After a good 2 weeks of building and bench testing, my new rig is complete. The 200mm fan was delivered today, and it went in with absolutely zero hassle. It adds a bit more noise to the system- something I didn't want to do at first, but the results are well worth it. At a relatively low speed temperatures are quite cool and it is still much quieter than my old PC. Cranking it up makes for a bit of a persistent angry sounding whine from the fan, but that's exactly why I have it hooked up to the manual fan controller. Also, though the overall noise level is somewhat subjective, I must add that I've been bench testing with the rig about 3 feet from my head, in a very acoustically reflective room with no carpet. It may get even quieter when placed in a room with carpet to absorb some sound, as well as being further from me.
It almost makes me want to overclock a little bit more with 36 degrees leeway to TJMax of the cores; but I will refrain from doing so since I've had my fill of stress testing and tweaking.
Now all that's left is to see how it stands up to Starcraft II or Crysis or something...
19 August 2010
15 August 2010
System build 2010 continued (part 4)
Alternate title: F**kin' voltages, how do they work?
Alas, I appear to misplaced my trust in "easy overclocking" tools as a neophyte at the whole overclocking business. I was getting some outrageously bad temperatures in various heat and stability related benchmarks like Prime95 and the Intel Burn Test- I was worried that the application of thermal compound on the heat sink had been misapplied or something like that, when in fact the solution was much much simpler than I thought.
The [Auto] setting on my motherboard likes to send voltages into the stratosphere for even the mildest of overclocks- this may be "safe" inasmuch as it would prevent instability from too low voltage, but the power draw and temperatures created by this are nearly catastrophic for anything less than an awesome water cooling setup.
After tweaking the voltage setup I managed to push temperatures at load down to very comfortable levels, not budging past 70°C even when Prime95 and Intel burn testing. The chip I have is perfectly happy running 3.33GHz at minimum voltages, so not only is the CPU now faster than the 3.2GHz, it draws much less power and generates far less heat. 3.33GHz may pale in comparison to what some people have pushed their i7s to, but I was never going for a huge OC. Reasonably fast, quiet, and cool- I'm sold.
My DDR3 memory is also overclocked- like a madman, I'm running it at an earth shattering 4Mhz faster than stock!! (My BCLK and DRAM frequency math came out almost exactly to 1600MHz, but didn't quite hit the mark- I figured 1604 is close enough, and the RAM isn't complaining at such a low, low number over stock values.)
The Radeon HD 5850 was easily overclocked to 765MHz GPU, 1120MHz Memory. Alas, though, when using ATI overdrive to reach these numbers, you lose a good bit of the stepping ability that knocks down the clock speeds at idle. This actually raised idle temps from about 41°C to 52°C, because instead of running at 157/300, I could only run at 500/1120 idle. Big difference, so I think I'll refrain from turning it on unless I'm going to be gaming- recovering and implementing the OC settings is as simple as hitting a check box in the ATI Catalyst menu.
So far everything seems very stable and issue-free, so when the 200mm case fan arrives in the mail I'll throw it in, check the temps, and tweak the speed to keep the noise increase relatively minimal, and then I'll be ready to roll!
UPDATE:
The 200mm case fan has been delayed- it appears as though I will have to wait a few more days before it actually arrives.
Out of curiosity, though, I set up a comparably sized house fan on a stand, pointing at approximately the same area of the case that the 200mm will mount. At full tilt, the fan drastically pulled temperatures down anywhere from 5°C to 9°C, though the delta at idle was less pronounced. The GPU absolutely loved the fan setup, dropping temps down in the mid 30's at idle! Of course, this is not a particularly scientific test, since the little house fan moves a claimed 1400 CFM compared to the specified 166 CFM of the case fan. It's also much louder, too.
Alas, I appear to misplaced my trust in "easy overclocking" tools as a neophyte at the whole overclocking business. I was getting some outrageously bad temperatures in various heat and stability related benchmarks like Prime95 and the Intel Burn Test- I was worried that the application of thermal compound on the heat sink had been misapplied or something like that, when in fact the solution was much much simpler than I thought.
The [Auto] setting on my motherboard likes to send voltages into the stratosphere for even the mildest of overclocks- this may be "safe" inasmuch as it would prevent instability from too low voltage, but the power draw and temperatures created by this are nearly catastrophic for anything less than an awesome water cooling setup.
After tweaking the voltage setup I managed to push temperatures at load down to very comfortable levels, not budging past 70°C even when Prime95 and Intel burn testing. The chip I have is perfectly happy running 3.33GHz at minimum voltages, so not only is the CPU now faster than the 3.2GHz, it draws much less power and generates far less heat. 3.33GHz may pale in comparison to what some people have pushed their i7s to, but I was never going for a huge OC. Reasonably fast, quiet, and cool- I'm sold.
My DDR3 memory is also overclocked- like a madman, I'm running it at an earth shattering 4Mhz faster than stock!! (My BCLK and DRAM frequency math came out almost exactly to 1600MHz, but didn't quite hit the mark- I figured 1604 is close enough, and the RAM isn't complaining at such a low, low number over stock values.)
The Radeon HD 5850 was easily overclocked to 765MHz GPU, 1120MHz Memory. Alas, though, when using ATI overdrive to reach these numbers, you lose a good bit of the stepping ability that knocks down the clock speeds at idle. This actually raised idle temps from about 41°C to 52°C, because instead of running at 157/300, I could only run at 500/1120 idle. Big difference, so I think I'll refrain from turning it on unless I'm going to be gaming- recovering and implementing the OC settings is as simple as hitting a check box in the ATI Catalyst menu.
So far everything seems very stable and issue-free, so when the 200mm case fan arrives in the mail I'll throw it in, check the temps, and tweak the speed to keep the noise increase relatively minimal, and then I'll be ready to roll!
UPDATE:
The 200mm case fan has been delayed- it appears as though I will have to wait a few more days before it actually arrives.
Out of curiosity, though, I set up a comparably sized house fan on a stand, pointing at approximately the same area of the case that the 200mm will mount. At full tilt, the fan drastically pulled temperatures down anywhere from 5°C to 9°C, though the delta at idle was less pronounced. The GPU absolutely loved the fan setup, dropping temps down in the mid 30's at idle! Of course, this is not a particularly scientific test, since the little house fan moves a claimed 1400 CFM compared to the specified 166 CFM of the case fan. It's also much louder, too.
10 August 2010
System build 2010 continued (Part 3.5)
I'm actually posting this from my new PC. Got the registry fixed up, got my antivirus and firewall software installed, and installed Mozilla. Looks like everything is moving along just fine. I'm going to run a benchmark soon (PCMark and 3DMark Vantage) to get a baseline for the computer and also see if I might have configured anything wrong that isn't immediately apparent.
At idle everything is looking pretty cool, GPU is at 42°C and the CPU cores are in the range of 37° to 40°... it's also far quieter than the PC it is going to replace, despite being a very open case. The case itself, though, feels a lot hotter than the internal components actually are, probably because all of the heat is escaping. I'm confident that with the added case fan (which I still need to order) it'll be able to assist dispersing that warm air and push temps even lower.
UPDATE:
Base benchmark results are in. Be aware that these tests are with the one-use only trial edition of the benchmarking software so I have no way to give it another go, get an average of multiple scores, tweak the options, or get anything more specific than just my "total score." You'd think Futuremark wants to sell you their programs or something... haha. (I also think the trial versions give lower average scores, but that's neither here nor there)
PCMark Vantage Results:
Score: 11431
Max CPU Temp: 59°C
Max GPU Temp: 60°C
3DMark Vantage Results:
Score: 13439
Max CPU Temp: 66°C
Max GPU Temp: 70°C
I'm sure the 3DMark could have been better, as the first run was interrupted, and the second one gave me noticeably lower numbers on the CPU tests. As a baseline with literally NO overclocking whatsoever, though, it isn't too bad.
UPDATE 2:
I've got my rig overclocked to match an i7 965- A processor that weighs in at about $1,000- and it appears to be stable so far. I've got the RAM overclocked (but not overvolted) as well to about 1600MHz, which is what the RAM is actually rated for but was not clocked to take advantage of with the i7 processor stock. Things are a bit more spicy in the temperature area on the CPU, which is now at around 45° to 47°C at idle. I'm going to give it a quick burn test to see if it is truly stable, and then move on to the GPU which has just a tad extra that can be squeezed out of it without risking much. (735MHz to 765MHz, as the model I bought comes with the same cooling system as the model with the higher overclocking.)
UPDATE 3:
After getting some unacceptable temperatures from Intel Burn test, it looks like I'm going to have to tweak these settings a little bit more. Voltage from "auto" overclock is far too high, creating a massive heat issue. I'm on manual now, determining voltages and multipliers and clock speeds by just keying them in as opposed to selecting pre-configured profiles.
At idle everything is looking pretty cool, GPU is at 42°C and the CPU cores are in the range of 37° to 40°... it's also far quieter than the PC it is going to replace, despite being a very open case. The case itself, though, feels a lot hotter than the internal components actually are, probably because all of the heat is escaping. I'm confident that with the added case fan (which I still need to order) it'll be able to assist dispersing that warm air and push temps even lower.
UPDATE:
Base benchmark results are in. Be aware that these tests are with the one-use only trial edition of the benchmarking software so I have no way to give it another go, get an average of multiple scores, tweak the options, or get anything more specific than just my "total score." You'd think Futuremark wants to sell you their programs or something... haha. (I also think the trial versions give lower average scores, but that's neither here nor there)
PCMark Vantage Results:
Score: 11431
Max CPU Temp: 59°C
Max GPU Temp: 60°C
3DMark Vantage Results:
Score: 13439
Max CPU Temp: 66°C
Max GPU Temp: 70°C
I'm sure the 3DMark could have been better, as the first run was interrupted, and the second one gave me noticeably lower numbers on the CPU tests. As a baseline with literally NO overclocking whatsoever, though, it isn't too bad.
UPDATE 2:
I've got my rig overclocked to match an i7 965- A processor that weighs in at about $1,000- and it appears to be stable so far. I've got the RAM overclocked (but not overvolted) as well to about 1600MHz, which is what the RAM is actually rated for but was not clocked to take advantage of with the i7 processor stock. Things are a bit more spicy in the temperature area on the CPU, which is now at around 45° to 47°C at idle. I'm going to give it a quick burn test to see if it is truly stable, and then move on to the GPU which has just a tad extra that can be squeezed out of it without risking much. (735MHz to 765MHz, as the model I bought comes with the same cooling system as the model with the higher overclocking.)
UPDATE 3:
After getting some unacceptable temperatures from Intel Burn test, it looks like I'm going to have to tweak these settings a little bit more. Voltage from "auto" overclock is far too high, creating a massive heat issue. I'm on manual now, determining voltages and multipliers and clock speeds by just keying them in as opposed to selecting pre-configured profiles.
09 August 2010
System build 2010 continued (Part 3)
It lives! I ended up doing a minimal amount of wire clipping and just relied on looping the cables around in the case behind the motherboard and zip tying them down. Everything looks relatively under control:
I'm sure I could have sleeved all these cables and made them look all fancy and whatnot, but it's fine the way it is- cables are at least out of the way of everything.
After booting without incident, I checked and made sure that all of my components were working properly, which they were. The fans are a bit noisier than I would have originally hoped because the case is essentially completely open on one side with a mesh grille, however the saving grace is that they are a much, much mellower tone. I think I'll still get the 200mm external case fan though, as the case's fan controller is really great at keeping the case fans from getting annoying.
Then came the configuration! BIOS is something I have relatively limited experience with, so I left that be for the time being, at stock clock speeds and auto voltage until I can get a better feel for the system. I got a few things wrong, though, which led to some minor headaches.
1st- I forgot to select ACHI for my hard drives, instead leaving them in default IDE mode. This made my SSD run at a much slower speed than it should have, and required a fresh install of my OS to fix! It looks like I may be doing a third re-install to fix some other configuration mistakes that might have cocked up the registry, so I suppose it isn't that large of a whiff in the long run. The SSD eats Windows installations handily, anyways.
2nd- As I was running my computer, I noticed it was really getting far hotter than it should have been. The CPU was running at about 45-47 degrees Celsius, which is not horrible but higher than I would have expected. The PSU also was dishing out pretty serious amounts of heat, as well. The culprit? I had forgotten to enable the Intel CPU stepping! Essentially, the CPU was running at full tilt and sucking its maximum wattage of 140W or so, to keep the CPU running at the advertised 2.8GHz at all times. BIOS time! I made sure to enable the setting, and on the next boot suddenly everything was cooler by at least 5 degrees, and it wasn't getting so hot anymore. Now the CPU was chugging along drawing about 40W at idle (dipping as low as 28W), with essentially no degradation in performance that I could notice.
Once I installed the Sapphire drivers the Radeon 5850 came to life as well, although some of the software settings had to be tweaked for max performance. The "overclockers" panel is a neat feature that I will probably end up dabbling a bit in. Like the reviews said, it really does do very well at idle, and while running the windows desktop it ramps the core speed down to a very low setting and is almost silent. Humorously, I tried sliding the fan's duty cycle parameter up to 100% just to see what max load sounds like and WOW. It is EXTREMELY loud, but the cooling is seriously good. Stepping that fan up just briefly dropped the GPU temps very low, very fast.
Anyways, there is still a bunch of tweaking to do before it is ready to roll, but so far the Windows experience score is pretty respectable for my budget:
(yes, I'm aware of how shitty and arbitrary of a benchmark this is, I'll have to run some more robust benchmarking tools once I'm finished.)
I'm sure I could have sleeved all these cables and made them look all fancy and whatnot, but it's fine the way it is- cables are at least out of the way of everything.After booting without incident, I checked and made sure that all of my components were working properly, which they were. The fans are a bit noisier than I would have originally hoped because the case is essentially completely open on one side with a mesh grille, however the saving grace is that they are a much, much mellower tone. I think I'll still get the 200mm external case fan though, as the case's fan controller is really great at keeping the case fans from getting annoying.
Then came the configuration! BIOS is something I have relatively limited experience with, so I left that be for the time being, at stock clock speeds and auto voltage until I can get a better feel for the system. I got a few things wrong, though, which led to some minor headaches.
1st- I forgot to select ACHI for my hard drives, instead leaving them in default IDE mode. This made my SSD run at a much slower speed than it should have, and required a fresh install of my OS to fix! It looks like I may be doing a third re-install to fix some other configuration mistakes that might have cocked up the registry, so I suppose it isn't that large of a whiff in the long run. The SSD eats Windows installations handily, anyways.2nd- As I was running my computer, I noticed it was really getting far hotter than it should have been. The CPU was running at about 45-47 degrees Celsius, which is not horrible but higher than I would have expected. The PSU also was dishing out pretty serious amounts of heat, as well. The culprit? I had forgotten to enable the Intel CPU stepping! Essentially, the CPU was running at full tilt and sucking its maximum wattage of 140W or so, to keep the CPU running at the advertised 2.8GHz at all times. BIOS time! I made sure to enable the setting, and on the next boot suddenly everything was cooler by at least 5 degrees, and it wasn't getting so hot anymore. Now the CPU was chugging along drawing about 40W at idle (dipping as low as 28W), with essentially no degradation in performance that I could notice.
Once I installed the Sapphire drivers the Radeon 5850 came to life as well, although some of the software settings had to be tweaked for max performance. The "overclockers" panel is a neat feature that I will probably end up dabbling a bit in. Like the reviews said, it really does do very well at idle, and while running the windows desktop it ramps the core speed down to a very low setting and is almost silent. Humorously, I tried sliding the fan's duty cycle parameter up to 100% just to see what max load sounds like and WOW. It is EXTREMELY loud, but the cooling is seriously good. Stepping that fan up just briefly dropped the GPU temps very low, very fast.
Anyways, there is still a bunch of tweaking to do before it is ready to roll, but so far the Windows experience score is pretty respectable for my budget:
(yes, I'm aware of how shitty and arbitrary of a benchmark this is, I'll have to run some more robust benchmarking tools once I'm finished.)
08 August 2010
System build 2010 continued (Part 2)
Well, I plunked down the cash at Newegg and got the rest of my parts, but I'm still far from finished. It looks like I may be able to attempt booting up my system tomorrow, though.
The rest of the system:
RAM: 6 GB (3x2GB) of Crucial Ballistix 1600MHz DDR3 RAM ($40 cheaper than usual because I omitted the fancy blinking LED's and got the "OEM" version)
Video Card: Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 5850
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-C12P SE14 (due to size constraints of the case)
SSD: Corsair FORCE series 60GB
HDD: Western Digital 750GB Black
My progress from Friday, showing the beginnings of the rats nest:
Wrangling the wires is an absolute pain- it is without a doubt the most frustrating thing about building this system. Since I'm working with such a small case, every last bit of extra cabling is putting me in between a rock and a hard place, as well as every little cable that just barely does not make it. I'm prioritizing and switching things around, I've omitted some of the fancy light and fan controls that the case comes with because of cable concerns, and it's slowly but surely coming under control. The thick 24-pin power supply cable vexed me the most, although just moments ago I had a breakthrough by pulling the video card back out and re-routing the cable in front of the lower hard drive rack you see in the case, up around the front fan, and finally to the motherboard socket. Some of the SATA power connectors I've actually trimmed, and it looks like I may end up doing some more cable splicing to bring things under control as I still need to add the two power cables to the video card which are (as expected) way too long. Thankfully, now that the thick power supply cable is under control, there is a space in the case behind the motherboard to tuck a moderate amount of cabling. It just struck me that rather than splicing, it may make sense to just loop all the extra cable around in the back of the case there and secure it in place with zip ties, rather than doing any splicing. Who knows- this is an evolving project.
More as this story develops.
The rest of the system:
RAM: 6 GB (3x2GB) of Crucial Ballistix 1600MHz DDR3 RAM ($40 cheaper than usual because I omitted the fancy blinking LED's and got the "OEM" version)
Video Card: Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 5850
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-C12P SE14 (due to size constraints of the case)
SSD: Corsair FORCE series 60GB
HDD: Western Digital 750GB Black
My progress from Friday, showing the beginnings of the rats nest:
Wrangling the wires is an absolute pain- it is without a doubt the most frustrating thing about building this system. Since I'm working with such a small case, every last bit of extra cabling is putting me in between a rock and a hard place, as well as every little cable that just barely does not make it. I'm prioritizing and switching things around, I've omitted some of the fancy light and fan controls that the case comes with because of cable concerns, and it's slowly but surely coming under control. The thick 24-pin power supply cable vexed me the most, although just moments ago I had a breakthrough by pulling the video card back out and re-routing the cable in front of the lower hard drive rack you see in the case, up around the front fan, and finally to the motherboard socket. Some of the SATA power connectors I've actually trimmed, and it looks like I may end up doing some more cable splicing to bring things under control as I still need to add the two power cables to the video card which are (as expected) way too long. Thankfully, now that the thick power supply cable is under control, there is a space in the case behind the motherboard to tuck a moderate amount of cabling. It just struck me that rather than splicing, it may make sense to just loop all the extra cable around in the back of the case there and secure it in place with zip ties, rather than doing any splicing. Who knows- this is an evolving project.
More as this story develops.
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