New Core2Duo Overclocking Rig (Pics to come)

kent, i love your clean build - you clearly took some time with it and it looks fabulous!

Question: how did you decide on the Tuniq Tower 120?
I was having a tough time deciding between the TT120, the Thermaltake Ultra-120 Extreme and the Scythe Infinity. I liked how the TT has the fan knob controller, though. Really tough time deciding. The online reviews, of course, are quite conflicting.

I ended up just going with the Thermalright Ultra-12 Extreme because 1) it's not as wide as others (hopefully allowing better air flow), 2) i can choose the fan to go with it, so I went with this amazing-spec fan. Now let's just hope it performs to spec.

Now, I realize that my thought process was all wrong. Most of these coolers that have 120mm fans allow you to replace the fan and use whatever you want, so basically I just paid a lot more for the cooler + fan ($24 for the fan + tax and shipping and $65 for the cooler + tax and shipping, yikes).

I'm curious to know your thoughts on how you chose the cooler and your thoughts after the fact.
How is your CPU temp at stock and at overclock? How about noise?

Medwards-

Yes, I'd say overall, I'm very happy with the case. My last computer was a Shuttle SFF PC with an x1950Pro inside... it was a great computer... lots of power in an unbeatable form factor. Only problem was that the Shuttle SFF's get hot and noisy. So I was looking for a quiet case, above anything else.

The things I don't like about the Antec:
- Heavy (made of steel, not aluminum)
- Does not have a removable motherboard tray
- The included 430W PSU was not sufficient for my needs.

The things I liked about it are:
- Unique white coloring, real brushed steel front bezel, excellent enamel finish on the paint.
- Cable management system (keeps case very clean)
- Excellent drive rail / cage system... easy to mount drives.
- Filtered air intake on the front.
- Built for quiet systems... sound dampening panels on the side, quiet exhaust fan with adjustable speed.
- Excellent build quality. REALLY excellent.

Overall, I'm happy with this thing. It's exactly what I wanted... a sturdy, attractive case that is silent (I can barely hear it when it is on). If someone was building a new system, I'd highly recommend an Antec case to them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Knightslay

kent, i love your clean build - you clearly took some time with it and it looks fabulous!

Question: how did you decide on the Tuniq Tower 120?
I was having a tough time deciding between the TT120, the Thermaltake Ultra-120 Extreme and the Scythe Infinity. I liked how the TT has the fan knob controller, though. Really tough time deciding. The online reviews, of course, are quite conflicting.

I ended up just going with the Thermalright Ultra-12 Extreme because 1) it's not as wide as others (hopefully allowing better air flow), 2) i can choose the fan to go with it, so I went with this amazing-spec fan. Now let's just hope it performs to spec.

Now, I realize that my thought process was all wrong. Most of these coolers that have 120mm fans allow you to replace the fan and use whatever you want, so basically I just paid a lot more for the cooler + fan ($24 for the fan + tax and shipping and $65 for the cooler + tax and shipping, yikes).

I'm curious to know your thoughts on how you chose the cooler and your thoughts after the fact.
How is your CPU temp at stock and at overclock? How about noise?

---

Hey, thanks for the comments. After the time I put into it, it's encouraging to hear positive feedback.

I was deciding between the Thermalright Ultra 120, and the Tuniq Tower 120. The Thermalright Ultra 120 performed slightly better than the Tuniq Tower 120, but they were pretty much neck-and-neck. I knew I wanted a silent cooler, and I knew the Tuniq was silent, especially with the adjustable fan speeds. The Thermalright Ultra 120 didn't come with a fan, and I didn't feel like doing the research to find a silent fan that cooled well.

I settled on an overclock of 3.5Ghz at 1.5V to be stable, and I have temps of around 41C idle, 53C under stress. And the noise level is below the floor level for the case... you can't hear it, because my PSU (Seasonic M12 600W modular) makes more noise than the Tuniq Tower's 120mm fan. It's running at 3/4 max RPM, or around 1700rpm.

I'm really happy with the CPU cooling... I felt that I picked a great overclocking CPU and cooler... and between the research, comp build, and the heat sink lapping, I think I got a great overclocking rig put together.

clocking a cpu by feeding as much voltage as possible not a good idea, go as far as you can on stock when it get's unstable raise the vcore by .025 (if you can) if that's stable raise another .025 and the raise the speed a little bit etc. edge upward till it won't stay stable with a .025 increase then go for a .05 and try again :D until that dun work then you pretty much probably at 1.45 vcore or maybe 1.5, dun exceed 1.5 on the c2d's unless you got some wicked cooling (very sweet water, or LN2)
The .025 is what I call the lowest increment example, with athlons (the old xp's ) that increment was usually .25 or .1 depending on the MB. with these new c2d's the voltage increment tends to be much smaller.
I got a crappy MB with no vcore adjustment and undervolting to boot droop is 1.236V (idle 1.280) of 1.325V stock for my cpu, but then again I'm limited by my FSB anyway. Max on my board is like 295 with volt mods maybe 320, right now I got 306 going, I need to increase my mod a bit.
Anyway careful inching up is better than partially damaging the hardware (electron migration), which you could do the other way around.
My .02
terramir

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kent1146

Rimmerchant-

Default clock is 2.13Ghz at 266Mhz FSB.

Some things I had to do during the overclock:
1) Keep my FSB and Memory clocks unlinked. Memory was at 800Mhz for the entire overclocking process.
2) Cranked up FSB 10Mhz at a time until computer would not POST. Then start cranking up the voltages until computer would POST. Then start cranking FSB up again until computer wouldn't POST, etc. Repeat until you are at max voltage.
3) Then start cranking FSB back down until computer will POST, boot into Windows, and run 3DMark06 without crashing. If this works, burn it in for stability over SuperPi for several hours. Then start cranking down the voltages until it will run 3DMark06 and SuperPi without crashing.
4) Come to sharky's and brag about it.

Before I overclocked, I also used a nice aftermarket CPU cooler, lapped (polished) the cooler with sandpaper and metal polish, and applied a nice fresh coat of Arctic Silver 5. I'd like to think that the extra money and time I put into this process made a difference (but I have no idea if it did or not).

This is my FSB clock adjustment. The rating of 1825 is quad data rate, and represents FSB of 456Mhz.

Voltages that I tweaked. Represents +0.2375V CPU increase, +0.2V FSB increase, +0.2V SPP increase (equivalent to your MCH setting). Also has a 0.3V increase on the DDR2 memory, but that is not related to CPU overclock.

System Monitor shot, showing final voltages and CPU temp. CPU temp represents temps under load after 3-hour SuperPi, then immediately rebooting and coming to this screen.

Memory tweaking after I got the CPU stable. Left memory at 800Mhz, but changed timings to 4-4-4-12.

---

Ok, i totally have to call you on this - i find it very difficult to believe that you managed to achieve a 1.4 ghz overclock on a relatively base model core2 with air cooling - especially when i consider that the highest overclocks i've seen in a REPUTABLE publication are at 3.4ghz with WATER COOLING and are STILL unstable under certain benchmarks. So please, backup your claims with actual WINDOWS screenshots of some form of utility like ntune or speedfan or something that shows you're not completely full of crap. digital pictures of your bios prove NOTHING.

Lol, wow. AlmostFamous... is that you???

Yes, screenshots from Windows System Properties, CPU-Z, PCWizard07, and successful Prime95 runs can be provided to prove a stable 3.5Ghz overclock. I'll do these tomorrow once I get back home after being on the road for business. Many other people have reported overclocks in the 3.5Ghz-3.6Ghz range, and beyond... not everyone, but a large enough portion of the community to show that yes, it *IS* possible.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1183692

edit: I mean 3.5Ghz overclock. I posted earlier in this thread that I went with a 3.5Ghz overclock, for stability.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kent1146

I settled on an overclock of 3.5Ghz at 1.5V to be stable, and I have temps of around 41C idle, 53C under stress.

---

This is the other thing i question. most of the windows screenshots i've seen are bursting through 65C or 70C under stress at the same voltage (which is the primary heat generator) - the fact that you say you ran your benchmark, then rebooted then took the screenshot from the bios means the computer had more than enough time to cool down - i know mine drops 5c to 10c in just a few seconds after i stop a benchmark or game.

Holy crap, thats the worst application of AS5 I have ever seen.


And damnit, I knew I should've put a patent on the rubber band drive suspension :D Been doing it with vacuum cleaner bands for years.

Yeah, it was a pretty shoddy job of AS5.

It didn't occur to me until I got to the lapping attempt that I should do things like... look up the instructions for how to apply AS5.

The new application of AS5 uses the "thin nline down the middle" method.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rabidmoose171

Holy crap, thats the worst application of AS5 I have ever seen.


And damnit, I knew I should've put a patent on the rubber band drive suspension :D Been doing it with vacuum cleaner bands for years.

---

You beat me to it!!!!

I was going to say that the AS5 application was terrible and quite thick.

But I agree with Sellout with regrads to the heat. Run a program that stresses both cores at the same time and that 54c will be 70c :P

Use ORTHOS or something similiar for hours, even SUPERPI is not a good way to test stability.

I want to use a program to do a stress test my ram and cpu.

what is a good program for that?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rimmerchant

I want to use a program to do a stress test my ram and cpu.

what is a good program for that?

---

Fire up prime95 for about 8 hours. if your system can handle that, it's stable. you can also try an overnight cpu burn-in from Sandra....but prime95 is much more punnishing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sellout

Ok, i totally have to call you on this - i find it very difficult to believe that you managed to achieve a 1.4 ghz overclock on a relatively base model core2 with air cooling - especially when i consider that the highest overclocks i've seen in a REPUTABLE publication are at 3.4ghz with WATER COOLING and are STILL unstable under certain benchmarks. So please, backup your claims with actual WINDOWS screenshots of some form of utility like ntune or speedfan or something that shows you're not completely full of crap. digital pictures of your bios prove NOTHING.

---

Huh I know I've seen 3.6 to 4 ghz with base models with windows pictures of orthos for like 4 to 6 hours. and my e4300 can do 5 hours of orthos @ 2.7 @ 1.12 V core so @ stock I assume with decent cooling my chip should at least do 3.3 if I up the voltage a bit maybe 3.5 But I need a decent MB and well a pci express vidcard (cause I'm stuck with this crappy 4coredual-vsta till I can afford both of that). So I think your misinformed the c2d's rock:p
my .02
terramir

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Colossus

You beat me to it!!!!

I was going to say that the AS5 application was terrible and quite thick.

But I agree with Sellout with regrads to the heat. Run a program that stresses both cores at the same time and that 54c will be 70c :P

Use ORTHOS or something similiar for hours, even SUPERPI is not a good way to test stability.

---

I agree.

kent1146, nice build and nice overclock. I just finished mine as well and did moderate OC with stock cooling to get just slightly above X6800 territory, which was easily done. Not trying to rag on you but that's no way to measure temperature. By shutting the system down and rebooting you allow the system to cool a lot (as in 10-12 degrees easy). That happens within seconds of stopping a demanding process. Fire up a monitor software and watch it climb while running ORTHOS, or two instances of Prime95. I believe at that voltage and clock speed it will go higher than 53C even with the excellent cooler you have.

For the record my modest but stable overclock specs:

• C2D E6600 @ 3.04GHz (1.375V core voltage) 338MHz FSB x9 CPU multiplier
• Stock cooling
• 2x1GB G.SKILL DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) @ 900MHz, timing 4-4-3-6 (2T) 2.0V - Memory clock was unlinked from CPU
• EVGA GeForce 8800GTS @ 660MHz core & 1000MHz Mem
• Around 24,300 MIPS and 19,500 MFLOPS in Sandra XI Lite (Beats stock X6800 reference figures)
• 3DMark2006 score of 11060

I did not go higher because of the stock cooling. My system with these settings stays around 41-43C idle and 61-63C under 100% load, depending on ambient. Frankly, I think that's kinda high (for a Core 2 Duo anyway) and I did not want to risk doing damage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sellout

Ok, i totally have to call you on this - i find it very difficult to believe that you managed to achieve a 1.4 ghz overclock on a relatively base model core2 with air cooling - especially when i consider that the highest overclocks i've seen in a REPUTABLE publication are at 3.4ghz with WATER COOLING and are STILL unstable under certain benchmarks. So please, backup your claims with actual WINDOWS screenshots of some form of utility like ntune or speedfan or something that shows you're not completely full of crap. digital pictures of your bios prove NOTHING.

---

Pic of a burn-in that ran overnight for 11:45. 3.5Ghz @ 1.5V.

This is after all of the mods and tweaks I performed after the initial build of the system... new 600W PSU, lapped the CPU, new application of AS5 (thin line down middle of CPU, not the peanut-butter-jelly-sandwich approach of applying it).

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/6...age1eq8.th.jpg

kent very nice OC but next time use orthos so ppl can tell how long you were testing under 2 1/2 hours can't really be considered stable yet. just to let you know for the future. BTW what's the diff btw. the 6420 and the 6400 ? I just got a lowly E4300 @2700 MHZ (MB FSB Limit:mad: ) But @ 1.136 Vcore stable :p when I get a better MB maybe 3.3 on stock maybe more :p
terramir

I didn't do too bad with my Conroe.

So far, it's 5hrs+ Orthos stable--3.2Ghz (8x400) @ 1.368V.

I want to get it to 3.4Ghz (8*425) some day.

https://www.sharkyforums.com/images/...2007/06/38.jpg