Capn:

I can't say that I've taken careful notes on the burned boards. All of the bad ones were so severely defective that I never bothered.

My observation for the night as I try to get 3.2 prime stable on a b3 is this: at some voltages, the VTT yield fluctuates rather drastically. If you have a setting where you see fluctuating VTT, don't even bother to -*test*-('") it for stability, just move on to the next setting. You need a little more vcore to stabilize it.

Those are pretty good temps all the way around. 47c on the GPUs is below idle temp in most rigs for those cards. You have the "Watercooling Temperature Aversion Disease" mate. Most folks would be very happy with your temps at idle and stock voltage/freqs but as soon as you go watercooling you get antsy when things hit 40c. 50c sends you to Swiftech with credit card in hand and 60c means you have failed miserably as a human being. Meanwhile the rest of the world deals with 70+c temps on their cores, overclocked to 3.2 GHz, and are happy.

See, the reality is watercooling not only lowers your component temperatures, it lowers your "safe temperature threshold", which means we really gain nothing as we are now alarmed at 55c temps instead of 75c temps. How do I know this? Because I am one of the afflicted. Wait till the Capn contracts the disease.

i bought a simple coolermaster water cooler for the tinker rig.
not a super good one, but was only $85 and got a $30 rebate at the time so $55
and will see what happens.

water cooler rad.
http://home.comcast.net/~seven333/DSCF3464.JPG
http://home.comcast.net/~seven333/DSCF3466.JPG
http://home.comcast.net/~seven333/DSCF3467.JPG

love this guys review, that's some overclock he has going on there. lol!

Reviewed By: ZacK The Pc TeEn! on 9/6/2007 Tech Level: high - Ownership: less than 1 day
Pros: WOW! ok i had my intel core2duo running at 2.4 ghz and overclocked it up to 6.4ghz. with out the water cooler it was at a steady 105 degrees f. at 2.4ghz and with it it was 6.4 overclocked so you tell me how badazZ this watercooler is i cant hear it it is made with quality and it was cheap. I would buy two but i only have 1 processor. BUY IT

WOW..6.4ghz...Has he left an email or something, I'll give him $1000 for his Core2Duo if it does that on water..lol

well if the ASUS P5N32-E SLI plus has major problems with my quad i guess the DFI with SLi support seems to be the only board with SLi that i would go with.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813136035

at least they are trying to cool the NB down.
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/pro...-136-035-06.jpg

seems the ASUS P5N32-E SLI plus boards may just be too weak and the heat just takes it's toll.
I have one here for months brand new in the box, well now in the lian-li case i had here also. so may as well use what is paid for already.

maybe i got a good one...

if not, I think I can work with the DFI and cool it down even though water cooling the chipset doesn't seem possible from reading reviews.

anyway it's a toy to tinker with so whatever.

i have the dell (you know the one i'm not touching) for my gaming needs
got a dual boot now thanks to Arlies help, vista for the great looking games and xp pro 64 for everything else cause i hate using vista for anything but games.

it's running really nice and was put together so much better than the first one.
this way i always have a perfect running rig i can use at will and one i can screw around with.
i still have my DFI AM2 mobo and a 5200 cpu for it, 2.6ghz if i remember right.
got special OCZ ram made just for that board in the parts cabinet and it even sports two full 16x sli slots.

bios version was really bad for a DFI though at the time.

then there's an asus crosshair on the shelf that i had no luck with at the time.
so lots of parts to use and the ones i don't have been going on ebay.

i just hope the dell is gunna last for a good while and i'm set.

You have a lot of hardware Capn, but not a single submission to HWBOT yet.. Maybe some 3dmark scores from the new Dell eh? The 'untouchable' one.. Maybe you could have the word UNTOUCHABLE laser etched onto the side panel or something..but no, that could be considered tinkering tho..best left alone.

The NB heatsink is attached with those stupid hooks, it'd be hard to attach a H2O chipset block on there...Stick with the p5n32

That's the plan.
I really like the plus mobo, but if it fries that DFI was a backup. (maybe)

gunna try and fit a vantec tornado fan on the plus NB chip. lol!

I update my screenshot above that includes the temps.

It looks like it is going to be a tough call on the next chip. 1355/800 Unlinked (4-4-4-12 1T) is not wanting to stabilize within the realm of voltages where I hoped it would. 1.59375 vcore fails Prime after a little over an hour. 1.57 vcore failed at the 50 minute mark. Core temps at 100% load at 1.59375 (yielding 1.47 at load) are pushing 70C, so I don't have a whole lot of room to stabilize it and push past the 360 barrier where things might get squirrelly. 2T does me no good, that fails almost immediately. That seems to say that one of the new QX chips might be the better route. We'll see what 5-5-5-15 2T does.

Chuck is having some really good results with his setup. The G0 stepping seems to be much better with the 680 chipsets as he is at 3.4GHz or so with 1.34v Vcore. I'd go that direction and see what happens. B3 was early silicon and the results aren't so good. G0 acts like a completely different chip. If I have time (Dad is in town and two jobs backed up) I'll plug my Q6600 into the P5N32 Plus and see what it will do. I am guessing 3600MHz stable on air with a Zalman 7000.

Yeah, the next chip will be a G0 for certain. The question is whether it is worth the extra $$$ for a higher multi chip.

Chuck - don't you have results (stock overclock, max oc, and vcores) on the Striker with both the Q6600 G0 and the QX6800 G0? So ... Arlie will have that comparative data for the Striker to help him decide on which G0 - in case he already doesn't.

For the most part yes. With my QX6800 though, I stopped at the 3410MHz @1.33v (1.35 in bios) for now. I should be getting the new Apogee GTX on Monday and wanted to install that first. Also because I'm so amazed with my current daily setting, I just want to soak it in for a bit.


With the Striker or "plus" mobos, having a unlocked multi is key. I haven't tried going above the stock 11x yet though.

Jason has some nice comparisons between using a 10-12 multiplier with his QX6850. I believe he found that sticking with 11x is the way to go.

As Arlie is planning on, the G0 stepping is the only way to go.

So, with the Plus or Striker, you think extra $$ for the unlocked multi is worth it?