okeee

How did they get the fan wires (red/black) through those tiny holes? It has a molex connector so it couldn't fit through that hole. I see the motherboard connector at the back as well, in order to get it there the cable near the connector has to be severely bend, to much smaller than 90 degrees. Could this damage the cable?

wrench97

It won't damage the cable, it should be sleeved for farther protection.
The fans may be the hardest to do, most likely they took the wires out of the connectors and put them through the hole then reinserted into the connector, I would just make those connections on the motherboard side of the case.

okeee

Ok most cables are properly hidden in the backpanel. Except for win xp, what do I need to install? only motherboard drivers, network drivers and videocard drivers?

- Motherboard: Asus P5Q-E
- Processor: Intel E8400 boxed
- RAM: Corsair XMS2 - memory- 4 GB ( 2 x 2 GB ) - DIMM 240-pins - DDR2 - 1066 MHz / PC2-8500 - CL5 - 2.1 V
- Power Supply: Corsair 650TX
- Videocard: EVGA 896-P3-1260-AR GeForce GTX 260 896MB 448-bit GDDR3
- Case: Antec Three Hundred

Phædrus2401

Yup, that should be all. The network drivers should be bundled with the motherboard drivers, as well as the sound drivers. Don't bother with Asus Expressgate or that EPU thing.

okeee

I read that it is also very important to install the intel chipset utility. What is this, do I need it? What is "chipset" actually?

Phædrus2401

That's included with the motherboard utilities. Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipset
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northbr...28computing%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southbr...28computing%29

okeee

Are the drivers from the asus motherboard disc sufficient, or do I need to get the latest version from internet?

Phædrus2401

They should be sufficient, haven't updated mine since install, might want to later on, definitely if I ever need to flash the BIOS, but they should be fairly recent when you get it, no more than a few weeks out of date.

okeee

What site should I look for if I need the latest version, I'm not even sure what kind of driver type to look for.

Phædrus2401

http://asus.com
http://google.com

okeee

can you update the motherboard drivers whenever you want to, with the drivers from the disc already installed? I've read that it is not needed to update them, once windows has been installed. I'm not sure why.

Phædrus2401

Motherboard drivers are just like any other drivers. You can update them whenever you want. The ones that came on the disc should be just fine. Occasionally Asus will release new driver versions that maybe contain minor bug fixes and such, but that's it. When you want new drivers, you go to the site, download them, uninstall the old drivers, use DriverSweeper, reboot into safe mode, install the new drivers, reboot.

okeee

Another thing, about the videocard I received with the broken seal, I tried some games and most were ok. But with some of the games (from around 2002) I heard a soft but whiny noise. It is not loud, but you can hear it. It sound a bit like a saw machine that is being used, and it is a kind of irregular noise.
I'm not really sure that the noise comes from the videocard, but it's coming from that direction. It only happens when I play those games, and as soon as I stop playing those games, the noise immediately stops.

Should I return the card or is this normal? I don't have any new, heavy games to test on, but could the noise be even worse when I would play those?

wrench97

Could it be the fan on the card working to cool it?

okeee

It's not really a continuous high pinch beep, it's a high scratching tone. I'm not sure if it's from the fan but it probably is. Any way to find out? It is coming from the videocard area. The sidepanel was open, but it is still pretty hard to detect where it comes from. PSU fan is the closest near the videocard, but then I'm not sure why the sound immediately stops as soon as the game is stopped.

The strange thing is that more heavy games run without any noise. I tried running the game that causes the noise for about 12 hours, but after 12 hours the noise is still exactly the same (not louder). I don't have any heavy games to test on, but could the noise get louder with more heavier games?


I was looking for the videocard temperature, in display options and the advances options of nvidia itself, but it is not displayed it seems?

wrench97

Use GPUz for video temps, lets see what the temp is when you hear the noise and in other games that you don't hear it.
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads...-Z_v0.2.8.html

okeee

Ok, checked with pc wizard 2008, I noticed that for games that cause the noises, the temperature of the videocard quickly jumps to 70c (GPU temperature, GPU ambient: 60c). While for games that do not cause the noise the temperature stays around 47c (GPU temperature, GPU ambient: 41c).

wrench97

In CCC check to see what the fan speed is when the card is at that temp.
Then you should be able to set the fan speed to that setting, if it makes the same noise it's from the fan if not we need to look elsewhere.

okeee

I'm not sure what CCC is, but when I checked with pc wizard, the fan speed did not change, it stayed at 40%, for 47c as well as 71c.

wrench97

Woops brain freeze, I meant "EVGA Precision" to check the video card fan speed.
http://www.evga.com/PRecision/

Or Rivatuner will give the same info.