Sprocket sashays...

[clocker]

I still haven't had time to set up the Q6600 yet have you? What do you leave your setting at on a normal day?

I haven't bought a quad yet...kinda waiting to see what you thought.
No pressure or anything...

Those are my normal settings.
I ran a ten hour Orthos test today while I was out and about and passed with flying colors.
Average temp was under 40° (I had the window open as it was pretty nice here), so stability is good, temp is good and voltage is low...why not run like this all the time?

I did get some new cooling stuff, will have pics up (hopefully) tomorrow as it gets installed.

[kaiweiler]

WOW dude I HAVE to try those numbers tomorrow, as of now we have the same chip and ram. I still haven't had time to set up the Q6600 yet have you? What do you leave your setting at on a normal day?

Also I use multi meter because it shows both cores too. I know you said you had a few copies of Black XP have you installed the 100 or so gadgets using the WPI?

Secondary monitor Kai!? Must be nice

I run two 19" widescreen LCD's, I doubt I'll ever go back to single monitor setup again.

I'm pretty happy with my Q6600, I'm only running it at 3Ghz daily but as soon as I get a better cooling solution I plan on running it at 3.4-3.6 (which the chip itself has been proven to be easily capable of)
I could use some better RAM though as well...
It's a never ending story isn't it?


clocker, is the new cooling stuff wet?

[clocker]

Let's try this again...I had a big response all ready yesterday only to get the "Site down for maintenance" when I hit submit.
Kinda pissed me off...

No K., it's not "wet".

I've seen some posts around that deal with the fancy heatpipe setups that many motherboards feature- mine included.
Apparently, these contraptions look quite impressive but are not in fact very well implemented.
Since I've been pushing my system more than anticipated (and don't have any way of monitoring north/south bridge temps (thanks a lot, Gigabyte), I decided to take a look at mine.

Glad I did.

Apologies in advance for the picture quality, many of the motherboard shots were completely unusable...

I stripped Sprocket down and removed the motherboard.
Then, squeezing off the retention pushpins, I pulled the all-in-one heatpipe cooler off.
This particular board has the heatpiped sinks covering the north and south bridges as well as the power conversion components.
Of the four main sinks, only the northbridge showed any indication at all that the sink had actually made contact with the chips it covered.
The sinks did not have thermal paste, instead there was a rubberlike strip between the sink and the chips, and close examination did not show indentations which would indicate contact.

Basically, most of that setup was for show.

I cleaned off the sinks and the chips with AS cleaner & purifier and applied Ceramique to all the components.
Then I reinstalled the heatpipe with screws and nuts instead of the flimsy pushpins.
Like so...


On the back I used a plastic washer (for insulation) followed by a metal washer and a nut...


Then I removed the entire assembly to check my contact patches- it looked much better- recleaned, repasted and reinstalled.

So now I know that at least the sinks are making contact with the motherboard and the components have a chance at being cooled.

That was Stage 1.

Stage 2 involved cooling the vid card (which has been running stock so far) and the memory (ditto).
I ordered a box of swag from FrozenCPU and got this...


-Zalman VF1000 copper VGA cooler and a RAM sink cooler unit (which, despite being advertised as applicable for the 8800 series, does NOT fit the GT, so it will be returned)OCZ Freeze Extreme TIM.

-OCZ memory cooler module which sports two 80mm fans and clips to the DIMM retention clips

-OCZ Freeze Extreme TIM ( for the CPU as well as the GPU).

-the bag of fans I already had and was hoping to use as spot coolers on the motherboard but haven't done anything with yet.

First, the video card.
Remove the stock cooler...




And install the Zalman.

I had to use the individual memory sinks that come with the cooler instead of the super-duper heatsink that Zalman sells separately (which covers everything...as long as you have a GTS or Ultra).

Then the board got remounted in the case and the memory cooler and vid card were reinstalled.


It's a very close fit between the memory cooler bracket and the bottom of the video card...so close that I layered some electrical tape on the memory unit's upper bracket to prevent accidental shorting.

I'm not impressed with the OCZ's mounting method- it works but is rather loose, so I may custom make a bracket that is more stable and lowers the module a few millimeters to completely eliminate the possibility of vid card contact.

Thus ends Stage 2.

The Zalman VGA cooler lowered the GT's idle temps from 55°c to @ 30°c- a dramatic improvement. Running a few loops of 3D Mark 06 gave me load temps in the mid to upper forties, so I consider this modification to be an unqualified success.

I have no way of measuring my memory temps so I can't comment about the OCZ's effectiveness, but it does look pretty cool and I consider it good insurance as well as adding a bit of bling.

I went through all this rigamorole because I've hit a wall overclocking the CPU and it seems likely that I'll have to apply more voltage to the motherboard to achieve stability.
Even if I don't pursue the quest for more MHz, it seemed like a good idea to make sure my cooling was up to par and judging by the look of the stock heatpipe solution, this board needed some attention.

Now that I feel more confident about my safety net, we'll see what this thing can do...

[Detale]

I haven't bought a quad yet...kinda waiting to see what you thought.
No pressure or anything...

Sorry man life in general has been insanely hectic, I have been working my ass off 6 days a week 12 hours a day so when I'm home I'm eating, sleeping or changing shitty diapers.

BTW way to void every warranty you had!! You rock dude

OK but I had Sunday off and 3 whole hours to myself(these days thats an eternity) So I flew through installing the new PSU ( Corsair 620 Thanks Clocker I love the damn thing) and the Q6600 also re-installing my Blue Orb II cooler as I had the stock cooler on the wolfdale after the temp confusion episode.

So all is going well when I am tightening the 2nd screw on the CPU cooler when I hear an oh so dreaded "snap" I'm like WHAT THE FUCK NOW!!! so the good news is it was only one of the mounting screws on the cooler itself so not that big a deal but the bad news at least for now is I am stuck with the stock cooler again ( BTW I need a recommendation on a new CPU cooler guys)

OK so I get the rig up and running just then now remembering I wanted to run some last min tests on the Wolfdale and take some screenshots to compare along with pics of my rig innards All of which I forgot about because I was in an incredible rush ( sorry again)

Now I overclocked it to 333x9= 2997 which is close enough to 3 for me as a first run. Now CPU-Z is showing the multiplier @ 6 which is less than 2Ghz if I check the Bios it shows 3 but why not in Cpuz or Everest?? Oddly when I first ran Cpuz and saw that it said 6 I ran my mouse over it and it only for a second changed to 9 but then back to 6???Everest shows this

Overclock





CPU Properties:


CPU Type QuadCore Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600


CPU Alias Kentsfield


CPU Stepping G0


Engineering Sample No


CPUID CPU Name Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz


CPUID Revision 000006FBh


Core Voltage 1.163 V

CPU Speed:


CPU Clock 1998.0 MHz (original: 2400 MHz)


CPU Multiplier 6.0x


CPU FSB 333.0 MHz (original: 266 MHz, overclock: 25%)


Memory Bus 499.5 MHz


DRAM:FSB Ratio 12:8

CPU Cache:


L1 Code Cache 32 KB per core


L1 Data Cache 32 KB per core


L2 Cache 2x 4 MB (On-Die, ASC, Full-Speed)

Motherboard Properties:


Motherboard ID 01/02/2008-X38-ICH9-6A79OG0QC-00


Motherboard Name Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 (2 PCI, 3 PCI-E x1, 2 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Dual Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)

Chipset Properties:


Motherboard Chipset Intel Beachwood X38


Memory Timings 5-7-7-19 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS)


Command Rate (CR) 2T

SPD Memory Modules:


DIMM1: G Skill F2-8000CL5-2GBPQ 2 GB DDR2-800 DDR2 SDRAM (5-5-5-15 @ 400 MHz) (4-4-4-10 @ 266 MHz)


DIMM3: G Skill F2-8000CL5-2GBPQ 2 GB DDR2-800 DDR2 SDRAM (5-5-5-15 @ 400 MHz) (4-4-4-10 @ 266 MHz)

BIOS Properties:


System BIOS Date 01/02/08


Video BIOS Date 12/06/07


Award BIOS Type Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG


Award BIOS Message X38-DQ6 F7


DMI BIOS Version F7

Graphics Processor Properties:


Video Adapter nVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT


GPU Code Name G92GT (PCI Express 2.0 x16 10DE / 0611, Rev A2)


GPU Clock (Geometric Domain) 602 MHz (original: 600 MHz)


GPU Clock (Shader Domain) 1512 MHz (original: 1500 MHz)


Memory Clock 900 MHz (original: 900 MHz)

and here is Cpuz and speedfan with a little SuperPi thrown in




Now the temps look OK IMO but the same 3Ghz under the Wolfdale I got on my first try as seen in an earlier post in this thread is @ 15.6 sec So I have to say thus far at least I am not immediately impressed with the Q6600 over the E8600 The next 3 hours I get will prob be spent Swapping out this CPU for the Wolfdale again along with installing a new CPU cooler which I say again
I need some advice on please
But there is something to consider, the Blue Orb had two brackets installed using screws through the back of the Mobo then two screws through the fan onto said brackets. I cannot use something with a "plate" on the back of the Mobo I have this Copper plate back there ie



I have read that it will interfere with certain CPU coolers in that there screws aren't long enough to reach past the copper So any help would be cool as hell guys Thanks in advance I am looking for something firstly functional but also a little flash if thats possible something along the lines of this

Cooler Master Hyper TX 2 CPU Cooler


or
Cooljag Falcon 92-CU Quad Heat Pipe Copper Silent PWM CPU Cooler

[clocker]

D., you need to disable the power saving features in BIOS (EIST, CIA2?)...they are what causes the multiplier to default down to 6 whenever they decide the processor can run slower.
I thought that overclocking the chip usually disabled the power save features automatically but it wouldn't hurt to do it manually.

TheAC Freezer Pro is tough to beat for the money.
On the high end, the Thermalright Extreme 120 is generally considered the unit to beat.

[kaiweiler]

Yeah, it's the power savings feature...
Also remember that SuperPi just runs on a single core, where FSB and Ram speed probably plays the biggest factor. The E8400 has a 1333Mhz bus, while the Q6600 has 1066Mhz.
Try some video editing or other multi-core apps, even heavy multitasking and that is where the Q6600 will come out on top of the E8400.

[clocker]

Played around a bit with the video card...




Now I need something to stress the vid so I can check the temps, any suggestions?

[kaiweiler]

AtiTool, scanning for artifacts?
Nice score in 3dMark! Around 400 points more then I am getting. Although I see your using XP 32bit, I'm on Vista64.
What clocks did you get on your GT?

[clocker]

Actually K., that's Vista 32 SP1.

That run was at 700/1100.

I'll try the ATI Tool, thanks.

[kaiweiler]

Oh strange, in your screenshot it says XP 32 bit, I just assumed you had added a Vista theme.