MrDeodorant

When my P5Q died in a BIOS update failure, I had an opportunity to upgrade to i7, which I took gladly. I have taken possession of my hardware, and it's time to perform the upgrade.

The problem is that all I'm actually upgrading is my motherboard, CPU, and RAM. I'm going to have an i7 920 (a used chip, known to hit up to 4.3 GHz), a brand new fresh-from-RMA P6T Deluxe (that has already broken one of the PCI-e x16 retention tabs), and 6 GB of Patriot 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM, paired up with a 640MB 8800GTS and 32-bit Windows XP. My upgrades to Windows 7 and a new video card are planned for around Christmas, but this upgrade wasn't exactly planned in advance. My upgrade plan was for a video card in Christmas, an OCZ Agility in spring, and an i7 next summer.

Something this build will be able to resolve, finally, is how well a Black Ice Extreme 240mm radiator can cool an i7 with a Swiftech Apogee GTZ and MX-2 thermal compound. My GPU is on a radiator that has kept it very cool for some time now, so I consider it a known quantity. FOR SCIENCE!

So, as I go 'under the knife' and install my hardware, let me ask you: is this, or is this not, probably the worst i7 system in the world, short of one of those Shuttle ITX barebones?



Also pictured: some hardware that I'll be reviewing soon. Sneak preview: I'm very pleased with my purchases. Also, that's not where I'll be performing my upgrade, it's just my computer desk.

__________________

JarrettM

I despise the gaming keyboard, but it looks pretty good. Why do you think it's the worst i7 system?

sLowEnd

There are worse motherboards available for i7.

These
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121388

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813186177

Paired up with this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115214

__________________

MrDeodorant

Oh, the new hardware is great; but the system as a whole, with a weakling video card and a half-assed OS that can only recognize half the RAM installed, sucks.

__________________

1keith1

sounds like somebody needs to get windows 7

voklskier4452

I used a very similar setup (Board, CPU, ram) and it was a great setup tbh.. it took a bit of effort to have it running at 4.2 but when i finally got it there it was rock solid

identitycrisis

if you cant afford windows 7 yet get your hands on a copy of the release candidate that is good until june!

__________________
Laptop: Toshiba Qosmio F55-Q502

My old Opty 165 @ 3006mhz

Goobers

personally when it comes to upgrades i would have hit up a gfx upgrade before a cpu upgrade unless it was like seriously out dated, the 8800 is a card you can live with though, so no big loss, it would play most games, you wont get the same res or max settings but doesnt mean its crap

if you wanna sell it gimme a holla ill chuck it in an old rig to fold with

__________________

MrDeodorant

Can you upgrade from the release candidate to the full version without having to do a full reinstall?

It was a spur of the moment thing, where my existing motherboard and CPU were out of commission, and someone was selling his i7, motherboard, and RAM. I got a great price and a great system, but now there's a big generation gap between some of my components.

I'll give a full review later, but it's actually a great little unit, and it does exactly what I wanted from it when I bought it. Plus, I got it used for $25 on eBay.

__________________

dlee7283

new sig!

__________________