Chris123NT's Blog

One thing I noticed rather quickly with this build was that the iPod Touch does not seem to work out of the box in iTunes.  At first I didn’t mind, but then there was added pressure when my brother snatched my 6801 DVD and installed it on his machine and then came to me to get his iPod Touch working.  So of course this started a quest to do what many others wrote off as impossible.  Well, I’m here to tell you that it is NOT impossible, it just requires a little know how and willingness to do some things manually.  So let’s get to it shall we?

NOTE: Everything you need to know to make this work is in the following guide, if yours isn’t working, you did something wrong, so read it over again because you probably missed a step.

What you will need:

• Latest iTunes x64 release from apple.com
• Installed copy of iTunes on a Vista x64 system available to you
• Basic knowledge of installing drivers in Windows

Ok, so first off, you obviously need to install iTunes.  Install it as you normally would and let it do it’s thing.  Once you have done that, you will notice the following error if you try to start iTunes with your iPod Touch plugged in:

The reason this happens is because the iTunes installer does not install the Mobile Device Support component which is necessary for the iPod Touch to work correctly.  To remedy this issue do the following:

1. Copy the “Mobile Device Support” directory from your Vista system to the same location on your 7 system (Located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\).
2. Once you have done that, we need to merge the appropriate registry entries so the services actually work.  Merge THIS registry file and allow all UAC prompts.
3. Once that is done, now we need to move on to the hardest part of the whole process.  Installing the correct driver for the iPod Touch.  Windows 7 incorrectly sees the device as a digital camera, so we need to fix this manually.  To do this head into the device manager and select the iPod (see screenshots below).

   

   Once you have done that, right click and go to “Update Driver”.  You will now see this:

   

   Select “Browse my computer for driver software”.  Now you should see this:

   

   Click the button highlighted (hint: it’s the Let me pick… Button).

   When the prompt comes up, click have disk and navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\Drivers\

   After doing that click OK and you should see this:

   

   Click Next and the driver will install.

   Finally, reboot your computer to allow the Mobile device service to start, and plug in your iPod Touch and fire up iTunes.  Your device should now work exactly as it should.  Enjoy!

So as many of you know, back in December I got a shiny new EVGA 780i Motherboard (which was later followed by a slew of other hardware, but that’s another story for another day).  Anyway, over the course of these 2 months I have been battling with some pretty severe chipset temperature issues.  The IDLE temp of the MCP (Southbridge) chipset was 62C!  While this is "in spec" according to NVIDIA, to me this is completely unacceptable, especially when it was cranking up to 70C under load.

Now, I know what some of you might say.  Did you try replacing the TIM?  Did you follow [p]’s guide on the EVGA Forums?  The answer to both of those questions is a yes, those temps I provided are AFTER doing the mentioned things, you don’t want to know what it was before the initial mod.

So I decided to get a Thermalright HR-05-SLI High Riser from FrozenCPU.  That coupled with a little handy work modding the stock cooler and I should be all set.  Here’s some pictures of the progress with an explanation of the steps (click the images to see larger pictures)

Ok, so step 1 was of course to pull the motherboard out of the case.  As you can see here this is the motherboard with the stock cooler as it came from EVGA.  The only mod is the 60mm fan on the NB Heatsink, to push more air (yes I know it’s an AMD Fan lol).

Here are a couple of shots of the Southbridge chipset after removing the stock cooler.  As you can see it resides right under the Video card, so this thing getting hot does not spell good things for the video card temperatures, especially considering that I have an 8800GTX.

Here you can see the HR-05-SLI Mounted on the MCP.  It is mounted on an angle because the way the mounting system works it cannot be mounted straight.  This does not hinder the cooling performance whatsoever, and this proves that this product DOES fit on the 780i MCP (it does NOT fit on the northbridge because of the second NF200 chip).  So now that this is mounted, how do we get the rest of the cooling system in place?

As you can see here, the stock cooling system is back on the Northbridge and the MOSFETS.  The only thing missing is the heatpipes and the small block that sat on the MCP.  I simply cut this section of the cooler off with a hacksaw and filled in the heatpipes with lead free solder to avoid any possible leakage of the heatpipe element.

Here are a couple of pictures after everything is back in the case, as you can see everything fits great, and even better, there is enough clearance to get a second video card in the bottom PCI-E slot.  Tri-SLI however, is not possible when using this cooler on the MCP.

So now for the real good stuff, how does this all perform?  Well I mentioned before that my temp ranged from 62-70C on the MCP with the stock setup.  With the new setup the MCP temperature ranges from 41-46C.  That’s a full 20C decrease in temperature which is great.  As an added bonus, this also dropped my 8800GTX temperatures by almost a full 10C.  So all in all I’d say this mod is MORE than worth the cost of the cooler plus the time it takes to perform the mod (about a half hour if you’re good at this stuff).

Anyway, enjoy and feel free to leave any feedback in the comments area or e-mail me .

Where do I begin? I still can’t believe that this has actually happened. It just seems so surreal to me, looking at my MSN list and seeing the name Utakz which will be offline from here on out. The beta community has lost a truly great contributor. I am really going to miss talking to him.

I can honestly say that I never had any bad run-ins with Utakz and for that I am thankful. He was a good friend and someone I could always talk to if I needed advice, or just someone to talk to. I could trust him with virtually anything and he never betrayed that trust. I do regret sometimes that I caused him to question his trust in me but I am glad that we made ammends in the end. Aaron (as you preferred to be called), you were a great contributor to the beta community, and even more, you were a great friend. You will truly be missed. RIP Buddy .

So today I got my 8800GTX from newegg. And I have to say, I’m impressed. This thing takes everything I throw at it and just laughs at me, it’s great. I opted for the EVGA model, as I already have their 680i motherboard and I like to keep things matching .

This card is huge, it overhangs the width of the motherboard by about an inch. Thank god I have a Lian Li PC-75 or I would have had issues fitting this beast in my case. All in all I am amazed by the cards performance, and this is in Vista with the NVIDIA 100.30 beta drivers so you know it will only get better.

Yeah I know, getting old isn’t it?

I moved my operations to 1and1.com. Much faster and more reliable than who I was with. I would like to apologize for all of the downtime over the last 2 months. The host I was with had many issues that they seemed unable to fix. Those should be in the past now though

I’m working on something and we were importing a DB but it inadvertently overwrote my DB LOL. Well I don’t have a backup (because I’m a retard, I know, shut up). With that said it will take a little while for me to get everything back to normal again, but don’t worry, nothing of too great a value was lost .