+1 Vote for the budget Asus P6T-SE

So I decided to build myself a budget i7 system.

*I picked up a C0/C1 stepping i7 920 for £170 off of OcUK For Sale forums.
*Next I purched 6GB OCZ Platinum PC3-10666 for £72 elsewhere.
*I was stuck on which budget mobo to get, but in the end went for Asus P6T-SE for a little over £160 new. I could find NOTHING about this boards overclocking abilities beforehand and was a little concerned it would be a handicapped P6T.
*Today the 1366 base plate convertor for my TRUE heatsink arrived so I began testing. The clip cost £7.

My first hour of playing with the system has been good. The processor and mobo allow for 3.7GHz on stock volts with just a minimal bump in QPI volts. I just tested 4GHz, but it failed Prime after 4 minutes with 1.35v on the CPU.

I have little doubt 4GHz stable will be easy with a few tweaks.

Will post more (including piccies) later.

3.8GHz with HT and counting. 4GHz gets way too hot unless I turn HT off, but that is cheating. I need to improve my case airflow.

edit: Hetsink was fitted incorrectly and caused high temps for this run. See later posts for proper temps.

With HT off and 1.4v on the CPU I now get 4.1GHz Prime stable. I think the P6T-SE is a great board for those who do not care about SLI support (only crossfire is supported). I am sure my C0 920 is the limiting factor.

Nice one mate. Thank you for the info as im in the market for a new PC soon and cant decide between high end AM3 (955 etc) or a budget i7.

Good to see the budget boards holding their own!

Nice OC you've got there buddy.

I'm not clued up about i7 temps but those look worryingly high. If you was to run Intel burn test you'd probably be reaching 100 dergees.

Have you run any comparison benchmarks yet? I'd be interested to see what the results.

Good luck

trichromes said:

Nice OC you've got there buddy.

I'm not clued up about i7 temps but those look worryingly high. If you was to run Intel burn test you'd probably be reaching 100 dergees.

Have you run any comparison benchmarks yet? I'd be interested to see what the results.

Good luck

Click to expand...

I reseated my TRUE heatsink yesterday and temps dropped by a good 10deg. I did not apply enough AS5 on the original install. Max temps at 4.1GHz are now around 73deg after an hours Priming.

555BUK said:

I reseated my TRUE heatsink yesterday and temps dropped by a good 10deg. I did not apply enough AS5 on the original install. Max temps at 4.1GHz are now around 73deg after an hours Priming.

Click to expand...

Those temps sound more like it. Once your AS5 has settled in they should drop by a few more degrees.

Very impreesive OC 4.1GHZ, are you going to be pushing it any further? I look forward to seeing some benchmarks.

Here are some screenshots at 4.1GHz

Specs
Asus P6T-SE
i7 920 CO
6GB OCZ Platinum PC10666 (1333MHz)
Gainward GTX260 216 Golden Sample
Corsair HX520 PSU
Antec 300 case
2x Samsung F1 1TB drives
TRUE Heatsink with push and pull (twin) fans

BIOS Settings - All Auto except for:-
DRAM Frequency 1561
UCLK Frequency 195
CPU Voltage 1.41v
CPU PLL Voltage 1.90v
QPI/DRAM Core Voltage 1.375v
DRAM Voltage 1.64v (as recommended by OCZ for my ram).
Loadline Callibration Enabled
Hyper Threading Disabled

Note on temps I ran the tests below with an open case to keep temps low during the 5hour+ Prime session. With a closed case temps hit 73-74degrees. Core#3 seems to read lower than other cores. This seems to be a low reading sensor because rotating the heatsink 90/180 gives the same results.

Note on Clocks 4.1GHz stable seems to be the limit of this chip. I am very happy with the OC for this CO part.



32M SuperPI run.


3DMark06 Linky

I am glad I did not waste an extra £100 on an expensive mobo, or an extra £70-£80 on a D0 processor (my C0 was purchased used @ £170). Maybe I could have got 4.2 to 4.3Ghz with a D0, but I will "downclock" my processor to 3.8 for 24/7 usage anyway.