Working on the Hexx

Got the beast back together today. Working on loading everything with windows 7 pro. I am sure I will screw up some how as I haven't had to load dual video card drivers or raid dual hard drive drivers yet. I need to do some major re-routing on the wiring to make it look neater but it is out of the way. MSI mother board with 2.6 AMD dual core, 2gb ram and dual 7900 GT KO cards with aftermarket coolers, razer tarantula keyboard, 23" monitor and external speakers. Hope my next post on here is on that machine as I have been using my Alienware M9750 as my main computer when home.

Right now the windows 7 pro dvd doesn't see the hard drives even though they show up as found in the boot screen. Back to see what I screwed up on and get it straight.

It's got late on me, have to see what I can do in the morning. Went to the MSI site and found some sata drivers for the motherboard, maybe that will help. I will find out in the morning.

Of course, you realize we're going to need to see photographs . . .
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. . . and a 500-word review.

Make that a 1,000 word review video.

Hell yeah! Video review! New requirements:

Pics

500 word review

10 minute video review

I will see what I can do about that then, lol. I am still fighting with the windows install right now. I downloaded the drivers from the MSI web site and kept them extracted on a usb thumb drive. The windows 7 pro still didn't see the hard drives. I am on the Hexx right now using backtrack Linux. It found the hard drive with out a problem. When the computer boots it lists the master and slaves drives and show that they are there. I will still be messing with this on and off today, have some pictures later on and hope to have some shots of me gaming on it. Windows and Linux in a dual boot is my goal.

check the BIOS I think there is a RAID setting and also before you boot the system I think there is raid controller option it's real quick so look for it.

Have you tried loading windows with raid disabled? The other thing you can try is see if windows setup sees the drives if you set them to legacy (ide) mode in the bios. If it sees them its a driver issue. This wouldn't be the first time I have seen windows 7 insist it has the driver for something when in fact it is not a compatible driver.

I looked into the BIOS. I had to hook up a ps2 keyboard to get into it as the USB keyboard wasn't being fully recognized in time to do it. I have two 250 GB 2.5" hard drives I am using, but have tried it with just one hard drive. I thought about going into the BIOS and resetting everything to factory default but didn't want to screw anything up as I am not use to a fully un-locked BIOS. I have read where sometimes doing that the ram speed and maybe CPU setting didn't read correctly and caused more problems.

The raid setup my be my problem as this is the first time I have had to set it up. On the Three laptops I have with raid the Alienware M9750 and M780 had raid drivers installed. The U703 only has one hard drive in it for right now so I didn't have to install them on it yet.

Going through older posts on other forums I have seen this has happened a lot to other people but don't have a clear cut answer or even a answer at all. I am just going to have to do some more reading or maybe even try XP on it to see how that works.

I think it has something to do with this error maybe "not enough space to copy pci option rom" Reading up on it now, strange the linux will work even with this error and can't get anything out of windows.

Is there room in the Hexx for a third hard drive? Wondering if you couldn't install Windows on a hard drive dedicated for the operating system and set up RAID after the fact.

As for the requirements: I'm willing to forgo the 500-word review seeing as ADOR is providing a running commentary and in lieu of the fact that we're now getting a video review.

As long as the video review has a stirring score.

make sure your sata cable are plugged into the motherboard in the correct order....

I got Windows 7 32 bit on it right now. I pulled one hard drive and then set the bios to "optimized default" The disk took a lot longer to boot and load but it worked, looking at maybe doing more to it tomorrow. Maybe get the raid working on it. Then decide what in bios has changed and what I may need to change back.

Once I get all of this sorted out I need to swap the keyboard cover out for the Voodoo Keyboard I got a while back off Ebay. It doesn't work but is the same case as the one I have. The default light is blue on the one I have, Blur, is the voodoo keyboard you got a while back have a different color light? I have the same one but I doesn't work.

While you are at it the led board should swap over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6Or9k_R4ok

Thanks for the link on that keyboard East. I have downloaded it on the Hexx and look at it more when I get time. I got windows 7 pro 32 bit on it. Had issues and had to re-install. Got the anti-virus up and going, basic programs I used installed to a single 250 GB 2.5" hard drive. The system recognizes it has dual 7900 cards but right now it won't work. The screen flickers then go back to no SLI setting. Later on I will sort out the raid issue with the drives and the video card stuff. I am going to swap drives here in a day or two and load XP Pro 32 bit on another drive to see how that runs. Need to do a disk back up before I play and tweak too much on it.

For right now here are the pictures I took last night, finally got them off the camera and onto my flickr account, give me a time and I will do the reviews. I want to make sure I have something good to write.

Got SLI up and running and the missing driver I had found and loaded. It will be time for some gaming tonight and put it though it's paces.

VOODOO HEXX REVIEW "AFTER THE FACT"

It has been a pleasant week with my "new" Voodoo Hexx. The monitor came in right after the system showed up so assembly came together swiftly. Now lets take a look at the original system and how the system is today. This mid height case originally came with and how it compares to the current system specs



THEN AMD Athlon 64 3400+ / 2.2 GHz 939 SOCKET
NOW AMD OPTERON 185 2.6 GHz 939 SOCKET

THEN 1GB DDR RAM PC3200
NOW 2GB DDR RAM PC3200 CORSAIR CMX1024-3500LLPRO

THEN Asus K8V SE MOTHERBOARD
NOW MSI MS-7220 MOTHERBOARD, 2 PCI EXPRESS SLOTS, NFORCE 4 MCP, SOUTH BRIDGE

THEN GE-FORCE 6800 ULTRA 256 MB
NOW GE-FORCE DUAL 7900 GT KO 512 MB AFTERMARKET COOLERS

THEN TWO 80 GD SATA HARD DRIVES 7200 RPM IN RAID 1/0 3.5"
NOW ONE 250 GB SATA 2.5" 5400 RPM HARD DRIVE

THEN DVD DRIVE
NOW PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-109 ATA Device OPTICAL DRIVE

THEN 19" LCD DISPLAY TFT
NOW 23" WIDE SCREEN DISPLAY

THEN AC97 INTEGRATED SOUND
NOW CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY SB AUDIGY

THEN
NOW MICROSOFT SIDEWINDER MOUSE

THEN $3300 Price
NOW Considerately Less thanks to Blur

THEN 600W POWER SUPPLY
NOW 650W POWER SUPPLY

THEN WINDOWS XP 32 BIT
NOW WINDOWS 7 32 BIT

ORIGINAL SPECS CARD




I haven't tried any real labor intensive stuff on this Hexx yet, Halo, Halo CE, Plant vs Zombies, WOW, MINECRAFT, WW2 Pacific Heros are to name a few. I will be loading Blood Rayne 1 and 2, hit man trilogy soon though. Still need put the filter in the front and see if I can find one that won't mess up air flow.

The base chassis is good thick aluminum that shows no flex, the 3.5" hard drive housing has been removed and a slot for two 2.5" hard drives has been added to the floppy drive housing area. Original reviews bitched about how the power supply was placed in the chassis, but I do not see any rear problem, both of the 7900 cards running in SLI have no problem clearing the power supply and it looks like some of the 6850 ATI cards running cross fire I am looking at will run fine in this machine later on. Besides ram the video cards will be about all I can do with out replacing the motherboard. Since I don't need it to be hard core right now I can live with it for a while.

How about:

10 word review

500 minute video review,

we should have choices here.

Iago wrote:Hell yeah! Video review! New requirements:

Pics

500 word review

10 minute video review

I am going to have to have a lot more installed for that video review, lol

You should see if an athlon x2 939 will work. I have gotten them in working condition out of junked systems before; They were fairly common and would make a nice upgrade. Especially if you could stuff a x2 4200+ into it. (A lot of hp systems were built using them if I remember correctly) You will have to research the mobo though to tell for sure.

I'm not tuning in for a 500-minute video review, and I like ADOR . . . .

How about 500 words per minute?

My original RAGE SLi had a pair of 6800 ultras on it. Still may, unless East has finally gotten to working on it and replaced them . . .