I'm done with my new air cooled I7 920 D0 build

[Mungri]

Pictures first (I know, they are crappy), words later





















Specs in sig, wait, I think my sig got rolled back? damn.


I'll be stress testing it soon, right now I'm stuck with trying to salvage my data of my old HD as I got a new Samsung F1 1TB, and plugging in my 500 GB drive with my backups gives me a boot error. I think I'll have to reinstall Vista with both drives installed so that it boots and I copy over my old stuff.

[xman01]

looking good

[Mungri]

I need to update my bios to improve compatibility with the D0. Also, I downloaded core temp, and freaked out when it showed my idle core temps at 44-47 degrees !!!

But in my bios it shows my CPU temperature is 26-27 degrees, so core temp must have been wrong, or at least, I hope my bios isnt wrong


Ok, after the bios update my Bios CPU temp showed as 36 degrees, but thats still a lot less then what core temp shows.

Also, it allows me to boot with my memory at 1600 MHZ . Before the bios update, setting the memory to its XMS profile would cause the PC to stop booting up without a CMOS clear. Now it works with its rated specification, with all 12 gigs installed.

Stock frequencies tested and stable. Leaving orthos on for 1 hour with another run of Super PI to be certain:

[Jsunn]

Nice looking Build!

[WrigleyVillain]

Heh for some reason I read this as "done" as in fed up and selling everything

Does look good; that cooler is a monster!

[Splave]

hey bro, you need prime or linX to fully blast all the cores, orthos only hits 2 of the 8. Looks good though, Im a fan of blue led's

[Mungri]

Heh for some reason I read this as "done" as in fed up and selling everything

Does look good; that cooler is a monster!

Definately =D

Bored of old PC, need to build a new one.

But I seriously did need to get a better case, my old Aerocool was rubbish on the inside, sucked in too much dust, and was too difficult to work with - I had to remove the ram and graphics cards just to get to the tightly squeezed in hard drives.

Now its all much more roomy, and I can access the hard drives any time I want thanks to the case . P182 is my best case ever, I wont need to replace it untill it breaks, if cases ever do break.

I plugged in my old hard drive, and now it boots into Vista without a disk read error anymore I think the Gigabyte sata drivers fixed it, or the first round of Vista updates.

Backing up 154 GB of everthing from my 300 GB except for games, this will take a while =D.

I noticed forgot that I had to clear CMOS last night, and now my ram is defaulted to CAS 7 1.5v again!!!! - Praying that it doesnt switch off while copying all my stuff

Is there anything I can do about my rams default settings? It isnt stable at CAS 7 and 1.5v but thats what the PC keeps setting it too by default.

hey bro, you need prime or linX to fully blast all the cores, orthos only hits 2 of the 8. Looks good though, Im a fan of blue led's

You mean 4 cores? I'll keep that in mind, first I want to look for another temperature sensor, theres no way that each core is Idling at 44-47 degrees as shown by core temp with that cooler, when Bios is 10-12 degrees less.

When listening to music, I cant even tell any difference between my new Dolby surround and old X-Fi Elite Pro. Everytime creative release a product, they make it sound as though they've invented a way to insert a thousand Chuck Norris's into your ears. I wont be buying a seperate soundcard again, this onboard and my expensive speakers is good enough, maybe I can also try my ATI HDMI sound.

I want to start playing Sacred 2 again, need to hurry up with the backups and updates

I wasted money on a new pair of cathodes and Thermaltake Sorbs before I had decided on this case. I dont need any of them now, and think I'll just put my old single cathode underneath my graphics cards. I tried removing the Zalman VF830's, but they were stuck on good. However, they are really good coolers, and I actually prefer the contrast they provide as oppsoed to having everything the same.

So I'm stuck with some Thermaltake Sorbs and Cathodes untill I manage to sell them.



Its pretty much the current ones:



vs these:



The Sorbs are quite bigger, but theres hardly that much difference between them other than appearance, and the Zalmans are already great coolers.

[Mungri]

The graphics cards are benchable and artifact free in Vantage at 790 / 1075

Surprising without any ramsinks - the Zalman coolers blow air across the ram chips as well.

Had to drop it down to 1050 MHZ on the ram for 3D mark 06, but it was 100% stable and artifact free. 1075 MHZ is pushing it too much, but still, 4200 MHZ is really nice

[Mungri]

Core temp lies to me!!!



Even after 10 minutes, the CPU temp is stable at 43 degrees @ 3.2 GHZ, but core temp is crazy and shows 67 degrees!!!

It is 43 degrees in Small FFT's and Gromacs Core tests as well

I dont know if thats any better than other coolers though.

[GAR]

Use Real temp 3.0, and these Core i7's run HOT!

[Mungri]

The Gigabyte overclocking guide showed me how to do this (run 4 x orthos, set each ones affinity to 2 different cores each - I now see that it is 8 cores with multithreading):



All four cores under 100% load @ 3.2 GHZ = 55 degrees, but look at core temp lol

Ok, I'm going to install Sacred 2 now, I wont be overclocking anymore for a while.

[i43]

hi bhavv
You have pretty hot stuff there !

new (High-end) cooler maybe help you only a little bit forward ,
sorry i don't want to be rude -or such
but (my opinion ,- (on base own experiences) with the same case
sorry to say but this Antec P182 case have bad airflow .. and you got 3 major 'hotspots' i7cpu & 2x hd48xxgpu's
this case is not designed for tdays ''hot'' hw or other words
at least not for OC this stuff inside it

, i still owning that same Antec P182 box ( conf . in my signature) ..
and really! i have had damn hard times to keep even c2d (E8400) steady @ 4.1(aircooled) with single gf9600GT
(had 8800Ultra earlier, but this raised case internal temp.'s even more)

this box is good for silent run on stock speeds .. but who cares abut stock nowadays LOL
-----
off T
with c2d i have tested TRUE120 / and both Noctua's -NH-C12P /NH-U12P inside this case
... had test runs with original antec ''tri-cool fans, later have replaced all antec orig, case fans to NF12P fans ..
still - not mutch help E8400 @4050 -- and this idle ~48/45C //
prime95 load ~75/70C (coretemp) and talking abut C2D here!

i had that same setup on open air (table stand) and i remember
the difference from open air - vs inside P182 ~ 17-20C on idle !!
-----

[Mungri]

There is nothing wrong with the Antec P182's airflow, it has the same two fan support at the CPU as most other cases, intake fan, and seperate PSU area.

The only thing it doesnt have is side fans for the graphics, but I have a collection of PCI coolers and exhausts I can try to use.

Reviews of this case also show its cooling performance to be top quality, just because it doesnt have side case fans or a window doesnt make it a bad case for cooling.

It looks a lot better to me then an antec 900 or 1200 case.

[ben805]

time to crank up them bclk yo! it'd be a waste to run that D0 of yours at anything less than 4.0Ghz!

[Mungri]

I got done with overclocking the bus speed to 200 MHZ today, I had to increase it 5 MHZ increments, but it needs a QPI voltage of 1.555v, I dont think this is safe for 24/7 use right? 1.515v froze up before I could even start one run of Orthos.



Now I'll increase the CPU multiplier step by step. I disabled hyperthreading, but it only reduces the temp by 1 degree at 3.2 Ghz.

I will have to underclock the ram to go any higher, it gets unstable at around 1640 MHZ and isnt even superpi compatible at 1600 MHZ at higer bus speeds and 1600 MHZ, but everything else is stable, playing games all day with no crashes with the ram at 1600 MHZ, so I will use it at its rated specification, if anything happens to it it has a lifetime warranty, so no problems there

Oh I just remembered - I increaded the CPU voltage to 1.3v, before on the 160 MHZ QPI run at the same frequency with hyperthreading, it was at 1.275v, so I have a little more voltage, no hyperthreading, and it was still lower in temperature.

Testing 3.4 Ghz now - PC switched off so I increased the CPU voltage to 1.4v

[Mungri]

Multitasking with Duffy at 3.4 GHZ and 1.4v



Now the CPU is getting hot

[Mungri]

Yay! 4.0 GHZ, 62 degrees =D

[annihilus]

I bet your cores are hitting 80C+, and that after 10min. Why don't you use realtemp and prime or occt?

[Mungri]

I bet your cores are hitting 80C+, and that after 10min. Why don't you use realtemp and prime or occt?

will give them a try and see.

I think your right, it is the gigabyte utility that was lying

I hit 69 degrees at just 3.33 GHZ, not fair.

[khamo]

its the difference between core temperatures and the die or IHS temps. Always go by core temps. Use OCCT, core temp or speedfan.

[cadupradoo]

I also think you should guide youself by core temperatures...

Its not that EasyTune was lying to you.. It's what khamo have just said, it's two different temperatures... The cores usually go 15ºC hotter than the processor itself.

The temperature you see in Bios is the processor, that's why it's cooler...

And your chip is really running hot... Which fans are you using with the HS?

Here I get 72ºC in the cores with 5hours of prime, at 4.2GHz... and that's at 1.44V... if I run it at 4.1GHz, 1.388V, I get 68ºC.

I would say your cores shouldn't get at 85ºC during these tests...

[Mungri]

I'm using coolermaster LED Silent fans (1200 RPM), and the paste that came with the Triton 88, It sure does look like MX-II.

Anyhow, I decided to go ahead with modding the graphics cards:





















Idle temp on the first card reduced from 63 to 58 degrees, but it still fires up to over 100 degrees in Furmark

It remains at 79-80 degrees under normal load in 3D mark and games though, which is just the same as the stock Zalman ones were, so it seems that both the Zalmans and the Thermaltakes are pretty much Identical.

I should have gotten these instead, 4 heatpipe versions of the Zalman one that came on my cards with a blue LED:



http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-76...F2000-LED.html









. Never mind, the current ones are fine outside of Furmark.

[dpokrajac0]

Nice build u got there.

[Demo]

Why not a single 4870X2 ?

[Mungri]

Why not a single 4870X2 ?

Too big. I prefer two cards to a double one, although heat wise it wouldnt be any different because the first card I have still gets too hot with the small amount of space it has.

I think I'll have to set my spotcool fan to a higher setting.

The extra ramsinks on the card really helped, no more artifacts and 100% stability at 1100 MHZ has now been achieved