[EGS]

I've been stable since 2010 with my Pro Tools 9/Win 7 build. I decided to do a few hardware upgrades, and try to keep it running ... even longer !!!

upgrades:
1. motherboard: GA-X58A-UD3R ---> update to latest bios version FH
2. CPU: i7-930 quad ---> i7-980X hex
3. RAM: 6 x 2 = 12GB ---> 4 x 8 = 32GB
4. drives: 3 int WD Black HDDs ---> 3 int Samsung SSDs

Note:
The 4 ram sticks are indeed running in triple-channel mode. The Gigabyte manual clearly says that you can use 3, 4, or 6 sticks in triple-channel mode. To achieve triple-channel mode, you must insert the 4 sticks into certain specific slots, as the manual states. I was skeptical... First, I put in 3 sticks for 24GB, and it was fine. Then I tried adding the 4th (all 4 matching sticks are 8GB each). It worked right away - 32GB in triple-channel mode. Memtest86 = 0 errors. The extra ram will be helpful for my video editing projects.

Pro Tools 9 non-HD is (still ...) working. I changed the processor prefs to use 11 cores. I haven't run a lot of PTools on it quite yet, since I just finished this upgrade yesterday. I'll try to beat-up-on-it soon.

I did some more research, and decided to attempt some very gentle overclocking. I bumped it up from 3.33 MHz (stock) to 3.9. I also made sure the ram was running at the mfgr spec of 1600MHz.

Finally, I did a video render test of a recent video edit project. I timed this render before and after these upgrades. The render after upgrades was 44% faster. Wow!!! CPU temps under full-load (i.e. during the video render) were 65-72C.

So far so good!!! A pretty cool upgrade. I learned a lot, and it didn't cost me a fortune!!!