"Rate my Rig" thread

Edward Yee · Post by **Edward Yee** » 2006-12-12 08:01pm

Not sure if I can afford it, unfortunately. (Although, the plan from CompUSA is supposed to cover one battery replacement.)

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-13 09:15am

I've just put my PC into a new case. Bigger and better in terms of airflow.
Guess what, CPU temperature went down by 10 degrees and mainboard temp by about 5.

UPDATE: okay, after a few hours the average temperature CPU went down only by about 4-5 degrees, but thats still something.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-14 07:19am

Alright, I've bought a Thermaltake Golf325 radiator together with a fan, it says it is sufficient to up to 3400XP+. I've fired up MTW2 and my average CPU temperature is about 40 degrees.

Can someone suggest a good overclocking guide? I know that my processor can withstand up to 2Ghz no problem (1.67 is what I have currently), but there were overheating problems.

Previously a friend came over to my house and we toyed with the RAM/CPU settings, but I cant remember exactly what were they. I remember that we upped the CPU voltage but to what value I just cant recall.

Edward Yee · Post by **Edward Yee** » 2006-12-14 02:34pm

Probably a silly thought, but... any use to waiting until Saturday night or Sunday, when the big stores release their weekly discount ads, before actually opening my Pavilion?

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-14 04:05pm

Shit.

Now you will not believe this, but I installed the Thermaltake Golf325 copper radiator together with a low speed fan and the average CPU temperature WENT UP.

It is actually about 5 degrees higher than when the previous cooler, a stock aluminium thingy that came with my BOXed Athlon.

I have my doubts about the conductivity compound. About 2-3 years ago I bought a small tube of such compound which is silver (it is advertised that it contains silver, which is supposedly a very good conductor). Is it possible that the thermal compound I received together with the radiator better? (its white). Should I take off the radiator, clean the old compound off and use the new one? I would like to hear some opinions before I crack my case open again and start meddling.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-12-14 04:14pm

You didn't clean off the old compound first? That would definitely cause the temps to rise. The white stuff is shit. I'd recommend getting some Arctic Silver 5 or the Zalman ZM silver (forget the name, but its damn good).

Here's the Zalman and here's the AS5.

Personally, I've found the Zalman to the better compound.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-14 04:17pm

I did clean the old compound off...with my finger. Should I clean the core completely of any old pasta? I have Titan's Silver Grease. Is that any good?

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-12-14 04:26pm

Tolya wrote:I did clean the old compound off...with my finger. Should I clean the core completely of any old pasta? I have Titan's Silver Grease. Is that any good?

You need to use us rubbing alcohol to clean the CPU (and now the the base of your new heat sink), preferably 90%+, but I've done it with 70%. Never heard of "Titan" before, but its a safe bet its better than the white shit.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2006-12-14 04:27pm

Don't clean it with your finger. You won't get all the old stuff off, and you'll introduce skin oils onto the processor. Use isopropyl alcohol.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-14 04:29pm

Thanks. Is isopropyl alcohol some special kind of it or is there some widely used detergent based on it?

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-12-14 04:31pm

Tolya wrote:Thanks. Is isopropyl alcohol some special kind of it or is there some widely used detergent based on it?

Its off-the-self rubbing alcohol. Any grocery store or pharmacy will have it.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-14 04:32pm

Right-o. I'll get on it first thing tomorrow. Thanks guys.

The funny thing is that I overclocked my CPU from 1.67GHZ to 2.08Ghz (eq. 2600XP+) and it ran damn fine, with 1.7 vcore and 166 bus. It rebooted after 5 minutes of Medieval Total War 2 when it overheated.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-12-14 04:36pm

Tolya wrote:Right-o. I'll get on it first thing tomorrow. Thanks guys.

The funny thing is that I overclocked my CPU from 1.67GHZ to 2.08Ghz (eq. 2600XP+) and it ran damn fine, with 1.7 vcore and 166 bus. It rebooted after 5 minutes of Medieval Total War 2 when it overheated.

What did you use for stress testing? I usually use ORTHOS (its basically Prime95 with a better interface - download), and its small FFT test will absolutely peg a CPU to its maximum temperature in a few minutes. If you can run it a few hours, your overclock is good to go.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-14 05:03pm

stress testing...I didn't really go beyond firing up a modern game and running it for a few minutes. It then rebooted, which made me to revert to original BIOS settings.

I need to sort out the heat problem and then I can think

It runs fine in idle in terms of errors. The only problem is overheating, hopefully solved tomorrow.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-12-14 05:11pm

Beowulf wrote:Don't clean it with your finger. You won't get all the old stuff off, and you'll introduce skin oils onto the processor. Use isopropyl alcohol.

Acetone also works quite well.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-15 08:12am

Okay, running Orthos.

After 10 minutes the temperature is about 54 degrees. Is that much?

Also, there is a small safe thingy which resets the computer when CPU reaches a certain point. Do you know what is the max allowed temp of an Athlon 2000XP+ (its a Thoroughbred) and eventually how to turn that limit off? They have a die temperature of about 90 degrees.

By the way, besides changing the bus speed I also upped the Vcore to 1.7.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-15 08:46am

UPDATE: 166mhz proved too much. Went back to 150mhz.

Although I still need to install additional fans in front and in the back of my box.

mjn6172 · Post by **mjn6172** » 2006-12-15 09:05am

OK, so I'm looking to replace my home PC with a new gaming rig. I'm looking at getting one from Digital Storm right now (unless, of course, someone out there has horror stories about them, which might make me change my mind.) Unfortunately, it has been about 7 years since I ordered my last PC, so I'm a little out of my depth. I'd appreciate it if someone would take a look at what I'm ordering just to make sure I'm not doing something stupid.

I do know it doesn't come with a monitor (which is fine, I got a new one ~ 2 years ago and I'll just use that.) I'm not really sure about the processor speed (all of my previous computers had Intel Pentium processors, and I'm not quite sure how they compare.) Also, the price for this is ~$1500, is that a good deal or not? Thanks for any help. I've copied the specs below:

Specifications:
Case: Digital Storm Twister LITE (Black Aluminum Edition)
Power Supply: 550W Thermaltake (SLI Compatible) (Silent PurePower Edition)
Processor: AMD Athlon X2 4600+ (Dual Core) (1 MB Cache) w/HyperTransport Technology (AM2)
Motherboard: Asus M2N4-SLI (Chipset: nForce 4 SLI) (nVIDIA SLI Comp.) (AM2)
Memory: 2GB DDR2 Super Talent at 667MHz (Dual Channel)
Floppy / Media: Sony 1.44MB Floppy (Black Edition)
Hard Drive 1: 320GB Western Digital (16MB Cache) (7200 RPM) (SATA)
Hard Drive 2: - No Thanks
Raid Option: - No Thanks
Optical Drive 1: Sony DVD-ROM/CD-ROM (DVD Reader 16x / CD Reader 40x) (Includes Power DVD)
Optical Drive 2: Lite-On DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 16x / CD-Writer 48x) (Includes Nero)
Network Card: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Modem: - No Thanks
Video Card: 2x SLI Dual (nVidia GeForce 7600GT 256MB (By: eVGA) (PCI-Express)
TV Tuner: - No Thanks
Sound Card: Motherboard Multi-Channel High Definition Audio (7.1 Channel)
Physics Card: - No Thanks
Cooling: Air Cooling (Certified Digital Storm Heat-sink and Fan (Stage 1 Cooling)
Case Lighting: Blizzard Internal Lighting (Blue Edition) (Cold Cathode Tubes)
Round Cables: - No Thanks
User Manual: FREE! Personalized Elite Digital Storm Binder (Paperwork / Benchmarks / CDs / Manuals)
Windows OS: Microsoft Windows XP Home (Includes Windows Vista Basic Upgrade)
Restore Kit: FREE! Digital Storm Restore DVD Recovery Kit
Protection: McAfee VirusScan Plus 2007 (AntiVirus, FireWall, AntiSpyware)
Office: - No Thanks
LCD Display: - No Thanks
Surge Shield: - No Thanks
Speakers: Creative 2.1 System (Black Edition) (Model SBS 380) (Includes Subwoofer)
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Desktop 2.0 (Multimedia Keyboard + Optical Wheel Mouse)
Mouse: - No Thanks my keyboard comes with a mouse
Warranty: 2 Year Platinum Care Parts & Labor Warranty
Support: Lifetime Toll-Free Platinum Care Technical Support

Post by **Beowulf** » 2006-12-15 12:43pm

Rig Comments:

Get Core 2 Duo for the processor. Blows away the equivalently priced AMD proc. E6600 and E6300 are the two best bangs for the buck (E6600 has extra cache which brings it up to good bang for the buck).

SLI sucks until you get to the very high end. A single board solution is going to be both faster and more compatible.

The Seasonic PSU is going to be the quietest one.

The asynchronously timed RAM that 667 is hurts performance. Either get 533 MHz (synchronous for C2D) or 800 (enough bandwith that it doesn't hurt).

Multiple ODDs is overkill, but that's really your choice, I suppose.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-12-15 08:29pm

To be fair, I have two optical drives and I rather like it.

That said, I recommend an NEC DVD-burner. (And if you're going for two optical drives, why not have two burners?)

I second Beowulf on the SLI; get a single higher-end card. SLI in a new system is only worth it if you're getting the absolute top of the line tech.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2006-12-15 11:54pm

If it weren't for the fact he can't get a NEC burner from the builder, I'd have agreed. Of course, he can get a drive after he gets the computer.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-18 06:51am

I have a question: since I dont plan on switching to Vista anytime soon, therefore I don't need DX10 capability of my video card. Is that statement true? Are there any rumours about DX10 coming to XP?

The problem is that my GPU does not support PS3.0. Which really sucks - Ubisoft already started to make games based solely on PS3.0. I did a small overhaul of my computer and it works much better now, but I wonder is there a good (in terms of bang for the buck balane) AGP card that I could buy and run it for another year or two, before switching to Vista becomes mandatory?

The problem is that X-mas is coming and my parents are asking me what I want to get. Good opportunity to exchange my hardware and I don't know what I should do.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-12-18 06:55am

Are there any rumours about DX10 coming to XP?

Will not happen, probebly never will.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-18 07:05am

So, making an assumption that I will not be switching to Vista immediately after it comes out (but I don't know how long I will be able to hold out on XP) therefore I do not need a card which supports DX10.

So, what card would you recommend (Im on ATI 9800Pro right now) to get to hold out until I switch to Vista (a year or so), not to spend crazy amounts of money and still be able to play all the new games? (1024x768 is fine with me, Im the kind of person that can go with medium settings).

Regarding Vista and DX10, am I seeing a conspiracy to force people to switch to Vista (opinions that I get from previews and various people say it will be a rather crappy system)?

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-12-18 09:22am

Tolya wrote:So, making an assumption that I will not be switching to Vista immediately after it comes out (but I don't know how long I will be able to hold out on XP) therefore I do not need a card which supports DX10.

So, what card would you recommend (Im on ATI 9800Pro right now) to get to hold out until I switch to Vista (a year or so), not to spend crazy amounts of money and still be able to play all the new games? (1024x768 is fine with me, Im the kind of person that can go with medium settings).

In that case, I'd recommend an Nvidia 7600 series card.

Regarding Vista and DX10, am I seeing a conspiracy to force people to switch to Vista (opinions that I get from previews and various people say it will be a rather crappy system)?

Ok, I'm getting really fucking tired of this "conspiracy" bullshit. If you, or the people making these claims, had bother to read any of the technical reasons behind the decision, you would know better. The reason DX10 is Vista only is because it depends on Vista's new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM), which removes a fuckton of overhead that's currently in the XP driver model. This, in turn, depends on Vista's new Kernel. WHICH IS THE WHOLE FUCKING CORE OF THE NEW OS! These changes will not be "ported" to XP, because its next to fucking impossible to do it. And if MS did do, they may as well just give Vista away for free; and that's not how you run a business.

Edit: Bit-Tech has a DX10 preview, which covers new driver model.