Parky

I knew that.......ya' bastard....... Cheers Mate, Parky

Thanks Al, I AM the mechanic....lol. Not much that can be done with the X-Fi, as you've hinted. It's the 5 hard-drives that make it impossible to get it any tidier....... Cheers, Parky

Naahhh......this was a good choice!! Just replaced a Sapphire 5970 with it, and I'm very, very, very pleased with the upgrade. This is what tax refunds are for after all......although I'm still trying to convince the wife of that Cheers, Parky

Yep, That's normal. If however, you were to go here: http://www.overflandersfields.com/FAQ.htm you'll probably find a whole boatload of useful info. Then if you stumble around this forum a bit, you'll find everything else you need to know, and probably a whole lot of stuff you don't need to know, but it's there for the taking anyway. Cheers, Parky

Herr Olham, Just for you.....

Hi Olham, Sorry to hear you're running into problems. If it's any consolation, there are a number of others who've run into similar and sometimes identical issues with that specific model of Corsair RAM on the ASUS motherboards. It's not exclusive to that particular motherboard either. Paulo has offered very good advice here. As he mentioned, you could try setting the RAM's timings and voltage manually through the BIOS as opposed to relying on SPD values. Another thing I suggest you try is enabling the Extreme Memory Profile or "XMP" option for that RAM in your BIOS. That may also force it to behave itself. It's worked for me in the past. There are also 6 BIOS updates for that specific motherboard available on the ASUS site. Might be a good idea to check your BIOS revision and have your tech friend update it to the most recent one available. If those steps don't solve the problem, grab a set of the Kingston memory with the same or similar specs. Woudn't be a bad idea to cross-reference the QVL before you pull the trigger. On a side note, I haven't used anything other than G.Skill memory in the last dozen or so builds I've done, and haven't run into a single memory related issue that wasn't easily solved. Mind you, I haven't attempted to run it in the P7P55 that Paulo mentioned earlier. Kingston would probably be your best bet strictly in terms of compatibility. I wouldn't be blaming the motherboard for your issues...........not just yet anyway. Far too early to be considering an RMA on the board. Keep us up to speed please... Cheers, Parky

Exactly.....

LOL.......yep, I hear ya'. In this case, it should be all downhill from here. It takes a little while for that that thermal paste to "set" or "cure" properly, at which point your temps should come down a wee bit more. Sounds to me like a successful operation... Cheers, Parky

Outstanding performance at a very attractive price-point. You won't do much better than that for affordable air cooling. The reviews are all very positive. It is a bit of a monster and weighs in at 600 grams. Just check the dimensions carefully to make sure nothing on your motherboard will hinder or prevent a clean installation. On a side note, from what I've read, you must supply your own TIM....which is never a bad idea to begin with. Cheers, Parky

That's a damned good question, and one that I can't answer. The last time I put togther an AMD based tower was many, many moons ago. An Asus K8N-E Deluxe Socket 754 board with an Athlon 3400+ which was a great gaming rig in it's day, when paired with an ATI X850-PE graphics card. BirdogICT has a tendency to go with AMD builds, and would probably have the info you're looking for. Cheers, Parky

Mike, Unless the temperature in your tower is smoking hot to begin with, that e8600 is idling at way to warm a temperature....even with the stock Intel cooler. Shouldn't be much more than about the mid 30's. Perhaps somebody botched the seating process with the stock HSF would be my guess. Regardless, the Arctic Freezer should be considerably better than what you have. I've used it in the past, which leads me to this bit of info. You might want to remove the fan from the heatsink before attempting to do the install. Makes it much less awkward, and it can be clipped back on quite easily once the heatsink has been seated properly. One other little detail. That cooler is mounted using the same method as the stock Intel thingy. From my experience, those four plastic pins that pop into the holes in your mainboard can "split" open if you don't line 'em up properly. It happened to me on one of the four corners....at which point there was some rather colourful language. Make sure you line those puppies up precisely, and insert them from diagonal corners as opposed to doing one side and then the other. One other little thing I didn't like about the design was the amount of thermal paste that comes in the pre-applied pad. Far too much of it for my liking. It's easily cleaned off and replaced with a nice thin layer of Arctic Silver or any other good quality product. That's strictly a matter of personal preference though... Best of luck with the upgrade. Cheers, Parky

Congratulations Olham!! You should be very pleased with that hardware array. The Sandy Bridge will overclock very easily on that board. It's usually a piece of cake to obtain 4.5 Ghz using just a decent air cooler in most cases. 4Ghz would be a nice round number. Just make sure you're extremely careful if it's necessary to increase any voltages....particulary where the DRAM is concerned. Under NO circumstances should you increase your DRAM to any higher than 1.65v. You run the risk of cooking your processor if you go any higher than that, as that's where your memory controller now resides as opposed to it being on the Northbridge. Quite honestly, I doubt you'll even have to worry about voltages at all. You should be able to obtain your target overclock without even messin' with them. A graphics card upgrade somewhere down the road would be the next logical step. A friend of mine recently put together a tower with similar specs. Picked up an EVGA GTX 570 and is thrilled to bits with it. The price vs performance ratio is rather outstanding. Lots of good options out there though....that was merely a thought. Cheers....and Well done!! Parky

And here I was thinking it was a reference to DCS's A-10 Warthog. Good reason for concern if that's the case, because that is one awesome sim. Now, if they could only just come up with a decent dynamic campaign for it. Come to think of it, now that we're really going out on a limb, I wonder if they might have even been referring to Train Simulator...because what they said was "another sim out there", not "another flight sim". Cheers, Parky

That's only half the battle, Olham. Getting the other parts of your anatomy to remember what to do once your feet have carried them to the toilet, is equally as important. Cheers, Parky

Hmmmm, Interesting. Might I be so bold as to suggest OBD aren't really "vying for anyone's attention" though. From what I've seen, the development of OFF seems to have been more a labour of love and passion for a particular genre of flight sim than anything else. It certainly wasn't undertaken with the idea of any significant monetary gain as the ultimate goal, which can't honestly be said about the "Other Game" I suspect. About the best thing Winder, Pol and the others can hope for I fear, is once Phase 9 is complete, they might have covered their material costs and have a bit of dosh left over for a trip to the local pub. I'm sure most of us hope they get some spare time to actually enjoy flying this masterpiece they've created as well. Some downtime is certainly long overdue... Cheers, Parky

LMAO!! Btw......it's not an "additonal" setting at all. I think it overwrote your "Easy Squint" option. Cheers, Parky

Right you are, Lou. I think there's a setting in Workshops that allows for "Easy Squint". Use that or you're faced with having to flex somewhere in the vicinity of 117 facial muscles to pull it off manually. Cheers, Parky

Neither was I. It's just that I'm so adorable there's no effort required I really don't like this kind of fame, but it comes with the territory I s'pose. Just ask Elvis. He's alive, living in Istanbul, and would like to sell you a very nice liquid cooling system. Cheers, Parky

Indeed, Then however, some of my fans here would feel deprived if I didn't include my usual, superfluous commentary. With all sencerity though, the recent Athlon-based systems I've looked at had no problems at all just running with the boxed cooler....even with some moderate overclocking. It may not be as "low profile" as some might prefer, but it certainly seems up to the task. I'd probably give that a whirl before I went out and spent any of my beer money on an upgrade. Best of luck with whatever you decide on. Cheers, Parky

Yes, the H50 and H70 are nice coolers, but would be absolute overkill for what you're trying to achieve. On a side note, the radiator is the furthest thing from being "huge". It has roughly the same dimensions as a typical 120mm case fan. I have the H50 installed in two towers here, and until you go to a push/pull fan arrangement, it's not cumbersome at all. In fact it's quite compact....particularly with regard to the cooling block, which is in fact, extremely "low profile" when compared to your typical air-cooling solutions. It's also extremely effective. I've got two i7-920's here both clocked to 4 GHz and neither of them will get over 70c even when I'm priming the everliving snot out of them. As far as the system not being "simple", well from my experience, a reasonably clever and dexterous chimpanzee could install one, probably in 5 minutes or less. Frankly I think you've pretty much answered your own question here. If you aren't planning on overclocking the processor, and you don't want to spend unnecessary cash, why wouldn't you just go with the stock cooling that comes with the processor?? Besides....even if the the fan bearings turned out to be absolute garbage and the fan died or was making an unbearable racket, you could just remove it and aim one of your case fans at the heat sink, just like you did with your other tower. I wouldn't recommend that approach, but it's worked in the past, right? Cheers, Parky

Simon, Check to see if you have a "Microsoft Virtual Wifi Miniport Adapter" showing up in your active networks. If you do, get rid of it (unless you have some use for it...which I seriously doubt). In order to "disable" it, open up the windows command line interface and type in the following command "netsh wlan stop hostednetwork" (no quotes) and hit "enter". That should disable the adapter. Now type in "netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=disallow" (no quotes) and hit "enter", which should stop the windows service it relies on. This should solve your problem completely. HTH Cheers, Parky

The self-proclaimed computer "expert" you refer to here is a moron as far as I'm concerned. Regardless, let's move on to your driver issues. Try the following if you would... 1) Use ATI's built in uninstall utility to uninstall the Catalyst package you currently have installed. 2) Reboot into "Safe Mode" 3) Run Driver Sweeper, and get rid of everything related to ATI. 4) Reboot to Windows and if Windows offers to install any drivers for you, tell it to piss off. This way we avoid installing a standard VGA driver before installing the CATS. 5) Run a clean install of the entire Catalyst 11.2 suite and you should be good to go. Hope it works for you. If not, let us know. I'm sure one of us will be able to solve the problem. I'm certainly hoping BirdDog and a couple of others chime in here. The more input, the better as far as I'm concerned. Btw...I'm no guru....but this issue shouldn't require one from what I can see. Cheers, Parky

Glad you're sorted! Cheers Mate Parky

And you can tell 'em you heard it straight from Carly Simon...

*Knock, knock....*