Hardware pr0n...w00t!

[clocker]

Welcome to my world.
Bloody f00kin' blizzard hit Denver yesterday.
One of those spring storms that we seem to get every few years.
Nice, heavy wet snow.

The building that houses my shop was built in 1906 and is in less than tip-top condition.
A snowfall like this could easily collapse the structure, so I struggled down there yesterday and spent the better part of the day shoveling the damn roof.
By the time I finished, I had to start all over...the snow was coming down relentlessly.
I hope it survived the night.

This pic is from my front door at home.
The couryard is a natural snow trap and the drifts are almost chin high.
I'm just gonna let the crap melt...I've done my fair share of shoveling, and this will all be gone by Wednesday anyway.
Denver's high altitude means lots of UV radiation and that, coupled with the dry climate, will evaporate this nightmare away.

That's my theory anyway, and I'm stickin to it.

What does this have to do with Sprocket?
Well, yesterday was supposed to be my day off.
I had big plans, but they fell by the wayside unfortunately.

I managed to reinstall 32-bit XP, but haven't had the chance to do much else.
I finally discovered the secret entrance into the Advanced Settings in BIOS- what a stupid crock that is. Why the hocus-pocus to access basic RAM settings, etc.?
Ooooh, I feel so special cause I can ctrl+F1 and enter the secret overclocker's world....bollocks.

Anyway, things should be looking up soon.
I did run Aquamark 03 and scored just under 60K.
3D Mark 05 was 4926.
The card is running bone stock timing-wise, so I assume there is room for improvement with different drivers and maybe a wee OC.

I am amazed by the temps that both Gigabyte EZTune and Speedfan are reporting.
Running Prime95 I am maxxing out at 33C which seems absurdly low.
I don't see how my CPU could possibly be cooler than my HDDs (they are at 34C right now), but there you have it.
It's concievable that a BIOS flash might correct this (if in fact the temps are wrong) and I keep reading about Beta BIOS's all the way up to F10 (I'm running the latest BIOS from Gigabyte...F2, I believe), but I can't seem to find them anywhere.
Anyway, if the temps are even close to correct ( and I'm really hoping they are...) that would make a passively cooled H2O setup like the Reserator or the Innovatec a very doable project.

So here is what she looks like right now...

Even with a half-assed wiring job Sprocket still looks almost empty...not having any IDE or floppy cables really makes things easy.
Obviously, I have plenty of room should I decide to install an internal waterloop...an attractive idea just for the simplicity, but we'll see how it goes.

That's all for now, more to come as I find the time and energy.....

[GepperRankins]

maybe its the weather, mine seems to fluctuate about 10C between cold and warm days.

i wonder if humidity can play a part in heat dissipation too

[Virtualbody1234]

Wow! That's quite the snow dump. All the snow has melted here. I know what you mean about your "fair share of shoveling". I too did my share this winter.
---

There you go, clocker. Now you see what I mean about the 90nm being very cool running. Those temps look about right to me (with that cooler).

I setup another 90nm machine this weekend (with a friend). The quiet&cool, that controls the CPU fan speed, actually stops the fan when below 34°C on his board. It is quite the strange feeling when you see the fan stopped. We turned off the power, as a reaction, the first time we heard the silence of no fan.

[clocker]

There you go, clocker. Now you see what I mean about the 90nm being very cool running. Those temps look about right to me (with that cooler).

I setup another 90nm machine this weekend (with a friend). The quiet&cool, that controls the CPU fan speed, actually stops the fan when below 34°C on his board. It is quite the strange feeling when you see the fan stopped. We turned off the power, as a reaction, the first time we heard the silence of no fan.

Yup, that C&Q is very weird.
We actually thought the HS fan was dead on our first build, but were pleased to see that it worked fine plugged into a different header.
Then I broke down and read the manual ( a first!) and saw what was going on.
I have disabled that feature and run my fan from a Sunbeam rheobus.
The idea of the HS not running at all was just too strange.
It helps that this AC fan is extremely quiet even at full blast.

Right this minute my room ambient is 21C and the CPU temp is reported to be 23C ( minimal CPU usage).
The case is all buttoned up.
This seems too good to be true, but I'm not complaining.

My vid card is running at 56C...gotta work on that, I think....

[lynx]

Yes, that C&Q is impressive, except when you are running at full load all the time.

If I turn the "Folding" service off, my CPU temp drops by about 10C within 20 seconds, then by another 4C over the next few minutes (with reduced fan speed). But when I turn the service back on the temp goes back up about 12C within seconds.

[Duffman]

SS-no? Its almost 70 here!

[clocker]

Well, well, well.
Slow but sure does win the race sometimes.
I am beginning to get a grip on the BIOS setup for this beast.
Bumbling around (albeit in a fairly organized manner...) has lead me to discover several settings that will cause Sprocket NOT to boot and some that make her better.

A bit (well, a lot, actually) of tweaking RAM settings has gotten me here...





Much better.
Although I knew the RAM was not right (Everest was calling it "PC1600"), Lynx showed me what I should be able to achieve. Thanks for the bump, buddy.

I wonder if the nForce4 boards respond to the loose tRAS(?) setting (typically in the range of 10) that the 3's and 2's liked?
So, far, my RAM timings have been set to auto ( and, to their credit, the Patriot sticks are running just as advertised- 2,3,2,5), but I suspect that some further gains are hidden in that thicket of jargonese.
I'm willing to spend a bit of time finding out, but sheesh!, how much better do I need?

Next is the CPU speed.
Time to see what sort of (easy) overclock is available.

[lynx]

I knew your 3500 and 2-3-2-5 memory should easily outperform my 3000/3-3-3-8 setup, it's about time you got your finger out.

[clocker]

Right.
Finger removed.
New finger smudges all over the BIOS.
Not a lot of progress.

Stock settings on this chip are 11x200 (2.2GHz).
Anything over 11x210 and she won't boot.
Even combos using a lower multiplier (like 10x230) are a no-go.
I have toyed (briefly) with the HT setting, but lowering from 5 to 4 and even 3 doesn't seem to help.
I upped the RAM voltage by .1v and relaxed the timings (tried Lynx's 3,3,3,8) to no avail.
I need to find a better tutorial about this...actually, a "Dummy's Guide" would be ideal.
Oh well.
This was more of an intellectual exercise than a necessity anyway.

At 2.3 GHz I am Prime stable (at least for the six hours I ran overnight) and the system feels fluid and fast.

About the cooling....
The 939 socket is solid (unlike the socketA which had the open center) so there is no place for the dreaded "thermistor" temp sensor.
I am assuming then that the temps are being derived from some sort of on-die diode.
In the past this was the preferred sensor, but my temps are ridiculously low and I just cannot believe them.
The high temp in my log from last night was 28C...this is with the sidepanels in place and a room ambient of 20C.

I'd like to think that this is all due to my cooling expertise and cleverness, but even my ego baulks at the results.
At any rate, even adding in a correction factor of 20% means that I'm running cooler than ever before, so now I can concentrate on the video card and HDDs.
My 6800 runs at a pretty constant 53C...this seems high to me, but I have no prior experience with a card like this so I don't know.
My hard drives are averaging in the mid-thirties...I'm rethinking my mounting approach.
Apparently the drives are designed to dissipate heat through the sides of the casting ( this being the only real path for heat to travel when mounted in the standard fashion) and my suspension system, while effective for noise isolation, eliminates the heat path.
Not sure how to combine the two requirements as yet.

Silence, as opposed to max cooling, has become my new quest and thus watercooling is back on the table.
I'd like to use these components...



All three would be set with 3/8" fittings.

Notice that there is no radiator listed...that's cause I'm torn about what direction to take.
Obviously, an internal rad would be the simplest solution ( and I have lots of room to mount one), but that would entail fans to cool it.
I have a forum buddy from Finland who has done extensive work with the Zalman Reserator and his progress intrigues me no end.
His current setup uses the Reserator* without the internal pump...essentially just a big, passive reservoir and an internal system comparable to the one I've shown.
The Reserator has been enclosed in a Plexi tube with a 120mm fan on the top, so it's basically a chimney drawing air from the base up over the fins and then out the top.
A one fan system that performs very well.
The downside to this goodness is the external reservoir...moving the PC would be quite an effort.
Oh, decisions, decisions.`

* We are both fatally attracted to this monster...

It has no internal pump so it's just a passive radiator, but reputed to be much more effective than the Zalman design.
I'm hoping he'll take the plunge ( it's very expensive!) and let me know how it compares.

[clocker]

@ Lynx (or anyone else with an nForce4 board...)
Help!
I can easily run 11x210 ( actually I'm currently at 11x 212), but no combination of settings gets me any higher.
So many folks talk of hitting the wall at 240FSB (10x240 seems to be a common setup), but I can't seem to struggle past 212FSB no matter what.

Any ideas would be appreciated.