Nickz

Kewl, thanks guys!

Would totally build a nice workstation/epic gaming rig with this. Thanks for the giveaway guys!

Decided to RMA the board. Went into the ASUS live chat and had it sorted and setup for repair/replace in less than 5 minutes. They up front ask to describe the problem and a shipping address up front and send an email with information on sending the board in. I like that kind of service Thanks guys, I'll let you know how the new/repaired board goes.

Ugh.... Setup: ASUS RIVE, latest BIOS as of last week. 8GB 1333 RAM HD 7950 (kept from last setup for now) AX760i WD 640 Black (also from last build, didn't get to finish this build yet...) So I'm not sure what happened last night. Was repairing a GPU for someone last night and put it in the bottom PCIE slot so I could reflash it (not sure if corrupt or not, 4650 shows up with all the wrong info and 80 shaders in GPUZ and would not run a game or install drivers), and the flash went well. Shut it down to remove the card, removed card and restarted. Went to plug his card in and it did fix whatever was wrong with it. Came back to mine and after a while of browsing I noticed my sound wasn't working. Said it was fine, but no audio. Restarted the system and re-tested sound to find out it shows it's fine again, but this time its saying nothing is plugged in. So not sure if I did something to kill it or what, but it's dead and I also have no optical light. I ALWAYS ground myself to the case/power supply when I work on computers. I killed an A8N-E by shocking it near the chipset plugging in a sata drive, learned that lesson the hard way. So I'm debating if I should RMA since it's only 9 months old, or just disable it and grab a sound card. I'd really like to have it fixed because you know, I paid quite a bit for it to have something fail or not work, but at the same time it seems this is a very common failure for the board and even replacements fail down the road. Need a few opinions to help me figure out what to do. Anyone else dealt with ASUS RMA? If so, can you explain how it went? Thanks

I like the fact it has an IPS screen rather than the TN panels that are in laptops these days. Makes computing so much more enjoyable when a blue is actually a blue, and not a green from across the room.

No nerd on earth has enough internet bandwith. An ASUS RT-AC68U and PCE-AC68 to go with it is a good setup for the Uber Geek. Also an ASUS RAIDR would help those painfully slow boot times, and keep the Geek productive.

Maximus Formula x38

Eh it is, but it's more for the hobby enthusiast I guess. At least I tried .

As I type this, I'm at 6GHz on a dry ice run and would love to share it with you guys, but it doesn't really fit in any other section in the forum. I'll have a build log and pics later, but I know I'm not the only one on here who does this sort of insane cooling . Pic is from my iphone 5, at night. The flash doesn't work that great in my room apparently.

Mount the pump upside-down, and have the tubes on the radiator on the bottom. Their is air trapped in the pump and with it upright, it stays in the impeller. I had the same issue with my Kuhler 620, and I fixed it by adding more water to the system. They are closed loop systems, but the thing is the tubes are NOT secured in any fashion at all, you can pull them right off. The other thing you can do it lay the system on it's side with the CPU and pump facing up, and have the radiator disconnected with the tubes on the bottom and run it for a few hours, then reattach it after you slowly upright the system WITHOUT disturbing the radiator. This small amount of air is left in the system so the liquid has expansion room, so it's normal. I advise you try the second option first, because opening the cooler will void the warranty. I did it because I got it second hand and new I could fix it. I have a small res somewhere I will add to it later just for fun.

It's only a problem if you overclock the FSB. With an unlocked chip though its not an issue. If it was locked, slower RAM would keep you below whatever the RAM will handle at 1:1.

You need to consider the power draw from the three fans. I think a fan header can handle 5W maximum, or you're going to kill it.

Hicookie gets binned chips, not something off a store shelf.

1.5 is fine if temps are good. The older Athlon and Phenom chips aren't good for much past 4ghz. It's been this way since the Athlon 64.

Intel said that the netburst chips would hit 10ghz, but it never made it past 3.8 because of thermal reasons (although cedar mill P4's are REALLY cool running chips). I think the P4 had a 8 something record for a while (P4 631, also a cedar mill core), but was lost when the original CPU overclock database was killed (ripping.org). There was a screenshot of an AMD FX chip at 9ghz but was dismissed because it was a glitch in CPUZ.