Originally posted by: furballi
Search for the A64 3000 result. There's a rig with the same Zalman CPU cooler. 2920 @ 1.50 Vcore. Biggest factor is the CPU! If 1/2 of the people are idiots, then we should see 1/2 of the Opteron 146s running at +3000MHz on air. Clearly this is not true. From the CPU database, those that were able to hit 3GHz were using water as the working fluid!
http://www.cpudatabase.com/index.cfm?action=search
No air-cooled CPU cooler is going to be able to best the 7000Cu at room temp by 14C! Where did you get your engineering degree?
Here are some data comparing the stock Athlon 64 HSF with the latest exotic CPU coolers. Note that the best CPU cooler was only capable of lowering the CPU temp by another 10C (A64 3200 @ 1.7 Vcore)! The Zalman 7000Cu is certainly much better than the stock A64 HSF. Therefore, you should NOT expect to see more than about 5C drop in temp.
Another thing to consider is the air flow of the case. Open the side cover and see if your max temp will go down.
http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&number=8&artpage=1655&articID=406
Half of what you said doesn't make any sense!!
OK, there's a 3000+ that got a screenshot at 2.92 Ghz.....SO WHAT?? do you want to see my 3000+ screenshot?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v729/absolute035/overclocking/3.jpg
"If 1/2 of the people are idiots, then we should see 1/2 of the Opteron 146s running at +3000MHz on air."
Makes no sense. If people are idiots then we'd see bigger overclocks??
There is nothing special about watercooling. I have built two watercooling loops and i've done air for years and i have a single stage phase unit. There isn't much of a difference between air and water, so you can't say that you NEED water for 3 Ghz, that's frigging retarded, i can show you a screenshot of 3 Ghz priming on the stock heatsink with 60c load...
It's certainly possible for a CPU cooler to best a 7000Cu by 14c. First of all, the 7000 is tiny and doesn't perform very well. Get a lapped Big Typhoon with a Panaflo 120mm x 38mm fan on it, and put that on a fan controller, and pump some volts....
And airflow of the case doesn't even enter into it.
So, to the original poster, you can just ignore this big confusing mess (that doesn't make any sense) and just rest assured that with a Big Typhoon you could get a bigger overclock. If you're hitting 60c then the heatsink sucks and it's getting overloaded by the volts and you have even more to gain from a real heatsink. The fact that prime runs for a few minutes and fails tells me that you're very temp limited. Trust me i've been through this for a while now because i've gone through a lot of Opterons. I'm used to seeing the temps go upward. Sometimes 1.5 degrees is the difference between prime failing in 2 minutes and Prime going for over half an hour. Undeniable truth from TONS of overclocking.