The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

I may have to blow out my computers tomorrow. I do believe they're due. My ambient temperature in here is currently 70.5- 71.5C. Usually with that temperature, My cpu idles at 27-28C. Gonna have to blow out the radiator, and what not. I've been itching to work on my secondaries led lights. Now I have another excuse to pull the towers off my desk xD

 

Oman7,
I don't know if you've tried to use the ACC settings yet, but if you don't know how, go into the setup and hit Enter on the ACC and select Hybrid, then save and exit. It will go through a little firmware routine that only takes a few seconds, Let the computer fully boot up in Windows, then restart it and you will be able to set and save the settings.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

No Russ, you've missed the point. AMDs run cool because they're temperature sensors are calibrated to show them running cool, they put out just as much heat as their power consumption dictates, there's nowhere else for it to go!
The temperature of AMD CPUs, according to the sensor is low, but they still put out bootloads of heat.

 

ok what is the ACC setting and where is it located?

 

I've reached in all of my systems while they've been running. The only system I've had worthy of noting heat was the HP pavilion (1.4Ghz Athlon Thunderbird). All of my modern systems haven't been much more than cool to the touch The GPU seems to be the only serious heat producing component in my rig

Russ, Why would I need to enable ACC?

 

Sam,
While that may have been correct with the older ones, I've checked everything in the computer that makes any real heat and the sensors are giving very accurate information. I know this for a fact because before I got all the fans straightened out, I was having temperature issues, and things like the Northbridge got too warm to comfortably touch. The temperature read 57C for the motherboard, and it was spot on. 57C won't burn you, but it will leave a red mark and become quite uncomfortable. I've heard that sensor story before, and spoken to AMD about, but AMD says No! They use a managed average for the cores. This way each individual core can not just be throttled, but the load can be switched to other less stressed cores if need be so that one overheating core won't bring the whole CPU down. It can even turn off any core that may not be working properly. The temperature shown is that of the hottest core. We do the same thing with MRI scans, CT Scans and full motion x-rays, because of all the cores involved when using 16 or more multiple core microprocessors. It just makes core management much easier to control and makes it easier to delegate the load over all the cores.

Just because it's a 125w CPU doesn't mean that it's always drawing that much wattage, even fully stressed. Before the fan/cooling problems were addressed, My 955 ran a bit warm and had unacceptably high motherboard temps. Once I could isolate the NB and VRM cooling all the temps came down. If you remember, the temps were very high when the video card was installed in the main 16x slot. This was due to the confinement of so much heat in such a small area, due to the need of keeping the pipelines as short as possible. once I was able to cool the hotspots, I was able to move the Video card back to it's proper location with no more ill effects. I'm going to post my temps to Kevin in a few minutes. I was able to bring my room temp down to 75F/23C, using both AC units. I got curious when I saw his temps at such a cool room temp, and decided to see how low I could get mine. While you can do that in cooler weather, it really isn't an accurate indicator, because there's less heat soaked into the outside walls, caused by radiant heat. The results at 75F/23c are pretty eye popping, as it's 5F lower than his room temp.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Omegaman7,
Here's a little eyeopener for you. I managed to lower my room temp to 75F/23C. Check out the temps!



Imagine if I lived with my room temps like yours! I think I've got my cooling, just about as good as you could ask for! LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

PS, I haven't even blown out the radiator since I installed the CoolIt, yet!

 

Russ, you're cheating LOL!

Russ, why would I need to enable acc?

 

Oman7,
because I discovered that some times when you increase the speed, the CPU Arithmetic performance goes down by 3000 or more MIPS. The ACC lets me recover those drops in performance without having to reduce the CPU speed. I believe that to be caused by uncorrected processor errors. If you get enough of those, you can wind up with corrupt files, or as in my case several months ago, windows refusing to load at all.

You didn't comment on my temps. I'm disappointed! ROFLMSOAO!!

Russ

 

I did you cheated! LOL! Nah, very nice temps My HAF932 has quite a bit of dust on it. That's probably where the problem lies. Damned dust in this area. I can't win LOL!

 

Absolutely true, but the power consumption figures from actual tests put AMD's 125W CPUs around the 118W mark, and Intel's 95W i5s/i7s around the 95-100W mark, so they're about right.
Remember, running at 60ºC is considered hot by people in this thread, but CPUs run fine at 75ºC as well.
Not sure what the argument is here though, I was merely pointing out that you were criticising i7s for running hot, they don't, the temperatures they display are about the same as AMDs, and the amount of heat they produce is quite considerably lower.

 

Sam,
Perhaps I was being unfair, since all my experience with temps for the 95W i5s/i7s have to do with some pretty good overclocks. I also have to consider that I have liquid cooling with the CoolIt ECO, although the 955 was surprisingly impressive with just a Freezer 64 Pro. I'm still Hella impressed with the temps I posted though. It's rare that it's 75F/23C in here when it's 87F/34C outside, as there is no insulation whatsoever in the outside walls. This house is older than I thought too, as it was built in 1936, so it's pre WWII.

You do have to addmit, AMD is getting there, after years of getting almost nowhere. Every time they bring out something new, they get a little bit better. Today's Phenom IIs, are nuch more efficient than the original 940, and overclock better too! There's a 95w 955BE/C3 in the works, that's supposed to be coming out soon.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Oh no doubt, I can't belittle AMD's achievements, and I do expect them to overtake Intel when Bulldozer arrives. Still, AMDs are pretty heavy-duty chips with regard to power and heat at present (but so are LGA1366 i7s).

 

Methinks I made a Boo-Boo. I installed the new motherboard, and proceeded to overclock it in XP Mode. I set the two GSata plugs to AHCI Mode before I started. I had a couple of crashes, but nothing out of the ordinary for overclocking, but when I went to boot up in Win 7, it started in a repair mode. After running for a little while, it told me that it couldn't repair the problem. now I'm at a loss to what to do. Can I re-install Win 7 in a normal fashion, or do I have to start all over again and install XP first and then set up dual boot again. I still get the boot menu, but when I select Win 7, it kicks it right back to XP. Any ideas?

Russ

 

My brothers installation of windows 7 did that several weeks ago. The problem appears to have fixed itself. Really weird. In fact I've had other bugs disappear too. Remember the kingston flash drive/printer issue I was having? It seems to be miraculously gone! I wonder if M$ is slipping updates in without my knowing LOL! Or if windows 7 is more impressive than I originally thought. I remember thinking when I first started playing with the beta, that it seemed adaptive. Curious...

 

Rob,
Sorry, if missed this one. The ACC is the top item in the MIT, Just click on it and select Hybrid. Save and reboot. Restart the computer and enter the setup. Select Hybrid. Then you can set it. I've tried the + and - settings, and so far the best it seems to work is on the minus side. Using that I can get about 98% of what I can get without it at 3.9GHz, at 3.8GHz. It also seems to perform better using DVDRB/CCE 2 Pass. It knocked off 5 minutes from a 7.2GB rip that I had previously processed at 3.9GHz. That's a lot of improvement, about +17%.

What it does seems to be some deep dark mystery, since AMD won't comment on what it does or how to use it. Since the core temps no longer read when the ACC is enabled, I'm guessing that it's some sort of core control that tweaks the cores for best overall performance, but not necessarily Synthetic Benchmarks. I'm still learning with it, but I'm making progress.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Oman7,
I managed to get the room temp down to 72F/22C, since I don't have to deal with radiant heat from the walls at 2 in the morning. Here's the setup. I pulled the CMOS battery and set the CPU to 3.6GHz at 1.312v. I manually set the memory to 2.1v. Everything else is set to Manual/Normal settings. I took these pics because I don't think it will boot up at 3.7GHz at this voltage. I'm not done yet though!



This is the hottest I could get it to run IBT 5 pass.



I can't get it any colder in here, but I imagine it might run just a little bit cooler in your room. Note the voltage increase that the computer gave it while running IBT. I just had to take a pic of it. I had to run it about 3-4 times in a row, because I kept forgetting to click on the full window before I took the shot! LOL!! Simply amazing! No ACC, so do you think I'm still cheating? LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I don't think you cheat russ. Totally yanking your chain. Very impressed! I really gotta get in my towers this weekend. I've been up to my neck in pc tasks. Not building. I'm still a ways out on that one. I'm kind of the software guru around these parts LOL! I have a knack for learning softwares. I'd really rather be doing stuff for myself though But I can't say no to people, when I know it's so difficult for them. I think you understand that

 

Oman7,
Just funnin woth you! LOL!! I think something might be corrupt in my system on the HDD. Everything works fine once it boots up, and it passes IBT with no problems at 3.8GHz, but DVDRB/CCE keeps crashing the computer. I think I have to totally wipe my boot drive, re-partition and install everything again. Everything was working fine until I tried to run Win 7. Now it's doing some strange things. The post screen will appear all blown up with huge text, no matter what video card I use. Sometimes it will double boot, and the Boot Menu screen acts up too. Temps are great, and it passes IBT with no sweat. I've run memtest on it with no errors, so I just don't know. I sure hope I didn't get a wonky motherboard!

Russ

 

so is the ACC a AMD thing or is it INTEL also? is it a function like E1ST?