New i3 System Came in Today!

First time with a new platform, I've been on LGA775 since my first computer...

I'm pretty pumped, and excited to learn the in's and out's of 1156/1366

i3 530 (placeholder until i7 875K)
GA-P55A-UD7
G.Skill Pi 2x2GB DDR3-2000 6-9-6-24
MSI R5770 Hawk

ahh, you're going to love it in comparison to 775. I'm the same as you. 775 was my first platform and since then I've upgraded to 1366. It's fantastic.

Nice looking parts. Have fun with it. You're going to love it.

I'm trying to figure out how to install W7 on a RAID0 partition...

Supposedly, you don't have to do the "F6" driver install on Vista or W7.

If I set the SATA ports to RAID mode, then my W7 disk can't be read. I have to set it to IDE mode to read the disk...A few thing left to try...

EDIT: I cycled through all of the settings IDE/RAID/AHCI and tried to boot each time, and finally it worked in RAID mode.

Yeah, you should be able to just create Raid0 by pressing like cntl-i or cntl-L or something on boot up. Then just install windows 7

Yeah, it was weird. I had the RAID0 set up, but my W7 disk wouldn't read. Maybe there was just some dust on the disk

The only other problems I've had is with the Hybrid Silent-Pipe 2 and the height of the G.Skill Pi RAM.

The Silent Pipe makes it tough to do Push/Pull with 38mm fans. It also got in the way of a peice of copper pipe on my station. And, with the Silent Pipe installed you have to mount a tower heatsink in the top/down config (that's the way I wanted it anyway, so it's not a big deal to me). See below:



The G.Skills are so tall I had to mount my VX off-center of the CPU, the entire CPU is covered, but the heatsink just isn't centered. See below:

Is it working? It does look weird. That ram is cutting it close to those fins.

I'm like you I'm going to wait for the Core i7-875K to come and see how it well it does.

At stock, idle temps are 26/25 and load temps after IBT is 39/36. I think the reason there is a difference between cores is b/c the VX is slightly convex, and with it being off-center, one core is getting better contact than the other.

Since the VX and the RAM actually touch, I'm using a fan clip on one side and the G.Skill fan to hold my H101 in place.



My first real OC with this system is attached. I don't think I can do my stock DDR3-2000 with this i3, I guess I'll have to try tight timings. Also, there is an 8C difference in cores, which I'm assuming is b/c of the offset heatsink.

MattNo5ss said:

My first real OC with this system is attached. I don't think I can do my stock DDR3-2000 with this i3, I guess I'll have to try tight timings. Also, there is an 8C difference in cores, which I'm assuming is b/c of the offset heatsink.

Click to expand...

Nice OC. And you'll love the ram when you get the 875k, and have an unlocked multi to play with

I didn't realize the memory controller differed between i3/i5/i7 (LGA1156), just noticed it mentioned in MIA's guide. I got the RAM to 1600 6-7-6-24. Temp difference between cores is still high, even though I mounted in the other orientation, with the heatsink centered correctly...I think I'll post in the cooling section about this...