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New Rig!; My four year drought is over...
Topic Started: Sep 10 2007, 08:00 PM (618 Views)
Sentinel67
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I built a new PC last Thursday. It replaces my four year old Pentium 4C rig. No, the DeVanni PSU I installed in '05 didn't finally kill it. It's alive and well, DeVanni and all. It will be my primary backup machine, bumping my Celeron 1.7Ghz rig into a closet somewhere... LOL! I kinda went over budget a bit, but I wanted to get quality components that would last at least as long as my Pent 4 has. Here are the specs.

Case - Antec Nine Hundred
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
Processor - Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz@3.0Ghz
CPU Cooler - Zalman CNPS9700 (On Arctic Silver)
Memory - 2x1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800Mhz@1000Mhz
Video Card - PNY nVidia 8800GTS 320MB @640Mhz/990Mhz
Audio - Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE
Optical Drive - Lite-On DL-DVDRW With LightScribe LH-20A1H186C
Primary HDD - 150GB WD Raptor 10,000RPM 16MB Cache
Secondary HDD - 320GB WD Caviar 7800RPM 8MB Cache
FDD - Generic Floppy Drive
PSU - BFG Tech 650Watt (no DeVanni this time) :P
Speakers - Creative SoundWorks 2.1
Monitor - KDS 17" Flatscreen CRT


Once I'd completed the build, it POSTed with no problems. I loaded XP Pro and the of my software. I used SiSoftSandra07 to run a twelve hour burn-in on the hardware, which remained stable and cool. Next came the overclocking. The quad core was very tolerant of a 25% increase (10Mhz bumps at a time) to it's FSB. The multiplier on the Q6600 is partially unlocked. You can adjust it downward, from it stock setting of 9, but not upwards. Lowering the multiplier can allow you to raise the front side bus speed further than you would be able to otherwise. Basically, you raise the processor's FSB, while locking down the memory FSB, to more closely match them. Unfortunately, my board doesn't let me lock down the memory's FSB...makin' the whole multiplier thing pretty much usless for me. :lol:

I could have pushed the quad further, but decided to stop at 3.0Ghz for three perfectly good reasons. First, it leaves the CPU with a FSB speed of 1333Mhz. The P35 motherboard is already rated to run a 1333Mhz FSB for the new 45nm chips this fall. No stress there. The second reason I stopped was the chipset temperature. I'm still running a stock chipset cooler and the Intel P35 tends to run on the warm side... :o The third reason I stopped was voltage. I'd locked down the CPU voltage at a stock setting of 1.325v and didn't want to increase it. After another twelve hour burn-in and some adult beverages and some GTA-SA, I determined the proc overclock was a success.

My attention turned to the PNY vid card. At stock speed, the 8800GTS runs 513Mhz on the GPU and 792Mhz on it's DDR3 RAM. I installed the latest version of Forceware drivers, then downloaded the nTune utility from nVidia's web site. nTune seems to work fairly well, but everytime you restart your system, your vid card reverts back to it's stock settings. Annoying that. I increased the 8800's frequencies in small increments, testing temps and stability after each little bump. I managed to push the PNY to 680Mhz/1004Mhz, before the crash. I restarted my system and it crashed, resetting the MOBO to defaults. Too fast and too much power draw I thought. The temps were still normal (only 18c higher on the GPU). I took the hint at any rate. I dropped the GPU down to 640Mhz and the DDR3 down to 990Mhz. To run a final test on my vid card, I ran 3DMark06 a few times. The GPU temp never topped 72c. I must say, the air flow in this Antec case is great...even if it does sound like a vacuum cleaner... :D

Now the benches...<span style='font-family:verdana'>

3DMark06-12002 PCMark05-9489


<span style='font-family:comic sans ms'>Not bad for a single GPU rig I thought. B)
</span></span>
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Ladym_cate
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Angel from the underworld or Devil from paradise
Congrats Sentinel67! Great job. Enjoy your new rig. :D

Cate
Cynicism is the smoke that rises from the ashes of burnt out dreams

formerly an eMachines T6420
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Toledo 2.2GHz Processor
BIOSTAR GEFORCE 6100-M9 939 Micro ATX AMD MOBO
2GB DDR PC3200 400MHz
EVGA nVidia e-GeForce 7600 GT KO
Antec Basiq 500W Power Supply
200GB HDD
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Jakeman97
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Well Done Sentinel67....ya got better components than the space shuttle. specool Maybe you should be working for NASA. Enjoy!
Jakeman97

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CoolerMaster 690II // GA-890FXA-UD5 AM3 // Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 2.8GHz // Corsair HX 1000W // G.SKILL 4GB DDR3 1333 // XFX Radeon HD 5770 // 2 Sg 500GB SATA3 7200.12 // CoolerMaster V8 CPU Cooler // Win Vista Ultimate SP2 x64


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Sentinel67
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I pushed it a bit more...against my better judgment...and I think I've pretty much topped out without liquid cooling.<span style='font-family:verdana'>

3DMark06 - 12234
</span>

This is with the CPU @3.2Ghz, the 8800GTS @660Mhz/1004Mhz and the memory @890Mhz (lowered the memory multiplier to 2.5). Gonna stop now...and this time I mean it... LOL!!!

:P
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