New Quad Core Build

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 9:30 pm

Ok I've finally got it together and cranked up a little bit ago. Bios updated for motherboard along with a fresh mod of the Antec Case I've been using for the last year or so with a few custom cuts and I've sealed up the front vents around the outer edge with some sealant to prevent air flow from around them and force only air through the lower vents. I've taken a quick snap shot of it with my cell phone but I'll prob add more of the build tomorrow when its daylight and easier to see vs just lights.

System components I went with a Motherboard suggested by Shagster which seems to be working ok and looks rather simple yet nice.

I'm using a simple Antec aluminum case with clear left side, dual 120mm one in back one in front fans for a clean push and pull air flow and to keep everything quiet. I'm also still water cooling with my Zalman Passive tower which still works perfect!

List as follows:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Yorkfield 2.5GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor
OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
ASUS P5K-E LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard
BFG 8800GTX 768MB Graphics card
PC Power and Cooling PSU 510SLi

I have to say that I'm pretty happy so far with everything as I'm still going to hang with XP Pro 32bit at this time..I've installed only Device drivers till Monday when SP3 comes out I'll finish the rest. I don't plan on OCing the processor any for at least a few weeks to allow it to burn in a little.

Quick snap shot of front of case...

Rivas · Post by **Rivas** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 11:00 pm

Nice system ...congrats.

Whats your 3Dmark score?

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 7:46 am

Rivas wrote:Nice system ...congrats.

Whats your 3Dmark score?

prob will never know... I hardly use that anymore plus Its just sitting here with SP2 on it and no updates as I won't be putting SP3 on till monday when its released. I'll prob end up putting BF2,Crysis and COD4 on it..strip down the services and let it roll.

Joel · Post by **Joel** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 3:38 pm

OC that biznatch! Have to say though, I am not too impressed by the overclocks people have been able to achieve with the new 45nm quads. Add to that their susceptibility to electron migration and lower multipliers than the equivalent quads of the previous generation and it makes the decision blurred.

I recently purchased a Q6600, then fried my motherboard doing a BIOS update so it could support the processor. Currently waiting on my new motherboard to get here.

Nice system, cool case.. What is it?

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 3:46 pm

Joel wrote:OC that biznatch! Have to say though, I am not too impressed by the overclocks people have been able to achieve with the new 45nm quads. Add to that their susceptibility to electron migration and lower multipliers than the equivalent quads of the previous generation and it makes the decision blurred.

I recently purchased a Q6600, then fried my motherboard doing a BIOS update so it could support the processor. Currently waiting on my new motherboard to get here.

Nice system, cool case.. What is it?

Its the Antec P160
http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=81602

If you look at the front in that page you see on the outer edge of the front it has vents..I sealed those up cause dust,cat hair and whatever was slipping in around the front lower vents which catches 90% of it on them. I used a sealant then I took a grey fleck stone paint and covered it after I masked off all chrome parts and the side window to give it a new look and feel. The bios update to the motherboard went great and quick.. no problems and it picked up the processor just fine. I won't OC it for at least a month to give it time to burn in.

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 4:47 pm

nice PC dude, you gonna run F@H on that puppy ?

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 6:21 pm

Mark wrote:nice PC dude, you gonna run F@H on that puppy ?

I haven't run a folding program in prob two years cause the last time it screwed stuff up and gave me problems for gaming and I was playing in leagues and competition and couldn't afford the issues. I was meaning to build a spare rig one day and let it do only that but never got around to it...perhaps soon though.

This rig will be stripped down of any and all services not needed that can improve my performance in game.. pure gaming beast!~

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 6:56 am

Sava700 wrote:I haven't run a folding program in prob two years cause the last time it screwed stuff up and gave me problems for gaming and I was playing in leagues and competition and couldn't afford the issues. I was meaning to build a spare rig one day and let it do only that but never got around to it...perhaps soon though.

I just shut my Folding down when I fire up Battlefield or BF2. When done playing...I launch Folding again. That way..it's at least crunching for 18-23 hours of the day.

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 8:25 am

YeOldeStonecat wrote:I just shut my Folding down when I fire up Battlefield or BF2. When done playing...I launch Folding again. That way..it's at least crunching for 18-23 hours of the day.

It caused more problems than just playing games...I can't remember but it was enough to make me reformat and get really pissed.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 9:53 am

Sava700 wrote:It caused more problems than just playing games...I can't remember but it was enough to make me reformat and get really pissed.

Format because of Folding? *snicker*
Quite similar to a DOS based program..just runs from one directory.

Roody · Post by **Roody** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 9:56 am

Nice PC Sava.

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:59 am

YeOldeStonecat wrote: Format because of Folding? *snicker*
Quite similar to a DOS based program..just runs from one directory.

yeah I was so pissed..I backed up everything and formatted..haven't used it since... not sure what it did. But it may go back on a machine I pc together one of these days..till then nope not again.

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:15 am

Sava700 wrote:yeah I was so pissed..I backed up everything and formatted..haven't used it since... not sure what it did. But it may go back on a machine I pc together one of these days..till then nope not again.

Nothing that just closing the program wouldn't fix. If you were having system wide issues it wasn't from folding.

I've had other people say the same thing and usually the issue is a frozen/unfinished installer or a program fighting with it for lowest priority of cpu time.

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:32 am

YARDofSTUF wrote:Nothing that just closing the program wouldn't fix. If you were having system wide issues it wasn't from folding.

I've had other people say the same thing and usually the issue is a frozen/unfinished installer or a program fighting with it for lowest priority of cpu time.

naw I know better.. something with the folding program was causing a issue, I can't remember details but I know darn well what I was doing and it got very annoying, sure the computer was in need of a format anyway so that was the quickest way for me to just remove and forget..and never look back.

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 5:03 pm

YeOldeStonecat wrote:I just shut my Folding down when I fire up Battlefield or BF2. When done playing...I launch Folding again. That way..it's at least crunching for 18-23 hours of the day.

i am running 2 SMP units right now on my quad, games run just fine and dandy while doing so.

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 9:44 pm

Here is a interesting issue or maybe no issue but appears that way to me.. Here is a screen shot of the core speed..CPU-Z shows the same thing but sometimes it will bounce to 2500.0 etc and then back down to that number you see in the picture.. perhaps I need to bump up the voltage cause its set to auto right now in bios?

Rivas · Post by **Rivas** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 11:12 pm

Did you flash your bios with newer version?
I had same problem long time ago and it was bios issue.

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:08 am

that is probably the power saving features running, not sure what they are called on your mobo, but i turned them off on my abit board.

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 7:57 am

Rivas wrote:Did you flash your bios with newer version?
I had same problem long time ago and it was bios issue.

yes the version is only 3 weeks old...one of the first things I did.

Its running fine..but just something doesn't feel as if its running to its full potential without overclocking..

Joel · Post by **Joel** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:24 am

It's just Intel's speedstep feaures I'm. If you examined the CPU-Z details while it was switching between 2000 and 2500 you'd more than likely find the multiplier going up and down. Personally I've always felt that with Speedstep certain processes feel laggier than with it disabled, which is why I always do disable it.

Are you sure you disabled it?

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:44 am

Joel wrote:It's just Intel's speedstep feaures I'm. If you examined the CPU-Z details while it was switching between 2000 and 2500 you'd more than likely find the multiplier going up and down. Personally I've always felt that with Speedstep certain processes feel laggier than with it disabled, which is why I always do disable it.

Are you sure you disabled it?

so I need to make sure I disable something called "Speedstep"?

I don't remember seeing that but I'll look again when I get home.

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 7:36 pm

ok found speedstep and disabled it...i'll monitor it tonight

Edit: cpu-z still shows those lower 2003 or 2004 level....

I'm rather curious of everything at this point.

Rivas · Post by **Rivas** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 12:32 am

Joel, the 45nm cpu's are excellent for overclocking.Much much better.

Sava try adjusting timings for memory, voltage cpu/ram and everything else in bios.

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 3:49 am

Sava700 wrote:ok found speedstep and disabled it...i'll monitor it tonight

Edit: cpu-z still shows those lower 2003 or 2004 level....

I'm rather curious of everything at this point.

Does the bios have another option for cpu throttling in power management options?

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 7:40 am

YARDofSTUF wrote:Does the bios have another option for cpu throttling in power management options?

has alot of options.. I believe I'm going to take some snap shots this evening with my cell phone and post them for suggestions.

Rivas · Post by **Rivas** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 2:19 pm

Try clearing your bios completely by removing the CMOS battery and letting the mobo sit there for a minute.

It might turn out that setting the board to factory defaults in BIOS isn't the same as a CMOS clear with the jumper.

Joel · Post by **Joel** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 3:24 pm

Rivas wrote:Try clearing your bios completely by removing the CMOS battery and letting the mobo sit there for a minute.

It might turn out that setting the board to factory defaults in BIOS isn't the same as a CMOS clear with the jumper.

The defaults would be to have power saving features enabled.

Also, 45nm chips do overclock well but the problem is, even though they run cooler and use less power, to get to higher clocks you still have to push voltage. Because of the small size of the insulation however you cannot push past 1.5ish due to voltage migration and ultimately frying your chip very prematurely. This is why even though the 65nms run hotter they overclock higher - because keeping your processor cooler is something you can actually change and affect whereas with voltage migration you're out of luck.

Rivas · Post by **Rivas** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 3:44 pm

Joel wrote:The defaults would be to have power saving features enabled.

Also, 45nm chips do overclock well but the problem is, even though they run cooler and use less power, to get to higher clocks you still have to push voltage. Because of the small size of the insulation however you cannot push past 1.5ish due to voltage migration and ultimately frying your chip very prematurely. This is why even though the 65nms run hotter they overclock higher - because keeping your processor cooler is something you can actually change and affect whereas with voltage migration you're out of luck.

Well did you see this ? I'm not arguing just look at the numbers.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3184&p=12

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 4:52 pm

ok here are some snap shots of main bios settings.
Yall let me know if I need to change something or whatever.. as you can see most is set to auto.

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 5:09 pm

I believe the CPU TM function is throttling management or something.

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 5:15 pm

better lock down the PCIE to 100 before overclocking

Joel · Post by **Joel** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 7:09 pm

Set the "CPU Ratio Setting" from auto to 7.5.

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 7:16 pm

Mark wrote:better lock down the PCIE to 100 before overclocking

well I just want to make sure the CPU is operating at what its supposed to do before even trying to overclock..so just looking at settings I should adjust to ensure that. As for OCing..well I may do that in a month from now and thats a whole different discussion

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 7:21 pm

Ok googling it seems CPU TM function will only throttle if the chip gets to hto so Id leave that, but they say C1E is throttling too:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/tr ... g-cpu.html

Post #5

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 7:30 pm

Joel wrote:Set the "CPU Ratio Setting" from auto to 7.5.

ok I'll do that

YARDofSTUF wrote:Ok googling it seems CPU TM function will only throttle if the chip gets to hto so Id leave that, but they say C1E is throttling too:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/tr ... g-cpu.html

Post #5

Ok I'll disable C1E

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 8:26 pm

ok did those things but cpu-z is still showing the Core speed to be 2003.9Mhz and not 2500.0 as it should be.. Windows System properties is reporting 2.50Ghz as is System Information showing ~2504Mhz

so what do I believe here??

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 8:33 pm

is this an up to date version of cpuz ?

version 1.44.2

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 8:50 pm

Mark wrote:is this an up to date version of cpuz ?

version 1.44.2

yep

Rivas · Post by **Rivas** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 11:23 pm

Different mobo but this is how it should looks, the settings are quite similar, manufacturer ASUS as well :

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Fri Apr 25, 2008 8:23 am

hmm so suggestions as to why CPU-Z isn't reading the processor right but everything else is?