New rig, pulling the trigger

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ochadd

Senior member
May 27, 2004
408
0
76
I'm a hardware guy and keep up with this stuff religiously. Every two years at Christmas time I upgrade my rig. No matter what. Knowing there is always something better and cheaper just around the corner will drive a man nuts and I'd never buy anything.

Before my last upgrade I broke this rule trying to hold off until January for a couple parts to be released. Well my watercooling system hung and the CPU boiled the H20 in the black and wammo.. an omen from the gaming gods brings tidings of a total meltdown.

Well not this year. The new machine ready for assembly:

ASUS P5K/e Wifi
Intel e6750
Tuniq Tower
OCZ Reaper DDR2 800
AMD 3870 @ 845mhz
PCP&C silencer 610
Antec P182 case
2x WD 250GB AAKS
ASUS DVDRW Sata
2x Sunbeam Controller

Although I've bought hundreds of Intel machines for companies and other customers this is the first non-AMD system I've ever built for myself. AMD let me down but that horse has been beaten enough but going to the darkside seemed necessary. 6 x 120mm Scyth Sflex & Enermax enlobals provide the flow of 294 CFM, whatever the PS fan is pulling, and a PCI VGA exhaust should put me somewhere in the 350-400 CFM range.

Haven't done anything with it yet but I'm confident it will hold out until Nehalem or Bulldozer. Going to do the OCing and benchmarking this weekend. Hoping for some luck. Will post back with results and pics.
 
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LOUISSSSS

Diamond Member
Dec 5, 2005
8,771
58
91
OCZ is great! i've owned over 8gbs of OCZ ram all worked flawlessly

good build bbut why do u need 8 fan controllers? u can use Y splitters to control/power 2 fans on one of the four headers of the sunbeam rheobus!
 
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Pabster

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
16,986
1
0
Originally posted by: ochadd
I'm a hardware guy and keep up with this stuff religiously. Every two years at Christmas time I upgrade my rig. No matter what. Knowing there is always something better and cheaper just around the corner will drive a man nuts and I'd never buy anything.
Click to expand...

Exactly. You'll never be "future proof" and the waiting game will never end.

Well not this year. The new machine ready for assembly:

ASUS P5K/e Wifi
Intel e6750
Tuniq Tower
OCZ Reaper DDR2 800
AMD 3870 @ 845mhz
PCP&C silencer 610
Antec P182 case
2x WD 250GB AAKS
ASUS DVDRW Sata
2x Sunbeam Controller
Click to expand...

Looks good. The case and PS choices are excellent. :thumbsup:

And enjoy the rig. ;)

 
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ochadd

Senior member
May 27, 2004
408
0
76
Build update.

The Bad
P182 + Tuniq tower + P5ke = Nightmare install

Really it comes down to installing the 4 pin power connector and cable management. Between those two issues took me more than 5 hours. There just wasn't room to plug things in or hide the excess cables. I ended up making a "jig" out of two shish kabob skewers to plug the power connector in. Then after hours of being delicate and picky during cable managment I turned to brute force to get things together.

If you are going to use a P180 or P182 case consider a modular powersupply mandatory. There is nothing short of a world record that would justify the headache of another install like that.

The Good

This thing is silent and cool. The loudest thing in the case is my HIS 3870 which is undistinguishable from the rest of the system until the fan hits 50%.

Processor temps are about 24c idle, 50 load in an 18c ambient room at 3Ghz.

VGA temps are 32c idle and 80-85c during heavy gaming at 50% fan. With Rivatuner fixing the fan speed at 80% the temps drop considerably, 10-15c, but it's too loud.


Performance update:

Running at 3ghz on FSB alone, running the ram at 901mhz 5-5-5-15-1T.

It was up to 3.5 prime stable but I already had more than playable frame rates at 3Ghz with the IQ maxed on all but Crysis. I'm unsure where this thing will really hit a wall but the difference between 3.5 and +++ is going to be negligable. The ram has been stable up to 1000+ without drastic tweaking but I've dialed it down as it didn't make much difference.

The 3870 I've had up to 845 stable on the shipped bios but elected to stay at 825 to keep temps and noise down.

Overall:
I'm either becoming less critical of my hardware or the hardware is getting kinder to the enthusiast. While the installation was freakishly painful the tweaking part of it was so simple it took some of the joy out of it.

Those G0 stepping C2D are insane. I had it running rock solid at 3.2Ghz after the first reboot and one reboot after that it was at 3.5. What's up with that? Has some tweaker made his way into the upper ranks at Intel or are they just sandbagging? I found this amazing considering how hard it was on past builds to get 1/2 the percentage gain this thing was GIVING me.

This thing is cool, quite, with lots in reserve. Unless the Crytek engine makes it's way into allot of games this thing should last awhile. If it does a new VGA card should fix that. I'm glad I didn't put the extra dough down for a Q6600 or E6850 as this thing has been perfect.

Edit: Temps and fan speeds were recorded from Coretemp and Rivatuner.
 
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