Project Demon Speeding II Underway!

[xipetotec]

Hey guys, I'm sure you're all used to people getting new builds and stuff, but it's been several years since I've built a new PC, so I'm pretty darned excited, lol. I just wanted to share my results with all of you, and hopefully get a few pointers along the way. All parts were ordered yesterday and were shipped out this morning and expected to arrive on Wednesday. I should be able to at least have it up and running by the weekend so I can dedicate my weekend to seeing what kind of OC I can get on everything. In any case, on the good stuff. Here's the parts for the build.

Case - Thermaltake Chaser MK-1

Fans - 2x 200mm Xigmatek XLF-F2006

Mobo - Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3

CPU - AMD Phenom II 1090t BE

Heatsink - Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

GPU - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 570

RAM - G.Skill Sniper DDR3 1600 8GB (2 x 4GB)

HDD(Boot) - 64GB Crucial M4 SSD

HDD(Data) - 2TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000

PSU - Corsair Enthusiast Series TX650

DVD - Samsung SH-222AL/BSBE

I'll post picks once everything comes in of the building process, then going to try and reserve the next 2 posts for benchmarking before and after OC to see what kind of performance gain I can get out of this.

First, I want to thank ALL of the awesome people on this forum who've helped me every step of the way in choosing what to buy to put this together. I would likely still be reading through hundreds of reviews and twisting my brain to figure out what to get if I hadn't had so much help. It's awesome that EOCF has such an AWESOME community and I appreciate you guys!

Another couple questions, if you don't mind. First, would someone mind posting what some of the best free tools are for benchmarking? I'll be searching around the web, but I figure a few of you probably know them all by heart if you wouldn't mind throwing them down. Also, if any of you have links saved or know of any for guides that would be useful for any of my hardware, I'd REALLY appreciate it if you wouldn't mind throwing it in here (for instance, about upgrading the firmware on the M4, OC'ing the 1090 and the GTX 570, etc etc). I'll be searching the web for everything I can find, but anything you guys can throw out there would be most appreciated! Thanks again, and I look forward to sharing my build with you!

Additional Comment:

Ok, adding another stupid questions, I looked all over but couldn't find anything about it, but I wanted to reserve a couple of posts so once I get pics/benchmarks, etc I can have it all at the top. But whenever I reply, it just merges to my last post? Is there anything I can do to fix that?











Benchmarks.xlsx

[DarkTower87]

Benchmarks...

http://www.futuremark.com/download/

http://downloads.guru3d.com/S.T.A.L....load-2433.html

http://www.aida64.com/

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Lost-Pla...load-2607.html

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...DiskMark.shtml

I am sure others will post more.

Additional Comment:

Some monitoring tools...

Temps
http://hwmonitor.en.softonic.com/

Info
http://www.filehippo.com/download_cpuz/
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Stress testing
http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=103
http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/

[xipetotec]

Awesome thanks! Just what I was looking for!

Additional Comment:

Case came in today! Everything else should be in tomorrow, so I'll shoot some pics when it gets here and post em! Just thought I'd update!

[DarkTower87]

Nice! Looking forward to it.

[xipetotec]

I know I'm WAAAAAY behind, but it's been a crazy week at work and I haven't even had a chance to hardly look at my new stuff, much less play with it at all. In anyways, I finally locked myself away this afternoon and got to business. I updated the original post with pics of the build (everything seemed to go pretty well). I'm pretty excited! I just got it booted and was about to start working on updating the firmware on my M4.

In any case, I did have a quick question. I had a little bit of a problem installing the Hyper 212 (and I think I put a little too much paste on there) and I was hoping to see if my temps were looking normal so far. I haven't put Win7 on the system yet, so just looking at what BIOS says, my CPU temp is floating between 47C and 49C (which seems pretty high to me) but I also wasn't sure if you could trust BIOS temps. Also, I'm worried that maybe I didn't get the bracket quite right on the 212... it holds firm, but if I put moderate pressure on the heatsink itself, it will twist, even though I tightened the screws as tight as I could... should this be happening, or is it maybe just the paste hasn't had enough of a chance to dry yet? Should I pull off the heatsink and maybe have another go at it?

[debs3759]

If you can move your heatsink then it is not properly attached. It should be firmly attached with no movement at the point of contact with the processor.

Also, I agree that if you have temps that high when all you have done is enter the BIOS then you have a problem. Try removing the heatsink, cleaning off the thermal paste, then reapplying paste and reseat the heatsink. Sometimes that can help, especially as you say in another thread that you think you may have applied too much paste.

As a rule of thumb I usually put a small blob of paste, about the size of a grain of rice, in the centreof the processor and let the pressure applied by fitting the heatsink spread it evenly.

[Cecil]

The small dot in the middle doesnt work well with larger higher core count CPUs, or DHP (direct heatpipe) heatsinks.

Undo it, clean off the CPU and the base of the heatsink with rubbing alchohal, and try again. Though this time after you screw it down, take it back off again and check to see if the paste is evenly spread across 85% or more of the CPU. If it is, then its making fine contact, just screw it back down and you are good to go.

[ORL]

Well, your temps are to high. And as has been stated you will first want to try resetting the HSF and a reapplication of the TIM. Although do not assume because you can move your HSF slightly it is not seated properly. Its very typical of the AM(X) sockets to have some play on the CPU. You do not want to over tighten or for that matter have to loose of a mounting. This is usually caused by a lack of bushings or ferret/washer that fills the gap around the pins protruding through the motherboard mounting location and is not indicative of a poor mount.

The trick with direct contact heatpipe HSFs is to actually apply the TIM in a very thin line across each individual heatpipe and then attach it to your CPU. The small gaps between each heatpipe and housing body tend to eat the vast majority of your Thermal Interface Material. Be very careful not to excessively apply your TIM however as this can be just as ineffective as under application.

Good luck!

[xipetotec]

Well, I wasn't sure if BIOS temps were reliable, so I went ahead and installed Win7 and installed HWMonitor. And looking at the CPU temps on it, it's showing idle temps at 22-25C for all cores. This seems a lot better, but what do you guys suggest?

Also, I agree about the heatsink moving.... I think tomorrow I'm going to open it back up and make sure I screwed it in as tight as possible. It's possible I might have left too much slack, the 212 retention clip is pretty tough to get in there right.

Additional Comment:

Originally Posted by ORL

The trick with direct contact heatpipe HSFs is to actually apply the TIM in a very thin line across each individual heatpipe and then attach it to your CPU. The small gaps between each heatpipe and housing body tend to eat the vast majority of your Thermal Interface Material. Be very careful not to excessively apply your TIM however as this can be just as ineffective as under application.

Good luck!

Thanks, but I actually don't have the gaps with the EVO. It's pretty much for that reason alone that I decided to pay the extra few dollars to avoid the headache that seemed to plague people. Should I still attempt to reseat it with the temps that HWMonitor is showing?

[Cecil]

No, your temps are fine. BIOSes just read higher.

[ORL]

Actually your BIOS temps are the most likely to be accurate. Please do not regard the individual core temps as your actual numbers. AMD chips use an estimation method that has proven to be drastically wrong. With a proper seat your unit should read less than your Ambient on your Core temps which is wrong. My core temps on both of my motherboards with both my 1075 and FX8120 read less than 11C most of the time. This is wrong as that is 51.8F. My actual ambient in my house is 70F or 21.1C.

The reason BIOS temps usually read higher is because the software and operations on the BIOS level are not initiated in power savings type operations. This in turn causes the chip to run full out despite its lack of usage and this creates a higher reading.

[Cecil]

While the core temps are not accurate, the real temp is usually about 10C higher. Seeing 20s at idle is normal.

[DarkFox]

all right two tips.

1. Taken from the way my video cards were done. Instead of dots or anything, either spread it yourself, with a credit card or something. Or instead, try a * pattern. you use very thin lines but it gets a good spread around the chip and because you crossed the center a few times, you end up with a bigger dot in the middle.

2. Once this stuff starts to dry, do not move the heat sync. Yes, you can grab a hold of the heat sync and twist it a bit, but if you have done that once the paste has started to cure, you destroy the bond it made, and since it is curred it will not fully re bond.

So I say take it off, clean it, use whichever pattern you end up with. Tighten it down, I usualy will twist it a few times once its tight, kinda make it feel like diging your feet in the sand at that beach. But after the first power on and heat cycle, dont twist that thing any more. If you do you will be putting on new paste again.

[xipetotec]

Ok, here's a SS of the desktop with Speedfan, HWMonitor, CPU-Z, and GPU-Z. See if that helps at all in seeing if I'm reading the right temps... if it looks like I have a good bond, I'd rather not mess with it, but just in case, going to run to the store while waiting on a reply and pick up some rubbing alchohol.

Another question, about how long should I leave the PC powered off before removing the heatsink and cleaning the CPU? I figured it would be better to leave it time to "cool down" before messing with it, but I wasn't 100% sure. Also, do I just use pure rubbing alchohol and a rag or should I dilute it in some water or something? Any tips for this would be VERY helpful as I've never actually had to remove one and clean it off before.

[Cecil]

Pure alchohal, and no you dont need a cool down time.

But your temps are fine, you shouldnt need to redo it. Just run a stress test to see what your max temps are. Run prime95 with custom ram settings to max out your ram for a while.

[xipetotec]

Ok awesome! Gonna give Prime95 a shot and see what my temps get up to. About how does it have to run to get your CPU temps to max? About 10 minutes?

[xipetotec]

Ok, just ran a test, and it's looking like it only gets to about 35-36C under a load. That seems pretty good for stock to me, but you guys are the experts! Here's a SS, let me know what you think!

Also, I'm not sure if it's important, but if you look in Speedfan, Temp2 seems to be running hot in the 50-52C range, but I'm not sure what that is or if it matters...

[Cecil]

47C is your actual CPU temp, not the core temp. I would drop speedfan, hwmonitor is easier to use imo. The 52C is your NB, but whats scary is hwmonitor saying your vreg temp got to 82C.

Run prime again, and touch the heatsink on the vregs. If its hot get a fan over it right away. If its not, then its probably a bug in the reporting sensor. That would be my guess as you took the screen shot while prime was running, and the current temp was 36C.

I have the same board, and the first one died from the vregs and NB getting so hot. But they are ok with a 1090T at 4.2Ghz, they just got really hot with bulldozer.

[xipetotec]

Ok, noob question, but what are the vregs? And how hot should it feel with prime running? Should I be worried if it's warm or if it burns my hand? And how did the rest of the temps look? Pretty stable or should I try a reseat? Don't want to start running benchmarks and OCing until I'm 100% sure everything is stable on normal.

[Cecil]

The vreg heatsink is the long one to the left of the CPU. 60C would be the highest you want to see really. If you can stand to touch the heatsink its ok, but if its hot enough to burn, then thats too hot.