The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Returning a Q9450 to swap for a Q6600, I doubt that's a request they get often. Profit for them really be giving you an older CPU in exchange

 

An OEM is normally only handled by the re-seller and typically they don't trade up/down as it is exact replacement. Also the warranty period is much less, something like 90 days to a year. That goes for Intel or AMD.

That Q6600 sure was a nice Intel cpu, you done well getting that one for sure!

Since I've built so many computers I've seen many CPU's go bad, some right away and others a year or so out. The ones that aren't bad right off the start seem to fail right around the year mark +/- a couple of months. OEM's use to be the processors that would fail more often at least with AMD's, Intels were all made at the same plants years ago. I'm sure that has changed since.

As to paste I don't find a big difference in cooling between old ceramic professional paste and the newer diamond pastes. Is diamond pastes coefficient better, sure but it is very close to the old pastes. What I don't like diamond paste? It holds the heatsink more to the cpu and you can pull the processor right out of the socket when removing the heatsink. I haven't had a problem persay with the etching wearing off of my cpu's but that could happen especially if you are constantly re-pasting or twisting the heatsink a lot to get the cpu off it.

 

For some reason or another this CPU still had a manufacturer warranty. I spoke to the customer service rep form Intel and asked if I could get a Q6600 sent out in return. He said it was unusual but they could help me out.

It was an almost cherry picked G0 that's still holding 3.7GHz to this day.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600(G0) @ 3.708GHz 9 x 412MHz 1.45v w/ Tuniq Tower 120(lapped)
Gigabyte GA-X38-DS4
2 x 2GB Mushkin XP Ascent PC2-6400 @ DDR2 825 CL 4-4-4-12 w/ 2.1v

That was and still is a fast system. Every bit the machine my gaming rig is. Idles cooler too.

I use Arctic Silver Ceramique and have had more than agreeable results for years. Totally non-conductive as well. Has the added bonus of actually curing hard by design and not drying out.'

EDIT: BTW a liberal re-application of the ole' Ceramique about 10 minutes ago has dropped my temps by ~3 degrees. Turns out the corners are high spots on my 955, and it benefited from using more than usual. Funny! Even funnier is the temp sensor updates more frequently now. More efficient thermal exchange? It cools down a lot faster. Load temps are about the same under IBT ie about 55 after several hours, but idles are improved greatly.

 

Sam,

It's not just the return policy, it's the attitude of the people you are forced to deal with, such as deciding that since I wasn't willing to use the piece of crap stock cooler, the guy voided my warranty on my last E6750, right then and there! Sure, I got it back, but my whole point was, I shouldn't have had to!\

Russ

 

SSD Special


Mushkin Chronos 120GB SSD $89.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226236

AData 120GB SSD $79.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211588

I've used both with no complaints. The Mushkin comes with a 3.5" bay adapter.

Russ

 

Speaking of SSDs and as I happen to be in the thread, I'll ask for your opinions on a few things if you don't mind.

I'm thinking of upgrading my laptop HDD (Seagate ST9500420AS - 7200rpm/500GB/16MB) to an SSD. I'm under the impression that I will appreciate the difference, but firstly I suppose I should ask if I will or not.

Obviously being a laptop this will be my OS drive and I'm limited by the spec of the laptop to 128GB SATA II. I appreciate the longevity issues associated with flash memory but I figure with a decent drive (well, controller), that I should be looking at ~2 years of solid use from it?

Assuming people agree with the above, I'm going to buy a Samsung 830. I've done a fair bit of reading around, and the combination of performance, reliability and particularly low power consumption made me settle on this - any thoughts/counter-suggestions?

Cheers guys.

Edit: I forgot to mention that price is irrelevant because I'm in the UK and prices aren't going to line up with US/Canada anyway, so there's no need to factor that in to your suggestions/reply.

 

You have a 500GB HDD in your laptop now so you could replace it with a large SSD unless you want to limit the price, you are not limited to a 128GB SSD per your laptop.

Personally buy what ever SSD you like for the money and I think you'll be happy, especially going from an HDD.

Also I would run Windows 7 even though you can use XP there are issues with XP that you would avoid with the current OS.

Good luck!

 

Well this is something I'm not entirely sure about. I might just be being dense but I was sure there is a limitation to the size of SSD that my laptop will support based on the mainboard spec. Am I making that up? Regardless, I don't see myself buying a bigger SSD than 128GB but I'd be interested to settle this.

I'm looking for a bit more technical insight but thanks for replying.

 

i've never heard of any limitations on ssd's and i have been an early adopter of the technology. older mainboards have issues with 3tb hard drives, but thats not specific to ssd's.

 

Oh right - I should know better than to take HP's word on the matter presumably.

Have you had any experience using a SATA III drive on a SATA II controller? From what I gather I should expect the SATA II to perform effectively "maxed out"?

Any thoughts on reliability as far as particular models are concerned?

 

Ripper,

I think he is talking about differences between XP and Win 7 with using an SSD. I don't think trim works with XP. sammorris could probably explain it better.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

XP is not designed with SSDs in mind - Windows 7 is. There are several differences in the way the file structure works and so on that mean Win7 is better suited to SSD use. As for TRIM support, I'm not sure if it was ever retro-fitted to XP but it certainly wasn't initially in there.

The 128GB limit you might be thinking of was Windows XP prior to service pack installation, had a limit around that area. However, this goes for all drives, there is nothing different about SSDs to add any additional size limitations. The maximum size of a drive under standard NTFS using MBR is 2.1TB, so for current SSDs no worries - beyond that you just need to use GPT instead.

 

Thanks for the replies all.

I'd completely dismissed the thought of XP; I haven't run XP on anything for a while so sorry for being slightly ignorant there. I haven't read extensively enough to comment on whether or not TRIM works under XP now as opposed to initially but obviously this isn't a concern.

The reason for my confusion stems from reading the limited documentation from HP for my laptop - this model ships with Win7 and always has AFAIK so it's odd that they'd state such a thing.

Thanks for the clarification.

So, are there any comments as to the drive itself (the 830 series)?

 

Not used a Samsung SSD myself. To be honest, I treat most SSDs the same as they're all very similar underneath except for the Intel ones.

 

There is this
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sata-6gbps-performance-sata-3gbps,3110.html

to make a long story short, link says yes maxed out, but no clear difference in the real world using an 3drive on either a SATA2 or 3 board. However, benchmarks and transferring large files are better using sata3 board so you are loosing a little it seems.

The jump from hard disk drive to SSD is so great, it doesn't matter if you still have the older SATA2 standard. its still a great leap.

 

Thanks for the link, I hadn't already read that. Essentially confirms what I thought so that's good, I'm looking forward to making the switch.

Does anyone have recommendations for a good 2.5" eSATA enclosure?

Edit: StarTech/Raidsonic (IcyBox) - any experiences with either brand?

 

Crucial's M4, at least some of Intel's older drives, OCZ's Vertex 4, Octane, and some other older drives, Samsung's 830s, Plextor's drives, and probably several more all use non-SandForce controllers and instead either use a Marvell controller or another non-SandForce controller. Furthermore, Intel's newer SSD lines use SandForce just like the majority of SSDs do. The Intel 520s and the Intel 330s are both SandForce and are the most reliable SandForce SSDs around. These non-SandForce SSDs can vary widely in performance characteristics and varying hardware, although many of them use Marvell controllers. If I remember correctly, Samsung's drives use their own controllers that no other company with SSDs uses.

 

This is true, I tend to forget how the newer SSDs differ. It does also explain the increase in the RMA rates, which is a shame. I'm a big fan of Intel in-house technology, because whatever else you say about it, it is really solidly built, like almost no other brand in the industry.

 

AFAIK this is correct yeah, and it's supposedly very good.

I've typically read only bad/mediocre comments about one of OCZ's older lines and certain Sandisk SSDs - the 'Extreme' series or something like that. Crucial M4 and the later Intel drives also get good write-ups alongside Samsung. Intel are typically more expensive and I believe the power consumption is slightly lower in the Samsung.

I'm pretty set on Samsung 830 tbh, but I'd still be interested in hearing any lurkers first-hand experiences with different SSDs.

 

So, is Sandforce what we should be looking for, or like Ripper is suggesting, go with a Samsung?

I have to agree with that. They have spent a lot of money on some very well-publicized recalls - like the cpu that had the "small" error that only one in 100,000 users would notice, in computing some huge number - which some dude DID notice. That recall was what - hundreds of millions of dollars, to maintain their reputation, which of course is extremely important.

So, Blaze and Sam, would you recommend Intel SSDs or the widely-recommended Vertex that seem to be so popular - of which Kevin I believe just picked up a 256GB model - or maybe Ripper's Samsung?

Speaking of SSDs, there's a picture of one below. The animator, Miles, whose computer was "on fire" until I underclocked it with him on the phone, just got his new rig. He heard something rattling around, as he unboxed the rig.

Here it is - look at the hard drive cage.




He said the box was in perfect condition. I think it's another soft aluminum Lian Li like the last one, the hot box. I think they dropped it, and despite the popcorn, the G's hit big numbers when the fall off the truck abruptly halted due to the density of the ground.

LOL

Anyway, I told him it should bend back in shape easily enough. I'll go up and do it for him if he wants. Notice they sent him one 2-TB drive, and one 256GB SSD.

Regarding the SSD, I don't know what model until I see it, and I don't know if that is where Windows 7 is installed - I would presume so, but maybe not - they could have configured it as a hard drive accelerator. I mentioned to him what you guys had talked about - like Blaze how you said no paging file on the SSD, and turn off indexing. I told him to never defrag it, using conventional tools, but I don't think he ever defrags anyway, haha.


Hey one last question.

I'm getting ready to do crossfire, and I have two 7950's but I'm still in testing one at a time:

Background:
==========================================================

I have an HIS IceQ 7950 that is iron-clad - it cannot get hot unless you turn its fan down to 900. It's stellar. Unfortunately it's 2 1/2 slots wide, so at most on a 3 gpu motherboard, I could put one at 2, and one at 7, and in position 5 I need a two-slot card, so I am okay that the HIS would not fit in my slot 6 as it bottomed out hitting the case.

So I pulled the HIS out so I could test a second card for crossfire.

Until a couple days ago, the second card was a Power Color that was good - but no cooling on the vram, and very little spacing to put on vram coolers - I don't think my low profile 9mm coolers would have fit, and maybe neither my 8mm. But I didn't get that far because apparently I burned up the vram by letting the gpu temp get to 90 in furmark.

Jeff, who is helping me with Crysis (full 30" gaming now at 32fps, ultra settings, no crossfire so far) says the vram was probably over 100. I got crazy artifacts in 3dmark11 even after reverting back to non-overclocked settings. I guess my vram was simply fried.




So - I'm still getting to my question - I returned the Power Color for full refund at Newegg. (I didn't mention furmark.)

I ordered an XFX - the single dvi, one slot cooling vent version.




It looks like good build quality, with some kind of "ghost" cooling that resembled heat pipe technology. The cooling package connects to all vram with thermal tape. Very good - I like the fact that, as with the HIS IceQ, the vram cooling has been taken into consideration. Unlike with the Power Color.

But actually, I don't know if the ghost cooling is as good as they say - the card seems to run just a bit hot. The dual fans go up to about 4,000, and at that speed they are loud. But nothing is as loud as my kazes. So that's okay. But even at the 4,000, and with my extra thick 120mm kazes roaring away at 3,000 each, the card still seems to get a bit hot.

After toasting the Power Color, as you can imagine I am now watching temps very carefully, and when it hits 80, I start to get nervous. It has been up as high as 84, running Heaven, but only briefly.

I was able to cool it off a bit, by reducing vddc voltage down from 1000 mV, to the low of 987 (lower and 3dmark11 halts mid-way through) which enables my core clock of 975, memory 1350. My temps on 3dmark11, depending on how hot the ambient is here in the trailer (right this second at 110 F) approach 80 - the good thing on 3dmark11 is that it shuts off every couple minutes as it changes tests, so it's not quite the heat builder that Heaven is.

Heaven - you have to watch. It just keeps going, getting hotter and hotter. With the trailer yesterday more like a "cool" 90 F, my Heaven stabilized at 84, with vddc set to 1000 mV, and then finally down to 81, when I got 987 to work.

But right now at 110 here in the trailer, I would not let Heaven keep running, and I would start 3dmark11 windowed to see temps before I would let it run full screen for the bench results.

====================================================================

Now finally - with that background - here's my question.

When I first pulled the HIS out, and put the XFX in on Tuesday, my XFX scores were all 20% below where the HIS and the Power Color had been, for identical clocks. To be specific, instead of 2650 in 3dmark11, I was getting 1900. Instead of 1630 in Unigine Heaven, I was getting 1300. That persisted for a lot of testing.

As you can imagine, I was absolutely flabbergasted, and I was one final reboot away from RMA'ing that card.

Then, suddenly, on last reboot, THE SCORES WENT UP TO AS GOOD AS THE OTHER TWO: 2650, and 1630 or so.

Some time after that, my 3rd or 4th 3dmark11 score dropped down to 2200, and at the same time my Heaven score dropped back to 1300. Again - what is going on? I believe I had Catalyst running. I rebooted, killed CCC and MOM, and the problem has seemed to go away.

So my question is: Was it Catalyst competing with Trixx?
Was it some kind of burn-in that had to occur?
Why did this card start out 20% lower power? Anybody have any ideas?

Rich