System Check (4 weeks)
So after four weeks of use, the verdict on the new system: kicks ass.I had some minor teething pain.
One of the coolest features in Vista is suspend mode. Instead of shutting down, you choose "suspend," and here's what it does:
keeps your session in memory and puts the computer in a low-power state so that you can quickly resume working.
This is, in short, The Shit (in capital letters). The "low-power" state is so low that all system fans shut off, and while it seems like you've shut down the system, when you hit the power button, you're back on the desktop in just a few seconds.
I would do this indefinitely, never rebooting, except the EVGA motherboard had a bug with suspend mode that made it lock up about 5% of the time you tried to resume. With a bios update last night, though, that's supposed to be fixed.
Other than that, zero crashes in a month. Well, except for King's Bounty, but I'm certainly not by myself as a member of that club. And I've run two other games (The Witcher and New Star Soccer 4) with zero crashes, so I suspect KB, not the system or the OS.
I wasn't a big fan of downloading games that I could get on disc instead, but with this Intel SSD, I have totally changed my mind. It's just great to have the entire game on the hard drive--no optical drive noise, and no hard drive noise, either. Plus this drive just absolutely screams in terms of speed.
Other problems? None that I can think of. All the peripherals I like to use work just fine, and this system is just so ridiculously fast that it's a pleasure to work on anything and everything.
Like I said, this is a low complexity build, and I'm trying to do that with installed software, too. Right now, I'm using Firefox and Microsoft Office (almost went Open Office, but decided against it), and I've got the three games installed. That's it. I'm one of those people who compulsively scrubs their drive to keep it as "clean" as possible in terms of what's installed, so having a lean set of apps installed is pretty normal for me.
One last note: I mentioned this before, but EVGA's customer service really, really impresses me, so if you're looking for an X58 board, I'd recommend them highly.
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