comicalsans

I'd only suggest if you are going for RAID 0 to just remember a small error can cause full data loss - I'd hope you have a backup!

Yeah he was on an 8x too (ref https://youtu.be/epIlB49SNTI?t=3m15s ), but in your case you'll definitely have to use an adapter with that motherboard (then finding issues in the case placement) or you'd have to cut the 8x slot to fit the gpu (maybe leading to other issues like hitting components) - it's really up to you... it can be hard sometimes to justify the cost, I know man haha

taking "building" a PC to the next level... I wouldn't even trust anything I'd print to not be faulty!

That sucks man... Yeah you can't use the card at all in that motherboard... the item that stconquest linked above is just a riser so wouldn't really help use the 8x card in a 16x motherboard (you could always do as this person did on reddit https://imgur.com/a/oYRmU - I would not suggest this at all! hahah) I don't understand the 20% restocking fees by companies... it doesn't make sense to charge 20% to put something in a shelf gah The adapter you linked could work... only issue is you'd have to find some new way to mount the GPU in a case. In regards to the bottleneck, you might have noticed that in linus' video his GPU was actually running at 8x too as the electrical connection was only 8x (but in a 16x slot for unknown reasons...)

I have to agree with blu4, Malwarebytes antimalware is the way to go - if it doesn't get rid of it I don't know what will!

The thing about changing a HDD to a new PC is that Windows may have licensing issues (claiming its non genuine) - a while ago I upgraded my PC (all new hardware except the hdd) and my Windows 7 at the time got angry and required me to reactivate my system... Also I've come across issues if switching from Intel to AMD where the system just will not boot (this was a windows 8.1), even when I tried using a system repair disk it didn't help; I had to do a full install to fix it in this case. Often the move does work and later windows like 8.1 and 10 handle it much better than windows 7 for instance; but a backup is always a good idea before trying this just in case you plug it into the new system and *somehow* it corrupts or breaks stuff to an extent that the HDD wouldn't work in the old setup either.

Hopefully you'll be able to cancel that other order! The board took a little more looking to find as ebay has its flaws... The ram looks all good; hopefully the build works out for you.

Quite fascinating indeed.. It's good you solved your problem!

On a Windows machine I upgraded I had audio issues that were similar, like dropping out, but it was the microphone - which made the main use of the machine (skype conferencing) useless... I tried uninstalling drivers like you did too but what fixed it in the end was installing drivers from the motherboard site that were specifically for Windows 10, and to this day I still cannot see why that fixed it, but it did. that's my 2 cents!

Faraday Cage is the way to go!

I've found a couple of SuperMicro server/workstation motherboards that might be worth looking into on ebay, they are all ATX and have x16 connectors - they also claim to support the cpu's you bought. Do note that all these motherboards do only seem to support DDR2 and SATAII; maybe it's the chipset and that may be the same with all of them? can't say. You will also need to buy some socket 771 coolers, but I guess you'll figure that all out. http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5100/X7DCA-L.cfm (X7DCA-L) (here is an example from the USA - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Supermicro-X7DCA-L-YI001-Server-Motherboard-LGA771-Socket-/331621666936?hash=item4d36311078:g:VUIAAOSw0e9U1AW3 ) http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5000X/X7DAL-E_.cfm (X7DAL-E+) http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5000X/X7DAL-E.cfm (X7DAL-E)

The black and blue ports are actually old PATA/IDE Hard drive ports, you don't see them on anything new these days. But as I'd said before - you won't be able to use the GPU in this board as it only has 8x pcie slots (the long slot on the left of the pic in black is actually an IPMI Slot)

Looking at the board, it is DDR2 and only has SATA2 so if you were looking at an SSD that'd slow it quite a bit. In regards to the GPU- it wouldn't actually fit into the x8 connector! About the GPU hitting the 24pin connector - it won't even fit into the board as I said haha - I should've looked more closely at the ports

That sucks man... one last question - did you upgrade from an older windows to windows 10? When I've deployed Windows 10 upgrades I've had many driver issues come up... its quite annoying.

You got those cpus for a steal! Looking for dual 771 motherboards in an ATX form factor these days is becoming a lot harder at the right price (some can be over $300 USD!) - so it might be worth getting an eATX board instead. And as you pointed out how eATX is quite a bit larger (you'd not be able to turn another case into one that'd fit an eATX without loosing places to mount hdds etc due to the length of the board) - you can find eAtx cases - often full tower cases are able to hold eATX (but yes they are quite large cases); or you could as others have suggested, make a case or something out of plywood, mdf, plexiglass etc...