Got the pieces together, what now?

[bershirker]

Hey all, I recently bought all the parts to a brand new computer and the parts all arrived yesterday. After several hours, I plugged it in and it surprisingly worked. I just have a few questions on some of the setup and what to do now to polish it up a bit. Here's the system I put together.

CPU - i7-920 w/ Noctua NH-U12P
MOBO - GIGABYTE EX58-UD4P
RAM - GSKILL 2GBx3 DDR3
CASE - Antec P182 w/ Signature 650w PSU
GPU - SAPPHIRE HD 4870 1GB w/ Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 rev.2 Heatsink (not attached yet, not sure it will fit)
SATA WD 1TB HDD and SATA DVD DRIVE
running windows vista pro 64-bit

Questions are as follows:

1. I have 8 SATA Jacks on this mobo. 6 of these use the ICH10R controller and 2 of these use the GIGABYTE SATA2 Controller. From the manual, I have deduced the only real big difference between them is the RAID options and the color, but does it matter where I plug my single HDD and DVD drive. I have no experience using anything SATA and I'm wondering if there are any performance differences going one way or another.

2. My graphics card is nearly...it is touching the Intel x58 Northbridge heatsink on my motherboard because of it's size. It's simply resting against it and there is no pressure but is this something that I need to sorry about or change? Can I plug the card into the second x16 PCI-E instead of the first. Is there any performance difference or does it have to be in the first?

3. What is the proper way to overclock an i7 920? Do I need to mess with voltages or the multiplier or what? There was some guides I saw with Quad Cores but nothing on the new i7's. Do I need to overclock my DDR3?

4. Aside from that, are there any software considerations that I should use to maximize my computer's potential? Is there somewhere I can get a free benchmarking tool to see if it's all working correctly? Do I need to change around some things with my BIOS?

I know that's more than 4 questions but I haven't built a new system in 6 years and I want to make sure everything is working as it should be. How do companies like Alienware and Voodoo-PC tweak and optimize their computers before they ship? That's what I want to do, I just don't have the knowledge past the building part.

Thanks for your help, any suggestions would really be appreciated.

 

[magruder13]

2. I believe you need to have the card you are useing in the first slot unless you are running SLI/Xfire. Not sure but i think i read something about that.

3. Read the quadcore overclocking guide, it is not made for i7's but you wont find one that will. Overclocking them is generally the same. Personally i wouldn't OC a processor that powerfull unless your just really bored.

4. Play with your bios a little, i always do, just to get familiar with it, if you dont know what it does look it up in your manual, if u still dont get it, THEN DONT TOUCH IT. =D

Thats about all i can help with, i hope i provided some help.