gmac82

Cool, ill play around with that later tonight. Just finished watching the Super Bowl

Does anyone else get weird audio artifacts whether using onboard audio or a USB sound card when overclocking? I tried all different kinds of drivers to no avail. Put the clock speeds and memory timings and voltages back to stock and the problem went away. I was also getting pausing of the mouse every 4 or 5 seconds in 1 second durations when moving the mouse constantly within game. If this isn't a widespread problem, I'm guessing that extreme increases in the BLCK in combination with deterioration due to age of capacitors etc on the motherboard causes a level of instability that manifests as audio distortion and other "ticks" in the USB bus. Disappointing to say the least. Oh well, hopefully this system can keep me afloat until I can afford a brand new system.

I just finished overclocking the CPU, stress testing to find the highest stable clock. CPU-Z is slightly under reporting, based on the settings in BIOS and during post, I'm at 4.1 Giggity Hertz with a 205 Mhz core clock and 20x multiplier. With the Memory ratio at 2:8 and Uncore @ x16, my 16GB of Corsair Dominator Platinum 1866 (4x4) kit (I upgraded, originally I recalled my Corsair Vengeance kit being 24GB but it was actually only 12GB) is slightly underclocked at 1642 MHz. Running LinX CPU stress test for 10 minutes @ 10,000 problem difficulty, the highest core reached 71C. All in all I'm pretty happy getting to at least 4 GHz, the big improvement is running that 205 MHz base clock. Everything is much snappier, and combined with the NVMe I have zero system lag whatsoever.

CPU-Z will report whatever the motherboard has set the clock frequency to. That's why people use it to verify their overclock once they get into Windows. But yes, those temps right now are stock.

Do yourself a favour and get an AIO. https://www.amazon.ca/Radiator-120mm-SP-Advanced-Lighting-Software/dp/B019954Y2Q/ref=sr_1_5?crid=17W6WYNI923S9&keywords=corsair+h100i+v2&qid=1580430855&sprefix=corsair+h100i%2Caps%2C207&sr=8-5 This single 120 rad with push/pull is in the same range you're talking about, and will ensure you never have issues with CPU temp. I'm running an H100i v2 and albeit being a dual 120 rad with more surface temperature, there's the same number of fans. Here's some screenshots of CPU-Z and Core Temp at idle and after 10 minutes of stress test. Keep in mind my AIO is like 4 years old which is longer than most people keep theirs (~3 years on average) IDLE STRESS TEST

Yep. For a cold boot from power on to Windows login screen it's 60 seconds with no manual intervention. Nope. For example I'm using a USB key that came with a peripheral and it has a capacity of 256 MB. DUET/REFIND takes up about 5 MB of space on the drive. I don't think so, I just have it plugged in on the top most USB port on the rear I/O. Just make sure your BIOS is set to boot from USB (in my case the motherboard detects USB keys as HDD High Capacity Devices), in which case just make sure your DUET USB Key is set to the top most priority. As for using extension cards, I would think that as long as your BIOS detects it and its a selectable drive I don't see why it wouldn't work. As far as performance is concerned, I have the PCIe expansion card plugged into the 2nd x16 PCIe 2.x slot. Here's an out of the box, no tweaks run base settings from CrystalMark: Follow this guide to the letter and you'll be fine: https://youtu.be/eSPnRB1aVAE Here's the equipment I purchased: PCIe to NVMe adapter: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B01N09W21D/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 512 GB NVMe drive: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07KZXJTLN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 So for around 150 CAD or less after shipping and taxes I'm getting great performance. Excellent value.

Interestingly after doing some forum reading, its recommended to not use the GUI for preparing the DUET USB. Using the command line as Administrator and only doing FORMAT, DUET, REFIND options (using safe removal when prompted) makes everything work seamless. Windows 10 is now installing on the NVMe!

Interestingly, if I boot directly to the Win10 USB installer, it does see the NVMe but says Windows can't be installed on drive 0 partition 1. Under details: Windows cannot be installed on this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu. I'm assuming this is part of what DUET does, is provide a logical controller for the NVMe that the Windows installer will recognize in order to allow the OS to be installed.

So I'm at a loss so far, and can't figure out how to get this DUET stuff working. I've tried 3 different usb keys. I can get DUET usb to boot into the boot loader, and whether I use REFIND or not, nothing will boot the secondary USB key to install Windows 10. The USB key for Windows 10 is working because I've just booted a laptop with it that I need to reinstall Windows on. My motherboard detects the USB keys as HDD Mass Storage devices, not as removable devices, so not sure if that has anything to do with it. When I go into the Boot Manager, none of the devices boot, they all display "Boot Failed. <Device Name>" The motherboard is the EVGA X58 SLI LE. Any help/pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Always wanted one of those boards back in the day. That is a good deal, too bad it doesn't come with RAM

Rest of the parts came in from Amazon, system is built, tomorrow will be the troubleshooting/setup effort.

Bought some goodies to finish the rebuild of my x58 machine: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0799FW19P/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07398XQBN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07DXF94K9/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07654W3F2/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07N4HDTNS/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B081HWKF5Z/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B083LZWGLZ/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B01N09W21D/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07KZXJTLN/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07R4XZK52/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00KF7NGUE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Gonna play around with DUET, looks pretty straight forward. I'm re-habbing my NZXT S340 Elite case, window is a bit scuffed up so going to use some automotive plastic scratch removal stuff, see if that works out, worst case scenario I get a new window cutout of lexan and attach using nuts and bolts. Will end up having 512 GB nvme boot, 360 GB SSD JBOD and 2x 2TB platter drives for large file storage/archival.

Yup, and given the fact that my home network is 99.9% Mesh WiFi N, I'm not able to saturate Sata 2 speeds yet. I'm waiting until we buy our first house before wiring rooms for 10 Gbit LAN

I was looking at this: https://www.amazon.ca/Crest-SI-PEX40129-Ports-Bifurcation-Controller/dp/B07HYZY7P2/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=nvme+adapter+bifurcation&qid=1579727896&sr=8-5 But there's also this: https://www.amazon.ca/M-2-X16-Expansion-V2-Supports/dp/B07NQBQB6Z/ref=sr_1_9?keywords=nvme+adapter&qid=1579727762&sr=8-9 which is much cheaper because it doesn't do any bifurcation. Also it seems (as of 2013) SWTOR doesnt have "official" SLI support, but it can be jury rigged to work, but does have some quirks such as scene to scene negative scaling requiring a quick ALT + ENTER cycle to move to windowed then back to full screen mode to fix SLI scaling. At least this is so far based off the info I've been able to find.

Oh yeah, that was something else I might look into is getting a bifurcation adapter to run a couple of NVMe's in raid. One of the other things I plan to do with this machine is go back to digitizing my Bluray collection so I can have everything playable through Plex. I tend to go once every few months and buy a bunch of $1-$3 Blurays to add to my collection.