Originally posted by omegaman7:

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I haven't heard of any issues either. If they do arise, it'll likely be due to either bad coding, or a flaky chip. Take my kingston 16Gb drive. It causes some very weird bugs to occur. It interrupts my printer, and I'm fairly certain it mucked up a CCE encode twice. I'm strongly considering retiring it...

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I?m surprised Russ doesn?t have more problems with dust than he does living where he does, that?s amazing?

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Originally posted by Mr-Movies:

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Russ, good point pressurize you case, don't have excessive airflow and things work much better. Excellent job my man!

Kevin, actually I see the same problems with Gigabyte, MSI and even ASRock tend to be snappier. I do think it is Gigabytes design as they tend to have the same chipset as the others. In fact when I went from my ASRock with the USB HDD problems to my new Gigabyte and didn't have to update chipset drivers but did anyway. Installs were slower but the biggest issue I've had is that the integrated video, same exact chip, runs much less efficient. My best guess would be drivers and not the hardware architecture of the board layout. I could try other drivers to test that theory however it does get difficult to do this as most board manufactures tweak the chipset to support their own set of features.

Even with Gigabytes running a bit slow I still prefer them in most cases unless I need extreme speed and then I would go with MSI platforms and/or Intel setups as they are faster.

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Originally posted by Mr-Movies:

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It is true that MSI BIOS updates lag but still I've built thousands of systems from most all board manufactures, testing, imagining, trouble shooting, and MSI is by far some of the fastest boards out there. They don't come with the features for the same money that Gigabyte does but with exception to loading them up with four sticks of high speed memory I've never encountered much problems with them, they are a very good board. The memory timing problems have been fixed since I had them but is was a bugger to load the board and get memory working properly in fact it was a problem just to get the board to post when loaded but such is life and I have had those problems before with other manufactures.

That Biostar board is cheap, wow, but if you want to talk about quality issues Biostar is right up there. They are one manufacture I tend to stay away from personally, on occasion I'll solicit buying one but typically steer clear. However for $40 I'd give them a shot you really can't go wrong at that price.

With the cooler don't you have a heatpipe/coolant-line connected to your NB, I can understand the issues with the VRM's? I guess there is something I'm missing there?

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Originally posted by omegaman7:

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Indeed stevo! My northbridge tends to run substantially higher than my CPU. If I could cool it better, I could likely take my CPU even higher. And I probably will eventually. This board and CPU will be my Blu Ray workhorse one day :D I'm probably gonna take it to the next step though. Beyond the Coolit eco. I plan to go TRUE water cooling. That's one of the things I haven't played with yet ;)

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Originally posted by theonejrs:

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Originally posted by Mr-Movies:

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That totally makes sense now that I see your configuration. Have you had over heating issues with the NB/VRM heatpipe or has it just run a bit high? I like the radiator but it would be better if the NB was also a part of the cooler system too.

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Mr-Movies,

The motherboard temp run's warmer than I like to see it. I try and get the MB temps 2-3 degrees warmer than the CPU at idle. If I fully stress test for a couple of hours, all 6 cores at 100% load, the MB temp doesn't go over 41-42C The CPU doesn't break 53C. Being a sealed system, you can't add a NB or VRM cooler to it. I solved the NB cooling with the addition of a fan mod I came up with. I found that a 70mm fan from a useless stock AMD cooler fit snugly in between the Pump housing and the knobs for the mounting pins. The fan blows right over the NB cooler and blows on the back of the video card. As noisy as those little aluminum block stock coolers were, when you just have the bare fan out in open air, you can't hear it run at all despite it turning 3200 rpm! Smooth and quiet, just the way I like them! here's a not so good pic made with the webcam, but you can clearly see the fan and the way it slips in, with the bare NB cooler directly below it. I removed the "pretty" blue covers that are stuck on with thermal tape, they actually increased the temperature by 1-2C when it was cooled with a Freezer 64 that ducted air to the NB cooler and VRMs!




I put a large zip-tie around the mount spring and over the fan, and it's not going anywhere. A couple of folks here on AD tried it and had good results as well.

Best Regards,
Russ

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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Not bad, I hope the optional top fan mount includes spacing for 120/140mm fans too, as 200mm fans to buy aren't usually that cheap, or effective. It's not so bad when they include them with the case :P

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Originally posted by Deadrum33:

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i do not have this CM case. Just wanted to say the toolless design of some of their expansion bays seems to be getting cheaper. also how i always regret the few times i purchased cases with doors. these are just opinions, i would still purchase cm cases cuz i wouldnt buy too cheap a case and no need for a designer case 2x the price

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Originally posted by Deadrum33:

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i do not have this CM case. Just wanted to say the toolless design of some of their expansion bays seems to be getting cheaper. also how i always regret the few times i purchased cases with doors. these are just opinions, i would still purchase cm cases cuz i wouldnt buy too cheap a case and no need for a designer case 2x the price

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