The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Seems I may finally be getting to the bottom of why almost every Verbatim disc you can buy in the UK will coaster if you write on it (with a proper CD marker, we're not talking ballpoint here). They're all in fact manufactured by CMC, which from what I can recall, is a pretty lousy media brand?

 

CMC media varies. I've seen excellent results, to C- like results. Essentially, they're inconsistent. I suppose Verbatim as a whole seems to be now. Certainly employing CMC's media! Most burnable media fanboys stick with Taiyo Yuden, or Verbatim MCC dyes. They seem to suggest the best longevity, and reliable/consistent burns. (I'm a media fanboy)

Rich, I don't know if it's simply due to a fresh install, or what. But GTA IV runs very smooth on the SSD. Smoother than it ever has! The install was a pain in the butt, thanks to M$'s wonderful (NOT) Games for windows Live! I had to try signing in, and updating like 3 or four times to get it to take! It took over an hour to install. GTA V better not be a pain in the butt!!!

The SSD Is wonderful!!! Firefox is my only existing bug As well as adobe flash

 

Maybe there no so here, the verbs here are doing just fine, plus I mark mine all the time with no problems, looks like you guys in the UK are getting ripped.

 

If I'm correct your talking about CD's which Verbatim mainly are CMC and over the years I've had aboot a 20% success rate for longevity and flat out bad.Chris

 

It seems to have only become an issue in recent years - I used to use Verbatim CDs for a long time without incident, but now, you can see right through the discs from the underside and see the reversed image of the Verbatim logo through it... My experience is when you write on them with CD markers, you can see that too from the other side, and the data becomes worthless :/

 

Hey Jeff - thanks for the additional crossfire tips. I have had to put the cards aside and have been off my gaming machine for a day or so, but crossfire is coming up next week I think.

Kevin, yeah I read earlier about that hell you went through with MS live - haha. But I like that GTA4 is running really smooth for you now on the SSD. Congratulations once more.

I just am not sure that I need one that big - for crysis, all of them, I would think 120 gigs is enough for me.

Regarding GTA4 the game, now that I have played Mafia, I don't know if I'll go back to GTA4. I still didn't finish Mafia, but I'm near the end, but then I ran into the add-on exploits which were awesome.

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But let me get back to hardware, especially after tonight's adventure!

Guys, I have had the craziest experience, that peaked this evening, that somehow reminds me of the way that Intel has put an insulating thermal paste on the ivy bridge, as first discovered by some curious gamers over in Japan, to discourage dramatic overclocking, presumably in order to sell its higher priced chips.


As I had mentioned, last weekend, for Miles, the animator/modeler family member, I blew off the dust, and cleaned off a stock intel cooler, tied to a hot running i7 940, replacing the cheap Intel paste, or whatever the builder used, with Artic Silver 5, thereby dropping cpu temperature from 95 to 84, per the digital readout on an evga x58 sli motherboard, per speed fan, and per the bios "cpu temperature."

I had thought that the core temps, in the 70s, were way too high.

Then I opened up the tests, starting with speedfan, then core temp, and saw to my absolute consternation that all cores had climbed to 100, 98, 99, 99.

Over at Tom's I posted the question WHY ??????????????

Earlier today the situation turned from dreadful, to drastic, the machine over the last couple of days moving from shutting off twice a day, to as of this afternoon, shutting off every two minutes and therefore becoming totally unusable.

So an hour ago, I talked Miles through a dramatic underclock:

1. turning every case fan to max (probably minimal impact)
2. turning off HT (in my mind eliminating half of the heat-producing engines)
3. reducing vcore from 1.1 to 1.0 (probably major impact) and
4. reducing clock multiple from 22, to the minimum of 12 (biggest impact of all.)

The goal was to stop the shutting off, by reducing core temps below 90 under full load. We accomplished that, with core at 85 at full load. The machine still seems plenty powerful for what he does with it, which is not gaming.

I invite you guys to go over to the thread and comment - or comment over here. Especially you, Blaze, since you're a Tom's regular.

Nobody has explained how cpu temp could drop 11 degrees C, resulting in core temp climbing 30 degrees C.


My theory is similar to what Blaze suggests I should do in removing the IHS on an ivy bridge next year - replacing with a superior thermal paste, allowing it to overclock like crazy as well as sandy bridge.


Per my theory: the artic silver 5 did just that for the 940, according to my thinking, allowing the computer to overclock itself, beyond the realistic operating temperature of the cores on that chip, even for hot-running nehalem, pushing core temps to the ridiculous 100 degree range. "Great power management at play" on a non-overclocked cpu (but which never should have been binned as a 940 in my opinion) resulting in total shutdowns.

Tonight's solution: major underclock. Now the machine runs "cool" and does not shut down. I think as long as core temps never pass 95, he will never see a shutdown.

Right now, at idle, cpu temp is 59, core temps are in the 70s. At 50% load, cpu temp is 65, and core temps are in the mid 80s. I ordered a push-pin arctic cooling freezer 7 pro that I can slap on without removing the motherboard, and maybe we can move some of those clocks back up again. But it seems plenty fast still for what he does. LOL


But I am still looking for an explanation, unless you buy my "wacky" theory.

Why would cpu temperature drop 11 degrees C, but core temps climb 30 degrees C?

Rich

 

Even ignoring the core temps, you shouldn't be seeing anything like those CPU temps after having redone the thermal paste. It sounds like the paste job has been interfered with, whether the surface was dirty, the paste is no good, or something along those lines, the idle temperature is too high for a start. I'd say try doing the thermal paste again, and if that fails get another cooler.

 

I'm sure I could have gotten by with a smaller drive. But hey, just call me money bags! LOL!!! Nah, I simply like flexibility. Plus I could comfortably afford the drive, so I said go for it A bit upset about the huge price drop, but hey, what are you gonna do...

Played mafia, and dirt 3 at a buddies house yesterday. Both were impressive. Don't know that I'm into the whole storyline of Mafia, but then, I could barely hear anything with all the talking going on behind me.

 

Thanks Sam - well I'm scatching my head. I used the cleaning solution, and am sure the arctic went on okay, and the heat sink seated. You're saying it's still running super hot. Yes, I guess so, but cpu temp before I messed with it was 95, dropped to 84 after new paste and blowing off hsf, and now after underclock is 58 idle, and 70 under load.

At the same time I have a freezer 7 coming, AND a freezer 13 coming that will handle 200 watts, specifically for hot i7s, and similar push pin mounting without mobo removal. It comes with thermal paste but I'll remove and use the arctic silver 5 again.

But Sam - tell me how I could drop the cpu temp from 95 to 84 - as confirmed by led readout, bios cpu temp, and speedfan cpu temp, in other words an 11 degree drop in cpu temp, and then see the core temps climb 30 degrees to 99 and 100. Is this power management gone crazy or did we all eat some mushrooms the other night?

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Kevin - ok, not Kevin, I meant "Moneybags." LOL Well maybe you're right, I should just cough up the extra $100 and go 256gb on the ssd.

So you're not sure if you liked Mafia or not - what's the diff from GTA4? - he's a thug too! I think Mafia is awesome, and it makes it hard for me to go back to GTA4. But maybe call me "retarded" haha. (I hope that was not politically incorrect.)

Rich

 

The action seems fine and good, and I may just try it again(wink wink), before I buy it.

 

Yeah, try it again at your friend's house, (wink wink) before you buy it! LOL

And don't just think that the Mafia 2 action is only in the game. Go to the extras - and play the first extra for his buddy, his cousin - you play the cousin who has to tail an fbi informant, then shoot his way through an fbi safe house, and then that section culminates in an amazing car chase on a frozen river. One of the most awesome chase sequences I have ever been a part of !!!
Rich

 

That does sound interesting!

 

Rich,

Don't be in such a rush to clean off the paste that comes on the new cooler. They come with Arctic MX2 applied, and MX2 is slightly better than AS-5. Big Bonus for AMD Fans is, it doesn't dry out, so it's much easier to change coolers!

Best,
Russ

 

Agreed, MX-2 is good paste.

 

I did some more research on the verb's, sammy is right about them being transparent when I turn it over under the light after I mark my dvd verb's, do not know if that's a bad thing or not, because so far I have never had a problem buying here in the Philadelphia area anyway, they are and always have been MCC (Mitsubishi Chemical Corp.), now my JVC Ty's after marking them they are not transparent under the light.

So like I said no problem with my verb's so far, have been using them for years now, the JVC 's I started using early this year, so take that and use your own judgement.

 

There's nothing wrong with transparency per se. I see commercial pressed transparent discs all the time. I rather despise them though. My first couple of disc drives had trouble with them. Go figure! Light tends to pass through something that's transparent! I've seen transparent BD's as well. Guess they're continuing to be dumb!
If the felt marker is Causing transparency though, I would certainly consider buying something else TY's have a 99.9% success rate here Verbatim MCC's are good as well. Giveaway discs, I'll use just about anything though, and burn them at 25 - 50% of their rated maximum. Generally 8X Dvds, and 16 - 24X Cd's. Though TY's I comfortably burn at 12 - 16X.

 

Are you guys kidding! MX-2 is better the Arctic Silver 5. I didn't think there was anything better!!!

Rich

 

Rich,

It's marginally better than AS-5, and is totally non conductive. Here I am more than a year and a half later and I still haven't cleaned the CPU cooler as of yet.

Temps at time of original install of the Coolit LCS



Temps over 1 1/2 year later. Cooler still has not been cleaned



If you clean off the pre applied paste on any Arctic Cooler, you are just throwing away one perfectly good application of MX-2! I know some here tried a diamond paste, but never heard very much about how good it was. One of it's drawbacks, is it polishes the numbers off of the CPU, and with Intel being such miserable SOB's about CPU return policies, costing about $6.50 to ship because of Intel's insistence that you return their crappy stock cooler with the CPU. With AMD you only need to send the CPU, for less than $2, and they never hassle you!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I have never had to send an Intel CPU back. (Nor an AMD CPU for that matter).
For how rarely you'd need to RMA CPUs, I don't think the return policy is much to complain about

 

Only ever had to return one CPU which was a Q9450 with stuck thermistors. Intel were very accommodating and got me fixed up with a Q6600 as per my request(which turned out to be a very good one). Both CPUs were OEM so no stock cooler was involved.