The thing is fast... and it is running pretty cool. I've done a slight overclock on the GPU, but nothing yet on the CPU or RAM; I'm waiting until I have the aftermarket CPU cooler installed.
There is still some work to do on cable management. The case is a little tough to do this in because it has this pretty novel HD mounting system in which 4 of the 6 possible drives can be mounted vertically to improve airflow. However, the SATA power cables that came with the PSU really aren't made for this sort of orientation so the thing is a little awkward. I might have to get some SATA power cables specifically for this purpose.
On that note, I discovered that there is a Micro Center about 10 minutes from my house. They have everything a home builder could want. Had I realized that it was right down the road, I might have bought all my parts there...
Right now I get pretty high scores on WEI (windows experience index) although I'm currently limited by the processor, which I don't exactly understand. This is an 8 core 3.1 mhz cpu!! Hopefully some improved cooling and subsequent overclocking will improve the processor performance. This compliant is really purely from a bench marking perspective, in everyday use, the thing feels super quick.
I've also run novabench and got a score of 1319. I don't really have anything to compare this too... but I get the sense that it is a good score but not a great score.
I ran prime95 for about 5.5 hours and had no problems. I guess that is to be expected with stock CPU settings.
For overclocking the GPU I've been using MSI Afterburner, and when I start overclocking the CPU and memory I will likely use T-overclocker which I think is biostar's overclocking utility, or maybe it is made by AMD... I'm not sure.
But, this thing plays WoW like you wouldn't believe. And internet browsing is great. As new versisons of my most commonly used software comes out (photoshop, lightroom, primere pro, and so on...) I'll be installing and gradually moving away from my imac. Right now I'm still running the imac in a two screen setup, and this PC has a 27" LED LCD display, so yeah, my desk looks pretty awesome. Especially when I add my two laptops to the mix! Perhaps a picture is in order.
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