Windows 7 - Upgrade/Clean Install

DIGItonium

Makes sense... Win7, of course, has the Vista look and feel. However, something about it feels snappy. The experience was quite pleasing compared to Vista, but maybe that's because I was already used to Vista. If I had a choice, XP SP3 if it supported 64-bit extensions.

I finished the desktop build (minus HD 5850), grabbed a spare graphics card, installed Win7 OEM, and ran some initial tests. BSoD when installer loaded indicating "memory_management" STOP message, so first hunch was DDR3. I managed to get Win7 to install on the Intel SSD, and I quickly started running memory tests. After amost 2 hours of testing, at least one of the sticks are faulty. Just my luck... 1 of 4 DDR3 sticks.

Other than that, I have good initial impressions with the i5 750 and MSI uATX P55 board. The Scythe Ninja Mini is NOT so "mini." I need to shave 1-2mm to provide some clearance with my HTPC case (Origen S14v). I had to resort to a pull setup with the CPU fan. Speaking of which, the Gelid PWM 92mm fan is "buzzy" at full blast, so I set it to under 50% duty. The RaptorX is the only thing that's making noise... SSD in the future. Overall, this HTPC is so much more quiet than my last build.

I should get the Win7 upgrade media tomorrow for the Lenovo laptop and SSD installation this weekend. Let's see how that one goes...

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