6 hours ago, martin-w said:

Ai Suite for your MB, it has a feature called Five Way Optimisation.

I have that Ai Suite, for an Asus Z87A MoBo, Martin, but cannot locate this FWO. Any clues where it is.

I have a large circular icon to the lower right on the desktop window, and the AI Suite opens up with one of the smaller sub icons. I can see the "Five Way Optimisation" option to the top left when I open the suite.

EDIT: Despite the month of frustration, building my first PC has been a very enjoyable and informative experience. Now that I know the procedure, I am confident that I will be able to build my own systems in the future

Edited February 1, 20206 yr by Christopher Low

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

I have a large circular icon to the lower right on the desktop window, and the AI Suite opens up with one of the smaller sub icons. I can see the "Five Way Optimisation" option to the top left when I open the suite.

Thanks, Christopher, will look again. I do have that Ai Suite icon in the lower right taskbar, but could not locate that Five Way Optimisation..

Well done going forwards

I have removed the following components from my old PC as keepsakes....

• Intel i5 4690k CPU (cleaned off the thermal paste so that it looks shiny and new)
• 16GB Kingston Hyper X Fury DDR3-1600 RAM (2x8GB sticks)
• SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Music sound card (I may use this in the new PC if the Realtek audio chip on the motherboard fails to impress me)
• 2TB Toshiba DT01-ACA200 7200 rpm hard disk (this may also be added to the new PC as a backup drive)

On a side note....can I use isopropyl acohol to clean the dust off the soundcard? The top side looks clean and virtually brand new, but the other side has a fair amount of dust on it.

Edited February 1, 20206 yr by Christopher Low

6 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

isopropyl acohol

Not sure how it'd react with the bakelite PDB of that Soundcard. Why don't you use an old clean paint brush to flake off the top dust, then a damp cloth to clean the embedded dust, then let it dry?

I will have a look for a paint brush, and try that method.

20 hours ago, vc10man said:

I have that Ai Suite, for an Asus Z87A MoBo, Martin, but cannot locate this FWO. Any clues where it is.

 

There are different versions of Ai Suite dependant on your board. For me if you click the uppermost of the circular icons, to the right of the big round icon, a square with an arrow part way through it... 5WO will then be at the top of the panel.

I did a mini review of 5WO a while back, so if anyone is interested I'm sure it will pop up if you search for 5WO or Five Way Optimisation and my name. I went through what the settings are and what they do. 

6 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

 

On a side note....can I use isopropyl acohol to clean the dust off the soundcard? The top side looks clean and virtually brand new, but the other side has a fair amount of dust on it.

 

If it's the PCB you are talking about then as long as it's 90% isopropyl alcohol it's fine. You don't need to for just for dust though, just get a can of compressed air and blast it off. Try to avoid using a vacuum cleaner, as they tend to generate static electricity. 

The damp cloth was good enough to do the job. However, I then discovered that the sound card would not fit in any of the PCIe slots in my motherboard (the length of the first section of gold connector interface did not match that in the slot). I can only assume that the card is too old (probably ten years), or else Asus think that the S1220 Codec sound chip on the Maximus IX Hero motherboard is so good that nobody will need one!

Edited February 1, 20206 yr by Christopher Low

I see a review for that sound card dated 2005. I had, obviously mistakenly, thought that except for professional sound engineers, the on board sound on later motherboards was more than adequate for music, let alone aeroplane sounds.

 

 

I have always used a sound card, so I have no idea how good the audio processors on motherboards are these days. It will probably be fine.

20 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

The damp cloth was good enough to do the job. 

 

I'm sure it was, but Alcohol evaporates rapidly and is a solvent. Water is not something I would use on a PCB. But I'm sure you allowed it to dry thoroughly.