New rig

[Darky]

Hi all,

New to the forums and searching for some opinions ;)

I have recentely built a new gaming rig:

- Asus P6T Deluxe - OC Palm edition
- i7 920 2.66GHz with Noctua SE 1366
- 3GB Corsair Dominator PC3-12800C8 1600MHz - In my opinion the bottleneck of my system...
- Shapphire ATI Radeon 4870X2

From my previous system I kept my two raptors currently in Raid 0 and a storage hdd. Initially i was also using my previous case but since I wasn't happy with the temperatures inside the case I bought this weekend a Lian Li Armoursuit PC-P80. I love the case!

I am currently running the system with no oc at all. I have checking the temperatures and at this point in time during load i get 47C CPU and MB. Stable.

Any opinions about these temperatures? One thing that I have to do because the GPU runs really hot is to increase the fan speed to at least 50% - It's loud but the Lian Li case does a very good job in terms of noise.

I am searching for tips around OC and I would also like to know opinions about the temperatures and if possible how to improve them because the GPU goes up to 85C easy...

Thanks in advance!

[GeordieNo1]

Under load temps are fine m8. Higher than I`d like personally tho but no damage will occur to your hardware. Airflow is perhaps the key here, maybe ensure you tie up trailing cables etc.

4870x2s run hot by design. 85° isn`t unheard of.

[Saftlad]

47' under load for the 920 is nothing. Using the stock HSF you'd find it idling at 55' and with load it gets up towards 80', so you're doing fine.

Get a bit more bclk on it though and get it going towards 3.6 without any problem

Oh, and get folding on it too (http://forum.novatech.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6194), these 920's love a bit of folding to keep themselves warm :)

[Saftlad]

Oh, and your memory is not a bottleneck in this either. You'll probably find it's only running at 1066 if you haven't enabled the xmp profile in the bios.

Should have gone for 6Gb though :)

[Baggpuss]

your not using the crappy little heatsink that same with the processor are you? would really reccomend looking at an aftermarket cooler if you intend to overclock.

[Darky]

Thanks for the inputs!

I am not using the heatsink that came with it. I am using the Noctua one with double fans to play on the safe side:)

Regarding the memory, and the reason why I said bottleneck is because when I am playing Crysis Warhead with everything maxed I get a 98% memory usage. What do you guys think? and even with World of Warcraft that isn't that demanding it goes easily up to 82%. Need to check the bios setup about the memory speed because I can't recall what I have done, thank for the info on that one. I am though planning to get additional 6GB of memory but kinda worried about the temperatures when using the 6 memory slots. Anyone here with experience on it?

Regarding cable management I think I did a good job and the Lian Li case helps loads on it, so I think I have a good airflow on it at this point in time.

I am going to try to bump the i7 to 3.6GHz and I will also post here the results.

Thanks once more for the inputs guys!

[Saftlad]

I wouldn't worry about the %age usage, as some apps reserve the memory then use it when needed (SQL springs to mind). Don't know about Warhead.

You need to be running perfmon with some of the monitoring instances, not just from what is reported through taskmanager. High pages/sec (ie more than 20-25) would indicate a lack of memory and having to use the hdd for virtual memory. I find it hard to believe that the speed of your memory could be causing you an issue, given the architecture of i7

My 920 went straight to 4Gb just by increasing the bclk, but with a UD5 MB. Temps were reasonable (mid 70's) under full load. HT was left enabled, and everything else on auto.

Yet to see what my replacement (P6T Dlx) will get to, but I'd hope for the same ballpark

[Darky]

Saftlad ta for the input!

Seems you are going to get the same MB I have so keep me posted about your findings please :)

Tonight when I arrive home I will check some of the MB settings and also increase a little the bclk to see what I will get. I will post the results here.

Cheers!

[Saftlad]

No probs. Just waiting on my RAM coming back from a previous RMA, hence currently back on a quad @3.2

The 920 ran sweet as a nut at 3.8 24x7, just to help with longevity. Shame the board let it down

[Skylin3]

lovely system, good choice of motherboard.. :) have fun playing the latest games on high :)

[Darky]

Thank you Skylin3 :)

Saftlad you were right about the memory. I have changed my bios setup and I am now taking more advantage of of the Corsair Dominator @1600MHz.

This is a CPUID validation that I did nothing special but when you mentioned to get a little more bclk it's only that? or did you adjust some other stuff?

Ta!

http://valid.canardpc.com/cache/banner/514732.png (http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=514732)

[Darky]

Hi guys,

Just to share with you all where I am at the moment. I have bumped the i7 to 4GHz, I know that many people have done that already and indeed it's not difficult at all.



http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/vv35/Darky1973/i7920-OCto4GHz.jpg

It's stable but I want to do more tests and also some benchmarking. Temperature wise it's no problem at all - around 45C both CPU and MB in low load. I will post temperatures in full load later. I also have my Corsair running at 1600 MHz.

Any comments, suggestions just shoot :)

Ta!

[Saftlad]

Must admit, I'm not a big fan of using Windows based overclocking tools. Never quite seems to show what I need :(

Doing well there though mate, just keep an eye on temps when under full load.

Do you still have HT turned on?

[midnightray]

He does, look bottom right of CPU-Z "4 cores 8 threads"

[Darky]

Hi,

Thanks ;)

I haven't used the windows tools to OC just poped them for the print screen. I have done all the setting in BIOS using the AI Tweaker.

Yes i have HT on.

I am not sure if I stay with these settings at this point in time it's just to see how the system behaves. I am not an expert in OC so I know that if I want to go further I will have to play with settings like clock skews...

Anyway if you have any suggestions let me know.

Ta!

[Saftlad]

Did you have to adjust voltages (up or down) to keep it stable, or just left everything on auto?

[Saftlad]

He does, look bottom right of CPU-Z "4 cores 8 threads"

Yeah, I failed my snipers course :(

[Darky]

:D

I have adjusted my voltages:

CPU Volatge 1.35000V (up)
Uncore Voltage (QPI/DRAM Core Volt in ASUS) 1.35000V (down)
DRAM Voltage - 1.66V (just a little up - Dominator enjoyed it!)
CPU PLL Voltage - 1.96V (up) - Still want to explore it more...

Something else is to enable APCI 2 in the BIOS because for some reason it's disabled by default and it helps the multiplier to be more stable. I also have turned off Intel Turbo mode tech.

At this point in time, with bclk frequency set to 200 I got one BSD... I need to investigate more... An option is to drop it for 190 and get a stable 3.8GHz and that is more than enough.

[Saftlad]

Cool.

I've left most of mine on auto, and it's running fine at 190. Only set the memory speed correct (I went for standard XMS3, couldn't see/afford the xtra for dominator)

Looks like it's set my cpu voltage to 1.40, dram bus to 1.64 and qpi/dram to 1.375. Cpu pll is unchanged at 1.8.

I'll try reducing my CPU voltage to check it's not trying to give it too much

[Jasonkruys]

I think I need a lottery win or something, all of this i7 talk is getting me jealous! I have squeezed just about all I can out of this system, and think I need a new challenge!

Well done for your efforts so far, now you have the bug, you will be forever tweaking and wanting just that little bit more ;)

[Darky]

No need for lottery mate ;) Just go for it!

I have dropped my for 190 bclk wich sets the CPU speed to 3.8GHz. I found it more stable actually is really fast and I don't get any BSD! I got 1 at 4.0GHz... nothing major but for 0.2 GHz I don't really see the point...

Since I have the dominator memory I will play a little more with the speeds for fun...

Anyone else with this combo? Any different experiences with the i7?

Cheers!