The Chronicles of T [Upgrade Time!]

First off, for those of you who know me or at the very least vaguely remember me, I haz returned. Although this time I'm not going to say that and then disappear for a few months.

Anyway, I'm finally upgrading my board and CPU since I haven't even seen the proper ceiling on my 6950; I was going to upgrade to the 3570K but after reading through the Ivy thread and the higher temps I'm not so sure I want to do so anymore. Originally, I was considering the Z77 Sabretooth and the aforementioned 3570 but now I'm thinking 2500K all over again. If Gigabyte has anything good (Z77 or otherwise) I'm open to that, but I figure if there's nothing out there that piques my interest as much then I'll go ahead and give ASUS one last chance (have had horrible luck with them with the A8N32 and the Maximus Formula SE).

Opinions. Let's hear 'em. Oh! I'll also update this into a build log once everything has come to.

If you're going the 2500K route, make sure you pick a gen3 Z68 board. If the ivy temps either get fixed, or turn out to be a non-issue, you can always drop in an ivy chip later on.

I've had good results with my board and others have had good luck (eventually) with boards in the same Z68 range. The Pro is a sweet spot.

As it turned out, I'm going with Ivy anyway because while the temps may be worse off once voltage is stacked I'll have no basis for comparison, and I'm cooling it with liquid so it's all moot really. Anyway, the Sabertooth will be in tomorrow (I think, it's actually in Maspeth right now but isn't moving) and I'll order the 3570 on Wednesday and the build will commence as soon as I have that in my grubby little hands.

In the meantime, the Agility 3 90GB and the Snipers arrived last week.

You should be fine with the Ivy Bridge, especially under water. At stock it runs, on my rig, about 5C higher than Sandy Bridge. But, if core Temp is right, TJMax on Sandy Bridge is 98C and 105C on Ivy bridge. My experience has been that the higher temps only matter when stress testing. During normal use, I have seen no difference in temps. Also, the 3770K, in Pass Mark received a slightly higher score at 4.4 than the 2600K at 4.6.

Sink Your Teeth In
(Okay so I couldn't devise a better title. Problem?)




A 5 year warranty I hope I won't have to make use of (I haven't had the best of luck with ASUS boards) and Ivy Bridge support right out of the box. Suck it.

Also, if I'm understanding the tech properly, Lucid's VirtuMVP allows me (should I enable it) to divvy up tasks between the iGPU and the 6950, so it'd be like Crossfire, Resource Management Edition. Or, you know, Crossfire that actually works.





Board features. I'm particularly drawn to the UEFI BIOS, something I've wanted to use since Gigabyte were the first to use the tech, and then there's the BIOS Flashback - no CPU or RAM required, just board power, a flash drive, and the Flashback button. Sign me up today!





Not the best picture of the set, the first one, but at least you can see stuff so stop your complaining; my battery is dead and I don't know where the charg—oh, nevermind I see it. You're still not getting a new picture so quit your smiling.



Stuff!



More stuff!



Certificate of Awesome, er, I mean Reliability.

So, your first look at the board. Sexy, innit? Notice that cutout just above the first PCIE slot? That's one of the two locations for the two included 40mm(?) fans to exhaust further heat away from the board. See the button above the 24-pin socket? That's the RAM OK! button. It checks (and configures) your RAM if it is indeed compatible with the board.


Rawr.


This confused me at first because it says to insert the CPU before removing the cap, and I was all "Well how the hell am I supposed to do that?", and then I looked at the retention lever and I was all "Oh, duh."


See? No fuss. Look at all 1,155 of those pins, 380 more than I currently have.


USB 3 header, SATA 2 and 3 ports.


USB 2 ports, BIOS Flashback button, USB 3 ports, eSATA ports, TOSLINK port, DisplayPort and HDMI for the iGPU, network stuff I won't use with two more USB 3 headers under there, and Onboard sound... which I will be using for a bit as I'll no longer have a PCI slot to accommodate my old Audigy 2.

Would have had the build log all done by now but after switching over to the new rig I'd forgotten my password, and had it reset just this morning. So without further ado, let us pretend this is still a WIP:

The [Ivy] Bridge to Terabithia
(Oh yeah I just did that.)


Oh yeah! Pint-sized box though... wasn't expecting that all.


Everything looking good here.


HD 4000, huh? I wonder if it can outdo my old 4870?


Ivy, meet Kentsfield. Huge box is huge (and battered).


Up close and personal, keep your hands to your-effin'-self!


Touch it and die.


Ivy's fan versus Kentsfield's fan.


And then there's this... AC MX-2. Gotta have something to go on my hot dogs, amirite? I'm not?... Well screw you then.