Hey, I'm thinking of doing a mini-review on all of the new compartments:

8 GB Mushkin Redline DDR3-2133 CAS9 (2 x 4GB)
Core i5 3570K overclocked to the max
with Xigmatek Thor's Hammer (4x 8mm direct contact heatpipes + 3x 6mm heatpipes on top of that, with 2x Coolermaster 120mm fans push-pull)
AsRock Z77 Extreme4
Antec Neo ECO 620W psu
2TB Hitachi 7K3000 HD with 64MB cache (currently the only 7200rpm HD with highest-density 667GB platters, rather than 500-600GB)

I plan on getting an SSD later when Win8 comes out, as the prices should be even lower with the brand new "Vertex 4" generation (hopefully no more than $150 for 256GB)

No new video card yet, but I'll just go ahead and include my GTX 460 1GB for testing a couple of games/benchmarks..

It's a kick-ass "budget" build that I've finally installed Win7 Ultimate on, stable at stock everything!

Perhaps it should just be a review for the forum, rather than the main article, unless it gets good enough?

(Busy ATM, taking the family to a swim center - will be back much later on tonight)

Are you using the HD4000 or did you just not list the GPU?

Maybe it doesn't need a graphics card



Actually he did list his card:

Reviews are welcomed! Either here on (with polish) on the main site

wtb reading lessons

i missed it too on first read .. took care of the dp also

BoFox you're gonna want a new GPU for that beast.

Congrats on the rig, though!

I'm pretty sure that the Thor's Hammer is actually a very good heatsink.

Yeah, I want a 7850 for bitcoin mining, but not at $250. Like you said, it's worth $150..

Now, I think I'm done with benching the 2TB Hitachi 7k3000 hard drive. But I need to do the same thing with my 1TB WD Caviar Black, so that there's a comparison - I already did it for the Raptor X and the ATA-133 500GB Maxtor 7200rpm drive when I tried to do a review on the Seagate 15k.7 Cheetahs (a failed review, since the mobo didn't support SAS 2.0 but just SAS 1.0)!!

I'm leaving the 3570K at 4.5GHz, the sweet spot for now.

Question:

Should I de-lid the IHS and do an experiment on thermal pastes? I have Gelid GC-Extreme and IC Diamond (that I just got at Microcenter for $6.99) - I'm curious to see which one performs better. It's 92% micronized (synthetic) diamond, which has over 2,000 W/mK conductivity - compared to 400 W/mK for Silver!! I should sprinkle it all over my face, so I look like the vampire guy in Twilight when the sun is shining on my face..

One guy said that replacing the TIM inside the Ivy Bridge doesn't help, but now a couple others are saying between 7-20 degrees C improvement.

Should I take the risk?

Would you guys back me up, if I make any mistakes?

Also, the Mushkin Redline can only do DDR3-2000, not DDR3-2133. I tried changing the timings (CAS 10), voltage (up to 1.75v), etc.. but it refuses to POST at DDR3-2133. It can do DDR3-2000 just fine with the SPD timings (9-11-10) that are rated for 2133 MHz. I bought it based on some customer reviews on Newegg saying that it could be oc'ed to 2400MHz at SPD timings, 1.65v. But it's not worth returning to Newegg for 1% performance difference - something that I'd never notice anyways, right?

I just updated the BIOS to a new revision - will try again. ASRock claims the board to support over 2800MHz with 4 sticks installed:


I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the SPD profile only being XMP 1.2, not XMP 1.3 (for better support with Ivy Bridge rather than Sandy Bridge)???