Hi, I'm BeepBeep2 and I'm currently loving my ASUS motherboard.
I reside over at XtremeSystems, (about 4000 posts there) and help out that community the best I can.
I started overclocking at age 12, and when I turned 13 I started getting the hang of things. I overclocked my Athlon X2 5600+ (Windsor F3) to 3.5 Ghz, and the forum started taking notice. Turned fourteen in the summer, and then my christmas present that year was a Gigabyte 790X-UD4P (got it for $110) and a brand new Phenom II 965BE C3. I was thrilled about the 965BE, as I would finally have something more overclockable and powerful. Sadly, my CPU had a really high vid (1.4v) and would only do 3.8 Ghz on air nomatter what voltage I pushed. I tried and tried, 3.9 came with 1.50v, but temps were high. Still, I tweaked and tweaked and ended up running 3D benches (01,03,05,06,Vantage) at 4.1+ Ghz.
I had also owned an ASUS HD4850 TOP, in which I had replaced the stock cooler with a Scythe Musashi and pencil modded the VGPU and GDDR3. Going from 740/1100 benchable @ 85c stock to 830/1160 were impressive clocks, and seemed to please forum viewers more than pushing outdated hardware.
chew* held a random contest over at XtremeSystems in which the winner won a brand new Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H. My 4850 degraded pretty hard from the abuse, and he gave it to me because he knew I tried. I was saving for a new GPU and motherboard, when all the sudden half of it was just handed to me. That's when I bought two Sapphire HD5770's. Anyway, I'd never touched DDR3 before. Some forum members chipped in to helping me get some DDR3, chew* gave me a 1600 C9 kit and another member gave me a Ballistix 1600 C8 kit. D9 GTS chips, I took them to 2.2v and ran SuperPi on my 965BE @ 4.4 Ghz / 1808 7-6-5-18. I benched IGP for scores, as well as pushed my ram, but I soon realized that that board didn't like to be abused. I had some problems with it, it would seem to completely die, then revive itself only after I did a complete teardown.
Gary Key took notice.
He told me that if I kept having problems with the Gigabyte board he'd send me a ASUS equivilent for free. I was, ...amazed. The generosity of the community and all they had done for me was overwhelming. I told him I didn't really need a board with an IGP since I run crossfire HD5770's. No problem, he said. No less than three weeks later I recieved a huge box with gary's name on it, addressed to me. I look inside and an Intel X25-V SSD, ASUS M4A89TD Pro/USB3, and a brand new ASUS 4870X2 TOP were inside.
That card does 855/1000 like it's nothing. I'm using the board right now, with my 965BE and 5770's to type this. I did bench the 4870X2 with my aging 4850 (795/1100) a few times.
Bought some Elpida Hyper ram, a SuperTalent kit that does 1840 CAS 6-6-6-18 1T like a dream. I haven't been happier.
Thanks for reading the story of my life, I hope to bring a good contribution to this forum.
🙂To anyone who might be curious, here is my build similar to it's current form:
AMD Phenom II 1100T @ 4.2 GHz / FX-8150 @ 5 GHz
ASUS Crosshair V Formula
4GB SuperTalent ProjectX DDR3-2000 CL7 / 4GB GSkill Pi Series DDR3-2133 CL7
Sapphire HD5770 Vapor-X 2x Crossfire / ASUS 4850 TOP 512MB @ 800/1150
Intel X25-V 40GB
2x WD Caviar Black 640GB - 1.2TB RAID 0
Lian-Li PC-K62W
| Swiftech MCR320-QP | HeatKiller Rev 3.0 LT | Jingway DP-1200 | Primochill Primoflex LRT 7/16" ID 5/8" OD | Swiftech MicroRes (MCRES) v2 | 3x Yate Loon D12SM-12 - Push |