Intel vs. AMD

good news bad news post.

bad news

next reboot after i flashed the bios my pc refused to go online, it worked the first timebut after that no ethernet activity and the usb failed everytime i tried to install it. tried rebooting modem, reinstalling drivers, uninstalling and letting windows find it, resetting the bios, spent 45 mins talking to some tech guy in india(virgin media) reinstalled xp,nothing seemed to work. phoned scan and they said they would swap it.

good news

this one is working fine so far.

when i took it to bits this morning i found out that the hsf on the cpu was only in contact with about 20% of the cpu across the top side of it (glad i hadnt tried to up the clocks yet) now i dont think i have got 100% contact on it this time as it seemed to be slightly raised on the bottom side now too but there is definatly more contact between the 2 as the drop in temps shows. still a gap between the cores tho?

heres my current temps (its doing next to nothing and still at stock clocks) care of everest.

Motherboard 35 °C (95 °F)
CPU 25 °C (77 °F) (surprised?)
CPU #1 / Core #1 22 °C (72 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #2 29 °C (84 °F)

the sensor im my cases says 23/24c

now i have one above and one bellow the cpu temp?

other stuff

my amd reported back (everset and speedfan) that unless it was under heavy load the core was a lower temp than the cpu. i always thought that they had the sensors mixed up but who knows?

i have seen the guys at scan loading a delivery van this morning, hhmmm, if you ever get somthing from them and it turns up damaged i am not surprised. not one of them got closer than 4 foot to the back of the van and every thing was thrown in where another guy stacked them all up. glad none of it was mine.

edit

new mobo is the release bios, bit hesitant at the min to flash it agian.

@pacman

no thats just how everset shows them cpu #1 core#1/2

 

Yes but Scan package things properly. Overclockers just give you a jiffy bag, surprise surprise a hard disk arrived damaged from them. Didn't help that due to both citylink AND overclockers mis-labelling the delivery it was put on a van no less than 12 times. You think one throwing is bad! I'm amazed the other two HDDs worked. That delivery took 35 days in the end.

 

Considering Overclockers are one of the highest priced retailers, you'd expect the service to be better than anywhere else.
I keep away from them now.

 

Likewise, except the three RMAs I need to sort out with them.

 

I get most shipments by "brown truck". Handling may not be the best, but is decent, and the packages are packed properly by the vendors. I've not seen any that like returns the way Overclockers must. All the vendors I've used ship with cardboard boxes and they're not stingy with the peanuts.

 

Good news. Pulled out my P5W DH Deluxe mobo and reseated the chipset heatsinks with some artic silver 5 and also installed some 40x40x20 chipset fans. My mobo temp is now running at 34 celsius. I pulled out my cpu to clean it good from the initial install and forgot to save all my settings in the bios (F10) when it recognized a new cpu and made me go into set up so everything is back to default but even then it never ran that cool before. About 44 celsius was the coolest it ever ran. I'll let you know where it runs at when I get it OC'ed to 3.2ghz again.

 

Back to 3.2ghz. The mobo is now at 35 celsius. Before the mod it was running at 47 celsius when OC'ed to 3.2ghz. That's 12 degrees C or 22 degrees F cooler. I'm impressed. Now I can lower my front case fan down to medium speed or maybe even low.

 

Nice one!
Thats a big drop for what amounts to a small amount of time, and very little cost.

Hopefully everyone will start to see how important it is to do that.

Its almost impossible to believe the difference it makes until you actually do it, and apart from being a bit fiddly, its actually quite easy to do as long as you take your time.

I'll be doing it every time when I get a new board from now on.

 

BigDK,

My bios is version 1305. It's couple updates behind but not causing any problems, do you think there would be any real advantages if I flash it to the latest version?

 

The only thing I found with the later versions, was you could boot with a fsb of around 400 or higher and set the memory timings manually, whereas the earlier ones had to have memory timings set to auto.
I think that came in at 1707 but can't be sure.
I've just gone to 1901 from 1707 and it’s perfectly stable.
I've just ordered a better cooler for the E4300 and will push it back up again once it arrives.
I'm now running it at 400x6 because of the heat if I go any higher with the E6600 cooler.
The memory is set 1:1 4-4-4-12 which is why I want to keep the fsb up.
I think 1707 was considered a very good bios, but lacked some memory sub timings that would have been useful, the main thing with 1901 is vista support on some of the onboard chipsets.
As usual though there are those that say its improved things, those that say it's made no difference and those that say it's made it worse.
A lot depends on what you're running on the board.
I had no issues with the last 3 versions I’ve used, but getting the manual memory settings was a bonus, although some say that they still don't get manual settings only set from spd.

There are those saying that they can't go backwards from 1901 without using Afudos 2.11 (it won't load older bios from USB/floppy) giving error message about bios being older than the board.

If you don't have any issues, then don't bother changing it, if you find you're stuck at a certain point or get crashes in testing you think you shouldn't then its worth giving it a go, you can always go backwards.

 

Reseated my CPU HSF with a new batch of Arctic Silver and took a 5*C drop as well. Now running 42*C constant on load and about 32-35 on idle

 

Awesome, thats cooler than mine, but then I currently have the fan on minimum speed with a 45% overclock. I think that's what's going to limit my OC a bit too, I like having a quiet PC.

 

I'm hovering on the edge of getting a Phase cooler, so noise is definately going to be an issue.
Performance seems to come with a cost, both on the wallet and the ears!

 

Those artic freezer cpu fans must be loud. I keep my zalman cnps9500led on high and I can't even hear it. Cpu runs 29-31 centigrade at idle and bumps 42 centigrade loaded.

 

They're not, it's quieter than my CNPS7000, but I'm after an ultra-quiet gaming PC over a fully overclocked one.

 

my old evo33 had a dial so you could alter the rpm and the ammount of noise. my freezer 7 pro is no louder now than that was on low.

 

Oh it's a quiet cooler, but bearing in mind the loudest components in my PCs are the HDDs, you get the idea what I'm after.

 

Mort81,

Put a new battery in your hearing aid! LOL!! I've had 3 9500LEDs in 2 different rigs and all 3 were louder than the Arctics I replaced them with by a good bit. I think that a lot depends on the case as to how much noise they make. I have a 5"x3.5" air intake vent centered about 6" below the CPU air duct and the noiseiest thing in the computer is the 120mm in the PS. You can hear the fans running, but it's not annoying or loud. I would imagine with the airflow in a case like that rocket motor looking Xclio, you could probably cut the CPU fan down to it's slowest speed as it's a pretty good wind tunnel inside what with 2 80CFM slow turning 250mm fans blowing in. one in front and one on the side.

Happy Computering,
theone

 

With my PC as it is, the case fans are inaudible, the CPU fan is a bit noticeable on low, the GPU fan is noticeable at idle and loud during games, and the PSU is noticeable at idle and loud during games. The odd thing is it never used to be, and I'm a bit concerned by that.

 

sorry for the off topic post but this seems to be where the most people are that know alot about computers.so with that being said i was wondering if are all sata harddrives loud?