E7200+Gigabyte GA73PVM-S2H+PNY8800GT

[mirandamarquez]

Hi guys, just me again.

I wandered into the local branch of PC world today, actually looking for a PCI wireless card to replace a broken Belkin dongle ( Has anyone had one of these ( F5D7051 ) that lasted for more than a day over the warranty, BTW? ).

Anyway, I wound up buying the following:

Bundled E7200 on a Gigabyte GA73PVM-S2H board, which also included a 'performance' cooler along with a PNY 8800 GT 512 MB ( whole lot came to a smidge over £200, which seemed reasonable to me ).

I had sitting at home a spare SATA drive, 400 watt JeanTech PSU, a 2GB stick of PC6400, a reclaimed DVD drive and a crappy old case that until recently housed my late, lamented Athlon XP 3200+.

I'm on call, so no booze or fun for me tonight, so I thought I'd screw the bits together and see what happened.

As I type this, the XP setup disk is formatting the drive, so I thought I would ask what sort of overclocking potential does this set up reasonably offer?

I may as well do it now, before installing anything else, so any hints, tips or thoughts would be appreciated, and I'll get right down to it.

Advice as to the best drivers/ bios/ settings would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance gentlemen ( and ladies, too, of course )

Merry Christmas,

Mira

xx

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: mirandamarquez
400 watt JeanTech PSU

That doesn't sound good at all. That was the PSU you had your old XP 3200+ on?

 

[cubeless]

should be a easy push to 333mhz fsb... lock your memory at 1:1 and walk the fsb 25mhz at a time... if u have a good cooler set the memory to 3:2 and the voltage to 1.4 and keep going...

the cpu ought to be able to do 3.2 even if it's a 'bad' chip...

then get rivatuner and push the vid card up to 700/1000 and see what it'll do...

 

[mirandamarquez]

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: mirandamarquez
400 watt JeanTech PSU

That doesn't sound good at all. That was the PSU you had your old XP 3200+ on?

No, this came from....somewhere, I forget where. I think it was previously powering a Pentium 4 with a 7950 that I gave to my Daddy when his motherboard broke.

It seems to have booted up ok.

Is this not enough juice do you think?

Mira

 

[nyker96]

e7200 has high multiplier, you can OC it no problem on this board.

 

[error8]

Yeah, I have the impression that PSU is not ok. How many amps does it have on the 12V rail?

 

[mirandamarquez]

Hey Guys, hope you had a great Christmas.

error8: I left the PSU as it was after the machine kept trucking for 24 hours at the stock settings, then ran 3Dmark06, getting a score of 10134.

Nothing broke, so I followed cubeless' advice and ramped up the FSB with the memory ratio at 1.1.

The machine is now up and running at 3.17GHz, on a FSB of 333, with the GPU up at 700/ 750/ 999, all stock volts. CPU is at an average of 44 Degrees C, and drawing 58 volts. GPU is running at 53 degrees.

Just got a 3Dmark06 score of 11803.

Total build cost was under £200.

Worth trying for a wee bit more do you think, guys?

This is more fun than doing the big rig!

Your thoughts?

Mira

xx

 

[SunSamurai]

Im thinking that PSU should be your next upgrade in the casual future.

 

[cubeless]

u r done with cheap thrills...

now u need to start looking at temps (get hwmonitor) as u need to start pushing up voltages and messing with mem dividers and etc...

but u now have extracted the biggest part of the perf gains...

 

[mirandamarquez]

Thanks guys.

I calculated the power requirements for this machine and I think I had better follow all your really helpful advice and get a bigger power supply.

Now, I don't want to break the bank on this baby, so can I get some further advice as to how big a PSU I really need?

Apart from the 9600, I am also using a Belkin 7050 wireless card, and I have also got an additional 5 port USB card that I would like to fit as well.

I also think that the whole plot is going to run hot unless I add some more cooling to the case ( only got one exhaust fan in there at the moment ).

So, based on this info, can anyone suggest firstly, how big a PSU I should choose, and secondly, can anyone suggest a fairly cheap model that will do the business?

Anyone know anything about this:

http://www.dabs.com/productvie...linx=56M6#imagegallery

PS @ cubeless....I left the machine running overnight with the case closed and came back in the morning to see the heat being generated by the GPU inside that case and nearly had kittens!!!!

Went straight back to stock everything, except for keeping the GPU fan cooler at 75% from start up using riva tuner.

You could fry eggs on that thing before the card's own software kicks in!

Thanks guys for ALL your help!

Mira xxx ( and one for luck X )

 

[betasub]

The dabs.com website seems to be down at the moment, but it looks like you are on the right track re: better cooling.

On the release of the 8800GT, there were numerous threads here on ATF about temperatures and improving cooling, as well as tips for changing the video BIOS settings or using RivaTuner to control fan speed/temperature. Nevertheless, getting a good air flow past the card will help that little HSF do its job better. If you can direct an inlet fan towards the expansion card area of the case, it should work well enough (in tandem with the exhaust case fan you have already).

Hope you can find a good deal on a quality PSU, because I've suffered from using Jeantech tat "in an emergency".