD :)

Comments

  • MissilemanMissileman Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    So I went with the MSI NEO2 Platinum instead. Just like the features better. It and my 3500+ should be here in a few days. Now I can be back in the AMD club :) It will good to be back home.

    Ordered my waterblock adapters from Koolance direct for $6.99. I can live with that for keeping the water cooling thing going for a while.

    Wish me luck on the board. They say it is a good board, but very picky and finnicky. I'm gonna give it a shot.
  • MissilemanMissileman Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    Well the NEO2 and 3500+ are running !!!! The Corsair RAM is gonna be a NOGO in this board. I can pass prime95 all the way up to 2.6Ghz, but if the memory timings are anything but defaults (even when not O/C) the system will just lock up for no reason. I've upped the voltage, manual timings, aggressive off/on, all the settings actually. Still get the lock ups. Turning dynamic O/C off prolongs the time quite a bit.

    The AMD is a newcastle .13 BTW. I guess what they said about only OEM being .09 was right.

    The temps for anybody who is interested are running almost identical to the Presshot 3.2E on the Exos-AL. Of course the AC5 hasn't set up yet so it may end up a few degrees cooler in a couple of days.

    Gonna try the GEIL tomorrow and then some OEM off brand low latentcy stuff. Guess I'll have to get to looking for some memory. Anybody found any REAL good RAM for a NForce 3 Ultra yet?
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    Woah.. this thread got lost :(

    HyperX is very good memory for the K8N...

    http://forum.msi.com.tw/thread.php?threadid=51996

    That's an invaluable resource for knowing RAM is good and what is bad. The nForce chipset is more picky about memory than the VIA chipsets :rolleyes:

    Any other questions, ask.. I've dot.foldered this thread :)
  • MissilemanMissileman Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    Shorty wrote:
    Woah.. this thread got lost :(

    I kinda wondered. Thought I was a leper or something. Started 3 threads and nobody even read em :)

    Thanks for the info. I'll look into some Kingston if the GEIL doesn't work. It Golden Dragon 3500 low latentcy stuff. Also got some GEIL 3200 value RAM to try.

    I think I will like this setup after I get it cranked up. It is much snappeir than the Presshot. The benches are in the same or slightly less though. It just feels snappier though. The Nvidia RAID is WAY faster than the intel on the Deathstar drives. I got 2 Deathstars on SATA 3/4 and 2 Cuda's on SATA1/2. Each group a separate RAID-0 64K stripe set.

    Well I'll play RAM swap tomorrow and see how it goes.
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    The biggest reason for 64bit threads going south is that we still lack a core set of 64 users me thinks, Il work on a way of attracting more attention :)

    It will feel snappier. That's native SATA you are using on the NEO2. I found the nVidia raid to be great on my socket 754 NEO. If only the damn thing would stay stable enough with my memory.

    Golden dragon should work quite well. I've heard some impressive results with the value ram as well.

    And yes.. you should have crushing disk performance with that setup :cool:
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited October 2004
    Thought about going SMP? :nudge:
  • JimboraeJimborae Newbury, Berks, UK New
    edited October 2004
    Its wierd about this memory problem with the MSI Neo platform cos I've been incredibly lucky. In my neo I've used TwinMos BH-5, CH-5, Corsair XMS3200 LLPT, Rambos BH-5 & unknown BH-6 all with any hiccups.

    I've now got a MSI Neo2 & S939 3200 waiting to be put together this weekend so I'll be interested to see if that gives me any issues with ram.
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