Quiet Quad Core Build

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 2:43 pm

In July a classmate of mine came to me about building a new pc. We discussed the parts, and being quite impulsive like myself, he purchased the parts before the Intel price drops. The build consists of:

Intel Q6600 (not a G0)
4x1gb Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800(he added 2x1gb after the initial build)
Gigabyte P35C-DS3R
EVGA 8800GTS 320MB
Samsung HD501LJ 500gb
Samsung SATA DVD R/W drive
Corsair HX520
Lian Li A05B
Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme
Enermax Marathon fans(3)
Samsung 206BW 20'' Widescreen(I think..)

The system went together rather easily, and booted up right away. I intended to take more pictures, but I was carried away with getting it finished. I did ask Jon to take pictures, but he too was lost in the assembly of his new toy.

boxes!

boxes galore!

Boxes opened..

in the case..

me, enjoying jon's A&W.

The system is very quiet. The three fans are plugged into motherboard headers, but are not being throttled. At 12v, they only spin at 900-950rpm. The system was inaudible in his room, the ambient noise level is a little high. As for thermal data, I can only say what I think Jon told me. He mentioned the Q6600 idles under 30C, and loads in the low 40s. He hasn't been monitoring the video card temperature, though he does tell me the hot air seems to be pooling in the top rear of the case. He has since installed a <1000rpm pci bay fan to help bring air to the video card cooler. The system has been operating perfectly(with the occasional game issue) running Vista Ultimate X64.

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 3:32 pm

not bad not bad.

the cable coming from around the CPU to the optical drive area, is that a thermal sensor? i can't really tell.

interesting motherboard though. i've seen all solid state caps, but not DDR3...is it what its cut out to be?

Konnetikut · Post by **Konnetikut** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 3:44 pm

He's still using DDR2 there.

I think that looks like a Samsung HD501LJ.

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 5:23 pm

i know, but i see the slots available for DDR3, meaning its obviously an issue as they're not just relying on a new motherboard for it.

matt_garman · Post by **matt_garman** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 5:33 pm

ryboto, did you change the direction of air flow for either of the two case fans? I know on your own PCA05, you changed the front fan to blow inward, making the case positive pressure. Did you do the same for your friend's computer?

Can you verify the temperatures? I'm skeptical that his temps are that low (only because I had much higher temps with my dual core, and lower-powered GPU.

Oh, but did you or your friend overclock that quad core at all?

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 6:34 pm

matt_garman wrote:ryboto, did you change the direction of air flow for either of the two case fans? I know on your own PCA05, you changed the front fan to blow inward, making the case positive pressure. Did you do the same for your friend's computer?

Can you verify the temperatures? I'm skeptical that his temps are that low (only because I had much higher temps with my dual core, and lower-powered GPU.

Oh, but did you or your friend overclock that quad core at all?

He's doing the airflow back to front. I can ask him again what the temps are. He did say that he removed the PCI fan, and installed an X-Fi sound card. I would have done positive pressure, but I don't know if it works as well with a fan in the power supply. The motherboard has been working well for him. The Bios is a bit weak, but it works for him. He's not overclocking, just using it for gaming, and he folds for us. He wanted the board so that he could eventually upgrade to DDR3 if needed. Initially price was a concern, but in the end it didn't matter, so he bought the P35C, but it really wasn't that much more than other P35 alternatives.

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 8:21 pm

That Lian Li case looks very nice. Compact, yet able to take full ATX PSU and MB. Its very nice.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 10:09 am

So, Jon is telling me that the Q6600 gets as hot as 44C while SMP folding. As for the temperature of the GPU, I'll have to ask him again.

zoob · Post by **zoob** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 1:00 pm

What program is he using to monitor temps?

My B3 has a TJunction of 100, so I have to adjust temperatures in Speedfan by adding 15C, just like all the new G0s.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:21 pm

zoob wrote:What program is he using to monitor temps?

My B3 has a TJunction of 100, so I have to adjust temperatures in Speedfan by adding 15C, just like all the new G0s.

I think he's just using the program that came with the Gigabyte board. I don't recall installing any third party software to monitor the temperatures.

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 12:49 pm

I seriously doubt those readings. Not calling anyone a liar but instead doubt whether Gigabyte's software gives correct temperatures. SpeedFan for example is known to give too low readings (but you can go to settings, Advanced, and set a +15 degree offset to make it correct). I think there's other utilities as well that make the same mistake as SpeedFan. Even some BIOSes report low temperatures.

Core Temp should give accurate readings... and SpeedFan too, after you calibrate it to show the same temperature as Core Temp. It should just be offset and after it's compensated the reading should be the same at every temperature. Well, the software may show you an average of several measurements, and they may refresh at different times...

I recently created a thread for my Q6600 (G0) build. viewtopic.php?t=43624&sid=d6be2d2f4c098 ... 7300dae0b6

Even at reduced voltage stock clock the idle temperature of cores are above 30 deg C... with +15 compensation in effect, of course. I use a smaller +10 compensation for "CPU" (when compared to +15 compensation for "core0" to "core3") because that gives me a "CPU" reading that's about as hot as the hottest core instead of being 5 (or more) degrees hotter than any core. What is this "CPU" reading? Core temperatures are temperatures reported by digital temperature sensor so is "CPU" that CPU thermal diode then (non-digital temperature reading)?

Load temperatures of my system are:
44 deg C @ 2.4 GHz/1.1 vcore/1100rpm
60 deg C @ 3.2 GHz/1.35 vcore/1100rpm
(vcores are as set in BIOS, monitoring shows about 1.05 and 1.30 volts, respectively)

I have configures CPU fan to spin only when temperature exceeds 45 so when automatic fan speed is enabled, it stabilized at 47 with 30% PWM ratio (somewhere around 200...500rpm I presume, considering that 70% PWM gives me around 800rpm and below 20% PWM fan doesn't spin at all). Cooler is Noctua, which is a bit more freely flowing than U120E but has lower surface area and thus lower absolute cooling capacity at higher rpms.

Like jon, I too Fold with my Quad. A CPU cycle is a terrible thing to waste.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 1:00 pm

He told me he's using Everest to monitor the temperatures. I don't know what the accuracy of Everest is with these chips, but it's always been the most accurate for me.

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 5:19 pm

Maybe it's accurate with AMDs. I don't know. At least with Prescott it shows the same temperature as SpeedFan (if no offset is configured for latter software). Both are very inaccurate. On cold boots I've usually had CPU temperature of around "15". And it becomes slightly instable (no crash but Prime95 fails) as low as "low fifties"... but overclocking with stock voltage probably have something to do with that instability as well (crappy Asus P5S800-VM doesn't support manual voltage control and is stupid enough not to raise voltage by itself). +15 degree offset seems reasonable but I have not verified it since Core Temp doesn't work with Prescotts.

SpeedFan has given me good temperature readings on 1.8 GHz Duron. Maybe that's a reading from thermal diode instead of digital sensor? Or maybe AMD reports temperature in different format than Intel? Either way, Prescott or anything newer from Intel, and I wouldn't trust SpeedFan readings without at least using an offset. Non-linearity problems, while harder to compensate, are less significant than offset.

For Core 2 Duos and Core 2 Quads, Core Temp is one favoured by many overclockers. I believe overclockers know the best because they put their hardware at the greatest risk. Regular users may rely on faulty temperature readings and never know it because with stock clocks their CPU shouldn't crash that easily.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 7:42 pm

whiic wrote: For Core 2 Duos and Core 2 Quads, Core Temp is one favoured by many overclockers. I believe overclockers know the best because they put their hardware at the greatest risk. Regular users may rely on faulty temperature readings and never know it because with stock clocks their CPU shouldn't crash that easily.

Everest has always agreed with Coretemp for me. I'll have jon download it and see if it agrees with the Everest readings.

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Wed Sep 26, 2007 5:23 am

http://www.thecoolest.zerobrains.com/Co ... works.html

Core Temp = Tjunction - Delta

Delta is the value reported by the sensor and monitoring software has to do the previous calculation to obtain correct core temperature. Everest Home Version was last update 2005, right? Maybe all Intel processors had 85 deg C Tjunction back then? At least my Q6600 G0 has Tjunction of 100 deg C so if software makes the assumption of 85 deg Tjunction the readings will be 15 deg C too low.

AMDs have a completely different formula for calculating temperature so if you have good experience with certain Intel or AMD cores, that doesn't mean Everest will give accurate readings for some other cores. If it's accurate, then it's accurate, but if it's inaccurate, it's VERY inaccurate (most likely by 15 degrees).

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Wed Sep 26, 2007 6:24 am

whiic wrote:
Delta is the value reported by the sensor and monitoring software has to do the previous calculation to obtain correct core temperature. Everest Home Version was last update 2005, right?

he's using the latest version of Everest Ultimate.