Now that all the hardware is assembled its time to test it! The system posted into the bios on the first try! While in the bios, make sure that the system is recognizing all the hardware in your system and take note of the bios version. If the bios is not the latest one, I suggest updating it to the latest and greatest before installing the operating system. In my case, I had to update mine. I used Gigabytes Q-Flash utility to update the bios from a usb flash drive. It was very easy to do and worked the first time!
Next I installed the OS, in my case Windows 7 64bit Home Premium Edition. Once into the OS, I installed all the latest drivers for the hardware attached to my system from the internet. I did not bother with any of the driver CDs that came with all the parts since they were all old versions.
After much instillation and several system reboots, I had Windows 7 functioning beautify. I performed some quick benchmarks to see where my system is at and identify any problem areas.
Here is my Windows Experience Index score. Looks pretty darn good. Only thing suffering is the hard drive performance. Maybe one of these days I'll get a solid state drive (SSD) and boost the performance.
I also tried out PCMark Vantage Basic Trial 64-bit 1.0.1.0 which was limited to a resolution of 1024 x 768. It gave me a score of 7698. Comparing that score to some recent Tom's Hardware SBM, my $1000 PC is in line with their $1300 December 2009 SBM PC.
I'll try to do some more benchmarks and a little overclocking....got to get a better cooler first though.
Some good Tom's Hardware links:
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