OC queries for my rig

Banzai_Joe · 16 Nov 2007 at 09:49

Last night i OC'd my rig (See sig) from stock levels to 3GHz and ran Orthos for 10 hours with no errors and the cpu temps reaching 64° max on stock cooler, which i'm rather happy about.

Now, i'm thinking of the next level.
Questions:

1. I have a spare brand new freezer pro 7 that i could use to maybe bring the cpu temp down and allow me to push for 3.2/3.4GHz. Is it worth using arctic silver 5 thermite to help with temps as well?
2. Is it worth me adding a northbridge cooler?
3. One of my front case fans is noisy as hell, so i turned it off about a year ago. Are there any particular brands i could replace it with (it was the stock one supplied with the Lian Li case), so it can add extra air flow again, since i'm now an OC'ing freak! :rolleyes:

4. Does overclocking affect hdd temps? If so, is it worth looking at a cooling solution for it. I only have one hdd in the rig.

I appreciate more fans will mean more noise, but tbh, its more of an experiment really. Once proven i can always look to reducing the noise with better quality fans or something.

GPU question

1. I want to overclock my 7900gs (256mb). Its the OCUK version. What the best software to use and would that need extra cooling as well, considering all the other overclocking i'm doing?

2. Whats the best realworld test to perform on games before and after an overclock to see the difference? FRAPS? or something like that?

Your help would be most appreciated, thanks

Admiral Huddy · 16 Nov 2007 at 09:52

You are overclocking on the stock cooler.. Yes get that Artic freezer in with Artic Silver...

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=10437468&postcount=3

OC software for GC.. You may bale to use coolbits. Otherwise use Rivatune

For benchmarking, Some games come with their own like F.E.A.R. and company of heros. I tend to use them. Otherwise it's 3d mark06.

Custom PC benchmark 07 is a great way of benchmarking the PC in general.

Banzai_Joe · 16 Nov 2007 at 09:59

Excellent, thanks for that. I'm wondering then if its the paste that makes the extra difference in lowering the temps.
I recently built a quad core rig, and without overclocking, i changed the stock cooler for the freezer pro 7 and..............it made 1° difference! Honestly, that was it, 1°.
It runs 50° at idle and 68° under load when 3d rendering.

PikKOn · 16 Nov 2007 at 12:39

What other ways can you make the CPU go under load... does burning DVDs count? Does it stress the CPU a fair amount?

3D Rendering I suppose you are using 3D Studio Max, Maya or Milkshake?

Pneumonic · 16 Nov 2007 at 13:22

To stress your CPU use: Prime95 - ver25.4 - ftp://mersenne.org/gimps/p95v254.zip

Paste makes a difference depending on the brand... typically its normally advised that you run the PC for 6 hours after installing the paste and then let it cool to room temperature this will "activate" the paste at which point you can expect to see upto a 8-10c difference in temperature... Someone correct me if i am wrong! but i do believe pastes take up to 200 hours to reach there full potential

I would suggest that you have applied the paste incorrectly / mounted the heatsink incorrectly / or dont have the fan at max RPM if you are only seeing a 1c difference from the stock cooler to the freezer pro.. you should see more than that

Banzai_Joe · 16 Nov 2007 at 13:30

Pretty sure i've mounted it correctly as i've built dozens of rigs before and you usually 'know' when you've done something wrong. But in any case, i'll certainly check it over again and see.
Oh...and Prime95, i was told Orthos is better for stress testing, which is what i used on my rig at home for 10 hours (see my op)
Thanks for the tip.

PikkOn: yeah using Max to render (not me, i'm just the guy who sorts the I.T. out for the designers at work). Burning dvd's won't juice the cpu up as much as max will.

Pneumonic · 16 Nov 2007 at 13:46

k.Jacko said:
Pretty sure i've mounted it correctly as i've built dozens of rigs before and you usually 'know' when you've done something wrong. But in any case, i'll certainly check it over again and see.
Oh...and Prime95, i was told Orthos is better for stress testing, which is what i used on my rig at home for 10 hours (see my op)
Thanks for the tip.

Prime95/Orthos both do a good job and should load the CPU nicely.. If its mounted correctly and paste applied correctly then I would suggest that you check your BIOS options to see if it has any fan settings.. i.e. might be running it at low RPM to save Db/power

PikKOn · 16 Nov 2007 at 16:13

So this Prime 95 and Orthos are basically just to prove that you have a solid 100% overclock... but for everyday use, i.e. word processing doing the odd Database development in Oracle is it really necessary?

Clocked mine to 3.2GhZ but to stress it to those limits would someone like myself really need to do that? I am guessing Prime and Orthos stress it to an extent whereby you would probably never conduct as much processing as these tests do or am I wrong here?

Pneumonic · 16 Nov 2007 at 16:27

PikKOn said:
So this Prime 95 and Orthos are basically just to prove that you have a solid 100% overclock... but for everyday use, i.e. word processing doing the odd Database development in Oracle is it really necessary?

Clocked mine to 3.2GhZ but to stress it to those limits would someone like myself really need to do that? I am guessing Prime and Orthos stress it to an extent whereby you would probably never conduct as much processing as these tests do or am I wrong here?

You are correct Prime95/Orthos are going to run your cpu at much higher stresses than everyday applications... you can have have a 99.9% stable system for everyday use that wont survive a Prime95 stress test.. Really its just to prove that your system at maxium load is 99.9% stable.

For instance I clocked my brothers E6850 to 3.8ghz and is stable on Prime95 for around 4 hours before it gives in

but in the 3 months his been using it for gamming / etc.. has never had a problem

PikKOn · 16 Nov 2007 at 21:23

^^ I am in the same boat as your brother where I have clocked mine to 3.2GhZ but isn't stable on Prime for even a minute :| but when I play games or use Oracle on my comp its fine. Although according to CPU-Z I am running at a very low voltage... think it was 1.344V if I upped it would probably run fine on Prime... probably.

Pneumonic · 16 Nov 2007 at 22:04

PikKOn said:
^^ I am in the same boat as your brother where I have clocked mine to 3.2GhZ but isn't stable on Prime for even a minute :| but when I play games or use Oracle on my comp its fine. Although according to CPU-Z I am running at a very low voltage... think it was 1.344V if I upped it would probably run fine on Prime... probably.

Well I would guess you probably need some more volts... but as long as you are happy with the performance and its stable for what you do then thats all that really matters