So I am Late to the G3258 Party...A Few Questions

[VirtualLarry]

Thank you for the encouragement Larry! Yeah Mini ITX is a mess, it is all about trying to get SOME airflow going. I think the water cooler really made the difference to get me to 4.5.

I have yet to water-cool anything. Maybe some day.

I will say I was a little jealous reading about your cutting edge Skylake OCing, that sounds like some Wild West fun! At some point though you have to avoid biting off more than you can chew and I think in retrospect Mini ITX was JUST enough of a challenge for my tastes. I will leave Sky OC to the pros like yourself!

If you can call what I do for fun on this forum "professional". (You want professional, look at AtenRa's and IDontCare's threads...) More like, spend money I don't have for the forum LOLs. I think that I partially fried a PSU and my 330W UPS. (Yeah, in hindsight, I should have upgraded the UPS units before setting off on massive overclocking sprees... but my G3258 @ 4.0 rig never made the UPS complain. 330W is not enough, though. Need an 800W+ UPS.)

I haven't used the build much in desktop mode but this thing is pretty snappy and usable. It would make a poor gaming machine though, as my project from last year (a x5460 771 C2Q mod) actually does better in Firestrike. Which is kinda amazing.

Yeah, I was surprised too to see that my Q9300 rig scored higher in a few categories (though not by much), in the Asus RealBench thread here, than my SKL G4400 rig (my H110 rig, not overclocked).

 

[poofyhairguy]

I have yet to water-cool anything. Maybe some day.

I really wasn't impressed with this cooler in my ATX case. It cooled worse than my Scythe Ninja. It works great in this case though with worse airflow. For a ATX water cooler go big or go home.

I think that I partially fried a PSU and my 330W UPS. (Yeah, in hindsight, I should have upgraded the UPS units before setting off on massive overclocking sprees... but my G3258 @ 4.0 rig never made the UPS complain. 330W is not enough, though. Need an 800W+ UPS.)

Wow. Do you have a kill a watt to measure that consumption at the wall?

Yeah, I was surprised too to see that my Q9300 rig scored higher in a few categories (though not by much), in the Asus RealBench thread here, than my SKL G4400 rig (my H110 rig, not overclocked).

Core 2s can still game somewhat when overclocked like crazy.

 

[Yuriman]

This was my solution to my video card(s) not breathing:

Note: Pics are of my wife's computer, but our builds are similar and use the same case. I'm using a Noctua cooler on the i5 in my main rig, but the Intel cooler is effectively silent on her i3 so I saw no point in installing my spare Hyper 212 and making the case harder to work in.

Originally I had a PSU with an 80mm fan, which drew air from behind the video card and exhausted at the bottom of the case, providing at least some ventilation. I couldn't resist a pair of Sparkle Platinum PSUs a few weeks ago for ~$25 each though, and this effectively turned the top of the case into a dead-zone as these PSUs draw air from next to the CPU, and there is no vent or mesh at the top of the case. Under Furmark, the cards didn't throttle, but I was uncomfortable with 80-90c and it was causing the fans to get a bit noisy under extended gaming.

One of the side panels for the case has a mesh - this I moved to the backside, and cut out a space for a Noctua 80mm fan that I had laying around in the non-mesh panel. Case pressure is slightly positive, causing airflow over the top of the card and out the mesh on the other side. Even running at only 25-35% speed, the 80mm fan provides sufficient fresh air to the top of the case, and dropped GPU temperatures under Furmark almost 20c while simultaneously reducing noise. Under normal gaming conditions they're near-silent, with the power supply fan and my external hard drive being the noisiest components. Two more Noctua fans are now on my wishlist for the PSUs.

 

[poofyhairguy]

This was my solution to my video card(s) not breathing:

That is pretty awesome! Have to love a case mod. Thank you for the pictures.

I hit a wall with my 7850 because with that cooler and no fan the heat just builds and builds till I get graphical corruption.

The 7850 is a little more powerful than what I need in this build, so I think I will just get another card that will run cooler and hopefully be smaller inside the case. I have a ton of unused Best Buy points, maybe I can get a 750 ti or something to get by.

Thanks again!

 

[know of fence]

This was my solution to my video card(s) not breathing:

Note: Pics are of my wife's computer, but our builds are similar and use the same case. I'm using a Noctua cooler on the i5 in my main rig, but the Intel cooler is effectively silent on her i3 so I saw no point in installing my spare Hyper 212 and making the case harder to work in.

Originally I had a PSU with an 80mm fan, which drew air from behind the video card and exhausted at the bottom of the case, providing at least some ventilation. I couldn't resist a pair of Sparkle Platinum PSUs a few weeks ago for ~$25 each though, and this effectively turned the top of the case into a dead-zone as these PSUs draw air from next to the CPU, and there is no vent or mesh at the top of the case. Under Furmark, the cards didn't throttle, but I was uncomfortable with 80-90c and it was causing the fans to get a bit noisy under extended gaming.

One of the side panels for the case has a mesh - this I moved to the backside, and cut out a space for a Noctua 80mm fan that I had laying around in the non-mesh panel. Case pressure is slightly positive, causing airflow over the top of the card and out the mesh on the other side. Even running at only 25-35% speed, the 80mm fan provides sufficient fresh air to the top of the case, and dropped GPU temperatures under Furmark almost 20c while simultaneously reducing noise. Under normal gaming conditions they're near-silent, with the power supply fan and my external hard drive being the noisiest components. Two more Noctua fans are now on my wishlist for the PSUs.

Unrelated question what kind of timings can you achieve with those G.Skill DIMMs i think I have the same ones, it defaults to 11-11-11-28 for me, even though it advertises 9-9-9-24 on the packaging. Can you run it stable with the XMP profile?

 

[Yuriman]

Yeah, XMP profile works great with my sticks - 9-9-9-24(28?) @ 1.25v.