Reiter Rig on it's way to glory

Got the new drive today, and at the moment it seems to be functioning correctly. I have formatted it for NTFS and am currently in the middle of installing Windows 7 64-bit and some programs on it. If all goes well, I should hopefully have the system ready to go by the end of the week. So far I've gotten the Windows 7 installation up and running, and am now in the process of getting SP1 installed (as well as drivers for the hardware), an antivirus and firewall installed, and several other programs such as Steam and League of Legends. Looking forward to having another finished desktop tower that can play games at a respectable framerate.

Some pictures on the current status:

The replacement Caviar Black 1TB installed into it's bay

The bay re-installed into the Reiter rig

A shot of the hard drive info from the BIOS indicating the correct storage size

The start of installing Windows 7 64-bit onto the Reiter rig

An unfortunate day.

Well today one of my GTX 460's decided to take a dump. The EVGA GTX 460 installed in my system is deciding to drop video randomly. I'm not surprised that it's failed, I applaud it's performance up to this date (because it was a RMA replacement). I have contacted EVGA about the issue to see if anything can be done to resolve the issue, but it's doubtful as I believe it has no more warranty at this point, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I've had stellar customer support from EVGA in the past so maybe something can be done to fix this issue for me without too much of a hassle. In the meantime, at least I'm not hooped, I still have the PNY GTX 460 running in the system so I can play some games, but just not at as high of quality.

In other news, the Reiter rig may be ready to go soon. The tracking number says that the HDD is in the superbox (but I haven't checked the mail today). So tomorrow I'll probably have something to do anyway and will keep my fingers crossed that the new HDD is going to function properly without any other strange issues arising in the Reiter rig.

Replacement Caviar Black on its way.

Yesterday I received notice that the replacement Caviar Black has shipped. I'll probably be receiving it sometime next week and hopefully can get the Reiter rig up and running at that point without any more hiccups. Other than that, had a fun weekend with my friends as we went to the States for a day getaway to all hang out together. Not much else has been going on in the ways of PC's, mostly just waiting on that HDD before I can really do much else with the system at this point. It is otherwise ready to go it seems, just need the HDD up in there and then get Windows 7 64-bit installed and some extra programs that the Reiter rig might need.

Broadway rig finished and friend happy

So not much to report on the Reiter rig yet, still need to get the hard drive shipped out. Work has put me on temporary layoff because they hired too many people back in December and it's now getting slow (because of summer). A bit of a downer, but at least I can collect EI while I figure out what to do at this point. I finished up the Broadway rig last week, got good Memtest86+ (2 passes) and Prime95 for 24 hours so I deemed it stable. Friend picked it up last Thursday and has never been happier playing games with a decent frame rate. Not too much else to talk about right now, another one of the XAF fans was annoying me yesterday and vibrating a bit, but seems to be fixed right now anyway. I was a bit skeptical about the blade design, and it's starting to show that it's not really a good working design. All I can say is next I'm getting Bit Fenix fans when the other XAF fan starts annoying me again. I'm not going to necessarily dock Xigmatek for fans in general, the more traditional blade shapes seem to work fine, just the XAF blade shape doesn't seem to be doing much of what it's supposed to anyway. I may use the fans again in another case or something in the future for a build or something, but right now I'm just dealing with the deformed one by unplugging it and hoping that the other doesn't start freaking out again.

Broadway Rig almost finished!

Got the new Mushkin Silverline 2x2GB RAM today. Installed it into the system, re-overclocked the new CPU to 2.8GHz (has the same multiplier as a E6300 unfortunately), and did a Memtest86+ full test. No problems! Finally things are starting to look up on these builds. After verifying with 2 passes with Memtest86+, I was sure that the system was working 100% on the RAM. Right now, I'm working on defragging the hard drive and then doing a Prime95 balanced stress test for 24 hours to verify that the system is ready to go. If everything goes smoothly from here on out, I'll be able to give the new rig to my friend when he comes out this week. Not too much else to say right now, still need to mail out the DOA drive back to NCIX (haven't gotten around to printing off a prepaid label through Canada Post yet) but once I get the new drive back, hopefully everything will go smoothly for the Reiter rig at that point. Other than that, not much else occurred over the last couple days, but hopefully by the end of the week I'll have some stuff sorted and be ready to return to work after being off since October 2011 due to a back injury. Sorry, no pictures at this time of the replaced RAM, but it looks the same as the old Mushkin RAM (same heat-sinks on the individual RAM sticks), so nothing really visually new in the Broadway system.

Reiter rig parts ahoy and a bit of a set back

So today I picked up the motherboard and memory for the Reiter rig. Gotta say, wasn't expecting all the original paperwork (and CD) and most of the original cables to come with it (even a spare 775 pin cover). The eBay seller even saved the case stickers for the Gigabyte motherboard. Gotta say, if it powers up and functions great, the seller is definitely going to get a 5 star rating for this. The package even came from Estonia, and there's what looks to be no damage at all during shipping (which is excellent). Also the seller  included a double fan connector (which I guess he was using for his CPU heat-sink fans). The north bridge heat-sink looks to have faded a bit (it used to be more of a golden yellow metallic color). Not really something to be bothered about, just something I'd thought to mention. The board I received, by the way, is a Gigabyte GA-965G-DS3 (in case you didn't read up on it in a previous post). It is a bit older than the P5Q in terms of generation of chipset (uses the 965G chipset which is a few generations older than the P45), but it is still a quality board with some overclocking potential (not as much at the P5Q though). The RAM the seller included was 2x2GB of Crucial Rendition RAM (which is their budget RAM without any heat-sinks on the outside). As I won't be overclocking the ram too much, it shouldn't really be a problem that there's no heat-sinks on the outside, just something that I aesthetically prefer on systems or if I need a bit of headroom on the overclocking side. Quite impressed thus far, lets see how it does in the case.


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