this information has moved here:
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=20872

Forgive my n00b questions, but what does this do - underclock your PC wile its idling?

Please be more specific. Which software/feature do you mean?

One of the pieces of software utilizes the PowerNow! feature on mobile processors (which can be enabled on the desktop varients by circuting an bridge) to dynamically change the FSB, Multiplier and Voltage on the go.

-Por

Can anyone elaborate on what "fan speed adjustment" refers to? Is this similar to SilentTek or SpeedFan?

About a week ago I e-mailed Albatron and Soltek regarding Cool 'n' Quiet support on their Athlon 64 boards since I was thinking of buying one. I never heard back from Albatron, but did get a reply from a Soltek rep who didn't know what I was referring to until I linked him to the CnQ page at AMD's site. His reply:

"Thank you for your information.
Our K8 motherboards don't support this function according to our R&D. They indicated that almost K8 motherboards don't support
this function on the market. "

This seems to contradict the info in several reviews of Soltek boards.

Regarding idle (just basic disconnect/halt, not Cool 'n' Quiet) on the Athlon 64, this article mentioned in another thread seems to indicate it's not working on the K8V Deluxe and Fujitsu-Siemens D1607 (and most likely other boards), because with CnQ disabled they observed little temperature difference between idle and maximum load. Maybe they configured something incorrectly, or perhaps halt is tied to CnQ?

P.S. Thanks for making this thread sticky, but perhaps it should also be moved to the CPU section?

This disconnect/halt figures are ZDnet are a little bit confusing. In the thrustworthy german magazine C't, the power draw of all Athlon 64 motherboards was around 85-90W. They also tested the FSC D1607. In a german german newsgroup someone measured the draw of the 12V lines and also got a significant drop.
Conlusion: Don't thrust these figures too much - they are good for an overview.
I started the thread in the general sections since it also affects mainboards. But perhaps the CPU forum is a better place.

Cool & Quiet does work on ASUS K8V Deluxe.

I assembled my first PC on Monday. I turned on C&Q in the BIOS, then followed ASUS' instructions, and let XP update the CPU drivers from the ASUS CD. Once that was done, I installed ASUS' C&Q Utility, followed by upgrading AMD's C&Q drivers to the latest version. You need to turn the power management to minimal for C&Q to work, also if you have an ASUS board, do not use QFan with C&Q.

Right now, the ambient temperature in my room is 27 C, the CPU is running at 800Mhz and it's temperature is 34C (93F), and the motherboard is at 37C (98F) as reported by the ASUS Probe 2. MBM reports the same temperatures using the motherboard Winbond sensor. The stock heatsink fan is at 2884 RPM, and the Cool & Quiet software says the CPU is running at 800Mhz at 1.2750V. I don't know how to get the temperature of my Samsung SATA HD.

This is in a stock Sonata with a stock PSU and the stock heatsink. When opening or clsoing a program, or encoding a MP3, I've seen the CPU frequency increase, but it rarely hits 2Ghz, usually it only hits 17Ghz or so.

I have an Athlon64 3400+ with Asus K8V Deluxe. The Cool & Quiet does work. When Im doing desktop stuff it stays at 800MHz 1.27 volts, the temps are 32C for CPU and 35C for Motherboard. When I jump into UT2004 the CPU jumps up to its 2.2GHz and my full load temps are 49C. This is using a Zalman 7000 at lowest setting at all times, 1400RPM, and a single 120MM fan in the back of P160 running at lowest possible RPM at all times. Needless to say I love this setup and am pretty darn quiet except for my PSU, but I plan on replacing it with an Antec Phantom when they become available.

Just a quick note; C'n'Q has been slightly changed in the new CG revision of the A64.

The original C0 cpus idle at 800MHz @ 1.3V using 35W.
The new CG revision cpus idle at 1000MHz @ 1.1V using 22W.

The C0 cpus have a productID ending in 'AP'.
The CG cpus have a productID ending in 'AR' or 'AX'.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/30430.pdf

Hello:

I'm building an Athlon 64 3000+ (stepping 8 ) machine with an ASRock K8S8X motherboard (SiS 755 chipset) and there are some big issues:

Cool 'N Quiet is enabled by default -- but it works a little too well! With Folding@Home running, it stays at 780mHz (the clock is a little slow).

The Matrox P650 video card has garbled post and BIOS screens, necessitating that I install a PCI video card, just to see the BIOS.

Several sponaneous reboots, and many program crashes...definitely, there is a major problem(s).

I'm going to give the ECS 755-A2 v1.0 mobo a try. The PS is a Fortron 300watt 120mm, and the RAM is Muskin PC3200 "2-2-2 Special" set to Auto & DDR400.

Why always the cheapest ones? Better invest 20 bucks more and get a quality manufacturer.

How do you get cpu-throtteling to work (I have a mobile xp 2500+) on a regular pc motherboard? (abit nf7-s) on windoze xp?

Hello:



I've heard very good things about the SiS chipset -- should I complain because they cost less?

For the record, the ECS 755-A2 worked very well with [edit] one Mushkin PC3200 512MB stick at DDR400 2-2-5-2. However, with two Mushkin PC4000, it runs with 3-4-4-8 -- which is disappointing...[/edit] With the Samsung 160GB in a RAID 1 array, the thing boots WinXP Pro faster than I thought possible.

The only thing I would have wished for was maybe a Firewire port or two, and a slightly better ATX location, but I'd have to say it is a good quality motherboard. It *did* come with (only) one of the tightest fitting SATA cables that I have seen -- it's an AMP brand, and it has none of the sloppiness that some of the other SATA cables have.

I will say that just because something costs more certainly doesn't guaranty that it is better quality. Also, the crashes with the ASRock mobo were due to a faulty stick of Mushkin RAM -- the only problems with the ASRock were the boot screens on the Matrox, and the apparently broken Cool 'N Quiet.

Hello:

I can confirm that Cool N' Quiet can stop the CPU fan (Zalman 7000 Al/Cu) when things are cool enough and restart it as temps rise. It kicks on when the temps climb to about 52-53C, and they drop back down to ~47-48C when running Folding@Home.

What motherboard are You using? The ECS one?

AFAIK Cool 'n' Quiet doesn't stop the fan, motherboard has to do it (or external fan controller). That's why the stock A64 HSF has temp controlled fan (again, AFAIK).

Oh, and is it just 0/12V, or is there some range of speed/voltage?

Cheers,

Jan

Hello Jan:

Sorry -- check the subject line! I'm refering to the Asus K8V Deluxe this time. I did enable their fan controller in the BIOS as well, and if the temp drops below 40C it turns off the CPU fan. Above 52-53 or so and it kicks back on again.

I'm not all that impressed with the HD performance on this VIA chipset -- the SiS chipset motherboards booted *much* faster! In about 30 secs from on switch to Windows desktop. Virtually the same machine with the VIA takes almost twice as long.

I never look it...

That sounds nice. I'm assuming that it's basic 0/12V, but that's why God created those FanMates...

Aye, currently using VIA, and the next one is going to be something else! VIA and Creative sound cards don't really mix...

Back on the original topic; Do nVidia A64 boards have HLT/disconnect feature? Or does it work on all A64 boards, as hinted in the first post? The new nForce250 chipset looks quite good...

Cheers,

Jan

Hello Jan:

The Asus K8V Deluxe seemed to vary the fan speed quite nicely actually -- there is also Asus' fan control feature, so it worked very well, altogether.

I may have discovered the setting that would have gotten CN'Q working on the ASRock: in the Windows Power setting, Asus' manual mentioned setting it to "Minimal Power Savings" in order to get the CN'Q to work...so if it had worked, then the only issue with the ASRock K8S8X mobo for me would have been the garbled POST and BIOS screens (and the less than ideal ATX power plug location), but it's performance was quite good, especially the quick SATA performance!

And yes, the nVidia 250 looks good, apparently it is even better with the dual channel RAM on the 939 socket motherboards and their 1000mHz HT...

Realizing that You fold, what about the temps at idle? I.e. does the fan spin at all? This would be a nice feature for all of us not folding...

Cheers,

Jan

Hello Jan:



I was seeing idle temps in the low 30's. And yes, the fan shuts off at idle on the Asus K8V Deluxe.

I'm hoping to see how the AOpen K89 MAX does with RAM latencies and Cool N' Quiet.

Any progress? Does Cool 'n' Quiet still work if You undervolt (seems that AOpen is capable of undervolting)?

Cheers,

Jan

Hello Jan:

I have not yet built a machine with the AOpen mobo -- soon, I hope. My boss really needs a new machine, but it'll happen when the budget allows!

I did find that the Mushkin PC3200 "2-2-2 Special" RAM did *not* work very well on the ECS 755-A2 mobo -- in one case I had a bad stick, but I tried another matched pair and even at the maximum RAM voltage (of only 2.65v !) it started to boot WinXP, but then it failed. At 2.6v (which is the default, right?), it would not even POST. Strangely, it had several *lower* voltages for the RAM! My e-mail inquiry to ECS about any BIOS updates that would support higher voltages (most go to 2.8v!), they replied that I should look for RAM that worked at 2.5v -- which they seemed to think is the default voltage for DDR-SDRAM...

The Mushkin PC3200 Level 1 RAM (2-3-2) worked like a charm on the Asus K8V Deluxe mobo.

I have found, too, that the Mushkin PC4000 3-3-4 RAM on any of these three Athlon 64 Socket 754 motherboards could *not* be pushed to PC3200 at any lower latencies than the 3-3-4 -- which was really disappointing to say the least! It did work fine at the higher latency settings. Also, it would not even POST on my Athlon XP 2100+ machine at PC2100 speeds! Nothing that I tried helped...the only speed it would do anything was at 100mHz, which is like PC1600! VERY disappointing...

Ok, this is how it works for me, using a AMD64 3000+ CPU (CG stepping).

There is nice little utility called ClockGen http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php#support .
This allows you to change FSB, Multiplier, and VCore in realtime.
It is intended for overclockers, but it is much more useful for "the silent geeks".

This CPU is intended to run with: Multiplier=10, FSB=200 and VCore=1.5 Volts
I can run my CPU (Prime95 stable):
Multiplier=10, FSB=200 and VCore=1.3 Volts
Multiplier=8.5, FSB=200 and VCore=1.1 Volts
Multiplier=5, FSB=200 and VCore=0.85 Volts

The nice thing is the utility has a GUI, and can run "Command line driven"
So a few shortcuts on my desktop allow me to switch speed and VCore, and a shortcut in the "Startup" folder throttles down VCore after the machine has booted.

"Cool'n'quiet" is enabled in BIOS, but disabled in the OS.


Mmmm, editing this post isn't working out for me now. I'll clean up this post later.

Hello:

I noticed that NewEgg now has a new Foxconn 755A01-6EKRS (silly name!) motherboard that uses the SiS 755 chipset. It also has *3* DIMM slots, *4* SATA ports, Gigabit LAN, and Firewire -- pretty much a full feature motherboard. If the BIOS is full featured and it supports Cool N' Quiet -- with fan control, then it could be an excellent value. It's 20-pin ATX plug is *even* on the back edge of the board!

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-186-010&depa=1

Hello:

Well, I've just finished building another Athlon 64 system (2800+ this time) and I *like* the AOpen AK89 MAX! You can not only have the CPU fan controlled with the Silent Tek, but also the case fan(s)! Wow, that is nice.

And AOpen even included the floppy with the Silicon Image SATA driver on it! Will wonders never cease!

According to
http://www.hardwareluxx.de/cgi-bin/ubb/ ... 000055&p=5
this mobo does not support Cool'n'Quiet. Can you verify this?

Regarding the ASUS K8V, I was browsing through the manual for the SE Deluxe when I noticed the following:


Anyone know what that's about?

The stock AMD fan is thermally controlled.

Without a thermally controlled fan (one that goes up and down with temperature) Cool & Quiet doesn't work. Well, the Cool part does, but the fan would be spinning just as loudly.

They're suggesting that in place of a thermally controlled fan on the HSF, that you use software to adjust the fan speed, which seems like a good solution. It wouldn't have to be Asus' software, it could be something like Speedfan or CPUcool as well.

I've had two Asus systems, although both Socket A rather than A64's. At least for the Socket A systems, Q-Fan is a BIOS setting. It seems to be a 3-speed fan control system. For CPU temps below 50C, it would run the fans at about 2000rpm. For 50-59C it would run at 2500 and ramp to 2800rpm or so. Once it hits 60C it would go to a full 4000rpm. You can also override it with software like speedfan.