I will be posting a new one of these every now and then. But pretty much if you are purchasing a new system now and want it to work well with Vista take a look at this.

I'll post some pictures (here) in the OCU when I am finally done...

But I cut some of the extra plastic off the front of my case. The Idle Temp is now down to 46C . It was up at 51C idle just before I did that. Heavy load would go up to 63C. I have not got a load temp yet.. But so far surfing has not got over 49C and it used to be @ 53/54.

Wow that is a big improvment. I did a full install (less drivers) in 21 minutes and I was looking at the Vista Desktop..

For the most part drivers are in and working now. And boot time is usually less then a minute.

Impressions here

I've been moving up slowly and will Probably continue to do so for the next few weeks. I think the next step is drop the voltage to 1.45. I want to find out how low I can go. The easiest test for me is the 3D mark 2001 SE. As long as it runs the first two benchmarks stable I am happy. Then I go back to torturing it with normal use. (that keeps CPU usage at near 70% with HT enabled :D).

EDIT: I have now got it to run @ 3554MHz with 1.45 volts and it idles @ 50C I'm quite happy. Maybe next week I can raise it a little...

Update again. 3555 @ 1.45 Volts So far two days. And Vista really hates me when I change the clock speeds. XP is annoyed but Vista just plain hates me

So I've got this thing installed but I'm testing software quite heavily now. If you want to contact me use PM :D.

So far I have got the PC stable to 3.5Ghz @ 1.48 Volts and a boot time of 28 Seconds on the new Raptor. The best I got before was 43 on the Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 NCQ.  Oh if I try to run the PC @ 3.6 with 1.525 volts it acts and feels like an AMD. Just slightly off stable... Oh well. an 18% OC is not bad.

Okay so my Arctic Freezer 7 Pro just arrived so I duitifully sanded the bottom off and the top of the CPU. Did it make much of a difference? Well with both the CPU and the HSU smooth with some thermal grease between them the spin quite nicely. Hehehe. Oh well. It takes a couple days to see a small change and this HSU is not much better then my other one .17 vs .19 so the most likely thing to notice is the quieter operation 0.9 as opposed to the old 1.2.

Am I happy with it? yes. definitly. I like the new HSU and now that I know how to install them it went much smoother...

I don't know I was going to try and not buy anything this month. But mom's old Fujitsu HDD died so I get to buy a new one and give her one of my old ones... Guess what is on order... 36 GB WD Raptor... :D Time to get a 10,000 RPM drive. And yes I am giving up a 80 GB hdd for a 36 GB one. I guess my 160 GB later is going to get upgraded to a Hitachi 250 GB later maybe after I get Conroe...

I guess this also means I get to do a format and load the 78.03 HD2's instead of the crappy 83.60's I'm using now.

I have ordered a Freezer 7 Pro. Yes I have the Freezer 7 already but not the pro model. I am going to wait for that and then try lapping my CPU. I have the sandpaper already sitting there and I have sufficient thermal compound. I also hope to get by with less thermal compound.

 I just bought a Logitech G15 keyboard.

Do I like it? yeah totally. I like the lighted keys and it feels sturdier then my last keyboard and it is about 25% of the noise of my last one. I can turn the lights off and that little LCD.. It displays things like CPU usage time date what song is playing all that fun stuffl.

My VF700-Cu finally arrived. This is a large improvment in core speed. I can now get to 591 in Riva Tuner. (before 564 was maximum). Also. My previous autodetect was 550 now it's 570. I like and I got a whole 59 marks in 3D Mark.