Installation and BIOS
Before we get into any of the testing here’s the basic specs of my system as of now:
Intel C2D E6420 CPU
EVGA nf680i SE (122-CK-NF63-TR) motherboard
2 gigs Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC2-8500
2x EVGA Nvidia 8600GTS video cards
2x Dvd/Rw optical drives
4x 200gig SATA I/II hard drives*
-1 drive with Windows XP
-1 drive with Windows Vista Ultimate
-2 drives for storage/backup
*Drives housed in iStar BPU-340SATA Hot-Swap Backplane Raid Cage
Ok, well I first had this system in an Antec P182 case, but I found that there just wasn’t enough room for my purposes, as this is my main system there are things that I want or need in it.
I’ve since moved everything over to one of my favorite cases, an Asys Freedom Tower Series (CK-1022-5) Eiffel Tower PC Case, it’s an extremely well made and designed case with a whole lot of room…
Installation was fairly easy actually except for the couple things I already mentioned about the CPU cooler hitting the northbridge heatsink, the funky placement of the front panel header, and the installation of the chipset fan. Other than that everything went smoothly and the layout seems to be user friendly for the most part.
Before we get into testing we’ll check out the BIOS, it’s fairly large actually with quite a few options that you overclockers out there might want to check out… though it’s not as deep and involved as some other BIOSes I’ve seen on the likes of DFI boards…
The EVGA nf680i uses the Award BIOS which everyone should be familiar with so there’s no explanation needed. The main menu is fairly standard, with the exception of the very bottom of the screen, you’ll notice two things in particular there: NVIDIA LinkBoost and SLI-Ready Memory. According to notes on the Nivida site LinkBoost has been removed from the 680i chipset, but yet mine still has the option to enable or disable it.. dunno.. The main screen, Standard CMOS Features and Advanced CMOS Features are all pretty much the same as other boards I’ve had.
Advanced Chipset Features is where we get into the good stuff, we’ve got all kinds of settings and sub-menus to explore if you’re brave enough to do it. There are user configurable settings for pretty much everything in these sets of menus, so check out the pictures of the screens:
The next three screens, Integrated Peripherals, Power Management Setup and PnP/PCI Configurations are pretty much the same as any other BIOS. I do like the inclusion of the wake by time feature, my last board did not have this and it kind of annoyed me as I like to have it set to power on and be booted for me. Something else interesting is that you can configure the SATA ports to be E-SATA ports, and you can pick which ones to set either way.
The last menu choice is System Monitor, and here you can find all the temperatures, voltages and fan speeds, along with a sub-menu to set two of the installed fans to be temperature controlled.
