First off, I’d like to make sure you know what you’re going to get from this review. This isn’t going to be your run of the mill motherboard review where I ramble about the number of USB and SATA ports and run meaningless tests comparing motherboards and drawing conclusions from the tiny differences between boards. First I’m going to briefly discuss the features and layout of the board keeping in mind my point of view as an overclocker. Next I’ll show some results with the board and discuss how they compare to competing boards with a focus on clock for clock efficiency in the benchmarks used by HWBot.org. Additionally I’ll be discussing the overall experience or using the board including a few subzero sessions.

Gigabyte’s X58A UD9 is many things, it’s Gigabyte’s flagship X58 based board, it supports Quad-SLI and CrossfireX, and has USB 3.0 and SATA 6. Oh, by the way, it’s $700 on Newegg. To be honest, I have trouble imagining a single socket X58 board that could possibly be worth $700 when the next highest priced board is right around $500 and has a similar feature set with the exception of USB 3.0 and SATA 6. Are USB 3.0 and SATA really worth $200? They certainly aren’t to me, and I suspect that many others feel similarly.

Features
As this is Gigabyte’s flagship Intel based board it has just about every feature you could imagine for a motherboard. USB 3.0 as well as SATA 6 and a pair of eSATA ports are included to cover all of your current and future storage needs.

The rear I/O Pannel has everything that is expected on a high-end board. Personally, I appreciated the eSATA/USB ports as they allowed greater flexibility. At this point, having a pair of PS2 ports seems a bit over the top and I would prefer to see that reduced down to one that worked for either keyboard or mouse.

Additionally, the board includes the Nvidia chips “necessary” to enable Quad SLI. In order to make this as easy as possible the board includes a full 7 PCI-Express 16x slots.

While very handy for running multiple GPUs, this is annoying for people who would like to use a PCI post card or sound card. Also included on the board is a two digit POST code display to make diagnosing boot issues easier which is critical when overclocking.

If you are someone who cares about all the minor features of the board I’ll point you over to Gigabyte’s product page for the board as it does a solid job of discussing the boards features in more detail.

Layout
First the obvious, the UD9 is larger than your typical motherboard; it is both taller and wider. The width really isn’t much of an issue, as it will fit comfortably in to any case which accepts E-ATX motherboards. The height is more of an issue as it prevents the board from fitting into cases that have only 7 expansion slots. The UD9 also has two 8-pin EPS12V connectors to ensure that the CPU provided all the power is needs. While I do appreciate this, the placement is less than ideal as it is a bit of hassle to remove the power supply connectors once they have been connected.

Right above the PCI-Express slots and at the bottom of the board, a pair of 4-pin drive connectors are included to guarantee that there is enough power for the board when running multi-GPU setups.

Similar to other high-end boards the UD9 includes both power and reset buttons on board to make using the board on an open test bench somewhat easier. While I can’t really complain about this, it did bug me a bit during testing, the size difference between the power and reset buttons is a bit jarring and does make the reset button a bit hard to hit without looking for it.

Additionally, Gigabyte includes an extra heatsink that screws onto the top of the northbridge heatsink to provide extra northbridge cooling for those that will be sticking to air cooling for the board. Also included is a waterblock that cools the northbridge and allows anyone who already has a water cooling loop to cool the northbridge easily. All of this extra cooling that is included would be great if it weren’t for one thing. Both the waterblock and the extra heatsink attach to a piece of metal that attaches to fins which attach to another metal base which finally contacts the X58 northbridge. Does anyone else see the problem here? There are Fins between the northbridge and the waterblock.

Fins are meant to dissipate heat not transfer it, as a result both the extra air heatsink and the waterblock have little effect on northbridge temperatures. After seeing this I proceeded to do all of my testing with either the waterblock or extra heatsink. Throughout the course of testing the northbridge temperature never exceeded 45 degrees Celsius, which is impressively low especially compared to some of the other high-end X58 based boards. I’m going to sum up the UD9 heatisnk situation with this, if you find that your having problems with your northbridge running too hot, odds are, you’re doing something wrong.

The CPU socket area is fairly typical, we see Gigabyte’s 24 phase power delivery system and well, everything else is fairly typical of X58 boards. The mosfet cooling around the socket is a nice height as is did not interfere with any of the cooling methods we tested including the Prolimatech Megahalems and the single stage phase change cooler which can be tough to mount on some boards.

The one thing I feel is worth mentioning from an overclocking point of view is that the area around the socket is relatively crowded which makes insulating the board for subzero runs a bit of a challenge.

Finally, the one thing that I is missing from the board is a set of voltage measuring points as to be able to measure the actual voltage that components are receiving. This has become standard on overclocking oriented boards and I feel that it is a significant omission. Ironically enough, the lack of measuring points hits especially hard as the voltage set in BIOS and the actual voltage differed significantly most of the time. This left me having ask around (thanks Jody) to find measure points which were fairly inconvenient (behind the CPU socket.)

Test Setup

Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD9
Processor: Intel Core i7 980X Retail
Cooling: Single stage phase change, Kingpin Cooling F1EE + LN2
Memory: Corsair Dominator GT 2000C7
Video Card: Gigabyte GTX 480
Power Supply: Antec TPQ1200
Hard Drive: OCZ Vertex and Agility SSDs

A few notes about the UD9 and its BIOS
When I received the board it had the F1 bios, in this state is couldn’t clock memory to save it’s life, multiple kits, multiple CPUs and it still would only run 2000 MHz with 8-9-8-x or looser timings. Thankfully, this issue was fixed in F2 and later BIOSes and is no longer an issue as the UD9 now nearly identical to other high-end boards in terms of memory performance.

Results

(click for full screenshot)

All of the above results were achieved using the single stage phase change cooling unit which runs between -30C and -40C depending on the benchmark. Keeping this in mind, I’m happy with the results as the scores are all right around where they should be for a high-end board. The fact that Gigabyte has manged to keep their efficiency very close to that of boards that do not have NF200s while having two on board is impressive in my mind as most boards with NF200s on board take a slight performance hit in single card tests due to the added latency.

Now on to my favorite bench, low clock testing of SuperPi 32M. If I had to pick an area where the UD9 stood out, this would be it. Throughout testing, I was able to run 32M with my RTL values at least 1-2 settings tighter than on the E760 Classified. As a result, the UD9 enjoys a slight clock for clock advantage over the E760 classified in my testing. This allowed me to achieve a new personal best for lowest frequency needed to reach a sub 7 minute 32M run.

Click for full screenshot

This final result required liquid nitrogen cooling to achieve, and while not the greatest score overall, the clock for clock efficiency demonstrates what is possible with a better CPU.

Overall, the Gigabyte X58A-UD9 proved itself to be a solid, dependable board that never gave us any problems other than the initial memory struggles. A solid feature set, combined with well thought out layout and better efficiency than other boards make for a very respectable flagship board. Regardless, in good conscience I can’t recommend it at the $700 price point it currently occupies. It’s a great board but even in my efficiency oriented mind, the slightly better efficiency isn’t worth anywhere near the $200 extra it costs. If Gigabyte can get the price under control and bring it back into the realm of “reason”, say under $550, the UD9 will prove a very compelling choice for enthusiasts and overclockers alike.

• Compatible with K-, J-, T- and E- thermocouples (others should work but these are the recommended types)
• User programmable offsets
• Internal memory stores 100 sets of temperature readings that can be transferred to PC software
• Data logging software for real time testing (good for working with fan and component placement and viewing their effects in real time)
• Ability to export data sets from software in .xls format to do comparative studies and graphing

The graph capabilities of the 72-7712 software are not phenomenal, it does however serve the purpose. Though dual software readout (T1 & T2) would be preferred; the logging capacity and decent feature set, as well as an Excel export feature make up for the software weaknesses.

Thermocouple 1 reading

Thermocouple 2 reading

Thermocouple 1 - thermocouple 2 reading. Temperature difference. This screen is most effective when trying to move case temperatures closer to ambient room temperature.

Example of exported data to .xls format

Thermal conductivity of the heat sink material is an important factor in air cooling. Copper and aluminum are the most widely used materials in PC HSF (heat sink & fan) construction. The properties of these two materials are critical to proper cooling of the processor.

The Chart below shows the thermal conductivity of materials for comparison. The only three that matter for this testing are aluminum, copper and air (water and the other items may be of interest to those who like to get a little wet).

:More information about thermal conductivity and conductive heat transfer:

Some simple ideas for improving the PC enthusiast experience:

Checking the case for hot spots.

Keeping your entire case as close to ambient is probably the most important thing that can be done to keep the HSF operating at its maximum efficiency. A heat sink can not lower temperatures below case ambient and will usually level out 4-12 degrees centigrade above case ambient no matter how much money is spent on it.

By identifying hot spots, proper fan placement can be made. Though these areas may not seem relevant to CPU cooling; they are. Air circulating throughout the case creates eddies, (a current of air running contrary to the main current; especially: a circular current : whirlpool) which in turn, remain hot and by cross circulation make  air circulating around them heat up.

Working in a similar fashion to the eddy, dead zones (hot area where there is no mechanical air circulation) may seem harmless, it is critical to circulate or eliminate this air to alleviate convection (heat transfer in a gas by the circulation of currents from one region to another). For dead zones a fan may not be an option and directed air may be needed. If directed air is not possible then closing in/sectioning off this area may be the only option.

Knowing where the hot areas of the case are allows for fixes that otherwise would not be possible.

Testing for efficiency.

Methodology: Air can only dissipate a fixed amount of heat due to its low thermal conductivity. Having a material of higher thermal conductivity does not always mean better temperatures, but it does allow a potential for lower temperatures, depending on other contributing factors. Testing the two most common heat sink materials to see these differences helps gain an understanding of what the conductivity numbers really mean.

Copper and Aluminum heat sinks tested for conductivity.

Copper; 56.8 seconds to reach maximum efficiency with a variance of 3.9 degrees centigrade

Aluminum 59.8 seconds to reach maximum efficiency with a variance of 7.9 degrees centigrade

This is the point where temperatures stabilize and heat is dispersed through natural convection. This is not a scientific test as the blocks were not exactly the same and some variables were omitted. What it does show is that copper will transfer heat faster and more evenly.

A double boiler is used to allow for better temperature control

Test equipment and stop watch used (phone) for testing. A Tenma 72-8540 is used as a control.

The copper and aluminum heat sinks used for the test

A two minute test of both materials (copper and aluminum) showed a 3.7 degree centigrade variance, copper being hotter (this is good, it means it will draw that much more heat to be dissipated). It must be taken into consideration that these heat sinks did not have a fan and the variance would have been lower during operation.

The results of this test correlate directly to the previous test results.

Testing your Heat Sink and Fan assembly

Using an Arctic Cooling AF64 PRO

If the HSF is not equalizing temperatures within a reasonable variance or running 10+ degrees above ambient case temperature (check the temperature at the intake area of the HSF to eliminate the possibility of a hot spot causing the problem) then a re-seat of the HSF may be needed and possibly a replacement HSF of higher quality may be in order.

Using information gathered with a good temperature meter will help guide the process of lowering case temperatures and in turn allow for a cooler processor, memory and hard disk drive.

Shots of the 72-7712

All display elements

Temperature readout screen

Variance screen

Setup: Offset adjustment screen

Front view of meter showing controls

Conclusion

Using a dual probe temperature meter with capabilities comparable to the 72-7712 is a definite step up from the volt meter type single probe units that were used in the past. With the data logging capabilities and other features available with this unit it is much easier to maximize case cooling and potentially gain a few hundred MHz from a heat limited overclock.

With acceptable quality, useful software and features the 72-7712 makes an excellent addition to the tool box of the overclocker or small PC mod shop.

]]> http://www.techreaction.net/2010/06/01/tenma-72-7712-dual-chanel-temp-probe-what-happens-with-tempratures-inside-a-pc/feed/ 4 http://www.techreaction.net/2009/07/16/overclockaholicscom-3dmark-01-low-clock-challenge/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=overclockaholicscom-3dmark-01-low-clock-challenge http://www.techreaction.net/2009/07/16/overclockaholicscom-3dmark-01-low-clock-challenge/#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:11:31 +0000 3oh6 http://www.techreaction.net/?p=1434

The idea of a low clock challenge is to provide a playing field for benchmarkers to prove their tweaking skills in a given benchmark. Setting specific limitations constructs the playing field and opens the doors to a lot of people to compete that might not have the newest or best hardware that a wide open competition would require. Overclockaholics.com recently had a low clock 3Dmark 01 challenge which locked CPU clocks to 4.2GHz and limited Nature Frames Per Second to 1200FPS for single card or 1400FPS for dual card entries. These two simple limitations really setup an array of possible winning combinations that require tweaking skills at both the software and hardware level.

Needing a bit of a break from pounding my head against the wall with a memory review, I took a couple days to get back in the 3DMark 01 tweaking seat – which hasn’t been sat in for some time – and tried my hand at the Overclockaholics.com 3DMark 01 Low Clock Challenge. Here is my story of how I came to winning the single card category last weekend.

There are two primary platforms that can be competitive in this type of challenge, using an Intel C2D on the 775 platform or the slightly less potent Intel i7 socket 1366 platform. The reason i7 is actually a worse a platform for 3DMark 01 is the fact that the Nature benchmark scores are terrible on the i7 platform at 4.2GHz compared to C2D. You will soon find out that I had plans to take care of that. Essentially though, I had both platforms setup ready to rock but my goal was to be competitive with the i7 platform using whatever means necessary. I began preliminary testing on the Intel i7/X58 platform with phase cooling on the CPU. The need for sub-zero cooling on the CPU will also be explained shortly.

With the GPU on air, it was apparent that being competitive just wasn’t going to be possible. At a minimum, 90K was going to be required to win this thing, at this point in the weekend, I think the top score posted for single card was around 89.5K already. Even with the CPU under sub-zero conditions allowing for a very nice uncore clock – which helps 01 scores tremendously – the Nature FPS were just too low to compete. That is when the big guns were brought out to help the little GTX260 play with the C2D boys.

A little rubber eraser, 1 KingpinCooling.com Tek9 4.0 Slim, a 50K ohm variable resistor, a couple shop towels, and this setup was ready to rock 01’s world. The variable resistor was the only mod done to the card which was done to bypass OCP. Other than that, this is just a straight up Gigabyte GTX260 216SP video card. Here is a complete list of the hardware used for the rest of the competition.

Over the course of two six hour sessions, this system was beaten, abused, and downright throttled. The GTX260 nicely surprised me willing to run through Nature at -140C. Normally these GPU’s will cold bug well before that without a special BIOS so either these cards had that special BIOS, or this card is just a freak of nature. Either way, the GPU clocks definitely helped the score and took the single card results for the competition to the next level. Here are a couple photos of the two bench sessions.

Most of the benching was done with the GPU at -120C and the CPU at -30C ~ -35C. The digital multi-meter is showing the resistance across the OCP mod which I set to 13.33K Ω. This allowed GPU voltage of 1.25v to be used at clocks in excess of 1000MHz. For the suite of benchmarks, GPU clocks were set to 1026MHz with shaders running at 2052MHz. The GPU memory clocks were most stable at 1215MHz but could creep close to 1300MHz. For Nature however, the GPU clocks were set as they are in the screen shot below, 1080/2160/1215. Here is the screen shot of my best – and winning – single card result.

Obviously this isn’t even the best this setup could pull off at 4.2GHz because Nature is far from maxed out. If I could get GPU clocks high enough to hit the 1200FPS limit in Nature, the overall score would have been at least 92K. Either way it didn’t matter as this was enough to win the competition and take home a very much needed KingpinCooling.com F1 EE CPU pot. I have been benching with a MMouse Rev3 CU pot for so long that the upgrade to one with more mass is guaranteed to help with multi-threaded benchmarks like Vantage and 06 with the i7 processors. To wrap things up, here are a couple photos of the setup during tear down. Plenty of snow was produced during the bench session, nothing like winter in July.

I would like to thank Overclockaholics.com for a great contest, the rest of the competitors for pushing me to go LN2 on the GPU, and KingpinCooling.com for the prize. All I can say is that this card is far from done.

I arrived mid afternoon Friday and luckily I had no hardware casualties from the trip there, I met everyone when I arrived and it was really cool to meet those that I looked up at for so long. Vince was benching a killer rig (pics being kept under my hat ) and said after they were done they would get me set up with a rig to learn LN2. When I was being taught the ins and outs from everyone I was thinking that I had the opportunity to learn using LN2 from some of the best in the business and got a kick out of that. Shamino, K|ngp|n, Gomeler, Gautam, Vapor, 3oh6, Andre Yang, and Philly Boy were on hand with a few others to bench and hang out as well. I was set up to bench LN2 at a desk and was lucky enough to learn benching the Classified under LN2 by none other than Shamino, and that was a real treat to me. I was surprised how many Classified motherboards were on hand and then had to remind myself were I was and then it seemed normal. Over the weekend I saw a lot of records set and had a lot of fun -

I took some pics and think typing at 4:42am isn’t the best for blogging and will let the pics do the rest of the talking for me – notice how nonchalant Vince is as he fills his dewars LOL

The good photos of me were taken by 3oh6 (an awesome photographer)!

-TGE

TheGoat Eater Pouring LN2 - by 3oh6

TheGoat Eater - No Look Pour | by 3oh6

gomeler working the twkr

gautam working

Vince using the torch

Vince filling dewar

Vince

Gautam and Vapor's test rig

LN2 dewar

Partial Group Pic

Here is just a taste…

Phenom II BE TWKR

]]> http://www.techreaction.net/2009/06/30/chew-presentsthe-twkr/feed/ 1 http://www.techreaction.net/2009/05/30/opportunity-of-a-lifetime/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=opportunity-of-a-lifetime http://www.techreaction.net/2009/05/30/opportunity-of-a-lifetime/#comments Sat, 30 May 2009 19:30:42 +0000 Chew http://www.techreaction.net/?p=729 I was recently offered a choice by a certain individual……

You take the blue pill and it’s over, you wake up tomorrow and continue life as you know it and you believe what you want to believe.

You take the Green pill and I show you a world you never could have imagined in your wildest dreams where limits and boundaries are meant to be broken.

I obviously chose the Green pill

I will save the long drawn out speech for after the results…..So lets get right to the results….

I would like to state that in no way did I push this CPU to the limits in 2D….I had tuned my hardware for 100% efficiency prior to the trip to Austin.  I don’t use software tweaks, its not my thing and quite honestly I really don’t need them as I’m a firm believer that hardware tuning is greater than any software tuning can be.

System Configuration:

Gigabyte 790FXT-UD5P

AMD ??? CPU

PC P&C 1200W Turbo Cool + 750 Silencer

2×1GB Micron D9 GTR

2×2GB OCZ Animals

2 x Radeon HD 4890’s (3D)

Radeon HD 2600 Pro (2D)

Prototype Kingpin Pot

Prototype Phantom Pot by Aaron  Schradin

As always with me, I do not validate single cores, this is a 4 core validation also denoting I could have benched higher had I chosen to.

I ran some 3D with my 2×1GB set.

Not happy with the result and knowing I could squeeze a few more points out, I swapped to my OCZ 2×2GB sticks which I prefer for benching 3D.

All in all I had a great time and would like to take a moment to thank some people.

Special thanks goes out to Simon Solotko for being a believer.

Special thanks goes out to Vince AKA K|ngp|n.  It was an honor to bench next to you and an honor to use your prototype pot

This thing is a beast and is going to make benching LN2 so much more relaxing

Special thanks goes out to Aaron Shradin for letting me test the prototype acrylic see through LN2 pot.

I think this is the first piece of hardware I have ever used that looks cool and works 100%.

I also think this may be one of the best pots ever made in the pound for pound category….holding at -190 no load and -189.8 loaded.

Special thanks goes out to the rest of the AMD crew who was more than hospitable and helped to make this event possible right down to the engineers.

It was an honor to get invited and I truly hope I did not disappoint.

For those who may ever get a chance like this themselves, the best advice I can give you is to seize the moment and own it as this opportunity truly only comes once in a lifetime…

:: Link to YouTube to view in HD ::

DIGG IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE!

The trip started innocently enough with a locally purchased i7 920 sporting the date code 3845B026. Soon after some quick air testing, however, things took a turn towards the crazy track with the idea to test a theory on whether a colder north bridge would assist with BCLK clocking. It turns out it didn’t, but that won’t prevent me from showing the vacation photos.

I had simply planned on multiple layers of Armaflex insulation tape for the NB pot but ran into a problem when I realized my roll of Armaflex tape was still making it’s way back from the GOOC 09 event in California this past weekend…so I had to improvise.

After some cutting of 1/2″ Armacell sheets, I had a nice little north bridge pot insulation sandwich. Paired with the mounted MMouse Rev 3 CU pot, I had my twin towers ready to rock. After looking at the north bridge insulation sandwich for a while, it gave me the craving for a clubhouse, so it was a couple hours and a few pints later that the benching began.

Complete Hardware Setup:
• EVGA X58 3X SLI Classified
• Stock PWM cooling / DetroitAC NB Pot / Swiftech MC14 / Enzotech SLF-1
• Intel i7-920 3845B026
• MM Rev3 CU Pot w/LN2
• Arctic Silver Ceramique
• Corsair Dominator-GT 1866 7-8-7 (TR3X6G1866C7GTF)
• ATI PCI Mach64
• Scythe Ultra Kaze 120MM 2000RPM 87.6CFM (DFS123812L-2000)
• Seagate 7200.9 80GB SATA II 8MB cache
• Custom N’lightnd Windows XP Pro SP3
• Corsair HX1000W

As mentioned, the cold north bridge didn’t assist with BCLK at all, as I got the same clocks as previously with the north bridge running at a steady 70C during a previous session. This wasn’t much of a surprise to be honest. At the 250BCLK point, the Classified simply needs fine voltage adjustments to eek the most out of a processor. It was still fun running the NB at -40C, and it seemed to handle those temps no problem at all.

Enough fooling around though, time to look at the results. First up is the highest BCLK I have reached with this combination so far. As mentioned, more is definitely possible with proper time put in fine tuning secondary voltages…but 250+ for validation is still plenty impressive

After fooling around with voltages for a few minutes to maximize the BCLK without too much effort, I turned my attentions to Super Pi, both 1M and 32M. I only ran 1M a couple of times and did get 250BCLK to run a couple of times but had freezes opening CPU-Z. This has happened to me before with this motherboard and requires the CPU pot to warm up a bit. I didn’t have patience because I wanted to move on to 32M and didn’t have much time to spend benching. Here are the two best results I have pulled with this combo thus far.

The first i7 920 under 7 minutes in 32M and if I am not mistaken, under 8 seconds in 1M. At the time of posting, the 32M is actually 6th globally ranked amongst all CPU’s on HWBot.org and this 920 absolutely crushes the 965 C0/C1’s I have tested. With a little more work on voltages and better memory, there are sure to be quicker times from this combo.

The EVGA X58 3X SLI Classified has been much heralded in the enthusiast and overclocking forums and for very good reason. This particular 965 was only able to clock to around 5040MHz on both the EVGA X58 3X SLI and DFI X58-T3eH8 for 32M SPi. On the Classified, however, I was able to push this processor almost 100MHz more at the same pot temperature of around -75C. This extra 100MHz mated with a solid set of Corsair Dominator-GT 3×2GB DDR3-1866 7-8-7 memory, got me below the 7 minute mark for the first time.

Complete Hardware Setup:
• EVGA X58 3X SLI Classified
• Stock NB, SB, PWM cooling
• Intel i7-965 Extreme Edition
• MM Rev3 CU Pot w/LN2
• Arctic Silver Ceramique
• Corsair Dominator-GT 1866 7-8-7 (TR3X6G1866C7GTF)
• ATI PCI Mach64
• Scythe Ultra Kaze 120MM 2000RPM 87.6CFM (DFS123812L-2000)
• Seagate 7200.9 80GB SATA II 8MB cache
• Custom N’lightnd Windows XP Pro SP3
• Corsair HX1000W

Using a fairly typical SPi setup, getting into the 6’s was a bit of a battle. At 5GHz it was evident that the setup had the chance to go sub 7 minutes but I had no idea how the CPU was going to clock on the Classified as this was my first session under LN2 working on 32M.

The only issue I had was getting a screen shot. After getting sub 7 a couple of times, the system insisted on freezing when trying to open CPU-Z for the screen shot. Even after an extensive copy wazza process and running 32M, the system didn’t like CPU-Z…which obviously wasn’t making sense. As it turns out, letting the pot temperature warm up to near -50C was what it took to get the screen shot. It only took about three Newcastle’s and a half dozen runs under 7 minutes for me to figure it out.

It isn’t the most efficient run out there and my copy wazza/32M OS needs some work but the goal was sub 7 minutes and that was accomplished. Thanks to EVGA for another fantastic motherboard and Corsair for a solid kit of memory. Next up is trying to get that time down by a couple seconds and break into the top 5 overall 32M on HWBot.org with this setup.