My new PC build

[tmazz]

With this much overclocking going on will the i7 still go into turbo mode and boost the speed even further when less than six cores are being used?

And is this a useable feature or is it just marketing hype because all six cores are active almost all the time as a practical matter? Just wondering, as I have almost no hands on inexperience with the i series processors. My office PCs and just hitting their three year upgrade points later this year so I will have to get up to speed on this in the near future. The last I looked, the corp standard this year was to buy i5 based machines since we are doing more run of the mill office type stuff and have not need for the heavy lifting that an i7 would provide.

[jsaliga]

I disable the turbo boost feature when overclocking.  If you are using stock settings the turbo feature will allow for a x25 CPU multiplier, which will get you to 3.325GHz on a 3.2GHz I7 processor.

I have never tried using turbo when overclocking so I don't even know if it will have an impact.  What I do know is that I don't want anything changing any settings from the values that I tune since it can introduce instabaility.  I currently set up my machine where it is stable at 4GHz with a VCore at 1.25 volts, using a base clock of 191MHz and mutiplier of x21.  I wouldn't want turbo to bump it to x22, since that would increase CPU speed by 200MHz and might make the machine crash without a corresponding bump to VCore.  I also disable Intel Speedstep (C1E) in the BIOS and make some adjustments to the Windows 7 power management settings.  Bottom line: I want to be in control of the CPUs performance and thermal management rather than the OS.

--Jerome

[tmazz]

I disable the turbo boost feature when overclocking.  If you are using stock settings the turbo feature will allow for a x25 CPU multiplier, which will get you to 3.325GHz on a 3.2GHz I7 processor.

I have never tried using turbo when overclocking so I don't even know if it will have an impact.  What I do know is that I don't want anything changing any settings from the values that I tune since it can introduce instabaility.  I currently set up my machine where it is stable at 4GHz with a VCore at 1.25 volts, using a base clock of 191MHz and mutiplier of x21.  I wouldn't want turbo to bump it to x22, since that would increase CPU speed by 200MHz and might make the machine crash without a corresponding bump to VCore.  I also disable Intel Speedstep (C1E) in the BIOS and make some adjustments to the Windows 7 power management settings.  Bottom line: I want to be in control of the CPUs performance and thermal management rather than the OS.

--Jerome

The impact I was thinking about was exactly the instability you discribed, so we are on the same fear in that concern. Glad to know I was on the right track. Thanks for the info.

[jsaliga]

Here are results of a 90 minute stress test:



The temps ramped up a bit and would get as high as 79C and as low as 70C, and cycle up and down between these two endpoints.  While this is a little higher than I would have liked I believe it is acceptable.  Note that my high temp limit of 85C is 15 degress lower than the Intel spec, and I do that because I want some assurance that I can put the processor under a full load and leave the house for a few hours and not come back to a fried CPU.  If I cut it too close to the high limit and there is a thermal ramp that I didn't anticipate it could produce some unpleasant results.

This also suggest that 4GHz is the most that I can get out of this air cooler and maintain the margin of thermal safety that I want.  If I bump the CPU to 4.2GHz I will most likely need to increase VCore at least a little, and that will drive up temperatures.

--Jerome

[tmazz]

Any idea why the two middle cores on the chart are running so much cooler than the other two?

[jsaliga]

Not really, but it seems to be typical on I7 Gulftown processors.

--Jerome

[jsaliga]

Benchmark Results:

Default Settings (133MHz base clock with x25 CPU multiplier)






Overclocked to 4GHz (191MHz base clock with x21 CPU multiplier)





I was not able to run the 3D Mark Vantage tests with the extended desktop (5880 x 1080).  The benchmark would stall while loading the scene data on the first test.  I therefore reduced the screen size to 1920 x 1080 for the 3DMark tests.

Overclocking to 4GHz netted a 15.5% increase in the PCMark score, whereas it only produced a 8% increase in 3DMark scores.  The latter is to be expected, however, because CPU performance isn't as important to graphics performance as the GPU.

Was it worth all of this for 15%?  A fair question to be sure.  To me the answer is yes.  An i7 970 Gulftown processor sells for about $600.  If I can get an extra 15% of performance from it without taking major risk then it is very much worth it to me.

--Jerome

[jsaliga]

As it turns out I was not as impressed by the Nvidia 3D Vision as I hoped to be.  Yesterday after watching the final round of the US Open Golf Championship I spent a few hours playing some games with the 3D glasses.  The experience is largely going to be goverened by how well the game supports 3D Vision.  Some are not so great, such as Crysis 2, and others are quite good, such as Batman: Arkham Asylum.

If that were all there was to it I might be a little more enthusiastic about Nividia 3D Vision.  But, in my opinion, the technology is not quite ready for prime time.  Batman is probably the best looking 3D game, but another so called Nvidia 3D Vision Ready title was Battlefield Bad Company 2 (my favorite game from last year).  I found it very difficult to play in 3D because I was always disoriented by the image depth, which means that I missed a lot and also got killed a lot.  So playing in 3D was a hinderance in this case.

Bottom line, I found that games were more immersive (and enjoyable) without the 3D Glasses.  If someone were to ask me which should they buy, a GTX560 and a pair of 3D Glasses or a GTX570 I would recommend that they forget the 3D glasses and get the better graphics card or save the money towards a SLI setup with three monitors.  Nvidia Surround Gaming is pretty amazing that technology seems work very well, and is worth the cost of admission.

--Jerome

[jsaliga]

I got over my worries about water cooling and jumped in with both feet.  I found a company called Caselabs that custom manufactures computer cases that are designed for water cooling.  The case I ordered is big (yep, larger than the Thermaltake Armor +, and can accomodate up to five 480mm radiators.  I will be using two in seperate loops: one loop will be for the CPU and motherboard chipset, and a second loop will be for the GPUs.

http://www.overclock.net/case-labs/968780-case-labs-th10-1-a.html#post12783342

The case in the thread above is gloss white.  Mine will be in matte black.

An order has already been placed and the case should be shipping by the end of the week.  My water cooling components are also on order and some of it is already here.  Those components include:

Koolance CPU-370 Water Block
EK EVGA Classified Motherboard Water Block
Three Koolance VID-NX580 GPU Water Blocks
Two Swiftech MCR420-QP 4 x 120mm radiators (one for the CPU loop and another for the GPU loop)
Two XPSC Acrylic Reserviors
Two Swiftech MCP655-B cooling pumps
PrimoFlex Pro LRT tubing
Compression fittings
Biocide (to prevent algae from growing)

--Jerome

[jsaliga]

I have started my water cooling build.  Rather than cross posting it, anyone who is interested can follow my build log on Overclockers.com here...

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=682955

--Jerome

[bpape]

Sweet!  Looking forward to Monday to see the final product at least assembled.

Bryan

[jsaliga]

I have finished the water cooled PC project.  I hit a bump in the road along the way.  My EVGA X58 Classified 3 motherboard failed after moving it to the new chassis.  Instead of replacing it I moved on to a i7 2600K (Sandy Bridge) processor and Asus Maximus IV Extreme-z motherboard.  I have updated the linked thread with pictures.

I am running my processor at 5.0GHz with temperatures in the low 60C range.  My three Nvidia GTX570s never get over 42C under full load.  On air the GPUs would run at about 84C under 100% load with the fans going full blast.

--Jerome

[etcarroll]

That's an awful lot of horsepower just to watch internet porn, isn't it?!?

[richidoo]

Finally someone said it! 

[djdube525]

Weren't the 3 fancy video cards for 3D video? The man has built a freaking holodeck (sp?)!