Official GIGABYTE Forum

Overclocking, Benching, Events, Tweaking & Modding => Overclocking motherboards with Intel processors => Topic started by: bhavv on April 15, 2009, 01:43:44 pm

Title: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 15, 2009, 01:43:44 pm
Soon to have -

2x Gigabyte 4870's
Gigabyte EX58-UD4
Intel I7 920 D0 revision
12 GB (6x2 GB) Patriot Viper PC3-12800
Asus Triton 88 HSF

- Will be overclocking it obviously  :D

The choice of motherboard was based because I need a spare PCI slot on top of two graphics cards as I still use a Creative X-Fi Elite Pro - I wish that there was a UD5 board with the better motherboard cooling and just two PCI-E slots with a usable PCI slot, but this was the only one I could find, and I wanted to try a Gigabyte motherboard (Already had plenty by Asus and MSI, and bored now). I still only look for boards with two PCI-E slots and a usable PCI slot because I need a good sound card for recording and audio work (hobby = piano).

My current board is an MSI X48c Platinum which was perfect for my needs, and I am sure that this new Gigabyte one will be even better, just a shame that I cant get uber cooling like on the UD5 motherboard this time around with a usable PCI slot :(

I'm going to have to reactivate Vista over the phone again, I hate doing that every time I upgrade.

More info, reviews, pictures when I have everything up and running :)
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 15, 2009, 03:01:48 pm
I decided to change the motherboard to the UD5 instead, and am going to sell my X-Fi and look for a 4x PCI-E one instead that can be used for audio recording ...

I dont even know if such a soundcard exists yet :(
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: Badbonji on April 16, 2009, 09:20:37 am
Do you really need 12Gb? I use about 3.5Gb whilst just gaming, and have never seen all 6gb under use from transcoding or anything. It might also hinder the overclock too and lower memory bandwidth. The more sticks, the more volts the QPI will need to get stable.

I wish there was a "step-up" for cpu's, I'd want a 975 D0 :P
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: runn3R on April 16, 2009, 04:17:00 pm
Hello bhavv

so now waiting for the pictures of your rig assembled and running ...
which chassis you will use ? any modding planned ?
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 17, 2009, 04:04:53 am
The ram I got was well priced - 6 GB 1600 Mhz for £88, so I got two.

Gigabyte say that advertised memory speeds are reachable on this board with 6 Dimms installed.

Everything was despatched yesterday so I am waiting untill daytime for it to arrive, but I cant assemble it untill monday because I ordered an Antec P182 too late.

The only modifying I am now planning is 5 blue case fans and maybe Thermaltake Sorbs on the graphics cards, but I wont have a side window. Nothing too heavy, just matching heatsinks and lights. I also ordered two blue cathodes, but will send them back due to my case choice and just have the blue fans for pictures because the black ones that come in the case are ugly.
   
Untill monday I'll be busy trying to sell my current X48 equipment.

The graphics cards are here and I was thoroughly impressed with the nice boxes and packaging, much better then powercolor and MSI, but as stated in my other thread, the lack of memory heatsinks on a premium brand like Gigabyte is disappointing.

I dont normally buy Gigabyte or Asus products because they are expensive, but I am happy to finally have a premium brand. MSI = 4 - 6 phases opposed to 12 / 16 on gigabyte / asus, powercolour = 1 year warranty and very poor overclocking on the cards I have had from them so far.
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: Badbonji on April 17, 2009, 09:14:55 am
Well usually if the cards don't come with any extra cooling at stock, it won't need it under normal usage. Maybe there is good airflow for them from the fan?

Dont forget to post some pics :P
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 17, 2009, 04:01:13 pm
Pictures:

(http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/7647/p1213170409.jpg)

(http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/311/p1224170409.jpg)

(http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/3484/p182301150409.jpg)


Installing the motherboard + CPU on monday when the new case arrives.

I found these 1 GB 4890's for £159 today and screamed:

http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/2719635/art/pixmania/radeon-hd4890-1-gb-ddr5-p.html?srcid=369

But they arent a UK supplier, if anything went wrong it would have to shipped back to France.

I got Scan installation insurance added onto my CPU and Motherboard - £10 for 28 days cover, if anything breaks while installing during this time they will replace it. I have had a motherboard and PSU die on installation in the past, so decided to take out the insurance.
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: Badbonji on April 19, 2009, 07:46:31 pm
Must have been unlucky then?

Is it working yet? What kind of overclock you got so far?
Gigabyte boxes are always shiny and nice to look at lol :P

Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 20, 2009, 11:52:03 pm
Its not working :(.

It boots up and all the components work, but I get a disk read error when trying to boot from my Vista CD, or a hang up when trying to boot from XP.

Seems to be the harddrives, and I didnt want new harddrives at all.

I will call technical support for the supplier tomorrow, and ask in another thread for help.
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: RuiPereira on April 21, 2009, 03:02:09 pm
Keep us updated, interested to see how this performs
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: Badbonji on April 21, 2009, 08:53:22 pm
Its not working :(.

It boots up and all the components work, but I get a disk read error when trying to boot from my Vista CD, or a hang up when trying to boot from XP.

Seems to be the harddrives, and I didnt want new harddrives at all.

I will call technical support for the supplier tomorrow, and ask in another thread for help.

What hard drives? In raid? Any external plugged in?
External USB drives tend to cause problems to raid configs whilst installing, unplug any externals just to be sure anyway. It sees the drive correctly? Tried flasing BIOS to newest?

It will not work booting on an existing partition, as hardware changes, especially cpu and motherboard will cause it to BSoD randomly and hang. You could try installing the OS from Flash drive see if that works.
Also what might help is unplugging any external hard drives.
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 22, 2009, 02:35:34 am
Sorry, it was my bad.

I didnt enable Legacy USB support so 'press any key' wasnt working to boot from CD.

It works now, but I already went and ordered a 1 TB Samsung F1. Doesnt matter though because I can just sell my 500 Gb ones and have a faster replacement.

So tomorrow I install Vista on the new drive and it should all be fine. I always forget to enable USB Legacy support.
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: Badbonji on April 22, 2009, 01:18:04 pm
Two 500gb in raid should beat a 1Tb, I would keep the 1Tb for storage anyway :P
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 22, 2009, 03:25:57 pm
Meh, my current 500 GB drive with my backed up data seems knackered :(

I installed Vista onto the new drive, but when I intall the 500 GB, I get 'Disk Read Error'. So I tried going into setup to wipe the windows partition and temporailly install Vista onto it to boot and copy over my 300 GB of stuff, but when I try to format the windows partition or install windows onto it, the PC shuts off and restarts !!!

I will get my data back somehow, I hope :(

I should invest in an external hard drive.

Posting from the new PC :)


(http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/3668/p1058200409k.jpg)

(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6002/p123401200409.jpg)

(http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/169/p1149220409.jpg)

(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/4255/p114901220409.jpg)

(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/1656/p114801220409.jpg)

(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2187/p1239220409.jpg)

(http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/5381/p1253220409.jpg)

(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/775/p1257220409.jpg)

:) It was shutting itself off after about 10-15 minutes of startup, I immediately noticed that the bios had defaulted the ram to 7-7-7-20 on 1.5v, and changed it to 9-9-9-24 and 1.6v for now, and now it has been stable for an hour :)

Will stress test it and overclock later on, first I need to figure out how to get my data of my old drive, I think I will have to reinstall Vista with both drives plugged in so that it boots up with the old drive still plugged in, so I'll have to start again with reinstalling drivers.

I'm not going to bother with raid, I just have two drives for back up and dual boot purposes, so will grab a second 1 TB in the future. Raid 1 would be ideal, but I dont know if I can dual boot with Raid 1 ???

If anyone knows about that, then please let me know. Raid 1 and dual boot I would like :)
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: Badbonji on April 23, 2009, 02:10:02 pm
I think raid 1 should be dual bootable as it is just like using one hard drive (other is mirroring it), so you need to create two partitions on the raid 1 partition or however many OS's you are using. May want to look it up though as I never dual boot as I don't see the need to :P

I like those Blue LED lights :O

Good luck on the hard drive, and don't forget to overclock - it will be getting too hot to get decent ones on air soon!
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 23, 2009, 10:11:48 pm
I need to dual boot because I still play a lot of old games that dont work on Vista :(

Everything is working and stable at stock frequencies :)

(http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/5140/stocka.jpg)

But I cant seem to be able to manually adjust the timings on the ram? When I select a manual number, it doesnt override the default settings. I have the latest bios, the default bios wouldnt even boot when I activated the XMS profile in Bios. Now it works with XMS, currently testing 160 MHZ FSB with 3.2 Ghz on the CPU with 1.275v, and 1600 MHZ on the ram with XMS settings enabled and a lower multiplier.

XMS ram makes it really easy, just activate the profile and it autosets all your settings :)
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 24, 2009, 12:32:23 am
3.2 GHZ reached, and core temp is lying to me !!!

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/2139/coretemplies.png

Easy tune 6 shows a nice solid load temperature of 43 degrees at 3.2 GHZ in all of the orthos tests, but core temp shows 67 degrees lol !!!

My ram wasnt stable in super pi though, although Orthos was stable for 30 mins, and so were 3D mark 06 and vantage.

Graphics cards are both 100% stable and artifact free at 790 / 1050, and benchable in Vantage with 1075 MHZ ram, but they crash in 3Dmark 06 so I have to reduce it to 1050 MHZ.

That's still top quality for 4870's :)

I am reading the overclocking guide for the GA-EX58-Extreme for pointers on how to get up to 200 MHZ bus speed and 4.0 GHZ on the CPU, it doesnt boot when I try, but for now, 3.2 GHZ is fine and I want to start playing my games again.

Heres a picture of stressing all four cores as the Gigabyte overclocking guide showed me how to do:

http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/91/coretempliesallcores.jpg

55 degrees. This is the first time I have gotten a guide on how to overclock from the motherboard manufacturer!!!

This motherboard, and my graphics cards are really really nice, I think I might be converting to a Gigabyte fanboy now :)

I dont want to go any higher then 4.0 Ghz, that will be more then fast enough, but for 24/7 use I will stick to 3.2 Ghz.
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: runn3R on April 24, 2009, 08:49:14 am
(...)
This is the first time I have gotten a guide on how to overclock from the motherboard manufacturer!!!
(...)
This motherboard, and my graphics cards are really really nice, I think I might be converting to a Gigabyte fanboy now  :)   
(...)

i'm REALLY  ::)  glad to hear it. thanks m8 for provided pictures and results, i think they will be also useful for a lot o people.
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 26, 2009, 04:57:35 pm
Ok, no matter what I try, I cant get my PC to boot at either 166 or 200 MHZ frequencies on the motherboard :(

However, my previous MSI motherboards were also like this, I had to gradually increase the motherboard frequency very slowly, so I will keep on trying, but for now I'm happy with 3.2 Ghz.

I'm sure this motherboard should be able to reach 200 MHZ, I'm probably doing something else wrong, but I have increased votages and underclocked the ram, I maybe need a different bios.

i'm REALLY  ::)  glad to hear it. thanks m8 for provided pictures and results, i think they will be also useful for a lot o people.

Ive had two S939 Asus motherboards (A8N-SLI, A8R32 MVP deluxe), then upgraded to MSI P35 Neo 2, and later X48c Platinum (should have waited for P45 version of the Neo 2, much cheaper and just as good), and now this Gigabyte EX58-UD5, which I doubt I will need to upgrade again for at least 2 years =D.

My A8N-SLI died from too much overclocking (oops), then I decided to get rid of the P35 because it was rubbish for crossfire.

For graphics cards I always went for the cheapest one of the type I was looking for, and upgrade and sell the old ones very regularly as prices drop on higher up cards. This time Gigabyte 4870's were reduced as well so I grabbed them :). Normally I get whatever I find on offers, usually powercolor, club 3D, and a one of Triplex (support from Korea in spanglish !!!) and other low profile brands, never top brands like Gigabyte, Sapphire or HIS :(. I always said I would get a Sapphire or HIS card one day, but instead I got Gigabyte which is just as good.

A week later, the price fell some more :(

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-046-GI&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=

That always happens to me.
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: Badbonji on April 26, 2009, 07:26:10 pm
BTW is HT on?
Check RealTemp too, as 67C sounds much more likely than 42C on a core i7, these run very hot!
Mine hits 74C with a relatively cheap water loop at 4.35Ghz, need better cooling...
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 26, 2009, 09:32:27 pm
BTW is HT on?
Check RealTemp too, as 67C sounds much more likely than 42C on a core i7, these run very hot!
Mine hits 74C with a relatively cheap water loop at 4.35Ghz, need better cooling...

Hyperthreading? Yea its on.

If you see my second link with all of the cores under 100% load using a quad orthos run, you will see that the temperature is 55 degrees when all of the cores are being used.
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 26, 2009, 11:37:28 pm
=D

I disabled hyperthreading and increased the bus speed in 5 MHZ increments, got to 200 MHZ, but it froze up at 1.515v, but was stable at 1.555 (CPU is at 1.3v, Ram on XMP profile with 1.65v):

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/6442/200bus1.jpg

Is a motherboard voltage (Q something) safe to leave at 1.555v? It goes pink so I dont think it is safe for 24/7 use?

4.0 GHZ @ 1.4v done, EasyTune6 shows 62 degrees:

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/8845/200bus4000.jpg

Nice :)
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 27, 2009, 03:00:11 am
Ok, core temp wasnt lying about my temperatures. Real Temp says the same thing, 70 degrees at 3.33 Ghz :(

Its the gigabyte utility and bios that detect a far lower temperature.
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: Badbonji on April 27, 2009, 05:05:15 pm
They are not necessarily detecting a wrong temperature. Is it just called CPU temp? BIOS will only show the cpu temp, which is not the same as the core temperatures.

That is a nice overclock, but it is a D0. I think it can do better! (seen 1.26Vcore on ocforums for 4.2Ghz)
These D0's run quite hot even at lower voltage. 1.55V qpi is a bit to high, I wouldn't go over 1.45V, and my 965 is only on 1.3V.

Try to keep load temps under 80C (from coretemp/realtemp)
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on April 28, 2009, 03:18:28 am
So what is the difference between core temp and CPU temp, and why are they so different?

I could go higher, but I dont want to ... Yet :p
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: Badbonji on April 28, 2009, 05:10:04 pm
I found this explaination:

Heat originates within the Cores, where Tjunction sensors are located on the hot spots of each Core. Most of the heat dissipates from the top of the Cores through the Integrated Heat Spreader and CPU cooler to air inside the computer. Some of the heat dissipates from the bottom of the Cores through the CPU case, which creates a 5c thermal Gradient toward the center of the substrate, where the Tcase sensor is located. This heat then dissipates through the socket and motherboard to air inside the computer. Safe and sustainable temperatures are determined by CPU cooling efficiency, computer case cooling efficiency, Ambient temperature, Vcore, clock speed and Load.

So the CPU temp is Tcase, for which 65C is the safe max for Core i7's, and cores are Tjunction, and I think that is 105C (that is TjMax, not max safe temp, I wouldn't go over 85C 24/7 use for 100% load then you will be fine)
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on May 08, 2009, 04:25:49 pm
I decided to go ahead with modding the graphics cards:



(http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/3080/p2308300409.jpg)

(http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/4022/p2309300409.jpg)

(http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/3253/p230302300409.jpg)

(http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/415/p233501300409.jpg)

(http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/176/p234401300409.jpg)

(http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/1931/p2345300409.jpg)

(http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/4669/p2344300409q.jpg)

(http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/6184/p234502300409.jpg)



Idle temp on the first card reduced from 63 to 58 degrees, but it still fires up to over 100 degrees in Furmark :(

It remains at 79-85 degrees under normal load in 3D mark and games though, which is just the same as the stock Zalman ones were, so it seems that both the Zalmans and the Thermaltakes are pretty much Identical. The second card doesnt go any higher then 70 degrees, it stays put at around 68. The ram on both cards is now 100% stable and artifact free at 1100 Mhz :)


I should have gotten these instead, 4 heatpipe versions of the Zalman one that came on the cards with a blue LED:


http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-7687-view-Zalman-VF2000-LED.html (http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-7687-view-Zalman-VF2000-LED.html)

(http://xtreview.com/images/zalman%20VF2000%20LED%20007.jpg)

(http://xtreview.com/images/zalman%20VF2000%20LED%200011.jpg)

(http://xtreview.com/images/zalman%20VF2000%20LED%20008.jpg)



:(. Never mind, the current ones are fine outside of Furmark.


My cable management is a little better now, I havnt got a new picture though with the molex fan cable tied around the ones behind the CD drive.

Navigating the pictures is crappy on this forum  >:(
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: runn3R on May 11, 2009, 01:04:20 pm
i like cooling on memory, how did you connect cooper heatsinks with aluminium ones ?
p.s. about navigating the pictures - just remember to keep the pic width under 600 pixels, that's all
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: Badbonji on May 11, 2009, 04:00:36 pm
Those cards look very nice, make me want to water cool my GTX295 (or try to haha).

Is your case really that bright or just the exposure of the picture?
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: krazycommando on May 13, 2009, 08:45:40 pm
Hi bhavv

You can dual boot in a raid but if you are using xp and vista you will be better installing xp first then vista. You will then get a start up optionwhen you boot up for the first 30 seconds normally to eithe boot straight into vista or alter it to xp. i dont bother with raid these daysas its a bit of messing about with drivers i use an icydock trayless caddy for sata just fits in 5.25 bay and you just open the door and slide the bare drive in so got windows 7 on one drive and vista on another

 Cheers
 Krazycommando
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: dwood on May 18, 2009, 01:14:20 pm
That looks SWEET!!!  ;D

Any game benchmarks?

Dan
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on June 10, 2009, 07:39:46 pm
Hi. Sorry for the long delay. I've been having major problems with the graphics cards, firstly with incompatibility with every driver from ATI, and then a complete loss of Shader 2.0+ from working from messing around with bios flashing, hence many games and bechmarks like 3Dmark06 and Vantage stopped working :(

New F24 bios from Gigabyte fixed all my problems, I now have cat 9.5 working with Crossfire and all my games work again:

http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,296.0.html

:)

I'm not overclocking now though, because the weather is too hot and my PC is like an open oven in my room in the middle of summer =(

I have underclocked my CPU to 1.6 Ghz and deactivated 2 cores, and have the graphics cards running at 375 / 450, just to completely cool down the exhaust air coming out of it, and of course, lower electricity bills :)

I will just run them faster if any games need it, in 3D mode everything is working fine with the cards at 750 / 450.

I have these two 3Dmark results from before my bios flashing made my cards turn into poop :p

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=1001864
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=10803588

I dont want to overclock anymore, I want to to play stuff now :)
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: Badbonji on June 11, 2009, 09:27:55 am
Lol it says your cpu is a 975 in the 3dmark one.
Nice scores though :D
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on June 28, 2009, 12:13:55 pm
And all the recent price cuts on everything make me want to scream lol.

Sad :(

But nevermind. Im not overclocking or stressing anymore, just playing games.
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: Beekeeper on June 29, 2009, 08:14:33 am
the price custs on the hardware which is not the new one are the standard, you can't fight it. the market just needs to be prepared for new products in the same price segment which you payed for new bricks in your rig some time ago. that's how it goes mate
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on November 14, 2009, 01:24:31 am
A little update.

I updated my motherboard Bios to F7, and now my ram finally works as it should at 1600 Mhz :)

(http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/2408/1600ram.png)


Also I got a low cost upgrade to a pair of Sapphire 5770s by Ebaying my 4870s:

(http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/5450/p0832121109.jpg)

I have a Round IDE cable and a couple of Zalman VF950 coolers on the way to neaten it up and silence those graphics cards.

Both 5770s reach 1000 Mhz @ 1.225v, and 1050 Mhz @ 1.3v and score 2000 Vantage points more then what I had before, with DX11, lower power draw, and no more need for messy Molex > 6 pin splitters :)

I'm going to see if this new bios helps me overclock my CPU any better, hopefully I can reach 200 Bclk with 1600 Mhz on the ram this time.
Title: Re: My upcoming super Gigabyte PC
Post by: bhavv on November 14, 2009, 06:54:47 am
No modify available on the above post.

My ram sticks werent 1600 Mhz stable at 200 bclk, but the new bios made the motherboard rock stable at that frequency :)

My CPU is fine on a 19x multiplier for 3.8 Ghz, but 4.0 Ghz just wont work, I must have a bad chip :(

(http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/1994/200fsb.png)

I found this OEM Geil 2133 Mhz ram on offer at overclockers:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-083-GL&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=

3 packs cost £230 and I will try to ebay my Patriot triple channel kits for £125 each to recover the cost (ebay fees and postage = +£10).

I just want 1600 Mhz stable on the ram, 2000 will be sweet if I can manage that with 6 modules. I have a 12 cm fan right above the ram modules blowing air away from them too :)