I bent over... and got an I7 920.

I don't think you'll go wrong with that Gigabyte board. Chuck's got that series, the original ud5, and he loves the thing. At the very least, I'm certain you won't have a flaky bios or mysterious burnout. I've always had good bios releases with Gigabyte. Anyway, on the one hand I'm sorry to hear all the crap you went though with the new setup, but on the other I don't think you'll have to worry about that again with the Gigabyte board.

Have you read the reviews for the H50? It seems not so great when overclocking. That's the reason I love the Megahalems, it does better the more you overclock which is odd. Anyway, the H50 is a good cooler, I'd just have concerns running 4.0ghz with it where I live but I'm further south by quite a ways.
 
I think you'll like the Gigabyte board a lot more than your current one. At least you won't have to worry about a flaky bios or a melting board. God that reminds way too much of that MSI I had. Be glad you only had yours for less than a month. Good riddance I say. The H50 is a good cooler, I just don't think it would work for me in the South here with overclocking. But where you're at you shouldn't have any problems with that.
 
Okay, I was looking around and decided to get something I've had my eye on for a while, a new PSU. I figured my tax return was as good an excuse as any to get this now. Anyway, it's an Enermax Revolution 1050W modular. Talk about overkill, but I wanted a reliable and efficient, and quiet if possible, PSU. This one definitely fits the bill and it has a 5 year warranty.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ..._re=enermax_revolution-_-17-194-039-_-Product
 
So I got my new mobo today + the Shin-etsu paste.

I want to find the Corsair H50, but haven't been able to find it at the price I'd like ($65 or lower), so I'm going to delay buying it. Sticking with current cooler for now.

I quickly put the system together just to try it out, meanwhile noticing a "darker" spot on the bottom of the CPU as if slightly burned, but not too dark - leaving me in doubt that it might be a manufacturing side-effect, but then again it could also be a result of the previous mobo burnout, so my adrenalin starts racing a bit.

So I boot it up, fans spin up... could it be? DVI no signal detected.

Reboot... pleeeeeease. DVI no signal detected.

At this point, my nerves are pretty strung and I'm slowly reaching to grab my ankles.

I take a final look at the case... and DOH! I've forgotten to connect the power cables to the video card. With new hope I reset and after a painful 10 seconds (for some reason this mobo really takes its sweet time to display shit when turned on), it STARTS (and I almost shit my pants).

What a relief.

Basically, everything seems to work fine. I flashed the bios to the newest (just came out this month on the 12th), and looked at the options and they're looking very tasty. The memory timings are teh shit, and the voltages seem to have more fine increments.

Also, my idle CPU temp in the bios is ~37C when it used to be a lot higher before, so I'm hoping the paste really made a difference. Then again, I'll see what it is in windows, but that's probably not going to be until Saturday when I have more time. I think I'll disassemble the case and clean up around the cards and actually connect all the cables (USB for back plate + USB for front panel + fans + hard drives/DVDroms) before I start fucking around with it.

Well, hopefully this one doesn't blow up in my face 0_0 .

Good night for now, I'm like an hour late to bed - I hope I'm not dead tomorrow.
 
Sounds good so far. Just don't try to push that cpu too much with your current cooler!
 
I'll push it until temps are 85C under 8-thread-load and then stop :-D

The H50 is actually pretty good even for OCing, but the thing that appeals to me the most is the effective removal of one fan from my case (since the radiator fan will act as my out fan from the back of the case).

I'm expecting something similar to the experience of this person here:
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=632216

I also have a 9700LED, and it also hits 90C+ when overclocked above 4.0ghz (I think I can do about 4 at about 90C, but it's too much temp, I'm shooting for 3.9 right now).

With the H50, I should be able to do 4.2 comfortably - if not more. That guy's saying 60-65C at 4.2 which is simply outstanding. If I get that, I might just stick with it (depending on what the voltage is). 4.2 is plenty... for now :-)
 
Um... I decided to run my "full rape" suite today after getting the new Corsair memory stable (at 1.45v VTT in bios q_q), which is:

prime 8 instances in-place large FTTs
HCI Memtest 3GB low priority running in background just in case
Furmark xtreme burning 1440x900x4aa windowed + the new ripple effects

So I went over to the power socket and looked at my "kill-a-watt" thingie... and here is where you insert the FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU guy (http://ffuucomics.com/).

Basically, my PSU was pulling around 670 Watts from the socket.

Initially, I was like WHAT THE FUCK because it's rated at 620W, but after some research, it seems like PSUs are rated at internally delivering their wattage, and their efficiencies are greatly different - in this case, I'm guessing about 80-85% for mine. After some quick math, it seems like the "internal wattage" (which I have no way to measure unfortunately) is approaching 600W which is ridiculously close to the maximum my PSU is rated to deliver.

For 24/7, it is highly recommended that you don't exceed 80% of your PSU capacity... which I definitely am (in this situation)... and I let it run for a few minutes, and I've never seen the fan in my PSU start to spin so quickly/loudly. It was pretty much not an option.

So... I had to buy a PSU, and I settled for this:
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10011139&prodlist=celebros

Only thing which pisses me off is that it's not modular, so I'll have a lot of extra cables floating around the case, but for the price I just couldn't get anything else (the HX1000W version was $210 at least).

This upgrade is literally starting to fist me rather deeply.
 
That's a great pick for a great price on the PSU. It's very highly rated and is supposed to be very quiet. I've been using the Corsair 750 for a while and it's been rock solid. I think you'll be happy, down the road after the total sticker shock wears off from the system.

It's not just upgrading that is costing so much Heatsurge, it's running the new rig at the high specs you want. Chuck doesn't OC his except for the auto-overclock and he's happy with that and didn't need to spend extra money on better ram, a PSU, cpu cooler, etc. But, I'm with you in that I want to run this machine out at some steep specs and that does, unfortunately, cost more money to safely do that 24/7. Still, you've got some excellent parts in this setup that should last you for a while so at least there's some comfort there.
 
PSU arrived today, will install Saturday.

After reading a bunch of shit, I decided to go with a rather weird CPU cooler, the Cogage True Spirit (found it for $43 shipped) because of how cheap it is AND how well it seemingly performs (also comes with a fan which is quiet and well-performing, looking at reviews). A few benchmarks:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/07/23/intel_core_i7_heatsink_roundup_q309/6

http://www.pro-clockers.com/cooling/165-cogage-true-spirit-cpu-cooler.html?start=4

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/coolermaster-hyper-cogage_7.html#sect0

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/coolit-domino-cogage,2290-5.html

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1108/5/ (down right now but it should be up soon)

It's an odd cooler and almost hard to believe because it supposedly sometimes beats even Thermalright's own "TRUE" at the same fan RPM... and better than the Megahalems? We'll see. It was definitely cheap and should be very good though. And I don't have to take out my mobo (clip-on kit). People recommend the bolt-through (extra $10), but I feel like the clip-on will be just fine.
 
PSU installed and running fine. Now it's pulling 670-700W from the socket, so it's a bit less-efficient than my 620HX which it's replacing, but it's a LOT more quiet than the old one (in "assrape" mode) and I definitely feel much better about it running at 70% capacity peak as opposed to 90-95% peak, nevermind the fan speeding up to 100% and the PSU acting as a mini-heater in my room (I'm not even exaggerating... I had to open a window a bit in the middle of winter).

When the new CPU cooler comes, I might try to squeeze a bit more mhz out of the CPU too. Hopefully up to 4.2 . I just need to change my multiplier from 19x now to 21x ;-D... and a bit more voltage/cooling of course.
 
Installed the Cogage True Spirit. Replaced stock fan which is a bit whiny at high RPM with a Scythe S-Flex I had lying around.

Only 4.0ghz for 24/7. Temps get too high for more. Running 85C with Prime and 78-80C with Boinc (which is what matters really).

The Cogage True Spirit is really awesome - you can actually feel how warm the heatsink is all over (even in the fins) unlike the Zalman 9700 I was using previously. I think their "secret" is using really well-performing heatpipes, as opposed to other coolers. So even though it's light compared to monsters such as the megahalems, it performs somewhat comparatively.

Overall, everything with my new components is way too hot for my liking. The problem is I like my PC very quiet and low fan speeds just can't dissipate enough heat anymore it seems with PC components while overclocking. I never ran into heat issues so much before the i7 architecture.

The northbridge is also ridiculously hot to the touch.

I'm thinking in about a year or so, or for my next upgrade, I'm going full liquid cooling or phase change or something. I want something really really quiet which also performs extremely well.
 
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