ugh man i just did that pi test for shits and giggles, i wasnt laughing by the end of it :( stopped at 1M, that was plenty of information.
Spoiler: Show6m:08s
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ugh man i just did that pi test for shits and giggles, i wasnt laughing by the end of it :( stopped at 1M, that was plenty of information.
Spoiler: Show6m:08s
Yes, I would.Quote:
Originally Posted by ready1
After my new mobo arrives (DFI LanParty Expert) I plan on modifying my Seasonic with modular cabling which should take care of the unsightly mess you've noted.
A small update...
This time round there have only been small changes (relatively speaking) but a major breakthrough.
As previously mentioned, one pair of Raptors was sold so I'm now down to three hard drives (oh! the shame!).
After rearranging the drives I tried moving my original Weapon heatercore to the front bays- it fit, but took up a lot of space and unnecessarily cramped the spacing of the drives, so I reverted back to floor placement.
My custom base and Torin blower were removed and the stock casefeet (little disks, essentially) were installed.
The 120x38mm San Ace fans used previously were replaced with a set of Silverstone 120x25mm fans (originally supplied with my TJ-06).
The new fans move about half the air with a proportional drop in noise.
All pretty standard mucking about, really.
The big change involved moving the video card to the second PCIe slot which completely unshrouds the northbridge chipset. In theory the second slot is now operating at half the bandwidth of the first slot (8x instead of 16x), but performance in 3DMark03 seems unaffected...I've only made a few quick passes, but the results seem consistent.
Here is a shot of the new arrangement...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/clocker/nb1.jpg
Note the booster fan over the northbridge area- I machined some extensions which screw into the mobo standoffs and hark! an 80mm fan (in this case a virtually silent Zalman low-profile unit) bolts right on.
I retained the Vantec Iceberg4 HSF on the chip itself although I now have room to mount a much taller sink should I choose. At some point I'm sure I will, but for now it's fine.
After running for a few hours and Priming (100% CPU usage) for nearly two hours here are the results...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...er/newlow1.jpg
The northbridge is 10C lower than before.
Now we're getting somewhere.
The truly observant will notice that the Raptors are not in a RAID array here.
I assure you they will be, but while in RAID I cannot access the SMART temp sensors and I wanted to verify the drives were running cool so I installed regularly this time so I could check. I cannot explain the difference in temps between the three drives, they should all be identical in theory, but the warmest (the Seagate 120GB) is only 26C so I'm not going to obsess over it.
Also of note (just to be fair) is the fact that I'm only running at 2.42GHz now.
That's because this speed (11x220) is as high as I can go without retweaking the RAM timings and I want to go back to stock easily for the reinstall of Windows into the RAID array ( I always install at stock speeds...not sure why, just seems prudent and I'm superstitious).
After she's RAIDed I'll repeat these tests at the more normal 2.6GHz but I fully expect the temp improvement to remain.
Completely OT...
I inadvertantly discovered that the beta Opera browser does not support horizontal scrolling with my tilt wheel mouse (MS Intellimouse), but the new Firefox beta does, so after a brief flirtation with Opera I'm back to the Fox.
Just thought I'd mention it...
wow real nice clocker. case is full, with everthing running and 99% of your computer under 100*F its very nice. btw are you running dual 6800's now?
No.
It's still a tossup whether I'll end up with twin 6800GT's or a single 7800GTX.
Next up is the migration to 2x1GB RAM.
I think not.Quote:
Originally Posted by ApacNTS
Quote:
Originally Posted by clocker
Nice result, clocker. :)
Thank you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virtualbody1234
This morning before I left for work I attempted to reinstall into the RAID array
(trying a stripe of 32 instead of 16 this time, just to see what happens).
T'was an unmitigated disaster.
Firstly, I have no floppy installed (and no easy provision for doing so) so I used a second PSU to power the FDD and cobbled in the drive cable.
So far, so good.
At the install reboot my Plextor drive would refuse to power up and I'd get the "Error loading operating system" message.
After repeating the process three times I finally patched the FDD into the system PSU and that problem went away.
No clue what was going on.
Then Windows was trying to assign the RAID array D: as the drive letter.
This was confusing as I had unplugged the Seagate storage drive for the install (Windows always wants to default C: to a single drive for some reason, so I disconnect for that reason).
After aborting the install and rechecking in BIOS I tried again.
Same result.
I finally realized that my camera's memory card reader was plugged in and Windows was giving it precedence over the RAID array in assigning drive letters. The memory card wasn't even inserted and MS still favored it over the HDDs.
How stupid is that?
I was finally successful, but what normally takes about 20 minutes ended up eating an hour and a half.
Sheesh.
Tonight I'll finish up my setup and should be able to start benching again.
I'm curious as to whether running RAID will raise the northbridge temps (I hope not, but you can never tell).
If all goes well, on Sunday I might experiment with different heatsinks on the northbridge (now that I've gained some working room) to see how low I can get it. I may even try to bodge on one of my waterblocks and add it to the loop if mounting looks easy enough.
As usual, I'll keep ya'll posted.
I thought that only happened if you used both slots. My understanding was that either slot on its own would operate at full speed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clocker
Does this mean you can install windows on your memory card? That raises some interesting possibilities.Quote:
I finally realized that my camera's memory card reader was plugged in and Windows was giving it precedence over the RAID array in assigning drive letters. The memory card wasn't even inserted and MS still favored it over the HDDs.
How stupid is that?
No.Quote:
Originally Posted by lynx
The primary slot runs at 16x and the secondary slot at 2x when in single card mode.
After rejumpering (in the case of the DFI there are jumpers, most everyone else uses a card that you flip) to enable SLI mode, both slots run at 8x (which is effectively 16x with two cards installed).
I think.
Just checked on Asus, their SLI boards can run either slot at 16x when only one card is installed.
I suspect DFI is the same, but will run the second slot at 2x if two cards are installed but not in SLI mode.
Wow. Now that's something to look into.Quote:
Originally Posted by lynx
Quote:
Originally Posted by lynx
I like Asus's setup better if you can get either slot to 16x but I'm pretty sure that the DFI won't.Quote:
Originally Posted by DFI Street Global Moderator
I can try rejumpering to see...maybe after I get home tonight.
Please let us know the update on this, I would move my vid card to the 2nd slot, because my northbridge is running way to hot and I have no way to cool it down at this point.Quote:
Originally Posted by clocker
What motherboard do you have?Quote:
Originally Posted by JunkBarMan
I can confirm that the DFI definitely does not support 16x on the second PCIe slot.
*aside...*
You all owe me cookies.
Rejumpering this board with the card and waterloop in place was a giant PITA. After all the hassle I could tell within the first scene that the framerate had dropped to practically nil- I couldn't stand to even finish the test, "Massive Overdraw" would have been painful to watch.
Then I had to rejumper to get back to normal.
Oatmeal chocolate chip, please.:pinch:
Running at 8x I can see no real drop in performance (or bench scores) which pretty much confirms that most new games aren't even close to saturating the PCIe bus.
If nothing else, this exercise in agony has firmed up my decision to go with a single 7800 over 6800's in SLI.
The card itself is obviously more expensive, but I'll save the cost of the second waterblock (still waiting on hard info regarding the Stasis Thermal blocks, but I expect a price @ $125-150 apiece) and the loop will remain simple.
Now I'm on a mission to discover where DFI has hidden the sensor which reports "motherboard" temps as it reads way higher than I'd like to see.
Besides, it's weird to see the CPU running 7-10C lower than the motherboard.
If it is anything like the Abit boards (and probably some others) it is probably measuring the temp of the PWM chip. These things are now typically running at or above the cpu temp when under load.
Your browser is set to reject 3rd party cookies, so I had it myself. :P
THAT WAS MY COOKIE!Quote:
Originally Posted by lynx
I have the Lanparty NF4 SLi-DR, and the northbridge is covered up by my 7800GTX(long card) and can get quite hot when under load. If I put it in the second slot should it recognise it right away then, or do I have to change the bios or jumpers?
*I don't mean to hijack this thread
You will have to rejumper the 6 blocks between the PCIe slots to "enable SLI".
This will enable the second slot ( which DFI cleverly labels "PCIe4") to run at 8x.
Insert card and you're done- no other special configuration.
Now you owe me a cookie.
Make sure that greedy bastard Lynx doesn't sweet talk you out of it.
A couple of years ago I saw a computer some bloke had cobbled together and put in a pizza carton. For an OS he used some stripped down linux distro on a flash card. As far as I could tell it worked well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virtualbody1234
Given the better capacity of those cards today, putting windows on one of them might be doable. Depends on how big a card you can get, and possibly on how much you can slim down XP, or whatever you want to use.
That Gigabyte ramdrive would prolly keep better in the long run, 'cos flash cards have a tendency of going bad on me.
Nice new sprocket, clocker.
[QUOTE=SnnY]Everyone was sure the iRam was going to be the bee's knees, too bad Gigabyte is only making two thousand of 'em.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virtualbody1234
Apparently there has been a major redesign and the next gen will be ported into SATA, have 8 (maybe more!) DIMM slots and be bay mounted.
Sounds sweet, but vaporware usually does.
More new waterparts on the way...a Swiftech MCP655 pump and a DD Maze 4 chipset block.
With the relocation of the vid card I've been dying to see what adding the NF4 chipset to the loop would do.
Should have the pump by Fri. and the block early next week.
Now I really do have to get busy on the new reservoir.
Clocker sorry if this is like a silly question but I was looking at Sprockets innards:naughty: and I've can't see any ribbon connecters in there,have you took em out for aesthetic value or am I missing something?
I believe he's gone the way, of sata, or hid them well, he's always doing that.
See the thick yellow wire to the left of the fan in the picture:Quote:
Originally Posted by gripper103.2
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/clocker/nb1.jpg
It's a SATA cable:
http://www.e-shop.gr/images/PER/PER.804327.jpg
Sprocket is all SATA, from the five HDDs to the Plextor DVD-RW.Quote:
Originally Posted by gripper103.2
I really dislike IDE cables...too bad I'm going to have to mount the floppy back in, it's too much trouble patching it in to load RAID drivers (and I'm reloading Windows about every three-five days now as I experiment with stripe sizes).
Judging from the horrendous cable-mess I've left exposed I'm surprised (and flattered) that you would think "aesthetic value" was in play yet.
T'will be, but the layout must be finalized first.
Getting close, methinks.
*Got a new Saitek key-lit keyboard coming, too.
Now I can hunt and peck in style.
Oooh link to this new keyboard por favor.
I see now guys,that keyboard looks noice pity its not wireless
The batteries would go flat rather quickly, don't you think?Quote:
Originally Posted by gripper103.2
P'raps it could have those new methanol batteries in it.
And how much do they cost?Quote:
Originally Posted by gripper103.2
Dunno, but you can bet they're more in Canada.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virtualbody1234
Probably to expensive at this point,http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,110120,00.asp
very new tech at the moment
Big update coming soon.
Just thought I'd let ya'll know.
Cool! Standing by...Quote:
Originally Posted by clocker
The entrance fee will be cookies.
DO NOT *I repeat* DO NOT! feed Lynx.
He is still digesting the last cookie he scammed me out of.
No problem. I have plenty of cookies.Quote:
Originally Posted by clocker
I don't think you've checked the jar recently. :ph34r:Quote:
Originally Posted by Virtualbody1234
Yer killin me here.
Now the 14th wheres the bloody update "bump"