Gigabyte P-35-DS3R, case fans, OC and BIOS question!

[Jeradin]

Hello all,

After all the great info and help on this forum, I bought my new rig, and built it all yesterday, got all programs on and data back in place.

Here are my specs... (I didnt buy all the pieces at newegg, just using them for linking purposes.)
MB - GA-P35-DS3R
CPU - Q6600
COOLING - Arctic Cooling Freezer 7
PSU - ROSEWILL 550W
CASE - COOLERMASTER CAC-T05
VIDEO - VGA SAPPHIRE X1950XT
HD - 250G SEAGATE 7K 16M SATA2
MEM - 1G x 2| G.SKILL F2-6400PHU2-2GBHZ
DVD - BURN LITE-ON | LH-20A1L-05 LS


Now I have a few more questions I am hoping people could help me with.

1 - I got a CoolerMaster C. 5 case, which I love, and under 50 bucks! With the case fans, they have the little prongs that go into the motherboard, or the connectors to go straight to the power supply. Which is better? As it is now I am connected to the motherboard, since the bios controls the fan speeds... bad idea?

2 - I have my bios set to the default settings, are there certain things I should be changing for better performance?

3 - What is good to overclock the mem, CPU and such too? Never overclocked a computer before, and will read the full guide before hand, but wanted to check in before... I have the B3 stepping of course.

4 - Also, I still can return things or exchange, anything from my list that I made a mistake with and should swap out?

5 - anyone want a cookie?

Thanks for your time!

Dale

EDIT: My apologies, I should of posted this in "Overclocking, Case Mod, Tweaking PC Performance" Thread.... if mod sees this and is bored, can you move it? ha!

[dashogun]

I have the same motherboard as you and I have a couple case fans. My fans have a power connector which I connect to my PSU as well as a small connector, which I just plug into the motherboard anyway.

The small fan connectors (at least mine do) that go to the motherboard only have one wire, so I'm guessing it's not for power but for detection by the hardware. I don't think you use the motherboard to power your fans if that's your question.

When you startup, you can press the Delete button and go to MIT to change your overclocking settings (instead of keeping it default). Just bump the fsb up in small increments and run sp2004 or some CPU/RAM intensive program. If it gets unstable increase the voltage. The limiting factor would be the heat generated.

[baron5]

i believe fans are powered through ur motherboard well some of them anyway. and u can control speeds through bios just that mine didnt work

[BlueHeaven]

I have the same case and mobo with the fans connected to the mobo. I was wondering the same thing when I was putting it together but everything seems to be working fine (no thx the the coolmaster's incredibley horrible manual ).

[Jeradin]

Ya, the cases manual is ridiculous, no help at all... Had the case open the other day and put the fan power connected to the PSU, might switch it back to be powered from the motherboard again since it controls the fan settings. Didnt know if having the cases power run from the motherboard might stress it or not.

Thanks for the advice, read up more on overclocking and might mess with it in a week or so once I get some important work done.

All in all, very happy with the upgrade.