Fail CPU is fail

[Arkaign]

At one of my clients, a music production company, they have some Sweetwater workstations that are dedicated for use with Protools/CuBase/Wavelab/etc. Everything about the systems (circa late '06) is pretty nice, but they for some damn reason came with Pentium D 940 processors.

The mobo is an Asus Workstation Pro board, P5DWL or something of the like, pretty cool, supports pretty much everything on Socket 775 other than official 1333mhz FSB support.

The Cpu Cooler is a big Zalman tunnel cooler with push/pull fans, it's in a rackmount case with several 120MM Deltas.

Anyhow, they called me in this morning because the system was locking up / freezing, so I checked the temps. Bios reported 73c, and when I got it back to windows and installed SpeedFan, the cpu temp was around 100-102C. I opened defrag and started it, and temps jumped to 122c before the screen when blank and the machine went into some kind of thermal protection. I couldn't get it to reboot until I physically unplugged the power and reconnected it. Checked the fitment of the behemoth heatsink, checked the thermal transfer compound, all was good, just a damn flamethrower of a CPU. I guess something went awry on the CPU die itself, and it proceeded to attempt to incinerate everything around it. The case itself became intensely hot just from the heat transfer. Voltage to the Cpu was only 1.235v

Anyhow, lo and behold I check the mobo cpu support, and it supports the Celeron E1500 Dual-Core, which I just picked up for $39.99 at MC. Who wants to bet that it'll be faster than this ridiculous 3.4Ghz P-D?

 

[alyarb]

i'll take that bet if protools can fit inside trace cache. why didn't you get an e7000-series, though?

 

[Arkaign]

I'd have liked to have gotten them an E7000 or so, or even an E5000 but $ is a major issue for the company right now. Our local MC had this E1500, and the next step up was $69.99 for an E5300. The system is only used about 4-6x per year for a couple days at a time, so as long as it's competent enough to operate stably and run the apps, this should do fine.

Will be interesting, this is the first time I'm trying the new dual-core Celly. Only 512k L2, but seems from the somewhat obscure reviews to be a decent value chip.

 

[Griswold]

$30 more to get something better wasnt an option? I hope they dont owe you money...

 

[dbcooper1]

Or even a 3000 series for $10-15 more would double the cache and increase the clock speed..

 

[dbcooper1]

Actually now that I think about it, I'm surprised a board from '06 supports core2duo much less 45nm anything.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

What the hell?!?

Idling at 102 degrees Celsius?

 

[Lemon law]

If you can wait, the cleleron E3300 will drop to $40.00 soon and its only 5-7 % slower than the e5200.

As for a pentium D 940 idling at 102 C, I can believe it, but only after dust blown in from the fan clogs all the fins on the hear sink.

And if its running too hot, you can under clock it a bunch without effecting performance much.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Griswold
$30 more to get something better wasnt an option? I hope they dont owe you money...

Originally posted by: dbcooper1
Or even a 3000 series for $10-15 more would double the cache and increase the clock speed..

Yeah, they could have afforded the better options, but given that the P-D was more than adequate (when it wasn't overheating), the E1500 was a sound choice. More processing power would just be wasted in this thing, it will probably only see 16-24 more hours total use before being permanently mothballed.

Originally posted by: dbcooper1
Actually now that I think about it, I'm surprised a board from '06 supports core2duo much less 45nm anything.

Yeah no kidding! This is the board : Asus P5WDG2 WS Professional .. which is a 975X mobo. It's pretty nice, has the regular goodies like dual Gbit lan, 2 PCIE-16s, and it also has two PCI-X slots, which are crucial for supporting the ProTools HD Core and HD Accel cards for interfacing with the mixing board and external audio processor.

It's crazy, it's a Sweetwater system, and everything about it screams quality, but they chose that horrendous processor for it. Oh well, it's enough for Pro Tools, but it was just too hot.

The E1500 is buzzing along happily at ~33C while running ProTools.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
If you can wait, the cleleron E3300 will drop to $40.00 soon and its only 5-7 % slower than the e5200.

As for a pentium D 940 idling at 102 C, I can believe it, but only after dust blown in from the fan clogs all the fins on the hear sink.

And if its running too hot, you can under clock it a bunch without effecting performance much.

Well, the thing was sitting under a gargantuan copper Zalman, and I cleaned/reapplied the thermal paste carefully to no avail. I think it was actually going bad physically, I'm just shocked it still functioned to some degree. There was no dirt/dust to see in the system, as it was in a closed air-conditioned rackmount chassis, and kept at ambient 65f for it's entire life.

Would have been nice to wait for a better cpu deal, but I can't fault a workable solution for $40. This thing is gonna go in the dumpster after it's EOL'd anyway. Audio software and technology circa '06 is gonna be waaaay outdated when it comes up to be replaced in '11 by another system that will only see a handful of uses.

 

[dbcooper1]

A D 940 was pretty much top dog back around '06, wasn't it? I don't know that I'd run defrag as a diagnostic on a suspected unstable machine for a client..

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: dbcooper1
I don't know that I'd run defrag as a diagnostic on a suspected unstable machine for a client..

Agreed, that just sounds like asking for trouble.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: dbcooper1
I don't know that I'd run defrag as a diagnostic on a suspected unstable machine for a client..

Agreed, that just sounds like asking for trouble.

lol yeah, the system does have an Acronis rolling backup image, and the OS/App drive is roughly ~30gb in size .. so a restore would have been easy if it was needed, thankfully it was not.

Wasn't really using defrag as a direct diagnostic, but just a way of driving the point home. The temps were absolutely insanely hot. It only took a few seconds for the temps to really spike up.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: dbcooper1
A D 940 was pretty much top dog back around '06, wasn't it? I don't know that I'd run defrag as a diagnostic on a suspected unstable machine for a client..

The D 940 was pretty much outdated when it was released, but at least it was competent in some tasks against the overall superior Athlon X2s.

The troubling thing to me about this Sweetwater build is this, this is from the CPU box that was packed in with the rest of the audio software and assorted documentation / cords :

'Intel Pentium D Processor 945
LGA 775PkG, 3.4GHz, 2x2 L2 Cache, UP Only
Requires electrically compatible board - PCG05A

yadda yadda yadda .. and then :

PACK DATE : 10 / 26 / 06

IIRC, at that point you could already get Core2Duo E6300, E6400, E6600, etc. All of which are a world better than a Pentium D.

If the system was a sub-$1k basic workstation, the use of a Pentium D might be excusable, but these Sweetwater systems are hella $$$. This was a creation station rack extreme, and I think after all the add-ins on software and the dual Protools HD cards (about $2,500 alone for the pair), the package cost over ten grand. This obviously didn't include the external mixer panel and other assorted expensive stuff. Even if the P-D was $200 and the E6600 was $350, it's a minor difference in the big picture.

 

[dbcooper1]

Yes, but that was the pack date; it was designed, components specified and bid on and negotiated price well before that date.

 

[Lemon law]

How old is the system? Someone had the brains early on to use a much better stock heat sink and fans. It went quite some time before that presshot 95+ watt system became too not to become un runnable without shutting down due to heat.

Its why I find it impossible to believe that its not a heat sink and fan problem. And by the way, my wife's little brother presshot 915
just failed recently at age 1.5 years, it never got that hot, but an e5200 is going to be a better choice. As for me, piss on all 95+ watt processors, its the only way to keep them cool, but the trade off now a days need not be a previous slower than heck celeron.

When I replace my 915 D with a e5200, I fully expect my speeds to go up by 15% at stock clockings. Our OP has probably no better than 50% speed with the junk he bought in a previous generation celeron. But then again, a 8088 is faster than an any chip that throttles itself down to nothing.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
IIRC, at that point you could already get Core2Duo E6300, E6400, E6600, etc. All of which are a world better than a Pentium D.

Date: July 14th, 2006

Although for that kind of money I really question why an X2 or an FX-60 was not used if the quote/bid process occured prior to July 14 of that year.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
How old is the system? Someone had the brains early on to use a much better stock heat sink and fans. It went quite some time before that presshot 95+ watt system became too not to become un runnable without shutting down due to heat.

Its why I find it impossible to believe that its not a heat sink and fan problem. And by the way, my wife's little brother presshot 915
just failed recently at age 1.5 years, it never got that hot, but an e5200 is going to be a better choice. As for me, piss on all 95+ watt processors, its the only way to keep them cool, but the trade off now a days need not be a previous slower than heck celeron.

When I replace my 915 D with a e5200, I fully expect my speeds to go up by 15% at stock clockings. Our OP has probably no better than 50% speed with the junk he bought in a previous generation celeron. But then again, a 8088 is faster than an any chip that throttles itself down to nothing.

Well, just for fun I popped the Pentium D into my oldish but slightly newer Asus P5K under a Tuniq Tower 120 and fresh thermal paste .. it still went up dangerously close to 100C and was unable to complete the benchmarks I had on the drive. And for a final laugh, I put the unused retail heatsink/fan on, and the system blanked out before reaching windows at all. The CPU is just bad, there's something in it that is permanently damaged from the excessive heat. Undervolting and underclocking didn't seem to make much of a difference as well.

Celeron E1500 is not a previous gen celeron, that would be the Celeron 4xx series, and previous to that, Celeron D. Celeron E1500 is a cut-down C2D, just with 512k L2 cache.

You are in for a happy surprise if you expect only a 15% performance increase at stock settings. Remember, the C2D with 2MB L2 was about 2.05x faster on average at the same clock frequency as Pentium D. Given that the Pentium D 915 was only 2.8Ghz (and about a thousand times easier to cool compared to a 3.4Ghz version), a 2.5Ghz E5200 should blow it absolutely to bits. It will be more like a 50%+ increase in processor performance.

Looking at Passmark CPU benches, a Pentium D 3.6Ghz nets a score of 993, while this Celeron E1500 @ 2.2Ghz nets a score of 1,215. Moving up to the E5300, only 100mhz more than your E5200, bumps the CPU score up to 1,596. Other benchmarks for gaming/encoding/multitasking have understated the severe superiority of the C2D architecture compared to the end of the netburst P4/PD. So yeah, be happy, you'll be getting far more than a 15% boost!

Don't think of the Celeron as anything like what it once was, it's actually a very capable processor for most tasks today.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Arkaign
IIRC, at that point you could already get Core2Duo E6300, E6400, E6600, etc. All of which are a world better than a Pentium D.

Date: July 14th, 2006

Although for that kind of money I really question why an X2 or an FX-60 was not used if the quote/bid process occured prior to July 14 of that year.

I think the system was built in very early '07, but yeah, who knows when it was specced out by Sweetwater. They are a boutique outfit for audio professionals, and as such probably can't afford to change up offerings all that often. It's still a damn shame they used a Pentium D though. Any other option would have been *far* better, Athlon X2, Athlon FX, or C2D.