The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

I'm giving serious consideration to moving the CoolIt radiator to the outside of my case, by making a sandwich between the intake fan and the radiator. I have some special fan screws I got from Cooler/Master, left over from a build, and they will be perfect for the job. Then I could mount a couple of the good antec 40mm 2200 rpm fans on the VRM heatsink. I guess I will have to look elsewhere because Newegg says "Deactivated"! 2200 rpm, 6.5 cfm says it all. Perfect fan for the purpose, and they last a long time! They are actually quieter than the 26dBA claimed!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835129036

The problem isn't heat, but the mass of two fans and the radiator, all inside the case almost covers the VRMs, and makes it hard to get much airflow back there. I would gain an additional 1 15/16", and give me the room to better cool the area. I plan to cut out the case grille, and make two slots for the hoses from the radiator pipes. Sandwiching the ran and the one fan would cover everything and make the whole thing a lot sturdier, and the screws are the exact diameter and finished smooth so that nothing is going to slip around, as they go all the way through the fan. Sounds like a plan to me! LOL!!

Russ

 

PC Universe
Antares Pro

 

So after much mucking around and troubleshooting, my 790X board finally bit the dust! So long old friend! You served me very well for being free!

As a small bonus though, the guy who gave me the 790X-UD4P just sold me an 890XA-UD3 and some RAM to go with it for ultra cheap! 2 x 4GB kit of G.Skill DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24. It's the 1.5v Intel stuff, but runs A-OK and my previous OC settings worked perfectly!

Strangely enough the 890XA-UD3 is a recolored, slightly reworked 790X-UD4P. It is almost identical including having a 790X chipset despite the 890X branding LOL! Same exact layout besides a few small electrical components moved around. Which tells me it also has a newer design with apparently better technology! The only functional difference I can find between the two boards is the inclusion of DDR3 and the SB850 southbridge. Some of you might be aware of all this, but I found it very interesting, and worth mention!!

Finally dug out the camera, and took some pics of the new build. It is a sight to behold

EDIT: This is what I did all day lol

 

I have to remove my GTX 260 to properly get at my sata ports

 

I just funished everything on a new customer build. GigaByte MA78LMT-S2 MB, Phenom IIx2 3.2GHz 555BE Dual core. Turned on the ACC, and presto it became a B55BE, 3.2GHz Quad Core, with another MB of L2 cache and 6MB of L3. My customer is going to wet her Nickers! A very noticeable performance boost over the two core. Turned off the OBG, and put in a Sapphire HD4670/1GB DDR3 card in it like Fred bought for his new build, and it's great! It's so nice to see that you can still depend on Everest (NOT!). It said the CPU was 77C, which was only off by 41C. It was actually 36C. Nice to see that they are keeping up with the times! ROFL!! Oh, I put an Antec Earthwatts 380w PSU in it, and the 80mm fan is loud, even at moderate speed! Still a nice solid PSU though. Not too shabby for an $80 Quad core ($10 MIR) either. TYVM AMD!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Very nice on the unlock! Good component selection too. Sounds like a nice little rig Russ! For the record I have had good luck with HWMonitor Pro for reading the temps on Gigabyte boards. You can compare to Everest to find what your sensors are labeled as and change them with F2 to keep track on the more reliable program. They are otherwise set as Temp1 Temp2 Temp3 etc but only for the on-board sensors. It displays both core temps and the global CPU temp from the board. PM me if you want a copy!

BTW there's about 3 degrees of difference between the Board CPU sensor and the Core sensors for me. Currently sitting at 32*C at the board, 35*C at the cores in a fairly warm room(~74-78*F).

My Q6600, bless it, still sits at about 35*C idle high 50s load shoved under my desk. I don't even dust that one regularly! The large tower cooler doesn't hurt, lol. That's my most reliable system so far, and does a LOT of work behind the scenes. Batch jobs, folding, fileserving, hosting LANs. Thing is a workhorse

 

Gigabyte handles unlocking and OC'n very well. I've unlocked my Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H Rev 2.2 with a 545BE X2 3.0GHz CPU and Ripjaws DDR3 1066MHz (7-7-7-21) and now have a AMD Phenom II X4 B45 running at 3.3GHz with my RAM running at 1466MHz (7-7-7-19) with stock cooling for the most part and my CPU is running at 34c/93f idle. I really need to get a push/pull so I'll wait to push it a little more.

It seems my fourth core is noisy as I get high end noise on my audio device. When I turn off core 4 everything is just fine. I did try increasing the voltage to Vcore and the NB but still get noise with all 4 cores enabled.

Have any of you had this experience with a core generating noise when unlocking it?

I may just have to run this CPU as an AMD Athlon II X3 445 instead of a quad CPU. My temp is back down to 34c as an X3 and was at 40+c as an X4.

 

A couple of quick benchmarks!

CPUz



CPU Math 555BE, now a B55BE 3.2GHz Quad



Memory BW GSkill Cas 8 1333 2x4GB



Outstanding value for $127!

Russ

 

Steve,

I had the same problem with my Athlon2 x2 7750. It would only run on 3 cores, but made noise in the audio. Crashed the computer while loading windows after the windows screen when running all 4 cores. I too tried more voltage, and lowering the speed on the CPU, but it just never worked right! The quality of AMD's chips have gone up considerably since then. Today, it's almost a given that you can unlock the extra cores. I just finished running P95 on all 4 Cores for 10 hours. Solid as a rock!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Russ,

That's good to know I thought it was something like that but was looking for some confirmation. At least I can run 3 cores so I gain one which will help with VMWare. I'll just upgrade to a new X2 and push it, putting this old cpu back on my old ASRock and upgrading one of my older 939 systems or sell it to a buddy.

By the way if you hadn't noticed, or maybe you did and don't care, CPU-Z has a new skinned version of 1.57 that I think is nice looking. You might want to check it out?

ROG CPU-Z !

Stevo

 

Steve,

This must have come out in the last day or two as I downloaded the latest version through the cpuz site just a few days ago, and besides a Beta, 1.56 was the latest. I went and downloaded this ROG version. Looks Cool!

Thanks,
Russ

 

Good Job Russ. I was reading on it, You gonna try to crank up the core speed a little?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2927

I'm still trying to figure out how you got a cost of $127 between the 2 NewEgg cost is $59.99 with a $10 mail in rebate and the cpu is $89.99 = out at $139.99 that's after $10 rebate

board
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128455&Tpk=MA78LMT-S2
cpu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103846

 

Because it was a special to dealers. The CPU was 79.99 with a $5 Instant, making it $124.98 Plus the shipping! I just rounded it off to an even $127. I'm not officially a dealer, but I spend so much with Newegg a year that they extend me the courtesy of many dealer prices, without the hassles or having to qualify to be a dealer. I buy more than 20k a year from them.

I'm curious, why would I want to increase the core speed? It's a Black Edition with an unlocked multiplier, and I rarely overclock 1066MHz memory. It's generally not worth the hassle involved in terms of performance.

Anyone wanting a very high performing AMD Quad core better get one of the Phenom IIx2 chips now, because they are being discontinued. They have already been removed from AMD's Product List! The Phenom IIx2 565 is the equivalent of the Phenom IIx4 965BE for $34 less!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103912

It served a purpose when the chips cost more, but now that the wafer yields are so good on the Phenom IIs, it's almost a certainty that you will get one that will unlock all 4 cores. Still a Crap Shoot, but much much more in your favor!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

You friggin spammer!

Anybody else anxious for bulldozer? I hear it's releasing sometime in june

 

I can hardly wait for the new desktop AMD's and this should open up the unlocking again as you should be able to get a 4-core that can be unlocked to all 8-cores again just like the 2-core's and rare 4-core OEM's that we've unlocked already.

Yipeeeee!

 

The way they attack this forum it's a full time job zapping those spammers, good job ddp!

 

Oh I hate that taste hopefully it will pass soon.... LOL

 

We'll see how that goes I guess. These processors are significantly different than past processors from what I've been reading. Should be interesting!