PHyR

Great thread, loads of usual information.

Robilar, can you tell me what North and South bridge temperatures you get with the Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II coolers?

I would be interested to compaire these to the standard setup as I am thinking of getting a pair for mine.

Also, did you consider modifying the original heatpipe arrangement in order to keep the big copper heat-sinks on the VRM’s, e.g. chopping it up a little, this was my intention although I guess it will probably effect the boards re-sale value a little.

Robilar

Sorry that should read, "at" stock. In other words, leave it at 9x and up the fsb gradually till you max out in stability.

Robilar

Pictures are a great addition!

Onboard sound uses up to 10% of system resources (especially in gaming). that alone is a reason. even though the onboard is decent, you will still get better sound quality from a decent sound card. I am waiting for my Bluegears B-Enspirer to arrive from NCIX (hopefully tonight).

The Swifttech MC21's will work fine with the Tuniq. Just make certain there is some air flow across the area (a fan in the door for example). The Tuniq being tower in design blows no air downwards to the VRM's. What case are you going to be using?

The Thermaltake Chipset coolers come with packets of thermal paste but I only use Artic Silver 5. The no name stuff is usually crap.

Robilar

With the stock heatpipes, with a thermal probe, I saw the NB hit in the mid 50's celcius under modest overclock. With the Spirit II (with probe inserted under the edge of the HS, the temps were in the mid 30's (about a 16-18 Celcius drop). This really isn't suprising as the heatpipe system Asus uses is a POS for anything other than stock settings.

also the Thermaltakes mount easily.

I never considered chopping up the heatpipes as I might have to return the board under warranty and that would invalidate it. BTW, those copper heatsinks barely make contact with the VRM's to begin with and when you consider the point of the heatpipes is to channel heat from the NB/SB up to the VRM heatsinks, the VRMS passive cooling is dealing with heat from two sources. Dumb design if you ask me.

If you look back at post 82 on this thread, you will see the VRM cooling I used from Swifttech to cover the VRM's after removing the heatpipes.

If you look at the pic, I attached (specifically the area where the heatpipes come in contact with the VRM's), you will note that they barely make contact (areas circled in red) with the chips at all.

Attached Thumbnails

 

dijonace

Thanks Robilar...as always your answers are very much appreciated!

I decided to go the safe route (since I'm quite the beginner here) and try out the nTune program. I ran the "coarse tuning" option on this card. It ran its course over about 35 minutes and came back with recommended settings. I saved the "Best system.npe" profile and made it default (I remember that it settled on 3450MHz instead of 2500MHz)

Yet when I boot back up...the AI booster still shows 2400MHz. Is ASUS not letting the NTune program override it? Here's the image from my desktop:

http://img232.imageshack.us/my.php?i...erimageat5.jpg

Or perhaps do I make the changes on the AI booster in that "Tuning Panel" section? If that's the case...how can I pull up the saved profile from nTune to match those in the Tuning Panel?

Robilar

I only use the ntune software for gpu overclocking.

3.45 Ghz is easy with that chip and board but I would recommend doing it yourself out of the bios. Ntune is a bit buggy to begin with (Although its ok for monitoring and overclocking the gpu).


If you need help, post back. My guide covers the basics but I would start by going for 9x375 (which would be 3.375 Ghz). You will need to change some of the settings I listed but a close to 1 Ghz overclock on your chip is a good beginning.

webdork

I'm all over it - looking forward to it!

Agreed - I'll add it to the build.

It's an Antec Titan 550 from my last machine. The case is fairly large, and has good airflow thanks to some mods and custom fan installations I did. Added to my air conditioning setup, the case should stay pretty cool. I shut off the heat vents in the "man room" so it's usually much cooler than the rest of the house (open them in summer of course for AC).

OK, I'll grab some as well. THANKS AGAIN!!!

Robilar

You should be fine then. Bear in mind (as I mentioned in my guide), if you are going to go dual 8800gtx and a separate sound card AND cooling on the southbridge, that you will be limited to 150mm length for a sound card in the middle slot. (Hence the reason I went with the Bluegears B-Enspirer, its 146mm long). You won't need to worry for awhile as you are buying one gpu for now, but its a waste to buy a sound card that won't fit later.

dijonace

Ok I'll go with your recommendation. And I don't mean to hijack this thread with my problems...I'm just trying to learn as much as I can.

When you say 9x375...I assume that means moving up from 9x266.67 (which is where I'm at right now).

Trouble is...I don't see anything in the BIOS that states 266.67. Right now I have my FSB linked at 3:2 ratio per my other thread.

I bet this is one of those things which is sitting right in front of my face but I've got my blinders on I guess!

I figured out that 1066.67 divided by 4 equals 266.75...close enough. So if I'm to go to 300 as a first step...then I change the 1066.67 to 1200?

webdork

Agreed. I added the one you suggested it's on sale at NewEgg for $95. I think I'm done now. Gonna go ahead and order. Thanks!!!