The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Thank you for the learning experience guys

 

I became a metal scrapper a few months ago. I've been doing a stupid amount of research. I've learned more in the last few months, than I ever did in high school LOL! I used to think gold was the best too. In some respects it is. Because it is one of the least reactive metals. I think platinum is highly similar.

 

Indeed. Gold definitely trumps it, regarding least reactive. But it also, is only soluble in aqua regia. Perhaps highly similar was an overstatement. Similar in several regards, but they're obviously different LOL! They may also be similar in occurrence(rarity). But gold is simply higher sought.

 

Platinum is worth more than gold, but I don't know what that says about rarity. Platinum in some forms also has a super high melting point, and is used to make scientific crucibles among other things.

http://www.thomassci.com/Supplies/Crucibles/_/Standard-Shape-Platinum-Crucibles?q=*

Probably not similar to gold, which has a fairly low melting point.

 

Ok, I'm gonna shut up about the similarities LOL!

 

Melting points has nothing to do with conductivity so I really don't get that argument, electrical properties is a whole other issue and rare metals also doesn't enter in unless you are talking marketing jargon.

 

Gold is used in wiring in many things. Military jets for example. Not the most applicable for the average guy, or is it? I know people who have worked on them

 

That is true they use 2oz plating and until recent they also used Cadmium but do to its hazardous properties they have moved away form it. Cooper has the best electrical characteristics but gold is used for interconnects since it isn't as corrosive compared to other metals as is true with Cadmium plating, this is extremely critical in aerospace. The downside to gold is that it is soft which limits the amount of connections before it fails.

 

Haha I've found a limit for Gigabyte motherboards after all! Anywhere after 245MHz on the FSB, I lose SATA ports #5 and #6. The drives detect in BIOS and are able to be manipulated through command line software, but are completely invisible to Windows. None of my most reliable Windows-based disk management tools can even tell they're there. Drop it back below 245, and boom, everything detects like nothing happened.

Just thought it was interesting, and wonder if it's more related to the chip than the motherboard. AMD boards can act very differently depending on the generation of chip installed in them. Namely, there were always quirks present when I switched to Thuban, that didn't exist for Deneb, and vice versa.

Also interesting is that other brands don't seem to exhibit this issue until well above 250MHz on the FSB. Hmm, you win some you lose some. To Gigabyte's credit, I've never seen one of their boards outright die unless it was an Nvidia chipset or a mid range board being pushed amazingly far past its power limits. I've seen boards from other brands drop like flies for no readily apparent reason. *knock on wood*.

Oh well, the other advantages this board offers are well worth an FSB limit.

 

I think the answer is that AMD is intolerant to FSB shifts. I typically don't play with the FSB too much for that reason on AMD platforms when OC'n them. If you played with the voltages manually you might be able to get 250, but again that is high for AMD's, I typically keep it around 220 max before stability and over tweaking creep in.

 

Some brands will tolerate well over 250 before issues. Other, as you noted, will not. Really kind of a crapshoot.

 

I haven't run across those some I guess so I'll just have to take your word for that, but my experience, which is vast, has seen a much different reality I guess.

 

I hate to admit, but the first manufacturer that comes to mind is ASUS. You know I think they have a dubious reputation, but this(reaching or exceeding 250) is an ability I have seen on several of them. Really quite impressive. ASRock as well I think?

 

Funny I have several ASRock's and haven't seen that on those, it's always the AMD limitation I've found and many other experts have expressed. Also I know that many people think they have a stable platform that don't really but if you've got the key to push beyond great for you.

 

This board will almost do it, but it eventually drops SATA ports. I agree that in the long run, it isn't stable at all and causes more issues than it's worth. The highest I can get stable is 243, and that's pushing a little.

In fact, I have dropped it back to stock and gone back to a multiplier OC. Better results so far...

 

That sounds more like it. Are you dropping the FSB voltage to run it at 243?

 

Nope it stays stock. If I drop it at all, it doesn't go past 220-230. I really don't wanna raise it.

Multi OC generally works better and puts less stress on everything except the multiplier. I read on some other forums that a few Thubans would start to degrade after a while at 1.525v and others would go all the way to 1.575v without any long term issues. I'm playing safe and keeping mine at 1.5v. I don't know when I want to upgrade, and I'd rather not kill such a nice chip. It will likely replace my Q6600 at some point.

At the settings you can currently see in my signature, it runs beautifully. It needs 1.525v to be absolutely 12+ hours Prime stable but will do 6-8 hours at 1.5v and has never given me a single hiccup in any game or program. Upping from 2600 to 2800, then finally 3000MHz on the NB has given me some excellent gains. After 2800 you get diminishing returns, but 3000MHz was within reach and still showed improvements.

 

You can raise it a little without problems but you'll generate more heat so it is a balancing act of course. Your voltage limits seem to be pretty good so I wouldn't worry to much unless the system isn't stable at those elevated settings, then things can go south if you are not careful.

Also Prime will not guarantee stability I can't tell you how many times I've thought I was stable after using Prime just to find certain programs crashing my system.

 

An X264 encode, is where my stability test comes in