Quad into a mITX with 120W? No way :)

Grimgoth

Grimgoth

Grimgoth

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Well, I wanted to wait till I got an optical drive into it, but I ordered the wrong bits, so thats going to wait.

I posted a while back asking about power requirements of bits, wondering whether it was possible to get a quad core into the mITX form factor, without going through the standard ATX power supply route of the Sg05.

So here is the result of my experiment :)

Specs:
Q6600 SLACR 95W
Zotac GeForce 9300 Wifi
Artic Cooling FP7
2x 1GB Geil Orange stick ram @ 1.8V that I got off the MM
An old 250GB SATA hard drive with windows already on that I had lying around
An InWin BM639 mITX case with 120W PSU

The only voltage settings in the Zotac BIOS is to increase voltage, so with everything hooked up, it POSTS, but as soon as windows tries to load and all 4 cores kick in, it hangs. 1 stick/ 2 stick RAM makes no difference.

So I brought an external power supply and hooked it all up to that, used RMClock to undervolt the Q6600 to 1.1625 V (for some reason, it won't let me go lower, although the q6600 supposedly can boot on 0.8V...)

switched everything back to the tiny 120W, fired up the whole thing again, and viola- POST, windows loaded, and while I haven't run the full prime benchmarks, has been running BOINC happily for a couple of days, as you will see in the screenies.

Other things to note- the FP7 mounting clips to the socket is useless! broke 2 out of the 4 clips. Also, its a really tight fit with the Zotac motherboard cooler. As you might notice from:

xn4vgx.jpg


Getting the slimline SATA optical DVD drive now, and for those attempting to use slimlines, remember to get the converter (which i forgot!). and note that OcUK sells IDE slimlines too- the mistake which I made.

Hopefully with the optical drive, it will fire up, but if it doesn't, i can still make some power saving by switching to a notebook hard drive i think- which I also have lying around somewhere. Oh, and I suppose I can yank out the wifi module too....

So here are the screenies of a 2.4 GHz quad core (no i haven't tried overclocking yet), running stable in a tiny tiny mITX case with a 120W power supply.

Oh, and you can tell, its running a bit hot- not tried to CUDA the GPU to see how much hotter everything gets yet.

zl9nvq.jpg


2afg8d4.jpg
 
you could have opted for a Q8200S. it is about £60 more expensive which i know is steep, but it has a TDP of 65W, and has a yorkfield core, which is faster clock for clock than the kentsfield.
 
timefalls said:
you could have opted for a Q8200S. it is about £60 more expensive which i know is steep, but it has a TDP of 65W, and has a yorkfield core, which is faster clock for clock than the kentsfield.
Click to expand...

Yes, but for those of us with Q6600's that want to go smaller that would mean selling and buying another...

Grimgoth; said:
Q6600 running on 120W
Click to expand...
Thats great news that you got it working. Now try power a 8800GTX with it :)

One day I might take the leap and get a SG05, but I've gotta replace my 8800GTX, TRUE120, change of board, and find space for 5hdd's :D
 
You'll be running that PSU at it's maximum output and it won't last long. For comparison using a power meter my Q6600 system with

Q6600@ stock 2.4Gb but 1.025v (undervolted)
Intel P45 motherboard
8Gb DDR2 RAM
3* RE3 HDD's
1* Samsung F2G 1.5Tb
Nvidia 250GTS 1024Mb

and a few fans draws 139w at IDLE, and 250w in Prime95. Clearly I have more drives, but all of those drives add up to around 20w Idle. There is no way your PSU will be able to sustain that load in the long term.
 
Blasted citylink... still waiting on the optical drives and converter, hopefully arriving today.

I'm starting to think that i will be needing to get one of them home power meters.....

Anyhow, the machine has been running almost basically non stop since I posted, I think it was down the evening of the friday and sat because I had others staying over.

All 4 CPUs are at 100% load all of the time, because I'm having it crunching seti@home and other projects using BOINC.

While it would be great to get a seperate GPU on it, I have to say that the 9300 on the board is pretty decent- I can run Mindark's Project Entropia on it (very low settings), as well as Atlantica Online (again low settings). And this with BOINC chugging away in the background.

I would love to get my hands on some of those S CPUs.... but having wiki'ed and googled, I can't find anyone who will sell them to me.
EDIT: Ah, just googled again, and found one place that has em.... eyeing a Q9550s, but at 245 quid, sigh.

When that optical drive arrives, I'll be taking it apart, so I'll do the physical restraint on the different fans in there to figure out which fan is making the most ruckus.

Does running a PSU at 100% load for long periods shorten its lifespan?
I think if I remember right, PSU's have a sweet spot at about 85% load?
I'll keep this going, and maybe I'll be able to find a FSP 150W that will fit in the case when it blows.
 
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Yes, yours could well be running over 100% as they can take a little more for short periods. Personally I think you're taking a risk with that CPU. When a PSU blows it can take the components with it.

Defo get a power meter. You can get them from online for £12 or so. It's well worth it.
Good luck! :)
 
Stonedofmoo said:
Yes, yours could well be running over 100% as they can take a little more for short periods. Personally I think you're taking a risk with that CPU. When a PSU blows it can take the components with it.

Defo get a power meter. You can get them from online for £12 or so. It's well worth it.
Good luck! :)
Click to expand...

That or a Q8***S m8 really think that 120w is on its limits if im honest.
 
Well, the optical has arrived, all plugged in and running no problems. Played most of a DVD to test while BOINC was running. no probs. so there must be some more headroom somewhere. hmm. Do Blue ray drives eat more juice?

Will be getting a power meter and probably an S quad, but for now, some benchmarks :)

Prime 95 running

2upv9c4.jpg


unfortunately had to stop it cos BOINC went off snooze, and started crunching again, resulting in the 4 tests going out of sync. oh well. it runs.

This is for those wondering how the onboard GPU performs, ran a 3DMark06 test. A very low score, but hey, the test actually ran to completion.

jhtwfn.jpg
 
I'd have to agree with what everyone before has said, you are pushing your luck. And adding an optical of any type to that mix isn't going to do you any favours, probably even with one of the 's' quads, I'd be looking for a new PSU asap.
 
Something to consider with the extra outlay I notice Virtualization Technology is missing on the Q8200S when compared to the Q6600 presumably because it isn't on the vanilla Q8200.
 
WAY pushing your luck in my opinion ...

not a good idea at all

my old passive HTPC - with a E8500 and not a lot else was drawing 90W at full load ...
 
Ive seen quite a few people lately on this forum building rather beasty itx systems around small sff psu's that were simply never intended to take such loads, its just not good practice.

A word of warning, running small psu's out of their efficiently range will put your entire system at risk.

I know of a case where a sff psu kicked the bucket and took with it the mb and cpu in a mini itx server system because the array of raid drives drew to much current. It worked fine for a good while then fired it up one day and nothing.
Really is a ticking time bomb.
 
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Well, just got a cheapo £14.99 power meter that you have to plug into the socket and read off the display (no memory etc), and unfortunately my current desk set up means I'm not going to be able to take a piccy with the monitor, box and plug at the same time, but:
the system idles at about 60 W
full load with boinc running is 100-102 W
and full load with a dvd playing is 1 W more than that. Admittedly I don't have any speakers plugged in, but you get the idea. So I think the PSU should be able to handle this....
leaving the thing plugged in till I come back from work tonight to see if there are any unexpected changes.
 
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