New Core2Duo Overclocking Rig (Pics to come)

All-

Thank you for the advice and ideas you have given me on what to put in my next system. I was going to wait a few more months, but several recent price drops and rebates have caused me to pull the trigger on this a little early.

The following parts are on order, and will arrive on Thursday:

Core2Duo E6420 2.13Ghz CPU - $190
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler - $65
EVGA nForce650i Ultra Motherboard - $110/$100
EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB Superclocked Video Card - $380/$350
Corsair XMS2 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 800 RAM Kit - $155/$105
Antec P150 White Steel Case w/430W PSU - $140
Maxtor 500GB 7200rpm SATA2 Hard Drive - $100
Sony NEC Optiarc 18x DVD+-R Burner - $32

Total Price after rebates, discounts, shipping, taxes = $1167.48

I will pull my Creative Labs X-Fi and Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000rpm hard drive from my current rig into this new rig.

The plan is to overclock this thing as far as it will go (hoping to reach 3.0Ghz+) and turn it into a cheap gaming machine. I will post pics of the wonderful box of goodies as they arrive from Mr.UPS man, the build process, and the final result later this week when I am done.


Can anybody recommend a good image hosting service where I can host the images?

Day 1: First Parts Arrive

The first batch of parts came in today. The rest should be here tomorrow. Ooh, I can't wait!



http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/4299/pict2295ua5.jpg
The first part to come in today was the Maxtor 7200rpm 500GB SATA2 hard drive I ordered from Fry's. This hard drive is going in to my current Shuttle SFF computer, and eventually will be given to my brother-in-law.



http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/8711/pict2310su0.jpg
I popped the 500GB into my Shuttle SFF PC, cloned the hard drive from my Western Digital 74GB Raptor, and pulled the Raptor out of the Shuttle. This Raptor will be the primary hard drive for the new rig.



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My Sound Blaster X-Fi card, pulled out of my Shuttle SFF, and destined for use in the new rig.



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A little later in the day, the UPS man brings me a present... my Antec P150 case.


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Front shot of the Antec P150 case, with the painted glossy white panels and brushed aluminum front bezel. Wasn't a fan of the white case when I saw it on the website, but it looks a lot better than I had expected.

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Rear shot of the Antec P150 case. Thumb screws on the main panel. Pretty standard stuff.


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Interior shot of the Antec P150case. Comes with a Neo 430W PSU with modular cables, a large 120mm exhaust fan (with variable speed switch), and a cable management system (not shown).


http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/7776/pict2305uf3.jpg
The air intake grille on the front is filtered, to prevent dust from entering into the system and forming into dust bunnies. The intake is located just in front of the hard drive bays, to ensure those get lots of cooling.


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Taking a look at the hard drive bay itself, I have the option of using standard drive rail mountings, or the sound-dampening rubber band system seen here. This rubber band system is designed to suspend the hard drive in mid-air, to dampen any sounds from hard drive vibration. This case is clearly designed for silent PC's.


[IMG]http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/5559/pict2311ig7.jpg[/IMG]
I suspended my Raptor in the rubber band system, to give you an idea what that might look like. Definitely not designed for transporting the PC case in this state, but I can't wait to see how it works in silencing the PC.



http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/2811/pict2307vb5.jpg
We can see some sound dampening material on the interior of the side panels. Hopefully, this PC will be a lot quieter than my noisy little heatbox SFF case.

Day 2: The Guts

More parts came in last Thursday. I had a chance to build the system before I went on vacation for the long weekend.

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/4118/pict2312rz8.jpg
A little gift from the UPS man.


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All the parts laid out in their original boxes, ready to be installed.


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The Tuniq Tower 120 is a *HUGE* CPU cooler. I put it next ot my cell phone for an idea of scale. HUGE.


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The EVGA 650i motherboard that I ordered. Simple, bare. Exactly what I'd expect out of a budget overclocker's board.


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The Intel E6420 CPU mounted in socket, and slathered with a thin layer of Arctic Silver 5.

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The CPU and CPU cooler mounted on the motherboard. Because of the massive size and weight of the CPU cooler, it has to be mounted with the motherboard outside of the case.

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Sliding the motherboard into the case was a tight fit. But it finally got in there.


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The cable management system of the Antec P150 case. Keeps a lot of the motherboard header cables out of the way, for a clean interior.


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The black front plate of the optical drive, peeking out of the front drive bay cover.


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Final shot of the internal build of the comp. Cables are out of the way, and the interior is kept clean.

[QUOTE=kent1146]All-

Thank you for the advice and ideas you have given me on what to put in my next system. I was going to wait a few more months, but several recent price drops and rebates have caused me to pull the trigger on this a little early.

The following parts are on order, and will arrive on Thursday:

Core2Duo E6420 2.13Ghz CPU - $190
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler - $65
EVGA nForce650i Ultra Motherboard - $110/$100
EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB Superclocked Video Card - $380/$350
Corsair XMS2 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 800 RAM Kit - $155/$105
Antec P150 White Steel Case w/430W PSU - $140
Maxtor 500GB 7200rpm SATA2 Hard Drive - $100
Sony NEC Optiarc 18x DVD+-R Burner - $32

Total Price after rebates, discounts, shipping, taxes = $1167.48

I will pull my Creative Labs X-Fi and Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000rpm hard drive from my current rig into this new rig.

The plan is to overclock this thing as far as it will go (hoping to reach 3.0Ghz+) and turn it into a cheap gaming machine. I will post pics of the wonderful box of goodies as they arrive from Mr.UPS man, the build process, and the final result later this week when I am done.


Can anybody recommend a good image hosting service where I can host the



Hi:

The power supply is not large enough for the vid cd you want to use. I would get at least a 550W with no less than 18A 12V rails. Also, power supplies that come with cases are usually not as good as stand alone. Caps and other components not quality nor big enough to handle the load for very long. It may last awhile but look out down the road and hope it doesn't take anything with it. That is the most important thing in your computer.

The ps I just bought cost as much as your whole case. PC Power single rail 610W 49A 12V, 30A 5V. and built like a tank.

GAry

that rubber damping band and sound isolation plate is pretty cool.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sgtgto

Hi:

The power supply is not large enough for the vid cd you want to use. I would get at least a 550W with no less than 18A 12V rails. Also, power supplies that come with cases are usually not as good as stand alone. Caps and other components not quality nor big enough to handle the load for very long. It may last awhile but look out down the road and hope it doesn't take anything with it. That is the most important thing in your computer.

The ps I just bought cost as much as your whole case. PC Power single rail 610W 49A 12V, 30A 5V. and built like a tank.

GAry

---

Thanks for the info.

I thought about that when I was ordering parts... the PSU that comes with the system isn't a generic PSU, it's an Antec Neo 430W Silent PSU. I was curious about whether it would be enough... I figured I'd just give it a shot, and see what happens. I've been running an x1950Pro AGP in my AthlonX2 4400+ SFF system using the 240W PSU built in to the SFF case, and it's been working fine for a few months.

Post updated with shots of the internal build process.

I got a chance to play with it quickly before I left for vacation for a week. I overclocked it to 2.8Ghz (350Mhz FSB) without any adjustment to VCore. CPU temps are stable at 40C idle, 42C under load. 3DMark05 score of around 16,300 running at 2.8Ghz.

I'll play around with overclocking a bit more when I get back in about a week, to see how far I can push this. I'm hoping to get at least 3.2Ghz by increasing Vcore.

dude to be honest, that case looks messed up. cd-rom bay whacked, and that psu is balancing on 4 screws on one side with nothing to keep it straight on the other side.

a very nice rig though, i'm jealous :(

:) :)

Jesus that Tuniq Tower cooler is incredibly big. Its twice the size of a midgets house! Incredible mate looks like a pretty good rig, how longs she been up and running? Do any tests yet :P?

That power supply will be fine for one 8800GTS.

Nice build, I might look at something like that for a Linux box, but with a less powerful GPU.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Liger83

Jesus that Tuniq Tower cooler is incredibly big. Its twice the size of a midgets house! Incredible mate looks like a pretty good rig, how longs she been up and running? Do any tests yet :P?

---

I finished the build at around 11pm last Thursday evening, and had XP up and running by 1am. The only thing I've been able to do with it is give it a pretty mild overclock to 2.8Ghz (350Mhz FSB), and run 3DMark05. Runs at around:
- 13,200 under 3DMark05 at stock 2.13Ghz
- 16,300 under 3DMark05 at 2.8Ghz

I have not been able to get it to clock faster at stock VCore. I won't be able to play with it again until I get back in town at the end of this week. But when I get back, I plan on:
- Removing the CPU cooler, and polishing it with fine sandpaper and metal polish.
- Orienting the CPU cooler so that the fan blows toward the case exhaust (keeps all the airflow going in the same direction.
- Tampering with VCore to get better overclocks.
- Buying Shadowrun, so I have a game with eye candy to stress this system.

jeebus that cpu cooler is huge.

Sgtgto-

You were right... the Antec Neo 430W PSU that came with the case wasn't enough. I was getting a lot of random crashes and lockups.

I put a Seasonic M12 600W PSU in earlier tonight. Not only has that thing been rock stable, but I was also able to tweak out an extra 150Mhz overclock out of that thing.

Since I had the case open, I also lapped the heatsink (polished it with 3 grits of sandpaper, and metal polish, to give it a mirror finish), reapplied Arctic Silver 5, and rotated the CPU cooler fan so that it pulls air from the case, instead of pulling air below the PSU.

Final system specs are in my updated sig.

Schnap! Very nice! :D

Yep. I am a noob. I thought 2.95Ghz was the top stable overclock for my CPU.

So, as it turns out, my motherboard BIOS has a setting called "SPP Voltage". It appears to tweak the voltage going to the northbridge / southbridge. Once I started tweaking that, it was like the floodgates opened. FSB overclock just kept going and going and going.

End result was, I got an extra 700Mhz out of the CPU. Final stable overclock speed is 3.65Ghz at 1.5875V.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kent1146

Yep. I am a noob. I thought 2.95Ghz was the top stable overclock for my CPU.

So, as it turns out, my motherboard BIOS has a setting called "SPP Voltage". It appears to tweak the voltage going to the northbridge / southbridge. Once I started tweaking that, it was like the floodgates opened. FSB overclock just kept going and going and going.

End result was, I got an extra 700Mhz out of the CPU. Final stable overclock speed is 3.65Ghz at 1.5875V.

---

DAMN. what is the default clock of your cpu anyway?

I'm a Noob too and got my e6600 to 3.2ghz (default of 2.4 ghz)

here's my bios screenshot. can you show me your bios shots? because other than just upping the FSB I don't know what else to set.
https://www.sharkyforums.com/images/...2008/03/73.jpg

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).


http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/4539/pict2412sb2.jpg
This is my FSB clock adjustment. The rating of 1825 is quad data rate, and represents FSB of 456Mhz.


http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/6553/pict2414wr1.jpg
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.


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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.

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

So if you want to try and tweak your settings, I'd recommend that you try the steps I used, of cranking up FSB/Voltages until your system won't post, then cranking them back down until your system is stable. Make sure that you have enough CPU cooling while you're doing this.

And I would bring the PCIe bus clock back down to 100Mhz. I read somewhere it doesn't speed up your graphics card (GPU core and memory clocks do, not PCIe bus clock), and risks damage to the card.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kent1146

So if you want to try and tweak your settings, I'd recommend that you try the steps I used, of cranking up FSB/Voltages until your system won't post, then cranking them back down until your system is stable. Make sure that you have enough CPU cooling while you're doing this.

And I would bring the PCIe bus clock back down to 100Mhz. I read somewhere it doesn't speed up your graphics card (GPU core and memory clocks do, not PCIe bus clock), and risks damage to the card.

---

hmm... pcie bus 100mhz.. maybe that's why my oblivion crash..

can't rememeber where I read it but my specific card and mobo seems to run good on 102bus pcie..

hmm, your cpu core is at 1.587
I though I read in the c2d manual that it will hold max of 1.5 or it will go bad...

It's possible.

But it's moot... 3.65Ghz wasn't stable. Crashed after a few hours of SuperPi. Clocked it down to 3.6Ghz at 1.5V, and gonna see if I can bring the voltage down even further.

ahh screw it, I messed around with it for about 20-25 minutes

and can't get it to run stable at 3.4 or 3.6 ghz.

It's probably and my inexperience and impatience.
to tell ya the truth I really don't know what I was doing.

I got my 3.2ghz OC by following this guide.

A Guide to Gigabyte P965 Overclocking and BIOS Tweaks
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1169366

it's rock solid at 3.2 ghz so I'm just going to leave it alone and not be greedy. don't want to damage my equpment since I do some work with it.

I love the look of the case. Are you happy with it?