Tech Reaction

I remember the first time I got my very own PC, it was a gift from my sister about 5 years ago, an Intel P4 2.8Ghz northwood cpu. I canvassed for the other parts, paid ~$5 to have it assembled, and have been using the old clunker since.

Fast forward to the holidays of 2009, with so many applications that I install and use these days, the old clunker just can no longer cope. So as a gift to myself this Chrismas, I bought an i7 860, a Gigabyte motherboard, team xtreem memory and a budget ATI 4670 video card.

Am I happy with the purchase? Definitely! I can load software with ease now, boot up and shutdown times take about less than 10 seconds too! Of course, I haven’t installed the same amount of software yet, but Ill get there soon enough!

Here are some of my initial comments on the new parts:

 @cpu: quite difficult to OC using the motherboard bios, temps are running too high even at just 3.2 ghz mild OC, it already reaches the high 70s at full load in prime95. However, when I use the QuickBoost software from Gigabyte, I’m able to get it at 3.52Ghz with the same temps at full load. Ill be using this software for now, since it gets me stable results.  

@RAM: the team xtreem LV DDR3’s are quite fast. I bought them for about $10 less than a pair of G.skill ripjaws (also 1600 CL7). My initial findings of this are, the XMP profile of these mems use slightly above spec voltage at about 1.66V+ whereas Intel specifies a maximum of 1.65V only.

@4670: Im currently using this to play Borderlands and Dirt2, displaying on 20-inch monitor at 1024×768 resolution. Its already enough for me, but I unfortunately am experiencing game hangups/lag sometimes. and I also encounter pixelization and graying out of colors too. not a good sign!

Ill do a review of each part soon, especially the Team Xtreem DDR3’s since there are only a few reviews out as of yet, I might also have to replace the videocard to a DX11 compatible one, probably when Nvidia releases their DX11 series and prices become stable.