Watercooling E6600 Results - P5WDH Deluxe

[nerve007]

Hi All,

I'm new to the forums, but have been an Anandtech reader for quite a while.
I just put together a blog entry HERE with my results and pictures.

Bottom line... 3.5Ghz with the 6600 at 1.5V core. Temps are fine, so it is voltage
bumps from here if I want any more. I think this is going to be enough for me for now - I like stability 7x24.

I'm using a Reserator 1 V2 with the addition of a small house fan blowing on (which really helps).

Let me know what you think of my pics and setup!

-Bob

 

[nerve007]

Wow - nothing? No comment? Did it need more pics of babes? ;-)

-Bob

 

[T101]

Nice. See if you can drop vcore somewhat. It is not only heat that kills cpus you know.

 

[Twitch22]

I sure am impressed...have the same combo as you. Have been thinking of going with water cooling once I move into my new house (bigger home office space) but looking for the quiet more than anything else. But your OC is really nice! :thumbsup:

Twitch

 

[nerve007]

At 3.6 Ghz and 1.45 V it was unstable. I dropped it back to 3.5ghz and did a slight bump to 1.5V,
as I really want it to be stable. It's very stable with this setup - I hate crashes during games!

I've got the motherboard set for 1.5V Vcore, but PCProbe II reports anywhere from 1.46 to 1.49 volts.
Is that the Vdroop I see discussed?

With this setup... will it last until a quad-core is ~$500?

-Bob

 

[nerve007]

I'll work on pics of my whole setup... I'm running an Antec 3000blk case with
a slow-turning 120mm fan both front and rear. The Asus heatpipe fan was very buzzy and annoying - now that I'm rid of that it is a very quiet rig.

I'm considering putting a bigger fan-cooled and higher-output water pump under the house away from my pc setups to get the noise down and the cooling performance up, and also with enough capacity to cool my wife's PC, too.

-Bob

 

[mb]

Aww look at the baby water tubing! It's so cute!

 

[nerve007]

Do you think it wants to be 1/2" tubing when it grows up?

 

[mb]

Originally posted by: nerve007
Do you think it wants to be 1/2" tubing when it grows up?

:laugh:


I think you might want to try some different combinations with your FSB and voltage settings. You've got a good board and good CPU.... what PSU are you using? Are you OC'ing your memory too, or are you leaving it at stock speeds?
1.5V seems way too high for only 3.5GHz. With my E6600 I could get 3.4GHz stable at 1.35V on air.
I'll be watercooling mine sooner or later.

 

[nerve007]

Good tips so far...

I tried backing all the way down to 1.4V - torture test failed immediately.
Went back up to 1.475 - seems to be very stable there.

I'm using an Antec 500W Smartpower.
Memory: Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4 2GB Kit DDR2-800

With the FSB of 390, I selected the memory speed (if memory serves - ha ha) of 780mhz.
Haven't diddled with memory settings at all. In the course of trying to up the clock speed,
I've been selecting memory speeds of 800mhz or lower. Is this the right approach?
I figured once I got the CPU as high as it would go to start working on memory next.

It's not the most expensive PSU out there, but I thought it was decent.

BTW, running a 6200 video card (!) while my 7900GT Top is in for RMA/replace,
so power utilization on my system is down a bit. I'm also running three hard drives
(twox250s Raid 1 and one 500GB for backups).

I was a bit disappointed in the result given it's a water setup. Temps seem ok
so I think the wc is doing fine. I'd say probably not the best CPU - but your suggestion
that the PSU might be iffy is interesting. Could that explain why PC Probe II shows
lower voltage than what I set in the BIOS?

Thanks again for the advice!

-Bob

 

[nerve007]

Oh - just for laughs - I ran 3dmark06. With this $40 graphics card my system scored 169!

BA HA HA HA HA HA!

-Bob

(PS: Can't wait to get my 7900GT back from newegg)

 

[nerve007]

Hi Guys... would appreciate some feedback on the PSU question... it's bugging me now! Thanks!

 

[Verse914]

PSU could be a drawback...

I have the same combo as you. I run 3.6GHz stable @ 1.5v. Temps are very low with my Coolit Freezone. My max on this board is 4GHz@1.7V I didnt check for stability, but Im 99% sure it wasnt stable

-----
CPU: E6600 L628A268 Retail - 445x9 @ 4005.5MHz
VCore: 1.7v
Mem: OCZ ATI Crossfire 2x1GB DDR2 800 - 445MHz 5-5-5-15
Motherboard: Asus P5W DH Deluxe
Power Supply: OCZ GameXstream 700W
Cooling: Coolit Freezone


http://www.verse914.com/6600_445x9_coolit.jpg

 

[mb]

Unless the PSU is defective, 500W should be plenty especially since you're not trying to do something like SLI. Programs in Windows will almost always report slightly different voltages than what you set them to in the BIOS.
If you really want to find out if you something is wrong, Newegg and other online stores sell PSU testers.

 

[nerve007]

I think I just got "not the best" 6600. However, I'm happy with 3.5ghz and very low noise.

 

[jkresh]

I have fairly high end water (dont think you could do much better without a chiller or pelt) and my 6600 needs 1.6v to hit 3.4 (ran dual prime for 48hours before I stopped it so its stable), some chips just aren't as good overclockers as others.

 

[nerve007]

Jkresh - thanks for the feedback. Are you leaving yours at 1.6V? One of the other posters was concerned about CPU longevity at 1.5V, even.

-Bob

 

[nealh]

at XS systems there is alot of talk about conroe degrading with 1.5v and higher

Intel states max vcore is 1.55v...does not say for how long

My e6600@3500 needs 1.525v on RD600 for 12 hrs blend (when i stopped it)

I cant easiy get my DMM to measue vcore at idle/load

software readings are worthless..even a bios reading on vcore can be wrong..mobos are notorious for setting a vcore and not getting it

vdroop means under load the vcore vlaues is less...set 1.5v..idle at 1.5v and load at 1.45v

I am priming now with 1.4625v@3420...not sure I want to give 1.525v ...long term and I am on excellent WCing

BTW you can compare temps becasue of issues between mobo snesors and ambients...the only thing possible is get a sense of a delta over ambient and idle
74F ambient
load cpu@1.525v at 61/62 small ftt/large fft 57C in blend
idle was 42/43c

so my delta was 20C

 

[nerve007]

My 7900GT TOP died and returned to Newegg for RMA. They refunded rather than replace, so I've upgrade to a 8800GTS which should be here tomorrow... then we'll see how those 3dmark scores go. I've also got a dell 30" lcd ready to go - going to do some game benchmarking on this rig at 2560x1600.

Once again, Newegg is the best!

-Bob

 

[nerve007]

Got my 8800 GTS... whoo whoo! It is very quiet - surprising me a bit actually. Given that the MB/CPU in my setup are on water, the GTS adds very little noise to my setup.
I was thinking of putting it on water as well, but I'm not sure I can really get that much more out of it on water vs air. I need to do more research on this point.
Mid-9000s 3dmark - would like to hit 10K just for the thrill of it.

-Bob

 

[nerve007]

OK, quick update:

I think the auto settings are a bad idea for this board with the Twin2x2048-6400C4 kit I have in it. I wasn't able to get to even 900 on this memory, and that was with relaxed settings.
It's hard to tell what this board is doing with all those Auto settings! From the Corsair site, I used their tested settings:

4-4-4-12-5 BUT also set the MCH to 1.65 (the highest on my board rev) and set the memory voltage to 2.1. The memory voltage was showing as red in the bios... makes me think the auto settings
were under-volting the memory - maybe a lot.

Now I'm stable at the 4-4-4-12-5 settings... I thought I should try another speed bump to 400FSB (also figuring bumping the MCH to 1.65 would help - and hey - that's on water as well).

No joy on a longer run... but more stable than last time. Still headscratching over whether it is memory or CPU causing the issues now.


-Bob

 

[nerve007]

Okay, a Vcore bump back to 1.5V gets this rig stable again at 3.6ghz.

It will be interesting to see if I can maintain this stability in the summer when ambients are higher. I'm not sure that the stability issue at this point is temp related. On dual prime coretemp reports max temps ~ 64C.

-Bob