**New User** Memory, PCI Express, BIOS Need Help Please

Question

So, I just got my mobo installed and now I am having some troubles. First, my specs:
AMD Phenom 9850BE
Corsair XMS 1066 Dominator series 5-5-5-18 2.1v
MSI HD3870 800mhz edition
Antec 1000w psu.
Asus Xonar DX sound card
Vista Business 64bit
RAM Location:
Do I follow the colors (Green -DIMM1 and DIMM3, Orange - DIMM2 and DIMM4) or do I put them D1+D2, D3+ D4? Logically I would follow the colors, but the handbook says to use D1+D2, etc. Also, I set my mobo timings of the RAM to 1:2.66 so it would run at 1066mhz.  I set the voltage to 2.1v and got a bsod. But this is the way to change the RAM settings right?
Graphics Card Setup:
Right now I have my gfx card in the Teal/Light blue PCIe slot. Is this the mazarine color they describe? Also I plan on putting an HD4870 to crossfire with my 3870 once they come out, do I put that in the other Teal/Light blue PCIe slot? I do not know if this will fit that way, the USB/E1394 cables might be in the way, which would really upset me. Can anyone put a card on the first darker blue slot? The pipelines are in the way for me.
BIOS:
I do not know what version I have and if it is up to date. I tried LiveUpdate 3 to see if it was updated, but it kept giving me a "Services not started" or "cannot start service" error over and over.
eSATA:
I tried hooking up my eSATA external hard drive and it didnt work. I have to enable the onboard Raid controller option in the BIOS. I do not use RAID so I disable it, and I hate hate the startup check it has when booting. How do I work around this?
Thank you for your help, I know that this is probably somewhere hidden within the forums, but I really need to get this thing going and am trying to set up other things and never really find the specific answers I am looking for. Thanks again guys.

Answer 1

I do not know how to tell what version it is. I believe it is a MS-7376 Ver 1.0.   I just bought it from newegg maybe 2 weeks ago. MSI CPU support says that it supports 9850BE 125W CPU. I upgraded to the 1.4 BIOS version.    What do I do?
The gfx situation isn't pretty. I wanted to go Crossfire, but I doubt that will happen. I cannot get my card into the top darker blue pci-e slot due to the pipelines being in the way. Currently I have my card in the lower lighter teal blue color, which I guess is the PCIe 8x slot. Newegg said they were 16x for all of them and then 8x if they were in Quad CF.  Oh, I also have a PCIe 1x Sound Card that is right under the first dark blue PCIe. So I cannot put the card up top at all. The other lighter teal blue PCIe slot is on the bottom of the motherboard and will not have any place to put a double cooler slot GFX card into it. So, the only way I can go crossfire is if I put the Light Teal Blue 8x slot with a Card directly under it in the Darker blue 16x slot.