Hi, all! This is my first build in 20 years and have a friend who graduated in CS coming over to help me, but am slowly getting the pieces, recommendations, reviews hw-sw choices and peripherals together. The board is an Asus P5Q-EM I got at an estate sale, still wrapped.. and the Q9550 is a Micro Center deal, FSB 1333 but could go to 1600. The Memory is a twin pair of Corsair RAM DDR2-1066, and I have a keyboard and monitor remaindered from someone else. First question, an Asus tech told me I needed DDR2-800 OC'able to 1066 not 1066 but if I understand correctly you can run faster rated RAM at slower speeds without any system harm? And the overclocking referred to by the board is a result of bumping the FSB to 1600 or
.. Secondly, am I better off, technically, adjusting Q9550 through BIOS or doing a pin mod to make it seem like a 1600 FSB cpu to begin with ?
I plan to start with getting everything working just with the regular settings first and learning to do tests at that point, and then do any kind of fsb adjustment, voltage etc. Right now, I'm putting a list of what I need together. The PSU is probably garbage (this is a microatx and the case was $40 w xp coa and floppy and dvd/cd + 300 w psu) but wont know for sure until it is tested. My initial purpose in doing this is to run up to 4 cameras off OHCI or USB 2 (the firewire unibrains are ccd w up to 2 per controller for S400, but $100 apiece is a lil pricey to start with) to capture video profiles of kids bio's and birthday greets which will then be run through a cartoonizing filter and indexed to a dvd menu of headshots once burned for friends of family to enjoy (party favor giveaway at birthdays for children). Right now I only have board, cpu and memory. I hear the stock cooling is crap on the Q9550 so seems I may have to shell out extra $ there, and I need to also figure how to set up for the floppy and dvd/cd as per testing &c. My friend should be able to help..
Eventually, this goes to my mother for her photoshop work, and I am debating with myself over including a Folding@Home option to help out and give her a glimpse into that whole thing while I also am curious about learning it for myself... Am also wondering about using USB ports and/or daisy chaining external dvd's additionally to act as a dvd duping operation for the dvd 'yearbooks' once the format and files are converted to data to burn. It would be nice to retain independent drive capabilities while also getting them to clone together and I suspect this is just a matter of software.. Am also a little nervous about the ASUS power management software and expect to only use BIOS to start with, but may use it if I'm convinced it won't cause me to crap out the components accidentally. BTW, there are 6 USB ports to start with and 6 can be added; 6 SATA (havent decided on HDD yet) and I do not plan on using the pci/e ports unless I add an ssd and/or convert to photoshop capability. Need to think about the voltage/amperage planning on this I guess.
Comments, ideas, suggestions and pointers appreciated, thanks.
ASUS BUILD WITH Q9550 (as it goes...)
07-20-09
ASUS BUILD WITH Q9550 (as it goes...)
