Excited Newbie here! What can I do to finalise my Z170 build/prep it right?

[neiljwd]

Hi Guys! Been a cheap PC Gamer for over a decade, but this is my 1st time using premium products ;), and I'm obviously super excited to get going! 😄
I chose Asus as my current Build is an AMD AM3 that i've had an ASUS MB in, I've abused it terribly :eek: and it has taken it all, inspired me to go ASUS again, and went with the VIII Gene, as I think mATX is cute :o.
Build below, have every part apart from the Samsung 950 Pro m.2 via PCI-e SSD. It'll be my boot drive, so no Windows or program tweaking. 😞
What can I do while I wait to maximise my build, and save time later? Built successfully, but done nothing more. I've full access to the Bios, is there anything I should be doing in there, do I need to configure much?
Been very impressed with the diagnostics of Gene board so far, that Q-Code LED Display is amazing tbh!:p

PCPartPicker part list
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (Purchased For £299.96)
CPU Cooler: RAIJINTEK TRITON 100.5 CFM Sleeve Bearing Liquid CPU Cooler (£66.14)
Motherboard: Asus MAXIMUS VIII GENE Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (Purchased For £170.31)
Memory: Kingston FURY 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory (Purchased For £89.99)
Storage: Samsung 950 Pro 512GB M.2 Solid State Drive (319.99)
Storage: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (£221.00)
Case: RAIJINTEK AENEAS MicroATX Mini Tower Case (Purchased For £60.04)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (Purchased For £38.49)

[Nate152]

Hello neiljwd

I would be excited too going from an old amd pc to a new intel pc, you should see a night and day difference. There's really not a whole lot you can do until you get your operating system installed.

Everything looks good except maybe your psu. The gtx 970 calls for a minimum of a 500w power supply which is what you have and should be fine but it will hold you back when it comes to overclocking.

It's always good to give your psu a little headroom, it will run cooler, quieter and last longer. You should have gone with a 750w gold rated power supply but the 500w you got will do.

[neiljwd]

Nate152 wrote:

Everything looks good except maybe your psu.

Yeah I'm aware it's on the low end but isn't actually bad. But I got it at an excellent price, and I knew it to be quiet, plus I see it more of a placeholder/back up, as I am 100% going SLI when Pascal launches, and will be upgrading to a Tier 1 PSU when I know its requirements!

So there's not much I can do? Should I flash my BIOS to 902? Think i'm on 0402 revision at the mo - and it doesn't out to HDMI... .

[Nate152]

Sure you can update the bios to see if it gets the hdmi functioning.

Here is a guide you can follow, rename the bios file to M8G.CAP

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?1142-How-to-use-ASUS-ROG-USB-BIOS-Flashback

[neiljwd]

Nate152 wrote:

Here is a guide you can follow, rename the bios file to M8G.CAP

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?1142-How-to-use-ASUS-ROG-USB-BIOS-Flashback

Thanks for this Nate, so I should follow that guide, not use EZ Flash 3 Utility as is in my User Guide?

[Nate152]

You may use either method my friend. 🙂

[neiljwd]

Nate152 wrote:
You may use either method my friend. 🙂

Either?



Don't worry I know why <_<

I'ma go give it a go now, fingers crossed!

[Nate152]

Good luck and let us know if the bios update was successful and gets the motherboard hdmi working.

[neiljwd]

The update was successful... eventually, but didn't fix the HDMI.

Did it via EZ flash bios tool, and it went well to begin, got to a screen that said "BIOS Updating, don't turn off or shutdown[Sic]".
PC then restarted, and just did nothing, with the Q-Code Saying 00, which is reseved, means nothing. I left it 10 mins. Then manually shut down the PSU.
Restarted the PC, same nothing and 00 q-code, left it on another 10. No change, Shut it Down. Left it OFF for 10 minutes. Turned it on, and... worked! Jsut like that, by itself.
Bios reports version 0902, so has worked :).
Details posted in case anyone is googling similar.

However ASUS Maximus VIII Gene Z170 Skylake Motherboard still won't do HDMI out to my TV.
I used 2 cables, both work on this (old) PC, AND my Xbox 360, and both worked when connecting my new PC via my GPU's HDMI out.
But yeah the Motherboards HDMI out just doesn't work into my TV. It's a Panasonic Plasma, was expensive at the time, but that was a few years ago, so I'm guessing it has an older version of HDMI or some TV standard or something.

[Nate152]

Well boo on the motherboard hdmi not working, I suppose it isn't a big deal if it works with your gtx 970 but it still makes me wonder if it's a bad hdmi port or your tv. I guess the only way to really tell would be to hook it up to a pc monitor.

I'm assuming your tv is 1080p and if it is, you have in my opinion the perfect gaming pc for it.

For the best gaming experience you want to be at 60 Frames Per Second. Here is far cry 4 a fairly new first person shooter, I'm not sure of the cpu he is using but I'll bet it's not a 6700k.

This is one of my favorite games at the moment. 🙂

The D3D11 is the Frames Per Second