Geokilla's New Rig - Heading Into Dark Side...Again (56K)

[geokilla]

Lol. I would've gotten an Antec 300 if we knew from the beginning who's build it was going to be.

So....what's so bad about the PSU wiring? It's not that bad is it?

[martini161]

no, its not that bad but you should get some zipties just to make it even better

[geokilla]

I'll probably just leave it.....Now I have to take apart my AMD rig and put it together again because it's so freaken dusty....

Edit: How do I remove AS5 off my glasses cloth? I need to use it tomorrow on my AMD rig.

Also, on my Audigy 2 which I plan to keep in my sis' rig has a capacitor (I think) that got bent. Now I straightened it out and it's not fully sticking back onto the sound card even though I tried pushing it down. Would there be problems if I continue to use it?

[Bio-Hazard]

canned air creates the same kind of static, if not more because of how it is compressed. neither is perfect but here in the lab we prefer vaccums

Actually a vac is worst because the electric motor is creating the static around the whole area, ................

But use what ever you feel safe with I guess..............

[martini161]

canned air creates the same kind of static, if not more because of how it is compressed. neither is perfect but here in the lab we prefer vaccums

Actually a vac is worst because the electric motor is creating the static around the whole area, ................

But use what ever you feel safe with I guess..............

yup to each his own

[ratNukit]

Also, on my Audigy 2 which I plan to keep in my sis' rig has a capacitor (I think) that got bent. Now I straightened it out and it's not fully sticking back onto the sound card even though I tried pushing it down. Would there be problems if I continue to use it?

If your computer still accepts the card there shouldn't be any problem. If it was only bent there should be no problem using the card.

[geokilla]

Hehe everything works fine. Yipee!

When I took apart my current AMD build to clean the dust and stuff, I took off the heatsink, and there wasn't nearly enough AS5 on it. So I took it off, cleaned it. While waiting for the alcohol to drive, I used the mini-vacuum and my mouth the clean the dust as best as I can. Reapplied the AS5, put everything together, check the temps. HOLY! 42C under 95% F@H load! That's over 10C difference!!!

Anyways, I have to back up all the stuff in my current AMD rig before I can give it to my sis. This is gonna take a while...

[geokilla]

All righty. I got Windows XP installed, and some basic drivers installed as well. So far, I have a 60GB partition for C, but I don't know how I should partition the other drives. Anyone got an idea on how I should partition it? I'm thinking of having a total of 3 partitions, so C, D, and E drive.

Also, do I partition it in Disk Management? If yes, do I use primary partition or extended partition? I can't choose logical drive for some reason.

[DaIceMan]

out of curiousity, why are you using partitions, rather than say... a folder for each partition? I have 3 WD 640GB drives in my server, and none of them are partitioned. 1 is for downloads and family "My Document" backups, another for movies and musics, and the last is the system drive that our pictures/my docs backs up to every night.

[geokilla]

I don't get what you mean by folder for each partition.

C drive is like what all C drives are for....programs....and my music.
D drive is for my anime, manga, movies, etc.
E drive is for my programs (.iso, .exe, etc) and where I store my ghost image.

Now that I think about it, 60GB for C might not be enough....

I have only 1 hard drive, hence why I'm going to partition them. If I ever have to format, I don't want to lose everything on the hard drive.

[Alathald]

I like to use partitions if not just for the simple fact that it speeds up defrags when using windows...there are lots of other good reasons to partition though and it's a good habit to have. For one it's convenient to only maintain the parts of the system that need maintaining and it's also nice to have a dedicated home partition (eg. if running Linux) so you can access the same home folder (or any other folder) from different OS without the hassle of sorting through folders. Plus with logical volume management coming into it's own, there's no real reason not to use it (other than the small hassle of learning it).

@geokilla, it's better to put stuff like multimedia and documents on their own partitions near the end of the drive (where read speed is slower) and have the main OS partition and programs at the beginning of the drive. It's up to you if you want to keep the OS and the programs on a separate partition but I prefer to have them separate so if I ever need to reinstall my OS, everything is already on a separate partition from where the OS is installed (settings ect).

Example partition scheme - the Windows partition is primary while the rest (eg everything in "{ }"s) is extended
[C: Windows] {[D: Programs][E: Documents][F: Multimedia]}

It doesn't necessarily have to be set up like that but remember, you can only have up to 4 primary partitions so I usually stick OS's on a primary and everything else in an extended...again, doesn't have to be done like that, partitions are pretty flexible.

[geokilla]

If I put programs on D drive, then when I format C drive, won't that cause a problem? Formatting deletes everything, and there's only so much that an image can restore.

[geokilla]

All right guys. I'm going to start to try and overclock. Wish me luck.

Anyone know what to do with the Advanced Timing Control (Memory)? I have no idea what to do with them. I assume that it's best to leave them last?

Can someone help me with the following BIOS options?

DDR2 DeOverVoltage Control Normal
PCI-E OverVoltage Control Normal
FSB OverVoltage Control Normal <-- Do I change it last when the system gets unstable/reach my desired OC?
FSB DeOverVoltage Control Normal
(G) MCH OverVoltage Control Normal <-- What's the G mean?
(G) MCH DeOverVoltage Control Normal
CPU Voltage Control (Vcore) 1.2V <--- Can go up to 2.0V LOL


Currently have the FSB at 333Mhz. Gonna stress it for a bit using OCCT, then I'll raise it to 350. Then I'll go up in 5 to 10Mhz.

[geokilla]

K I need some help guys. Besides the voltage question in the previous post, CPU-Z is indicating that my core voltage is 1.184V, even though I'm giving the CPU around 1.26V in the BIOS, which should be around 1.23V after vdroop.

What can be wrong?

[martini161]

trust the bios more than cpuz

[geokilla]

trust the bios more than cpuz

So even though I've raised the vcore from the stock 1.2V to the current 1.24V, the idle temperatures are still the same, idling at 30C and 36C for each core. I'm using the latest temperature of core temp to read the temperatures.

Edit: I may have found the reason to my problem, and a solution as well. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/24719 ... -ep35-ds3l

Update: Currently, I'm sitting at 3.8Ghz with 1.36Vcore at idle, and 1.328V under OCCT load (CPU-Z) with +0.1MCH and FSB voltages. Is it safe to change the MCH/FSB to +0.2 and try to lower my vcore?

[geokilla]

Update: Got my rig to 2hrs+ OCCT stable last night. Then I went to sleep, dropped the core voltage by one notch, and it was 1 hour OCCT stable. So I raised the voltages, and it was on 30 min OCCT stable. Raised it again, and it was only 7 min OCCT stable?! I'm running OCCT again without touching the voltages, and so far it's 26 min stable.

Is it just me, or is OCCT not that reliable anymore?

This is with the CPU at 3.75Ghz. Temps top out at around 51C.

[geokilla]

Another update. I got 3.73Ghz stable without any increase in the MCH and FSB. Just the Vcore. I have it set to 1.4V in BIOS, which equals out to 1.36V in idle, and 1.328V during load. I'm trying to lower the timings on my RAM right now, and so far, I think I got it stable at 4-4-4-10 with 2.1V. I didn't test it with Memtest yet, but so far so good. No lockups or auto-reboots.

Question: Does anyone how I can tighten up the tRC on this motherboard? CPU-Z has that greyed out, so the only way to figure out what the timing is for the tRC is through the BIOS. However, I can't seem to find Bank Cycle Time (tRC) in the BIOS, even if I use CTRL+F1.

[kenc51]

Another update. I got 3.73Ghz stable without any increase in the MCH and FSB. Just the Vcore. I have it set to 1.4V in BIOS, which equals out to 1.36V in idle, and 1.328V during load. I'm trying to lower the timings on my RAM right now, and so far, I think I got it stable at 4-4-4-10 with 2.1V. I didn't test it with Memtest yet, but so far so good. No lockups or auto-reboots.

Question: Does anyone how I can tighten up the tRC on this motherboard? CPU-Z has that greyed out, so the only way to figure out what the timing is for the tRC is through the BIOS. However, I can't seem to find Bank Cycle Time (tRC) in the BIOS, even if I use CTRL+F1.

AFAIK you can't change the tRC timing with current Intel chip sets, you could with nVidia ones.
Try downloading and running "Memset" to check the misc timings

[geokilla]

Another update. I got 3.73Ghz stable without any increase in the MCH and FSB. Just the Vcore. I have it set to 1.4V in BIOS, which equals out to 1.36V in idle, and 1.328V during load. I'm trying to lower the timings on my RAM right now, and so far, I think I got it stable at 4-4-4-10 with 2.1V. I didn't test it with Memtest yet, but so far so good. No lockups or auto-reboots.

Question: Does anyone how I can tighten up the tRC on this motherboard? CPU-Z has that greyed out, so the only way to figure out what the timing is for the tRC is through the BIOS. However, I can't seem to find Bank Cycle Time (tRC) in the BIOS, even if I use CTRL+F1.

AFAIK you can't change the tRC timing with current Intel chip sets, you could with nVidia ones.
Try downloading and running "Memset" to check the misc timings

Can Memset be used to forcefully set the tRC timings? If I can, does Memset have to be running to set the tRC timing?

Edit: Wow. What's going on. Last night, it was 2 hours OCCT stable. Then I ran Memtest overnight to test RAM stability since I it at DDR 784 4-4-4-10 @ 2.1V. Passed Memtest too. Then I lowered the vcore by one notch, not stable. Raised the vcore by one notch. Not even a min stable. However! It's the exact same settings as last night! What the hell is going on?!

Edit: Got it stable at 3.73Ghz again. I think it was the RAM timings or something. Who knows. I'm just going to stick with 3.73Ghz since I don't want to waste another day trying to get 3.74Ghz stable. It's only 20 Mhz on the CPU and 4 Mhz on the RAM. I'm leaving the RAM at 1:1 ratio.

I'm going to overclock my graphics card soon, but it won't be for a while. I have to install all my programs first.