Meet HEX (now with pictures)

Defected to team red. Feels good even though my super pi time is about 19 and I am aiming for under 15 just to better my prev rig.
Sneak preview


EDIT - Photos and more waffle added.
The new motherboard. Same colour scheme as my car seats. The CPU reminds me of the engine too: 6 slower power units when 4 faster will do (i5 = honda k20 in comparisson I suppose). This photo made an excellent wallpaper for my phone.


The Chip:
I looked up the batch number, not one of the "good ones" but previous owner had 4ghz out of it so I am happy with that.



Cooler installed.
I went with the dark knight over my old CCF as this is newer, nicer looking and it's an excuse to see if fan orientation makes any odds. CCF was pointing towards rear fan in a very-nearly-push-pull. It's also a pain to remove the bracket and the DK bracket seem smuch sturdier. 6 heatpipes rather than 8. Gamining sees about 40 from the cores with this so plenty of OC headroom. That's a GT1850 but BIOS runs it at 900-1100 mostly.



Pointless empty case shot.


Installed:


Took a bit of persuading to get these lined up:


Up and running, the lower front fan was twitching. I plugged it into a molex-3 pin converter rather than having every fan socket on the mobo used. It now spins but it much louder than the orange case fans, presumably as it was the original from the DK they decided to include one with higher cfm.


Mmmmm orange. Like the dials in my car. Also black, white, orange, I only realised recently this is the BC2/BF3 wallpaper/case/titlescreen colour scheme. Better view of how i see the fans anyway.


I remember why I previously unplugged this now. OW.


Old kit ready to go to it's new home. I am tempted to test the cooler vs the DK, and frankenfire with that 5770. It served me well but i prefer teh new rig. ROG plastic cover removed from the SB as a ghetto 40mm fan helped reduce NB temps, I think 5C.

Edited by Mule - 2/8/12 at 1:55am

Step one, ask if 4v on the the NB is correct? One would assume not. Its too hot to touch but stable. Another dodgy sensor?
Step 2, punch EA in the face as BC2 stopped working since the new hardware.
Question 3: why does AOD flick between showing my me idle temp as 28/14. I know you use load as a reference but it seems to be adding/dropping the 14C ish offset each reboot. I hit 45C in p95 from 25ish idle so not worried sbout temps yet, but later I might.

It's a games rig, does ok for a 22" monitor and I don't want any bigger. 4ghz is of course on the cards but I'm going to try and keep it only as fast as it needs to be to keep the power/heat/noise down.



Weird, moved the slider in AOD and its now showing normal.

Edited by Mule - 2/5/12 at 9:36am

I am using AOD for monitoring only, maybe I might play a bit later, but I do my overclocking in the BIOS.

NB HS was getting too hot to touch (then don't touch it, surely?). So I just ghetto modded a 40mm fan onto it with a cable tie. I will have to turn that fan on and off to see effect on load temps but that HS is now luke warm, same as the one on the VRMs. The airflow from the little fan passes nicely under the cpu cooler.




It is a bit disconcerting that the HS on the chipsets wobble and move so easily. When I replace the TIM I will look into using bolts to secure these. Note to self: load test and measure temperatures.
Edited by Mule - 2/8/12 at 1:22am

Update from yesterday playing with some mild overclocking.

GFX:
I was initially disappointed in the jump from 5770 to 6850 but since maxing everything I can in BC2 @ 1680x1050 and 70-90 fps / constant 60 near-as-damnit with vsync I am happy with the upgrade. It's also relatively quieter wiht the same fan profile. Some overclocking on it anyway:
Tried 850/1200 stock volts on the 6850, no luck. Artefacts AND split screen. Is this due to memory or core?
850 core worked on stock volts so I did the msi EULA config extended OC and got to 900 but crashed in BC2*. Back to stock clocks and crashed with a sound loop during a game...

SOUND:
...A ha! I am using on-board sound. Tonight's job is to disable that and reinstall my X-Fi fataility soundcard. I prefer it for being able to hear myself talking on skpye so I don't end up shouting. True Story. I seem to be doing well with kit that has a terrible rep. Perhaps the Dell rig I used as a donor had cherry-picked components.

MEMORY:
As for the memory, it is at 1333 7-7-7-20. I tried 1600 8-8-8-24 and no luck. Superpi didn't register any difference 1T vs 2T so I think I'll just leave the memory as is. No point overvolting it for gains so small I will not notice them. I'll give CL6 a go just because.

CPU:
I'm also thinking of dropping the vcore down to about 1.25, lower if possible and running the core at around 3-3.2 as BC2 uses all cores at about 50% load. Either that or disable 3 cores and maybe clock higher. Any excuse for 4GHz I'll use the power usage in HWMonitor and go with whichever uses less power / creates less heat.

OTHER:
To do: push 2600 from 2400 on the NB and HTT. Bench/research the effects of this.

*I opened ports in windows firewall but ultimately, I think rebooting the router sorted this. Thanks EA support staff for their patience and another discount code for Origin.

I wish i had a camera too. Although with my skill level at photography anything above a phone camera is wasted. Your case is nicer than mine though surely.

Clocked down to 3200, still pulling 141w load. I did this because I was still crashing in BC2 even after disabling onboard sound. I tried to roll back drivers and got a bluescreen on install, so driversweep in safe mode and I'm now back on 11-3. Yet to test with a decent gaming session.

Tried CL6 on my ram at 1333 from AOD. Instant crash.

Lamptron FC2 on order. That's something else I've wanted for a gaming rig for probably 10 years and only just gone for it. Did the same with my G9 mouse and kicked myself for not doing it sooner. In less exciting news I also ordered a DVD-RW drive as I have been using my old IDE drive up until now.

To do:
Windows reinstall
Replace the NB/VRM tim
Dremel out the rear fan guard
Mod to fit 140 as the rear fan to remove the ghetto cable tie front fitting.