tweaking ups and downs, with a really high "up"

[Beomagi]

Anyone else here find it fun to tweak hardware to the max? Flashing cards, opening pipes, overclocking till it hurts? enduring headaches and debugging then BOOM! it works?

Recently started heavy overclocking on my cpu. Now, my board is crap - 2 phase voltage regulation for the cpu - compare to 3 phase on most low end enthusiast boards, 4 for boards starting to get serious, up to 12 on the gigabyte dq6. What does that do? help maintain voltage levels when load kicks in.

So my vcore while set at 1.5375, thanks to intel's makeup suffers a standard vdroop to 1.5 - on load however, it falls to as low as 1.44V - so load at high speeds hurts!

Going water was easier than I thought. ps - If you're ever going water, dont buy a cheap kit. Quality of asetek, swiftec and dangerdens are truly worth it. not only do thay surpass the highest end air sinks, but they can do so quietly, and usually are upgraded with brackets for newer sockets.

Came accross a couple posts on strap latency and fsb holes - instability between certain ranges in board's fsb. i.e. just when you think your board is unstable at 266Mhz, it may be more stable at 290 - weird...
so i decide to try a few other settings on my board.

last foray yielded this

reliably posts and get to the "your windows crashed, how'd ya wanna boot" screen. then it craps out telling my system folder is corrupt.

Unfortunately I was trying out the asus pci/pci-e locks, and OMG are they buggy! pci-e lock appears completely broken. Once set, any fsb change locks up the pc.


So many possible failure points now to test - maybe pci bus desync making it look like the bios is corrupt. may be videocard sucking power draw (never saw the graphical screen, that's exactly where it fails), May be the MCH overheating at that point, or suffering another vdroop.

So gotta get a pci-e drive, and try installing windows on it, or just try again tonight without the pci-lock.

I know some consider this a headache, but geez, to me, this is a blast!

[Crixx_Creww]

umm
you really got yur pd to 5ghz on water??

[Beomagi]

yes, just craps on the starting windows graphic.

[W1nTry]

GG... well soon to be added:
"The Beo review on GATT:
Want to turn your system components to ashes?
Wanna put up SuperPi scores that are so hot Alisha Cutburt hides in shame?
Wanna boil an egg, heat your house AND provide central heating using only your CPU?
Then look no further, Beo has it all to make your system wish it was frozen fossil found at the bottom of the marianas trench during the last ice age..."

What about the Nautilus water cooling system from Corsair, i've heard great things about that setup.

[Spazosaurus]

Whats your best stable config Beo? Damn gotta get me some new hardware so i can have some fun too. I smell Conroe on nf590

[Beomagi]

I think a 3.0GHz 6300/6600 would give my cpu some real licks though - pi especially.

Nautilus does look good - hoses arn't skimpy at all, unlike thermaltake. The external nature of it helps a LOT - water kits placed internally naturally have a higher base water level, and the hoses on corsair are 3/8 instead of thermaltake's usual 1/4 inch.

When I was looking at reservoirs, I came accross some decent reviews of the TT aquabay reservoir - they claim it has fittings for 1/4 and 3/8 inches, but it's just an adapter they use to make it from 1/4 to 3.8 inches (i.e. massive constriction) and the i.d. of the barbs on the res is 1/8 inch - the bay is near useless! Comparing it to TT's because tt's bigwater is close enough in price.

The LGA retention on the corsair looks flakey. No screws, it's plastic snapping pushpins.


according to this review, the tuniq tower air cooler, surpasses this setup.


In comparison to my own cooling - and my reservoir is in my case - My cpu temps dont get past 60C. Their cpu was clocked lower, and throttled.

They list an advantage is using other waterblocks for other parts of the system, but i dont think that's wise. Every component adds a back pressure. If that pump can't take more pressure, then the flow rate would plummet.

I'd stick with a tuniq tower over the corsair.

As far as blocks go, there's 3 kinds, some people lump the first 2.
1. simple channels - low back pressure, high performance with weak pumps - i.e. optimising on noise. (e.g. maze 4 dangerden)
2. pins - adds turbulence to water, increse in pressure means more powerful pump needed. (gigabyte 3d,
3. jet impigement - water sprays through hitting a rough surface. Need a REALLY powerful pump, but benefit is great.

[Beomagi]

So far max stable was 4.51, though I'm still tweaking.  If my board had an fsb hole, i may be up at a higher speed.

So far the 590 fsb info is grim for now.

We’ve also been hearing reports about the upcoming nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition chipset for Core 2 processors. This chipset is based on the now aging NVIDIA C19 chipset which some Taiwan motherboard manufactures are not impressed with. In fact, NVIDIA recently issued an announcement to motherboard companies saying that the C19 chipset will be phased out very soon and replaced by the newer and more refined C55 chipset in October. The C19 chipset maxes out at around 350MHz FSB which is one of the main reasons the Taiwanese folk were not impressed with the chipset, especially the companies interested in producing highly overclockable boards – and that’s most companies these days. With Intel’s P965 chipset, while not as fast as 975X, we’ve seen reports of the FSB hitting the 500MHz FSB mark. There are no official testing numbers on C55 FSB overclocking but being a refined chipset using newer technology, it is expected to beat the older C19 easily.

3 boards known to do over 500 - the asus p5w, the gigabyte dq6, and biostar tforce (yeah i know - that last one was a real surprise, but first time i saw it, it was handling a massive 530MHz base clock 2120fsb after quad pump)

[Crixx_Creww]

wow and omg@ biostar with 530 fsb!

iam still in forking awe that yu got that pd to 5 on water

good job once again!
would you dabble in phase cooling over water?

[Beomagi]

that gets picky...

need a license to handle refridgerant - home made phase change is an ac compressor, where the restriction ends before the cooling plate - so the cooling spot is right on the cpu. I know someone who got some ac's his relative tossed, and  out of 3, 2 had working compressors, so he can make a dual cascade system, if he knows a welder, for real cheap.

Difference between heat and temperature. Water's base line, is room temp of air passing the radiator. Phase's is the temp of the expanded refridgerant. BUT with enough load - and you can see it easier with peltier since those are usually underpowered - the temps CAN be worse on the phase. The change in temp requires more energy with water than phase. For that reason, i'd prolly never go phase. I dont want to make a phase that's weak, and certainly wont spend money on a $900 vapochill. If the compressor is weak, then for low power cpus, you'd see it doing well. But for high power cpu's temps can skyrocket. Plus, I think it may be noisy.

I MAY try peltiers. 437W peltier using 2 thermal take psu power supplys for 500W @ 12 v, though there's a general rule with pelts and I got out when aths and p4's wattage was breaking 100 - you NEED a peltier at about double the wattage of the cpu, and the heat remover - usually water - NEEDS to handle the sum of that heat. Even with double, most pelt/water block based systems usually end up only a couple degrees cooler. When overclocking, the plain water would have worked better in this case, because, the increase in power form the cpu wont be handled by the TEC. A 437 watt pelt has room though.

With either pelts or phase, it gets messy cause you need to coat the socket and area around the socket in dielectric grease or silicon to prevent damage to condensation.

What I AM thinking if, is using a water chiller, but I'm looking at modifying a large case to fit the other water system in, along with chiller. You can get subzero with some additives, and it's just an extension to any water cooler.

[Crixx_Creww]

ic

i think yur analysis on phase is a bit flawed but i wont get into it until iam at home and have enuf bw to back up my claims with research.

Any experience or thoughts on liquid metal cooling?

[Beomagi]

You mean the gallium compound saphirre was suppossed to use? No idea - never seen it in practical use. only liquid metal cooling I'd try at this point is liquid metal thermal paste.

dont get me wrong, for a 24/7 setup, phase is king, but it needs to be powerful enough with really high power cpus. I don't think an unmodded vapochill would be worth it's $900 pricetag at that point (and even then, I wince at the price)

[Beomagi]

update - flashed my x1900xt to x1900xtx. Gpu bios update set core at 675, and memory to 801 (1602MHz) which is higher than I've ever gotten using the older bios (sig gonna have to change!) - perhaps this is pushing higher voltage? forums at xtremesystems had some rumors of ati trying to limit oc's on xt cards.
took the core to 690MHz stable running RTHDRIBL in the background.
Want to break 700 on the core, and hoping to hit 850 (1700MHz) memory. with the higher core, may give hell to the new 1950 - *fingers crossed*

Took a few pics using my phone (gave camera to my sis) but they're not bad. would upload later. Took the sink off the x1900xt and wiped the crappy gunk off. Applied some zalman stg01 (my preference over as). temps are a little cooler. I tried adding my zalman 9500 - yes that's right, it's noting a spring loaded bracket cant be adapted to do! but the damn thing is too wide and hits the pci slots when inserting the gpu. (yes that's right, I wanted to use the cpu cooler on the gpu...)

[Crixx_Creww]

very interesting read beo.. but the most interesting thing you mentioned there was the existence of a sister.
Hmm could you please enlighten us on that aspect of umm stuff.

[Beomagi]

The answer is no

[TrinireturnofGamez]

 Prowl got the E6300 to 3ghz unstable with his Arctic cooler heatsink .

[Prowl]

3.1 unstable, 2.9 stable but while the cpu temps were ok with the cooler the northbridge started sizzle, trini's case cooling is poor. I'll do a 2.8 super pi later to show you guys I can put it in my case to keep it cool for that but I rather not dare do too much at much faster since our temps are 30-32c here which means high 50's under load temps for the cpu and a very hot north bridge. Those guys abroad running 3.3-3.3 with their e6300's are running with 20-25c ambient temps, lower the ambient the higher you can run it unless you got water.

[Beomagi]

pretty sweet. Would easily outpace my chip
If intel is going to stick to 775 for a while, then going water wont be a bad idea - you'd be able to reuse the system for the upgrade.

What mobo are you using? The p5womigodwow board?

[TriniXaeno]

rofl @ p5wowomigod board.

more lol @ w1ntry's comments on Beo providing heating for his home with his zealous overclocking

I'm impressed

Long since given up on overclocking myself but it is great to see so much passion for the technology still around.

Prowl, warranty void on that fan now eh....lol (you overclocking bastard!)

Oh and Yoda tells me that your video card arrived at HQ.

[Crixx_Creww]

what video card?

yoda tell me some smurf went an smurf dat card... presha boy prowl... >.> <.< 

[TriniXaeno]

rofl

you go ahead and make joke with the man card.

hell hath no fury like a technician without his graphics accelerator.