Borderlands Buster - i5 Mid-Range Build Log

Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
Thanks to my loving wife who coughed up some father's day cash I'm finally able to pull the trigger on my next system after selling my i3 budget rig last November. For those who don't know me that well, I've been without games for far too long. *twitch, twitch*

The first batch arrived today...

DSCN5875.jpg


Ok, so I fibbed. The Corsair 600T SE White case, Silverstone Strider 750w 80 Plus Gold power supply and Corsair H100 liquid cooler are being carried over from my previous system.

Joining them is a 120GB Mushkin Chronos solid state drive (SATA 6Gbps of course), a 3rd gen Intel i5 3570K processor, MSI 7850 Power Edition OC video card, a run of the mill LG GH24NS90 24X DVD writer and an 8GB set of of Kingston HyperX PnP DDR3 1600mhz memory with super slick grey heatspreaders.

There's more goodies to come along with 3D Mark 11 results!
 
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Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
DSCN5926.jpg


Ok, the final few parts arrived and I'm ready to get building.

Front and centre is the MSI Z77A-GD55 motherboard, a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Blue hard drive for storage and the small box in front is a Silverstone CP09 USB3.0 external to internal converter seeing how Corsair did not release a replacement front panel with an internal connector.

Oh, and what build would be complete without some fuel?! On the left are what's left my Innis & Gunn. This post was really hard to type, even harder to proof read and even harder yet to fix any errors so it'll be interesting to say the least.

Stay tuned!
 
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Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
For the sake of time this is going to be an "accelerated" build log. We all know how the various components install and what we really want are the money shots so here they are.

Motherboard and power supply installed...

DSCN5927.jpg


H100 prepped and ready...

DSCN5928.jpg


The finished product...

DSCN5929.jpg


I decided to throw in an Intel 210 caching solid state drive to help pump up the mechanical storage drive. Will it make a noticeable difference? Not likely, but hey, look what I have!

UPDATE

Benchmarks - my personal life has kept me insanely busy and I'm sorry to say that I haven't had enough free time to make the new CPU and GPU beg for mercy, but I decided to put up what benchmark results I can in the configurations that I can until I can dial each part in. The CPU overclock game courtesy of MSI's OC Genie and the GPU overclock was done with MSI Afterburner.

My gaming resolution is 1680x1050 (22") so I decided to use both the performance and extreme benchmarks from 3DMark11 since my experience with this gear will likely fall somewhere in the middle, but closer to the performance end.

Stock 3DMark11 Performance:

Stock-P.jpg


Stock 3DMark11 Extreme:

Stock-X.jpg


***********************

OC Genie CPU-Z:

CPU-Z.jpg


OC Genie 3DMark11 Performance:

OCGenie-P.jpg


OC Genie 3DMark11 Extreme:

OCGenie-X.jpg


***********************

Afterburner GPU-Z:

GPU-Z.jpg


OC Genie with GPU OC 3DMark11 Performance:

OCGeniewithGPU-P.jpg


OC Genie with GPU OC 3DMark11 Extreme:

OCGeniewithGPU-X.jpg


There's tons of overclocking headroom left on both components so when I have a chance to hit the sweet spot on each I'll rerun the benchmarks and update this thread.
 
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Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
Issues - hardware:

USB3.0 - external drive in a Vantec NexStar3 is not recognized on boot and works 50% of the time if reconnected once in windows. Also the front USB3.0 port connected internally with the Silverstone CP09 will not recognize a Super Talent SuperCrypt 32GB flash drive. Tested both storage units in USB 2.x ports without issue and they both worked without issue in a GIGABYTE H55-based board used in my last build. The driver is up to date with the latest that Intel has posted, which is one above MSI but the issue remains. I'll be performing more testing tonight if I have time.

Quirks

Rapid Storage Technology - with RST enabled and the 20GB SSD accelerating the 1TB mechanical drive I am unable to save a complete disk image of C:, likely because the OS sees 20GB of space even though it is reported as over 900GB. Disabled caching and saved the image without issue.

FYI's

All of the reviews out there that say this board supports Lucid's Virtu software are wrong (at least with BIOS version 1.4 anyway). There is no official support so legit version will not activate and the one you download from Lucid's site is a demo, which does not let you remove the watermark. I'll be testing this as well to see if the support is there and to see if there's a crack that exists.
 
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eunoia

eunoia

Partition Master
This is the kind of build that can never get the full credit it deserves. At the high and low ends, it's all about budget, but in this price range you can best judge a builder.

The balance, quality and value here is sublime. This is a perfect diamond, a poem, a PhD. Since I also have some idea what you'll be able to do with this hardware, I'm already smiling. This is the kind of build that's so smart it risks spontaneously becoming sentient.

Congratulations!
 
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Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
If it weren't for my precious 600T white I'd be sporting a 650 or 550D right now. So many companies are putting out rocking cases, but I feel Corsair is the one to beat.
 
eunoia

eunoia

Partition Master
Be sure to follow the memory population rules on page EN-14 of the Z77A-GD55 manual available here. It's not really clear because they're horizontal in the diagram, but DIMM2 and DIMM4 are labelled on page EN-4 (and presumably on the mainboard itself.)

(Ha! Proof that I'm really paying attention here! :D)
 
Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
Clearly it shows that I'm not paying attention. Thanks for the catch. Maybe the beer wasn't such a good idea.

So far I've run into one funky happening with the board itself and a kinda strange quirk of disk caching, which I've laid out above.
 
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eunoia

eunoia

Partition Master
On the other hand, only beer gives me the courage to squeeze out those last few OC MHz :D

(Or bench a new rig during the hottest days of the year, even...:techgage:)
 
eunoia

eunoia

Partition Master
I read the whole thread and am no closer to helping you find a workaround. I'm really surprised that Lucid isn't fully supported on a Z77 mobo. "Lucid" actually appears only once in your manual, in the trademarks section, then no other mention. :confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:
 
Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
I'll work on that tomorrow night if possible.

Until then, look what I found? Better late than never...and at 7.7% it'll be worth the wait!

IMG_20120713_201002.jpg
 
Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
Updated with benchmarks. I wish I had time to put together a set of final benchmarks, but I did what I could with what little time I had.
 
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