My Dual Harper - Asus Z7S WS living review *56K warning*

[Madman666]

Hey Guys,

I've been waiting for ages to get onto this forum and share my results and ask some questions - I'll come back later for the questions, but they relate to the irritating reset of the bios and OC profile 50% of the times when I reboot my computer, thereby making it impossible to rely on it for remote control operations...

Azus Z7S motherboard
1 x Antec 650W Truepower Trio Power Supply - more efficient than my 550W Thermaltake PSU.
2 x L5420 Xeon Processors (50w low voltage)
8GB of Kingston RAM 1 x 8GB Kit (2 x 4GB modules - KVR800D2D4F5K2/8G)
1 x 74GB Raptor 10,000 RPM for OS
2 x Hitachi deskstar 160GB in RAID 0 (fast access documents and other high-speed stuff)
1 x WD 250GB drive
Running SATA as RAID with full caching/performance settings (Yes I have UPS and backup generator!)
1 x ATI FireGL V5100 workstation graphics card supplying images to 2 x 19" Samsung LCD monitors.
2 x OCZ Core V2 60GB SSDs on their way from the States to install in RAID 0 for OS, 2 more possibly to follow in the new year.
D-TEK CPU Fuzion V2 waterblocks with quad core mid chamber inserts, Thermaltake GPU waterblock (bought D-TEK Fuzion GPU block but can't use it as it's not compatible with my FireGL - I'll have to use it with my new graphics card that I will add next year to run the 22-24" center screen)
1 x Laing D5 Pump running on slowest/quietest setting
1 x Thermaltake racing level radiator with 2 x 120mm fans in Thermaltake Armor case.
1 x Thermaltake AquaBay M3 5.25" reservoir - looks nice but poorly thought of when constructed, want to change it for something better and with 3/8" couplings.

I managed to get the L5420's to clock to 3308.00MHz with 441 FSB - I'm running 1.2ish vcore - totally stable. I kept speedstep enabled as I want the power savings. I am currently enjoying much more processor capacity than with my previous Pentium D (dual-core) 3.6GHz stock processor with a lot less power usage.

Core Temp 0.96.1 Temperatures:

Core #0: 50C
Core #1: 42C
Core #2: 42C
Core #3: 44C
Core #4: 45C
Core #5: 48C
Core #6: 45C
Core #7: 46C
Core #8: 46C

Asus PC Probe II reports:

CPU0: 34C
CPU1: 36C
MB: 34C

Which program do you guys find to be more reliable?

Has anyone been able to get more speed from either the L5420 or the E5420? Has anyone been able to go past 450 FSB with the vcore bios update?

Regards

Andrew

Hi Andrew,
I have L5410's with the z7s.
Unfortunately I have not been above 400 FSB, so you are one lucky
Anyway, did you look how your memory is detected in the bios ?
Mine says 667Mhz but it truly is 800Mhz ! I also have Kingston, however 4x2GB.

Did you change any other voltages, besides the Vcore ? Which BIOS do you have ? 0401 ?
Intel stated the Tjunction max for these CPU's should be 70C. If you use coretemp, you can adjust Tj.max and you should have the "correct" temps.
However, testing looks Tj max should be more in the line of 75-80C.
Because I think coretemps should be at idle ±5-10 above cpu temp.

Anyway, i hope you put some benches up.

BTW: what are your Dimm temps?