Sprocket Redux

[ApacNTS]

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: Show

6m:08s

[clocker]

Wouldn't you want nicer looking power cables.

Yes, I would.
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.

[clocker]

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...

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...

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...

[ApacNTS]

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?

[clocker]

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.

[Virtualbody1234]

... btw are you running dual 6800's now?

I think not.

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.

Nice result, clocker.

[clocker]

Nice result, clocker.

Thank you.

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.

[lynx]

In theory the second slot is now operating at half the bandwidth of the first slot (8x instead of 16x)

I thought that only happened if you used both slots. My understanding was that either slot on its own would operate at full speed.

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?

Does this mean you can install windows on your memory card? That raises some interesting possibilities.

[clocker]

I thought that only happened if you used both slots. My understanding was that either slot on its own would operate at full speed.

No.
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.

[lynx]

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.