No, you can use them more than once. I have a microsoft technet account, and I get a bunch of keys. Which do you want, pro or home premium? I'd give you ultimate but my brother and I already used all of the keys.
Yeah, that was the biggest complaint about the HAF 932 in a review I watched. I have a can of compressed air I just used to clean out other things recently, but I am going to try to figure out if there's anything that can be done to improve this situation. Evidently you can buy some dust filters. Some of them could easily be concealed by the detachable covers and would therefore not be an eyesore. http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=36_463_500_514
Pro I guess. Is there a big advantage of one over the other? I've only used Ultimate 64 in my other desktop. I think what I had for the other computer through my university was a 1-time upgrade only, though. I upgraded from Vista on that one. I don't have anything at all for this new computer. BTW, how will I get that onto the new computer given that I don't have an OS yet?
I'll PM you the information. You'll want to download 7 Pro with SP1 from Technet and burn it to a disc.
I haven't really noticed any difference between Pro and Ultimate in terms of features. Pro is clearly meant for a work environment though. The games section is hidden by default. You need to go to control panel, programs and features, and click on "turn windows features on or off" to show it. I guess they don't want people playing solitaire at work.
This is the thermal paste I like. It's non conductive, so it's not the end of the world if you get some on the motherboard. Also, buy some pure acetone (not the scented crap) or 93% isopropyl to clean the surface of the CPU and the bottom of the heatsink. Also, as weird as it sounds, go buy some paper coffee filters. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835100017&cm_re=arctic_silver_ceramic-_-35-100-017-_-Product http://www.arcticsilver.com/instructions.htm
I just bought a tube. It was cheap with free shipping. Seems worth it considering it won't screw up my mother board if I spill it.
UPDATE: I have most of the parts now. I received the RAM (finally!) and an extra 120mm fan today. Now I just need the CPU cooler (wow, that's taken too long...) and the thermal paste I just recently purchased. I don't know what's taking this damn cooler so long to arrive. Amazon doesn't seem to be as speedy as newegg. I was a bit surprised to see how large these RAM sticks are in person. I hope this clears the CPU cooler. They have gigantic ridges on the top. There is probably an important reason for this. Or they just decided to go with the stegosauras look.
Probly shoulda mentioned... you no longer need a 3rd party cooler to overclock... you don't really need 3rd party thermal paste either. Their both better, but the quality of coolers and thermal paste that come with processors have really gone up especially with Sandy Bridge. You can go ahead and play with it now heheh
All marketing. DDR3 doesn't need heat spreader at all. DDR needed them. DDR3 runs cool unless you over-volt it. DDR 2.6v DDR2 1.8v DDR3 1.5v
Lots of people complained about the standard heat sink that comes with the 2600K, although I'm sure they are going to go well beyond what I plan to do. I think I'd be fine with overclocking to the 4 to 4.5 GHz range, which appears to be very easy to do with the unlocked Sandy Bridge chips.
I used stock coolers with my c2d e5200 and i5 lynnfield. They seem fine.. I think for the most part, people complain about heat issues if they're part of the performance crowd. If you turn into one of those types, you'll literally be obsessed with each degree your cpu ticks at. It becomes unhealthy sometimes. I was like that when I rooted my phone and started testing different kernels for the first few months. Staring at the battery percentage numbers and looking at power usage graphs... But for your amazon concern.. amazon definitely is slower than newegg in many respects. Most of it is due to the fact that amazon uses usps whenever possible. Newegg uses dhl/usps on small packages and UPS 3-day on larger packages.
I remember reading that RAM doesn't produce much heat. I saw a thumbnail of the gaudy look, but I didn't completely comprehend how over the top it looked until I saw it at full size. Oh, well, it doesn't look bad when it's plugged into the board. BTW, I may get into some issues with the RAM speed/ timings. It looks like it's 1.5V with 9-10-9-28 (EDIT: fixed) timing. Evidently boards tend to not recognize that higher speed initially, and it isn't stable until this is fixed. Will I be able to get into the BIOS settings and fix this easily if I address it right away? I don't like the idea of unstable RAM while I try to get this thing configured. I also have this 1-button overclocking feature on my MSi board. Does that just impact the CPU, or would this correct the RAM issue until I figure out how to configure it properly? I'm a bit nervous about manually adjusting voltage. I don't want to fry any of these nice, new components. EDIT: Ooops, I had the wrong page for the RAM. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231455 I'm tempted to grab one more pair for a total of 16 GB of screaming fast RAM, but I have read that they aren't guaranteed to work together unless they are pre-matched. They could work...or they might not? What kind of nonsense is that?
Well, it looks like I'll be ready in case that eventually happens. I went overboard in some areas. I could probably Trifire a 6990 and 6970 with the PSU and case I have, although I have no intention of doing this. If I actually got that crazy, I'd definitely need to watch the temps pretty closely.
No idea but the i7 has it's own auto OC feature so it's probably best not to mess with the MSI one. I tried to OC my i7 and failed. That crap is all complicated now.
I plan to eventually manually set everything, but I was a bit concerned about the 1866 speed of the RAM. That's an OC'ed setting. In another "interesting" development, the specs for my mobo on newegg seem to say my motherboard is compatible with 1600 and 2133*(OC) but no longer include 1866*(OC). That was changed recently. I can still see the asterisk indicating OC speeds remaining next to the 1600, which shouldn't be there because 1866 and 2133 were the listed OC speeds. I got the 1866 figure from that page when I shopped for my RAM. AWESOME! Fortunately, there's a verified owner on there who indicated he has my board and has 1866 running just fine. Hopefully it works for me as well. People said it works on the ASRock board I originally considered before I was scolded by cmdrmonkey for sullying the quality of my build with that brand, so surely it would work with my MSi board.
Far as I know that speed is just a rating and the memory can go as slow as needed so it should go down to 1600 auto magically. The only odd thing I've seen is memory that runs at 1.6v and the board need to be manually adjusted. Looks like yours runs at 1.5v so no issue there.
Some people on newegg had complained of problems getting it set up properly. That's why I was concerned. I searched around for awhile and eventually found a vid of someone using OC Genie II with this board and that speed of RAM. The 1866 speed was included in the BIOS. I'm not sure why it's not listed on newegg anymore. It wasn't on the MSi page, either.