Posts Tagged ‘intel’
Hot Throbbing RMA
After a long discussion with Ivan the Overclocker on Tuesday night, we pretty much determined (and confirmed my suspicions) that the CPU I got was flawed with faulty temp sensors. Just my luck right?
I have sent the chip back to NewEgg for an RMA and replacement. After spending all this cash on new components, I want to be absolutely sure they work like they’re supposed to. Typically, I would just let it go and continue to use the chip. Afterall, Intel sells CPUs and not thermometers. That said, I hate having that nagging “what if” in the back of my mind, and I know that’s all I would feel if I tried to overclock this chip without being able to properly read the core temps.
I suppose I can wait another couple of weeks…I mean, now that Big Brown is holding my package, it’s not like I have choice. My delivery is supposed to make it back to NewEgg by the 28th, so I hope to have a new working chip by the first week of June. My jealousy of Magic Mike’s flawless build knows no end.
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New PC Build – Day 2
Well, I got everything connected, installed a stripped down version of XP, and away we go…
I also posted more pics to the FLICKR set.
No project is without problems though. When I was doing all of the research on the components, I came across a few threads regarding faulty temp sensors on the E8400. Basically, the temp sensors get “stuck”. As a result, instead of showing the high 30-low 40c temps for the CPU core, I’m showing 59c. I’ve tried troubleshooting as much as I can…setting and resetting the heatsink, applying different thermal paste, swapping 120mm fans on the CPU and running stress test after stress test. All the results are the same: 59c on the core.
My hope is that the sensor is only stuck on idle temps, and that the proper triggers will flip when the temperature gets too high. My guess is that I may see some of this when I up the voltage a bit.
Speaking of fans…I bought the wrong one, and boy do I feel like an idiot. The Scythe 120mm I originally bought to sit on the sink has a max speed of 800rpm, and is only a 3 pin fan. The header on the P5K-E is 4-pin, so I can’t adjust the fan speed. Regardless, 800rpm ain’t gonna cut it on an overclock.
Maybe Bearclaws can help me out a bit tonight.
All that aside, I can already feel the potential of the machine.
Tags: cpu, geek, intel, pc, scythe
New PC Build – Day 1
I just couldn’t wait anymore. I had to start the build process today. Going into it, I know I won’t finish, but I HAD to start playing around. I dropped Mrs Nerd off at Logan Airport this morning so she could head to Korea for a week, so in the meantime, it is pure geek freedom.
The whole goal of this project is to build a machine that I can overclock. When I built my last PC in 2005, I used an AMD64 3400+ (2.2 Ghz) which didn’t allow me to overclock at all. I have to blame Ivan for reinstilling the build-jones in me, so here we are.
Let me back up a bit first, though. Here are the components of the machine. Newegg loves me.
LianLi Metal Boned K10 mid-tower case
ASUS P5K-E WIFI-AP Motherboard
Intel E8400 Wolfdale CPU
Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme Heatsink
Corsair 620HX Power Supply
eVGA GeForce 8800 GT PCIe Video Card
Samsung DL DVD writer
Seagate 7200.10 250GB Hard Drive
G. Skill D9GMH 6400 DDR2 RAM – 2GB
Logitech G51 5.1 surround speakers
Tags: asus, corsair, evga, g.skill, geek, intel, lian, pc, thermalright
Yeah? So What?
The chip race is heating up these days, and the players, Intel & AMD, are in the thick of it.
With the release of Intel’s QuadCore chips (Tom’s Hardware review here), more than a few overweight light-deprived geeks are sweating with eager anticipation (or actually walking up a flight of stairs…who knows?).
My take? Great, a faster super-expensive chip that will produce a speed only noticeable by the most introverted autistic savants. Will it make IE crash faster? Will Thunderbird deliver my spam faster? Who cares? The upside to all of this is that the price of the quad-cores will make the Core2Duo price drop like a baby under Britney Spears’ watchful eye. As soon as the E6600 is in the mid-$200 range, it will be a great value for Joe PCUser. Think about it. Most of the applications that would benefit from 4 cores haven’t been updated to utilize all that new horsepower, so unless your running some 4000 machine beowulf cluster, don’t worry, be happy. The Core2Duo will speed things up quite nicely if, like me, you are still running a caveman-like AMD64 3400+.
I’m not exactly writing new gospel here, but I just don’t think that all the media hype is worth it. I write this to you from my Texas Instruments TI99-4A to prove my point.