Hello John;
Hi Bill - And thanks for the supportive thoughts. This is the first time I have "built" a PC from parts and I chose the top of the line Intel stuff out of the chute. I have poured over the Gigabyte Manual and looked over every setting that has to do SATA devices.
Well, now I'm
doubly amazed; not only did you get an x58/i7 system working, it's your
first try! I also find laudatory your having read the manual - you'd be surprised how many people toss it aside when they open the box... Often here, I'll come up with some oddball setting two layers deep in the BIOS that fixes an even odder problem, and I'll be asked "how could you possibly have known about that?" to which my reply is: "Umm - your manual - I, ah, read it..."
I was "thinking" that I should use those 4 (white) ports for the basic hardware connection because I want to use the ICH10R RAID capabilities in the near future. I really only need 4 RAID'd drives however so I will try moving the Seagate back to the (blue) port SATA_2-0. I am also getting conflicting opinions as to whether the 6 (blue) ports should be set to AHCI from the get-go.
I am also getting conflicting opinions as to whether the 6 (blue) ports should be set to AHCI from the get-go.
All, excellent ideas. You can set the ICH ports to RAID, as they don't require you to use RAID, but give you the option anytime. My normal recommendation is to set the ICH to RAID, and the jMicrons to AHCI, then put in the 'pre-load' drivers (F6 in Xp) for both when you install the OS. That way, your options are open, and you don't have to go through the major PITA it is to load the drivers at a later point... The jMicron (white) ports would be an ideal spot for your DVDs - its oddball bugs are mainly hard drive related...
Another thing to check is here:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931
There is a known (and widespread) problem with a large number of Seagate drives. There is a tool there to check your drive - you'll want to follow their instructions (but I don't need to preach at you - you read your manual :lol: ; flashing the repair firmware to a drive with incorrect original firmware can kill drives...
Regarding the ICH RAIDs, I can give you a 'barn-stormer' of an idea: I use all six ports on my ICH9R for RAIDs; I have two pair of RAID0 150G Velociraptors on the first four ports; then, a pair of 1TB WD RE3s in a RAID1 array for my data. I use a boot manager, and my first partition on both pairs of RAID0s is a hidden boot manager extended master boot record (I
use the one on the first pair - the second is a backup, in case of disaster; can just
switch to it); the next partition on each pair is an extended, right at the 'nose' of the drive, where it's fastest - inside of which are the logical partitions for the swaps; on volume_0, I have: 764_Swap (12G), V64_Swap (12G), and V32_Swap (6G); then, the partitions are assigned from the front (again, putting the most used OSs [which, since RC1 from TechNet, has been Win - especially 7x64] closest to the fastest part) - 732_Boot (96G); X64_Boot (48G); and X32_Boot (32G)... I keep Xp on volume_0 as, while you can install it to the second volume, evermore it will assign the system drive as 'D:', and I want all my OSs to show the same drive order: C: is the system/boot drive; D: is the RE3 pair for (reduntant) data (umm - 'd' for 'data' - has a certain ring to it :lol: ), E for my 1.5 T backup drive, F,G, & H for the swaps...On volume_1, I again have the extended, which contains 732_Swap (6G), V64_Swap (12G), and V32_Swap (6G); then the primaries: 764_Boot (96G), V64_Boot (64G), and V32_Boot (64G). This leaves roughly one third of each RAID0 pair unpartioned, meaning the furthest my heads will ever have to 'seek' is two-thirds of the disk, with an
average stroke of one third! So, for this effort, I get:
from the system volume, and:
from the swaps...
If you were to use a setup like this on a fast i7, it would
really cook!
Turning off SMART is certainly a good idea to simplify things, as, until we get the *&^% drive to connect, obviously we won't be getting any diagnostic info from it anyway! I thought, for the same reason, to turn off AHCI, but it shouldn't matter to the 'connect'; I have AHCI enabled on my jMicron, to use 'hot-plug' on a front panel eSATA - which also turns it on for my Seagate 1.5 backup drive; I did extensive throughput testing, and saw exactly zero difference - enabled or disabled. Further research revealed I was using the
wrong tests! Turns out the big advantage to AHCI really only appears if you're 'loading up' the drive with lots of requests for small pieces of data (especially write requests), as then the NCQ feature (Native Command Queueing) goes to work for you by 'sub-optimizing' the access mechanics.
I do not have a floppy drive so my current boot order is DVD ROM, Hard Disk and DVD ROM.
I recommend the floppy in the boot order, even if you don't have one, as you can then try a "blind flash" procedure should your BIOS ever 'take a dump"; it should not matter whether you have the drive connected now, but, if you have severe BIOS problems, you won't be able to go in an change the boot order, so you're 'locked out of' one of the few things you can do with a board whose BIOS is 'gone bye-bye', besides use it to prop open a door
What I did realize, while writing this, is that, though I've
recommended this before, I've never actually
tested it, to see whether having the floppy in the boot order, but
not physically connected, causes any kind of 'can't boot this' problem; will shut down later, disconnect the floppy, and test!
The thing is that I can not find a way to read what BIOS version is on this shipping MoBoard. I have tried getting to the Post screen from the Main Bios graphic but it flashes by so fast that I can not tell.
What you want to do here is, as the machine starts to boot up, peck at that <TAB> key like a woodpecker, then, when the screen 'switches views', peck again at the <DEL> key to get into the BIOS; this has to be caught fairly quickly (especially at the speed that demon is running), so you need to kind of locate the relevant keys before the boot, so you can do <TAB> with one hand (I've learned from experience) preferably your 'off' hand (i.e., if you're right handed, get the <TAB> with the left), and the <DEL> with the 'faster' one - a really nitpicky, minor point, but it has proven to help! Once you get into the BIOS, if you change "Full Screen LOGO Show" on the "Advanced BIOS Features" page to "Disabled", it will get rid of the 'splash' screen, and reduce the task to just hitting the <DEL>; also (at least, if they're still supporting it), there's a utility for changing the 'splash' to anything you want - I used to know of a site that had hilarious stuff (a pot leaf logo, with "powered by ganja!"; the Intel 'Intel Inside logo, that instead said "Idiot Outside!", but they appear to have gone commercial...
I have been told to update the latest f7
If you do decide to do this, I can give you a very safe and easy procedure for it. In the meantime, I'll give you the
MAIN WARNING!
DO NOT use the Gigabyte @BIOS utility - it is a well known source of 'trashed' GB motherboards - for which the only 'fix' is an RMA!
but I am not anxious to try that. yet!
I'm thinking, too - as
well as your system is running (
especially in comparison to the oodles of people either unable to boot at all, or only able to boot with one solitary stick of RAM), I'd
really want to know for certain, that a BIOS upgrade would
really be a functional upgrade, before I'd be willing to 'mess with success'!
I am planning on "overclocking" this Intel 920 chip after I get a water cooler for CPU cooling. I am planning on this new Corsair Hydro H50 cooler. I just want to get the basics working before futzing with over clocking.
You will love water - I came to it by accident. I designed my workstation to be extremely efficient at moving heat (twelve fans) 'out of the box'. My plan was to use it in a large, cool basement. However, during the, maybe a month's period when I integrated it (ten days of testing and 'speed binning' RAM alone), I ran it
in the basement, and found out the dust situation was
simply not tenable; even with intake filtering (I, too, have a CoolerMaster, and love it), sawdust was hideous - and the problem with sawdust is that it's 'sticky', due to the sap component, but when heat dries out the sap, the dust is anchored like freaking concrete. I had to move the thing into my bedroom, which is only about a hundred or so square feet; even in the middle of winter, the room temps were over eighty-five; absolutely had to do something... Came up with this:
Would have water cooled the rest (actually have the MOSFET water block), but, with the heat-pipe cooling, if I wanted to cool some of it, I have to cool all of it, and while I was researching 'how-to' water cool, people scared me into thinking that too many blocks would be a flow problem - more about that later.
I put this:
into the basement ceiling, and again, people told me it wouldn't work - too much hose, vertical drop...
This:
is in the wall behind the machine; the two tubes are 'quick-disconnect' fittings from Koolance, which have never leaked one single drop - though people warned me about them, too... What I mainly discovered is that, mostly, water-cooling enthusiasts blather and obsess about stuff that they don't really understand, and actually makes very little difference. Unless you're trying run an absurd overvolt/overclock (I ran into a guy using phase-change cooling to get a CAD station quad, supposedly, to over 5GHz!), just having water (of any kind) will work great! I wanted an expensive (~$150), three fan radiator, but my vendor seemed to always be out of them - so I settled for a fifty dollar one from NewEgg; when I got it 'cooking', I found out I probably could have done just as well with an even cheaper two or one fan model! I get exactly a 2°F 'drop' across my radiator; my CPU cores all run at exactly 39°C, stress test, three video streams at once, whatever, no matter; and my video cards (which are OC'd all to hell, used to just 'howl' their fans, and ran between 58 to 64°C) now are 'pegged' at 20°C! Gravity - don' matter: in a closed loop, mass of water being 'pushed up' is exactly equal to the mass 'falling down' - cancels out! Tube and pump size, number of blocks - withing reasonable limits, don' matter: bigger tubes, less blocks = faster flow, more
mass of water going
through the blocks to transfer heat to; smaller tubes, more blocks = slower flow,
longer the mass of water
stays in the blocks for heat transfer. I put a variable, 9-15 Volt 8 Amp power supply in the basement, triggered by a relay off the system power, to keep the heat from the current to
run the fans and pump
out of my system supply (
and my bedroom), and make the air/water flow rates adjustable; the Molex on the wall plate lets my system monitor and alarm the basement fans and pump; the 'foamed' area under the basement ceiling joists (and used some of that canned 'crack-seal' expanding foam to seal up the hose and net cable holes) keeps
all the noise
in the basement; in my room, the thing is
eerily silent...
While I am going to download the Windows 7 RC
If you'll take a peek here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/260696-30-ep45-ud3r-opinion-needed
I wrote up a little bit of a critique, sort of 'my take' on Win7 (at about the sixth post) (you'll
certainly be able to detect that I'm
more than slighly enthusiastic), but the important stuff is in, I think, the eighth post - I've listed a few places where you can find 'everything you'll ever need', in the way of: tracking the release history, tweaking it once you've got it, and, if you
at all intend to use Media Center - a fan-effing-tastic site that deals exclusively with 7's MC!
I also have to tell you - I've made (apparently) a serious enemy here, who's petulant because he was ignored in a tweaking discussion; he appears to be 'stalking' me, opposing and 'picking at' pretty much
every single sentence I post, and pointing people at a different site. I figure this will confuse the hell out of everyone, doing a disservice to all the first timers seeking actual assistance, so I'm probably going to give up here, at least for a while. One thing it's forcing me to do is something I should have done some time ago - build and populate a web site of my own, with a section devoted to GB MOBOs (and Chinese calligraphy, and quantum mechanics, and Kit Cars, and cognitive philosophy and theory, and ceramics, and political grousing, and neuro-physiology and -chemistry, and AODA treatment, and on and on and on
.
Whatever, if you need to get my attention, you can feel free to email me at: bilbat@wi.rr.com
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