Cool mate thanks. Got one fan in and windows installed but need to do the rest of the case mods tomorrow. Put the side fan back but got it the wrong way round and upon checking I'm running way too hot, bios says 57℃ on cpu, 21℃ on mobo. Took the whole side panel off and it dropped to 51℃ on the cpu which still seems a bit warm to me. Noticed my RAM is running at 1333MHZ, should be 1600MHZ but everything else seems fine. Any suggestions?
Head back into the BIOS, go to advanced mode (up by the exit button on Asus motherboards I think), select the Ai Tweaker menu, select the Memory Frequency option and set it to DDR3-1600MHz then save and restart. That menu is also where you overclock if you want to get yourself familiar with it. I also wouldn't worry too much about the temps in the BIOS. Get Windows installed and download Core Temp and read the temps from that. In the BIOS the CPU will be running at full whack I believe whereas in Windows, Cool N Quiet will be activated and the CPU will downclock itself when its idling.
Sweet, that worked a treat mate. Core temp doesn't seem to want to work though, it just reads 0 Deg C on all the temps. Any alternative suggestions for a temperature monitor?
That went really well last night. Managed to get a few applications installed along with Steam and downloaded most of my games, Yaaasss! Cpu-z seems to recognise everything ok: And I found the temperature monitor in the Asus mobo control panel thingy: So now the RAM is working ok and at it's stock speed of 1600MHz though at 9-9-10-24-41 instead of 9-9-9-21-41 (dunno if I should change it or not) and it looks like the CPU is idling at a chilly 26℃ with the new fans installed. I have made a slight error with the fans, and after cutting a new hole in the side panel and mounting it realised that it fouls the cross bar so the case doesn't quite close right now. I'll consider either removing a section to give me enough clearance or removing it altogether. Either way she's not a looker but it's not like anyone else is going to see her anyway as she will be tucked up in the land of spare oom. Tonight I'll need to rigourously test the rig by playing as many games as I can and seeing what FPS rate I can get. From there I can then decide wihither to push it and o/c a little and see where I get to.
So a wee update, got myself a coolermaster N200 case and a silverstone argon cooler. Here's a slightly dusty view inside. I've been pretty pleased with it overall though now I've got round to backing it up on an external hdd my thoughts are once more turning to overclocking. Has anyone got any good guides or advice? I was thinking of o/c ing the gpu first to squeeze out a few extra fos by upping the multiplier in bios....
