Big upgrade.

[GSGregg]

Nice rig! All set for VP's jump to DX9

 

[Itchigo]

Nice!! I read the specs.

Mine's 2 years old (already?). It was my first desktop build.

I-5 2400k (overclocked to 3.9 ghz on air!)
16gb Patriot Ram
650 W P/s
1.5 TB Sata
5ooGB WD Sata
GTX 280

Boots in about minute flat (with a Sata!)

This runs my cab (offscreen to the right) by remote, or is my normal computer when it's not running the cab.

I need a better pic of it.

 

[Shockman]

What operating system did you install?

 

[Itchigo]

Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

 

[mrschultz]

Nice rig! All set for VP's jump to DX9

:)

Been a week and I'm still finding programs I need to install. Constantly have the feeling I'm missing something. I have all my VP stuff transferred but haven't installed VP yet.

The SSD kind of makes sleep mode pointless. Takes about 3 seconds to wake up from hibernation, 12 seconds boot up from being off. My 5 year old Core 2 duo was up to several minutes booting up.

Just redid the thermal paste on the cooling head, wasn't happy with the temperatures and when I took it apart the paste was uneven and too thick. So got rid of the stuff that came with the cooler and put the small amount that should be on there, finally the temps are as low as I should get with the liquid cooler.

 

[Itchigo]

What kind of temps are you getting? Just curious, my case supports watercooling, but I didn't have the extra money for it.
Case: Sentey Black Box
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811322036

I'm usually about 90-100f idle/low usage.
The highest I've seen is 145f, and that's at 90%. Burning/encoding a dvd, converting other video files to a different format, and playing the cab, all at the same time.

And my old Core to Duo is about the same. I thought it was so fast when I first got it lol. But what do you want? It's dubbed as the "Dell from hell" because I built it from other dead Dell laptops lol.

 

[Coil_Smoke]

That is a fine looking computer. What makes the coolant circulate? Does it rely on pure convection?

 

[mrschultz]

There is a pump inside the head that is attached to the CPU, and a fan behind the radiator blowing cold air into it. The fan is variable speed just like a regular air cooler, most new motherboards have an optional CPU fan plug just for the pump (but it runs full speed all the time so you could just use an adapter to plug it into the power supply). These new liquid coolers are preloaded and sealed with 50/50 water/glycol so no worries about freezing or boiling. Some reports in reviews of defective units leaking, so I have been keeping an eye on it, so far no issues.

As for temps, with default CPU clock speeds it barely gets above room temp when doing normal stuff like web browsing. If I run a CPU stress test with 8 threads driving the CPU to 100% it goes to about 55°C (131°F). If I overclock to 4.3GHz the max temp goes to about 62°C. But the only application I have run so far that will use all 8 threads is Handbrake during a video conversion. Even a game like Skyrim only uses about half the CPU power and temps don't move much above idle.

 

[Coil_Smoke]

"CORE TEMP" Program Attached

That is cool(literally)...I like the uncluttered/orderly look of your cable routing system. Attached is neat little 250KB program. It shows the temperature of your processors/ each core and some other stuff. I believe it to be safe and bug free. I guess it is what you call 'Stand Alone" it does not install anything ...'Core Temp' just runs when you open it and it makes/keeps a wordpad in the same folder with log of the data...C_S

 

[mrschultz]

I've got a few of those stand alone monitors, but the one I use most is HWMonitor by Cupid. It's free and lists the temperatures and fan speeds of every sensor it can find in your system, so you get hard drive, video card, motherboard, and cpu temps.

 

[Itchigo]

Core Temp is great, I use it on my machine. It also shows, load of each core, and the highest temp in addition to the current temp.

 

[mrschultz]

I found I had a newer version of Core Temp already in my folder of monitoring stuff. The older version doubles up cores for hyper-threading CPUs, fixed in the newer version.

Redid my thermal paste again last night, 4th time's a charm, now I'm getting the temps I was expecting with the liquid cooling, I can now let the ASUS motherboard do it's automatic overclocking and temps stay below 60°C pretty much all the time, even with several threads running it barely goes above room temp.

Got this thermal paste:

 

[stevenjohnson]

great! thanks for information

 

[Coil_Smoke]

great! where you can play and be sure that you are not cheating.

BUT...The best kind of cheating is when you don't know you are doing it !