Please help with new 990x setup
Anthony Freeman 99 May 18, 2011 4:48 AMHi All,
Well after months of browsing this fantastic forum and deciding on the components (thanks to Harm/ Bill/ John and others advice, your support has been outstanding) I finally got the new 990x PC yesterday. Im excited but at the same time feel a little overwhelmed by the next steps in the process. I purchased CS5.5 production premium but havent loaded it yet because I want to first check with experienced forum members if im on the correct track with the way the system is presently set up. (I dont want to have to backtrack if the foundations are incorrect) . We cant wait to get started with editing but would rather take the time to build the system so that it performs with optimal stability and speed.
Background:
The builder had very little knowlege of building a high spec machines (he supplies low spec PCs to dealers) and all he did was install the motherboard, RAM in triple channel mode, power supply and graphics card into the case, the OS, and he tried to configure a RAID 5 setup of 6 x 1t 7200 rpm SATA drives using the onboard RAID of the asus extreme iii. (I have ordered an intel big Laurel 8 channel hardware RAID card but unfortunately it will take a month to get the supplier, so as an interim measure I decided to use the RAID on the motherboard)
Please could someone assist me with the following: (Just a reminder Im not too tech savy so Ill have to take it one step at a time)
1) My initial impressions are that the system feels sluggish and lags in response. I dont know if this is normal but with 24G Ram, 990x, and velocoraptor 10K rpm for dedicated for OS only I anticipated a faster feel. Could this be due to incomplete setup in BIOS?. Can you please help me go through the BIOS to enable/ disable the correct features?
2) Do all the relevant drivers seem to be loaded?
3) I have tried updating the BIOS using the Bios update utility supplied with the DVD that came with the motherboard but it claims that it cant connect to the server. (I have saved the origional version on a flash drive using the same utility). Is this an important step? The present BIOS version is 1102 date 09/23/2010
4) I have updated the and registered windows 7 64bit online. every time I log on it wants to add a new update though, how important is this?
5) Is the RAID 5 setup and configured correctly in both a) Windows 7 b) BIOS (Please see the screenshot below).
6) Im not sure if this is related to my previous point but on the tsak bar there is a continuous message that " a volume initialization is in progress" the hard drive light seems
7) As of writing this a message just came up that a Raid volume has failed. What can I do now?
Here are the specs of the system and following this will be the test results that i saved from two of the applications that Harm suggested. (im hoping that it will provide clues to assist in providing answers to the above questions)
| CASE | Coolermaster HAF-X |
| PSU | Coolermaster 1000w Silent power pro gold |
| Motherboard | Asus Intel X58 Rampage III EX |
| CPU | Cpu 990x core i7 3.46 ghz 12mb cache |
| RAM | 24 GB of ME-C4G3G20F9X3 CMT12GX3M3A2000C9 domGt c9+Fan Corsair Dominator GT |
| Graphics Card | Palit GTX-580/ 3Gvram |
| HDD | 1 x HDD210 Western Digital 600GB Velociratpor for OS |
| 8 x 1 T Seagate 32Mb cache hard drives (RAID 5) 7200rpm @R463 each | |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Professional 64Bit |
| Blue Ray Drive | 12 Speed Liteon blue Ray writer |
| RAID CARD | RS2 BL080 (big Laurel 8) |
Thank you so much .
Kind regards
Anthony Freeman





