Here's some preview photos of Gigabyte X79-UD5 motherboard. Full preview photos here

Been a while since I had new gear to play with and had the time away from work to give the new gear some attention

• Intel Core i7 2600K L038A660
• Gigabyte P67A-UD7

First pairing will be with 256GB Crucial RealSSD C300 on Marvel SATA 6G port 6 and 2x2GB A-Data 2000X DDR3-2000Mhz 9-9-9-24 memory modules, pretty old kits from Elpida BBSE days.

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Some more gear arrived as need more storage space and need to replace my very noisy Netgear G516T gigabit switch with a fanless HP Procurve 1810G gigabit switch with jumbo frame support.

• HP Procurve 1810G 8 port Gigabit Switch
• 2TB Samsung F4EG 5400RPM SATAII
• 2x 8GB Corsair Voyager USB Flash drive

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New hardware arrived LSI MegaRAID LSIiBBU07 Battery Backup Unit (BBU) for 8880EM2, 9260-xx and 9280-xx and LSI MegaRAID Fastpath key for my LSI MegaRaid 9260-8i unit.

The LSI LSIiBBU07 BBU is meant to provide at least 72hrs of battery backup in case of power outage. But user reports have the BBU providing as much as 130 hrs. Apparently, the BBU has a learning cycle for 24-48hrs after first use which happens after the initial automated discharge and recharge cycle within the first...

Just arrived - 720GB SSD - 12x 60GB Gskill Phoenix Pro - Sandforce controller based SSD. My first experience with solid state disks with Sandforce based controllers. Plan to have alot of fun with these in various raid configurations for benchmarking, reviewing etc

Did some quick single tests for each individual 60GB Gskill Phoenix Pro SSD on my main work rig (Xeon W3540 + DFI UT X58-T3EH8) via the Manhatten dual 2.5" in 3.5" drive bay.

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