Dream PC

Dark Krimson Update (COMPLETED)

2011-06-25T09:02:00.002+08:00

Realized I never actually posted my completed system here so here goes

Many changes has got into the system since the last post.The watercooling portion grew quite abit more than originally planned. Bought a whole set of Bitspower compression fittings for the radiator, CPU block, GPU blocks, reservoir and pump. I even got a Fill Port to fit to the HAF.

Testing the system with the red solution at first was a bad idea. Leakage and spills practically made me lose all of it so I ended up using just plain old distilled water for it.

Also gotten a set of 3 90CFM long life Cooler Master 120mm fans for the radiator. Way quieter, nice red lighting and moves alot of air.

So with no further ado, here are the pics:

If you noticed, I even got to spraying the insides all black. Made it look much cooler :)

Things that I till have not completed:

Sleeving the cables

Side window cutting

White LEDs to illuminate the insides

Project 2010: Dark Krimson

2010-02-23T22:55:00.013+08:00

Wow, haven't updated this blog for so long already. For those who didn't know, I actually spent the second half of 2009 in the US. Got lucky to be sent for assignment there for 6 mths by Intel.

And the best thing about the US? Shopping for PC stuff!! :)

So, a Happy 2010 to all of you out there. This year, I've decided to start a new PC project on my current system. Manage to buy my X58 system and all the cool watercooling stuff from US to kick the project off. Why older Bloomfield system instead of newer Lynnfield? I'm waiting for the next gen Gulftown 6-core processor tha tis going to be a drop in replacement for X58 boards (probably still needs a BIOS update).

I'll be going for a black/red theme for my PC. First off, a paint job will be needed for the internals of the HAF932 I'm currently using. Secondly I've carefully selected the below upgrade components to go with the black/red theme:

EVGA X58 SLI LE
Core-i7 965 3.2Ghz @ 4.2Ghz
OCZ GOLD 6GB DDR3 1600Mhz 8-8-8-12 1.65V
1.5TB WD Caviar Green
2x XFX Radeon 5770 Crossfire (Factory OC)

I have actually finished with the paint job and still waiting for some parts to arrive. I'm also ordering black sleeving and planning to do individual wire sleeving for all my cables from the fans to the power supply. In the meantime, allow me to share some pictures of what I already have (All taken and editted by me ^^). Stay tuned!

The all black sleek EVGA SLI LE motherboard

OCZ Gold DDR3 RAM

Great timings on these RAMs. 8-8-8 @ 1.65V 1600Mhz

XFX 5770 1GB Factory Overclocked Graphics

I think this is the rev2 cooler that is supposed to be egg-shaped but XFX modified it to their own version

The graphic card colors suited my theme perfectly! Even the display ports are red in color! :)

Thought I got a good deal with RM1140 for 2 cards with 2 free Assassin's Creed games. Now you can see its actually a single XFire port version meaning I can only do up to dual-gpu but its still good enough for me. Remember to watch out for these minor details when you guys are purchasing your own graphic cards

Zalman-like heatsink and very thick circular copper pipe

These babies just asking to be crossfired and overclocked to the max. Just need to wait for my GPU waterblocks to arrive.

4770 Benched and OCed

2009-07-06T17:34:00.007+08:00

Finally got to do some 3DMark Vantage on SC's build.

If you have read my post on 8800GT overclocking below, I was pretty happy to get about 13.5% boost of performance with voltage mod on my card for a final score of 5,884 on Vantage. Well, after my experience with the 4770, that score don't look too great anymore haha
4770 Default Specs (from Newegg) :

Model
Brand POWERCOLOR
Model AX4770 512MD5-M

Interface
Interface PCI Express 2.0 x16

Chipset
Chipset Manufacturer ATI

GPU
Radeon HD 4770
Core Clock 750MHz
Stream Processors 640 Stream Processing Units

Memory
Memory Clock 800MHz
Memory Size 512MB
Memory Interface 128-bit
Memory Type GDDR5

Ports
HDMI 1 (via Adapter)
DVI 2
TV-Out
DDTV Out

General
Max Resolution 2560 x 1600
CrossFire Supported Yes
Cooler With Fan
Power Connector 6 Pin
Dual-Link DVI Supported Yes
HDCP Ready Yes

Manufacturer Warranty
Parts 2 years limited
Labor 2 years limited

Straight up on first try with everything at stock, the 4770 easily clocked in a score of 6,693! That is easily 800 points higher than my over-volted + over-clocked 8800GT :(
And that was with value RAM and mid-range P43 motherboard! Haih...

To think I had to tweak and try so many things and couldn't even get close to the 6,000 mark. This card just did it without any effort at all and as we know, the 4770 has been known to be a good overclocker. Though heartbroken at my own 8800GT as I was, there's still excitement to see how high we can get this card to go.

AMD cards are different from NVidia cards in the sense that they do not have Shader frequency for you to tweak. Its all just about the Core and Memory frequencies to increase the card's potential. AMD was gracious enough to include an overclocking tool together with their driver installation package. So I pushed the card to 790/840 and saw a healthy increase of ~200points. Nice.

However, noticed that there some missing frames during the Vantage run so decided to go with a little lower memory clock (I don't GDDR5s need to have clocks anyways with their huge bandwidth) but compensate back with a higher Core clock. Missing frames were reduced but the scores also took a dip but not by very much. Stability is much more important than high frames with constant crashing I would say. So this is what I settled for in the end.

I think there is much more potential in this card. Even at the overclocked setpoints, noise was very much under control and the temperature can be considered low with the stock cooling. I just didn't want to destroy my friend's brand new card within the first month so cannot tell what is it's absolute limit yet. But to anybody that is considering buying a low cost solid card that should easily last you a couple of years, this is really the choice to go with unless you can find a 4850 at RM400 or lower which would be even better.

So, sad day for me today as I watch another new card beat my 8800GT through both price and performance. But that did not stop me from finishing Devil May Cry 4 at all the max settings...twice! :)
Those who haven't played it, seriously go try it.

Intel's New CPU Naming

2009-06-20T10:42:00.002+08:00

Well, plucked this from Anandtech showing how Intel is going to market their upcoming Lynnfield and Clarksfield processors in both the desktop and mobile segments.

Interestingly, Intel plans to start segreggating their products based on performance into three categories; good, better, best (there is no bad/average in Intel haha). This categories will then be labeled as Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 respectively. So, let's say you plan to buy a new PC/laptop soon, how do you know which you are getting? Anandtech has done a good summary with the below tables:

Desktop Processor	Cores	Threads	Turbo
Intel Core i7	4	8	Yes
Intel Core i5	2 or 4	4	Yes
Intel Core i3	2 or 4	4	No

Mobile Processor	Cores	Threads	Turbo
Intel Core i7	2 or 4	4 or 8	Yes
Intel Core i5	2 or 4	4	Yes
Intel Core i3	2 or 4	4	No

With the above, we can clearly see the performance gaps betwwen each category. The Core i3 lineups are the ones with no HyperThreading and no Turbo Mode to temporarily boost when less cores are utilized. The Core i5 will have Turbo but with no HyperThreading and finally the Core i7 with both features turned on thus having the best performance of all.

This goes against what I believe some of you have concluded that Bloomfield or Socket 1366 will be maintained as the Core i7 and that the new Lynnfield processor will be marketed as Core i5. Because Intel chose not to use QPI link and number of memory channels as comparison, it basically means that the Core i7 will be a mix of both LGA-1366 and LGA-1156 sockets. To differentiate, we have the sub categories:

Core i7 9xx Series - LGA1366

Core i7 8xx Series - LGA1156

Core i5 6xx series - LGA1156

Core i3 5xx Serie - LGA1156

There is no talk about what socket Clarksfield will be using though it is rumored to be using a totally different socket compared to Lynnfield. This is going to complicate the marketing further I think.

Anyways, whether this is the right strategy or not, I believe it will vary from each person's perspective. I mean previously, if I see a core 2 Quad or Core 2 Duo, I know I'm getting a quad core or dual core CPU respectively and its all about choosing the GHz. Now, I have to worry about what socket the CPU I'm getting is using and will it be compatible with my current hardware. Big headache to plan my upgrade path now :S

What you guys think?

Cooler Master 90CFM fans upgrade

2009-06-20T00:19:00.005+08:00

It's been a few days since my last post. If there were any readers out there, sorry for that. I had been pretty busy at work and preparations for my relocation to US by Intel. coincidentally, it was also because of these preparations that I had the opportunity to get my hands on the Cooler Master 90 CFM fans I've being eye-ing for awhile.

Cooler Master 90CFM Fan

I was in KL this morning to attend my US Visa interview. Basically everything went pretty smoothly and I had plenty of time left before heading back to Penang. So naturally, I had to make a pit stop at Low Yat first hehe. Walked around and found Sri Computers to be the only one carrying this fan model (or maybe I did not search deep enough) and also for a nice price of RM28. I found these fans selling in Penang as well but they will usually be priced at RM35. So I made a few calls back to see if anybody else needed them and in total I bought 7 of them :)

Here's the breakdown:
1 for SC's build (blue)
3 for another colleague (blue)
3 for myself (red)

Once I reached home and had dinner (about 9pm) I started to fixed up the new fans and try out the cooling improvements and visual effects I will be getting. So checkout the below sequence of blue/red fan comparison, before/after photos, some cable management shots and much more.

Red LED version

Blue LED version

Blue vs Red comparison. Notice the blue has brighter LEDs than the red.

Old set of radiator fans that have been serving me for the past year. Bye bye to them :)

Picture of radiator with current fans

Radiator with new CM fans

PC before fan change

After

Cable management behind motherboard tray. Much work still to do here. I'm planning to sleeve all the wires to make all of them an uniform black and do a much better cable tie cleanup. But it still looks pretty decent the way it is doesn't it? (Self praising haha)

Dark room shot through casing window (would be alittle more impressive if taken with a better camera). Not much to see from this actually. Future mod in plan is to cut a larger side window especially after internal paint job and liquid cooling for graphics, north/southbridges are in place. Water loops are meant to be shown off!

Lastly, a small comparison of cooling improvements with the new fans. With the very quite operation of the fans, I was allowed to power them up with 12V compared to the last set of fans due to noise levels. Also, with the high 90CFM rating, pressure is on that this fans should perform much better than my brandless cheap fans. However, for me, cooling improvements are not the primary reason I wanted to purchase these fans. My main goal is to maintain my current low noise level and at the same time, improve the overall look of the PC in accordance to my red coloured theme.

The results:

Temps before

Temps after. A 2C drop for the CPU and an overall 1C drop for all hardware in my case. This shows that the CM fans have increased the exhaust rate of hot air from the top which allows the negative pressure created internally to bring in cooler air from outside at a faster rate. Very satisfying results.

That's all folks! Hope you enjoyed the read and stay tune for my next posting on updates/benchmarks with SC's build. See ya!

8800GT Overclocking with Voltage Mod

2009-06-16T00:12:00.005+08:00

Well, after my power consumption check in one of my earlier post, I'm very much keen to go back to pushing my PC's limits since I know it's not the main culprit of my high electricity bill hehe.

Since the beginning, I've pretty much concentrated on overclocking the CPU. I felt more comfortable doing that because I know I have more than adequate cooling on it with the Swiftech water cooling setup. I was getting about 32C with air-conditioning and about 38C at room temp which was very very good in my perspective. The first processor I got from Intel and into this system was the QX6700 (Kentsfield). I was able to push it to about 3.6Ghz from its stock 2.66Ghz. That was using nearly 1.45V and temps was reaching 45C at idle. I really want to hit that sweet 4Ghz spot.

QX9650, 45nm Yorkfield

I have since swapped the Kentsfield for a newer QX9650 (Yorkfield 2.93Ghz) processor. Using FSB overclocking, the highest I got was 3.9Ghz. The moment I tried 400Mhz FSB or higher, the BIOS just would not boot and it will default all settings back. I checked around in the forums and found out that my board, the Foxconn X38A, had significant FSB hole issues which varies from customer to customer. For my case, the hole was at 400Mhz. I do not know if there are any passing regions above 400Mhz bsince I did not try pushing blindly passed it. Foxconn has also appeared to have stopped updating the BIOS for this board to improve on overclocking (I'm never buying Foxconn again) So I went with multiplier overclocking instead. Using the mobo's recommended voltage setting based on the multiplier number you chosed, it took me only 10 minutes to climb from a ratio 9 to a ratio 12 effectively bringing me to 4.0Ghz. Voltage required was a low 1.375V :)

Anyways, back to what I really want to talk about, my graphic card overclocking experience! The Galaxy 8800GT that I own ships with all it's clocks at default NVidia stock settings: 600Mhz Core/1500Mhz Shaders/900Mhz Memory. My original card was defective after a few weeks (would not show BIOS but ok in Windows) and I got it replaced while under warranty. At that time, Galaxy had already revised it's 8800GT lineup and offered it in two new configurations; one with a Zalman copper heatsink and the other with a dual slot covered cooling. Both had 2 6pin connectors at the back instead of the regular 1 for all 8800GTs which Galaxy said is supposed to improve voltage stability for overclocking (cool!). Here are the cards:

The dual slot cooling version

The Zalman spiral copper heatsink version

What I ended up getting was the two slot full cover version. Though I was pretty pissed since the Zalman version looks much cooler and probably cools way better anyway but I soon had a change of mind. Remember when I said that these cards gave you option to connect two 6-pin power from your PSU? Here is why: The card comes with its on 3-phase voltage mod jumper! By changing the position of the jumper from it's two positions or removing it totally, you get to decide 3 different core voltage the card will be getting. Good news since no more solder gun or wires needed to volt-mod this card.

Observe the yellow colored jumper located at the end of the card next to the dual 6-pin connectors.

However, I did not try the jumpers partly due to worries of total system consumption but not anymore haha. However, found out that Rivatuner, the popular tool for Nvidia & ATI GPU overclocking, is not able to recognize the drivers I have installed. Though I was able to force it to recognize the driver version, I just won't be able to trust the overclocking done by it. So, looked around and found another cool tool to get the job done. Introducing, EVGA Precision software. Too bad it only works for NVidia cards.

EVGA Precision

Armed with 3DMarkVantage, here are the overclocking results. I slowly increased the core clocks with increments of 10Mhz each with shaders unlinked. I did not hit any issues midway and stopped at a healthy 685/1680/950 configuration for my first benchmark.

Do note that at stock clocks, the 8800GT gives about 5,200+ GPU scores. Here we are seeing a 5,552 GPU score. A nice 6.7% increase. Also, the test completed without any errors or freezes indicating the card is still stable. Temps measured during benchmark (thanks to EVGA Precision's added feature to display on-screen real-time GPU temps) was steady at 70C. Stock cooler is holding on it seems haha

Let us continue. Next stop: 690/1680/960 (increase in core and memory clocks)

Did not see much increase in with a 5,571 score so time to take a more aggressive approach. I linked the shaders to the core and increased the memory clocks to hit a nice 1000Mhz(Galaxy uses higher rated Samsung chips known to hit 1100Mhz which can perform better compared to the usual Qimonda memory). Benched at 700/1750/1000 clocks:

Now we're talking. GPU scores have hit 5,792 here. Thats a full 500+ points increase over stock values. For the final bench, I increased the core clocks another 10Mhz for a final configuration of 710/1775/1000 and Oced my CPU back to 4Ghz (I went back to default temporarily for the power consumption analysis). This is where my PC currently stands:

In summary, I've managed to squeeze an extra 13.15% of performance from my card with the voltage mod (Final GPU score of 5,884 vs stock's 5,200). I know my card cannot hit 700Mhz without problems when I tried last time and that has been solved with higher voltage provided to the chip. However, the card temps are now hovering dangerously near the 80C limit I set for myself (I just don't like to see high temps on any of my parts) and started to show artifacts on ATITool around that temp. However, if I were to water-cool the card or perhaps get the Accelero cooler, I could actually push the clocks even higher :)

Anyways, that's news for another day. For now, I'm just gonna enjoy my extra graphics boosts with some games (let me see how much better frames I get in Crysis hehe). Some closing pics showing improved Windows rating before/after OC. Bye guys!

Graphic score of 5.9 before OC

Graphic score of 6.1 after OC

Broken Hard Disk

2009-06-13T23:16:00.014+08:00

My hard disk has been faulty for a couple of months now and I've been delaying on what to do until recently it started to crash my OS after 10-15mins of use (worse when I try opening a movie or starting a game).

The faulty drive

So, what happened to my Seagate drive? First, it started to make some pretty weird screeching sounds when it's on high activity. Then it started to show signs of failure during boot up. My BIOS would pick up the S.M.A.R.T readings from the disk and reported that the hard disk had a BAD status. At first I ignored it but apparently I had to hit the F1 button to proceed with boot up each time and it was annoyingly happening more and more frequently. Especially when your PC makes a smart move of updating your OS and rebooting and then you wake up in the morning to see it stuck at that BIOS. Practically a whole night of torrent-ing wasted.

Windows has also frequently popping up warnings of a faulty disk and recommends me an option to back it up and get a replacement as soon as possible but I simply chose to ignore it at first. I mean, after all I'm still able to boot to my Windows and do what I wanna do just as usual, caveat the few annoying stuff above. But recently, just as I stated at the beginning, it has taking it's vengence to a whole new level; crashing my OS to make sure I can't ignore this issue any longer as it is impeding my normal usage. :(

So, during lunch time, went over to Queens Bay Mall top floor and got me self a new 640GB Western Digital Caviar Green. The shop there was known for high prices and they did sell me the hard disk for RM219 which is about RM5 higher that PC Depot's price (PC Depot used to have very bad service and high prices but seems to have improved alot recently). Ironically, when I was building my PC, I was recommended by my friend to get a WD but I stuck with Seagate cos it was cheaper at that time. As you can see, I'm not gonna do the same mistake twice after what happened.

Anyways, my OS is now happily running on the new hard disk with no issues (let's hope it stays that way) but what I really want to share with you guys is how to check for your hard disk warranty and get a replacement drive for your faulty one. I do not know about Samsung and Hitachi but for Seagate and Western Digital, they allow you to check on the current warranty status of your drive at anytime through their website.

Seagate: http://support.seagate.com/customer/warranty_validation.jsp

Western Digital: http://websupport.wdc.com/warranty/serialinput.asp

So I went over to the site and checked on my drive's warranty. Bought it in 2007 so let's see what Seagate says. Typed in my Serial Number and Model Number (click for larger image):

If you're wondering where to get the Serial and Model numbers from, they are on your hard disk top label. I also noticed a suspicious "Certified Repaired HDD" line added on the label as can be seen below. Did I get scammed into buying a refurbished drive from the beginning? Hmm...

The Serial and Model numbers

And the warranty check results (click for larger image):

Apparently Seagate was kind enough to provide a 5 year warranty for their drives. The above shot shows my drive's warranty is valid till Aug 2012. This is different compare to Western Digital's 3 years . With Seagate's drives falling off so easily, it's good thing they are giving longer warranties to keep their customers satisfied otherwise sure kena complain teruk teruk :P

The next step would then be to RMA my drive to get a replacement. I'm going to try do it all online. I did not want to create an account with Seagate yet so I chose to return the product as a Guest. This is the link I went to: https://store.seagate.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/SgCheckWarrantyView?langId=-1&krypto=lZV0ifY90uy6PUbeNYxmlJ/eOamQTU8vX/yVcskL7Ra8YMmV34QjfaXbpO6NlvwR%2BTEC3tVdnhJ0%0AtmaQWKyGUNscSUkjrgNNSrX6sZWZFxPTN7qiNOvGlw%3D%3D&ddkey=SgSSORedirect

You'll have to fill up the Serial and Model numbers again and then enter your shipping address.

After I have finished the entire process of filling up some simple forms, Seagate basically provided me the address I should ship my hard disk to and also my RMA number so I can track the progress of my replacement. Of course this means I will have to bear the cost of delivery myself though the return will be covered by Seagate. I wonder if there is anywhere in Penang where I can do a walk-in RMA to avoid this cost.

Return address sample label (if you're wondering about the grey lines, it's cos I greyed out my address :P)

Seagate also provided instructions and specifications for the packaging because if it does not aligned with Seagate's requirements, they will void the warranty and blame the defect on the possible en route shipping mishandling :S

If you want an idea of how its like: http://www.seagate.com/support/service/pdf/pack.pdf

So I hope this helps some of you and excuse me while I go hunt for ESD packets and empty boxes.

Lynnfield Beckons!

2009-06-11T19:02:00.005+08:00

As we get nearer and nearer to the imminent Lynnfield (aka Core i5) launch, more and more leaked news and benchmarks are starting to hit the internet. So I thought it would be nice to track a timeline of the more significant milestones/news of this product since my team is partly working on it too :)

Last year in October 2008, a website released the first ever Lynnfield processor shots to the world. It compared the pin layout and substrate sizes between the 3 latest generations of Intel processors, the Yorkfield (Core 2), Bloomfield (Nehalem) and the Lynnfield (Nehalem) in a series of pictures. Technically, Lynnfield and Bloomfield share the same achitecture basics, but Lynnfield will be the first platform that will fully integrates the whole Northbride on die. In Bloomfield, only the memory controller portion was integrated and the Northbridge was still needed to handle the PCIE connections. Check out the pictures from here http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://xtreview.com/images/lynnfield-processor-LGA-1160-01.jpg&imgrefurl=http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-6579-view-lynnfield-processor-vs-bloomfield.html&usg=__JgCpB503Pks4e02vcmqQZT6FFlk=&h=307&w=600&sz=50&hl=en&start=8&um=1&tbnid=TwElCOXEYBfu2M:&tbnh=69&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlynnfield%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1

Then I remembered when the first becnhmark on SuperPi, FRITz Chess, Cinebench and CPU score in 3DMarkVantage was released from some Chinese website showing a Lynnfield 2.13Ghz around December 2008. On every site that I visited, all cautioned againts using the numbers to conclude anything as the processor and the motherboard was still in its very early stages. Link to news: http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-7237-view-Intel-Core-i5-Lynnfield-benchmark.html

Only recently, Anandtech did a more comprehensive 11-page review with gaming benchmarks of a engineering sample with a not so complete Turbo Mode enabled. According to Anandtech, Lynnfield will have multiple Turbo Mode options based on how many cores are currently in used. When 3 cores are used, Lynnfield is able to shut down the extra core and divert the extra power to boost the 3 remaining cores for an extra 200Mhz. Thats great right? Wait, there's more. Moving to two cores, the same feature will boost the remaining two cores for 400Mhz and finally, at one core, an amazing 600Mhz increase in clock speeds! I like this feature alot.

Model Number	Clock Speed	Cores / Threads	Maximum Single Core Turbo Frequency	TDP	Price
?	2.93GHz	4 / 8	3.60GHz	95W	$562
?	2.80GHz	4 / 8	3.46GHz	95W	$284
?	2.66GHz	4 / 4	3.20GHz	95W	$196

So if you games need raw processing speed, you get it with the Turbo Mode. Need multi core processing? No problem, Lynnfield has 4 cores to provide. You indeed get the best of both worlds with this processor. In short, we could say that Lynnfield will be the first CPU that is very optimized for both single threaded and multi threaded games.

Ofcourse then the next question is, how much will it cost? Anandtech also provided much valuable information about the Lynnfield's estimated position in the market and the launch prices for the different offerings

Name	Manufacturing Process	Cores	Target Market	Release
Gulftown	32nm	6	High End Desktop	1H 2010
Core i7 (Bloomfield)	45nm	4	High End Desktop	Q4 2008
Lynnfield	45nm	4	Performance Desktop	Q3 2009
Clarksfield	45nm	4	High End Mobile	Q3 2009
Clarkdale	32nm	2	Mainstream Desktop	Q4 2009
Arrandale	32nm	2	Mobile	Q4 2009

Processor	Price
Intel Core i7-940 (2.93GHz)	$562
Intel Lynnfield 2.93GHz	$562
Intel Core i7-920 (2.66GHz)	$284
Intel Lynnfield 2.80GHz	$284
Intel Lynnfield 2.66GHz	$196
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 (3.00GHz)	$316
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 (2.83GHz)	$266
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 (2.66GHz)	$213
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 (2.66GHz)	$183
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 (2.33GHz)	$163

Interestingly, Intel decides to sell the lowest end Lynnfield part (2.66Ghz) with HyperThreading disabled. I think this is partly due to it being priced lower than the i7-920 because with the Turbo Mode of the Lynnfield, the performance will easily beat the 920 thus there is no reason for end-users to purchase the higher-priced i7-920 then. The same goes for the i7-940 as the aggressive Turbo Mode will blow the i7 out of competition anyways. The only advantage the i7 has left is if the user is looking for high memory bandwidth and triple channel memory as well as full x16 dual PCIE lanes

However, there are also rumours that Intel might withdraw the lower i7-920 totally in order to draw a proper line between it's high-end and mainstream products. This is actually very bad news for fans of the i7-920 as this part has been one of the most overclockable processor especially with the D0 stepping, easily surpassing the 4Ghz mark. If Intel indeed withdraws it, fans of the high-end market will have to settle with higher priced i7-965s and 975s. If you've been thinking of building a i7 PC for awhile now, better do it sooner than later.

Anandtech also introduced one of the early CPU cooling offering from Thermaltake for the Lynnfield processors, the Thermaltake Spin-Q. I think anybody that eventually buys this should keep a few plasters in hand during installation lol.

Since Lynnfield is going to use a different LGA 1156 socket, you will not be able to re-use existing Bloomfield coolers due to the difference in the motherboard socket hole widths. However, the Thermaltake solution above comes with adjustable push pin position making it suitable for both Lynnfield and Bloomfield motherboards. But if you ask me, push pins are a nightmare to work with. Gimme screws and springs anyday.

The gaming benchmark shows that the Lynnfield is pretty much on par with a i7 at the same frequency and even leads it in some games. This was all with a crippled Turbo Mode unit that Anandtech was using. It will be very surprising that Lynnfield should not be able to extend that lead further when retail units start shipping with fully functional Turbo Modes. Crysis bechmark below:

Anyways, there are more pictures and plenty more additional info from the full review. Check it out at http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3570&p=1

I especially liked their closing statement : "Penryn was always good, Bloomfield was nice to talk about but Lynnfield may end up being the one you marry." :P

And in the recent Computex, one slide from Intel pretty much sums up the performance of Lynnfield compared to my current QX9650 processor:

Computex also became the place where motherboard manufacturers were showing off their brand new P55 motherboards that will support the Lynnfield processors. Amongts the usual suspects are the Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Foxconn, Asrock & DFI. Take a look at Gigabyte's new board! I can only wonder how many PWM phases its packing for its power supply around the CPU.

And finally, one of the news that I just read about today. Some Taiwanese motherboard company (guess who?) has reportedly stated that the Lynnfield processors will be a absolute dream to overclock. It seems early samples sent to them was able to hit 5Ghz....on air cooling!

Though this might just be rumours, but it's sure adding more hype to this potentially exciting product. Read the short article at http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/06/03/lynnfield-overclocks-to-5ghz/1

Let's see if Lynnfield will really take the world by storm. What do you all think?

How much electricity are you really using?

2009-06-10T19:10:00.006+08:00

Have you guys ever wondered how efficient is your PC?

When I started to get into overclocking and gaming, I was happily increasing my voltage to hit that satisfying 4.0Ghz speed. Seeing the 3DMark06 score jump by 400 points after overclocking my 8800GT was really exciting. Gained 4 fps in Crysis and I was already the happiest guy for the day.

Until the electricity bill came of course.

I never actually considered how much power my PC would be using but I bet the hours of Priming I did must have contributed something to it. So now I'm in a dillema. On one hand, I already have my system water cooled and it's begging to be overclocked but on the other, get nagged everyday by my mom for the increased electricity bill. Not a nice place to be at all.

So I went about to find some sort of measuring device so I could divert my mom's attention and hopefully able to blame some other faulty thing for the high electricity so she would leave me alone to continue OC my system hehe. It took me pretty long time and I just could not find any sold in PG or in Malaysia. Of course there are those so called plug-ins to the wall socket that supposedly able to cut down your electricity cost immediately but I chose not to trust these items partly also because it costs alot to find out if it works or not and that alone has already offset whatever savings you might be able to get from it.

Back to the topic, in US they have the pretty popular Kill-A-Watt (you can google it and you'll find many places selling them) but again, not offered here. There is also a problem of socket compatibility since the US pin layout is different. You would need a converter for the device and another for your application to plug into the device. Inconvinient and bulky I would think. To cut the story short, I went to ebay and did some search and found a few different models from UK. Apparently the UK uses the same socket layout as us and that is a definate plus. It also supports the same current and frequency ratings as what TNB is supplying us with. So after thinking a moment (first time buying from ebay and from a seller so far away), clicked the buy button and got it over with. RM80 gone and I waited patiently for it to arrive.

So, item arrived today much to my relieve. It was actually small enough to fit into a sort-of envelope with some paddings inside. I did not take any pictures of the unboxing or packaging because I was just too excited to try it out hehe. There were 3 buttons on the device: "UP", "SET" & "FUNC". The first two supposedly allows you to set the time and program it to even calculate your power cost by providing it with the price per kWh and it will be able to do the rest. Anyways, I skipped all those fancy stuff and basically only used the "FUNC" button. Pressing it will toggle the display to switch thru the typical Voltage, Current and Power(Watts) value. On to the results then!

Make a guess. What do you think is the power draw of my system?

For those who do not know my system specs:

Intel QX9650 3Ghz

Foxconn X38A Motherboard

2x1GB Crucial Anniversary 800Mhz DDR2

Seagate 320GB 7200rpm HDD

Western Digital 640GB Caviar Green 7200rpm HDD

Galaxy 8800GT 512MB GDDR3

Samsung 19" LCD

CoolerMaster M620 620W PSU

Watercooling: Swiftech Apogee GT, Swiftech MCR320 (120.3 radiator) & Swiftech MCP655 Pump

I did the measurement with everything at stock and no OC on any parts.

I first turned on the mains. At this point, PC is powered up but not running yet, mobo lights and PSU lights are on.

9W! I think I could have powered half a Atom PC up already even before I powered up my PC. At this point, it's not looking good at all. I'm so going to be blamed for the electricity cost.

Next, bootup.

Hmm, it's not that bad @ 200W but still, assuming bootup should be around the idle state of the PC, I would assume then that full load when playing games would have to be higher than this

Move on then. I have now start-up my PC and have logged in to Windows. Even during the OS loading and everything, nothing much changed. I was still pretty much stucked at 200W. So I fired up a movie (Madagascar 2) to see what is the power consumption at during one of my movie sessions. To my surprise, it stayed at the 200W level maybe a occasional 2-3W spike now and then but it was still pretty good considering the increase of HDD activity as well as GPU usage. Hehe, no worries for movie sessions anymore!

Now to gaming! Started Left 4 Dead game and let it run its usual opening "2 weeks after initial infection" movie. Started the hospital campaign and this is what I got:

OK. So now we're seeing a slight increase to about 220W. Either L4D was a totally undemanding game or my GPU was handling the game very efficiently. Gaming is usually where we see the graphic card switch to the higher powered 3D mode to help out with all the 3D accelaration and the processor will also get out of it's sleep/idle state. So 20W is not a great increase at all. Good good.

But I just had to know. What is the absolute peak of my PC if it actually went that far. So I opened Prime95 and proceeded to torture test all 4 cores. The result was:

So this is the max draw of my PC. A constant 270W at peak loading (I can only imagine the hours I spend running Prime on it when I first overclocked it and how much power was been used up then :S). Anyways, this is with the CPU maxed out but I'm sure if I perhaps run an ATI tool to stress the GPU, we're maybe talking about 300W then.

Last test. I actually regularly leave my PC on throughout the night to complete my torrent. So just for an idea how much power I'm using that time I measured it with the LCD turned off (don't need it since I'm going to sleep right?)

176W. So my LCD is actually taking 30W of power to display.

So in conclusion, I can see that although the power used during torrent-ing is the lowest at 176W, it is also the one that I used the most. Leaving over night means the PC will be on for around 6-8hrs each time, everyday. Add that to my occasional gaming when I'm awake, we are talking about 185W+ per hour each day for 6-8hrs. That is a total of ~1.5kWh each day. For 1 month, thats 45kWh units of additional cost printed into your TNB bill. Using TNB's very own bill calculator (http://www.tnb.com.my/tnb/tariff/calc.htm), that is a huge total of RM9.80 per month. What?!

I think it's time for me to go back to the world of over clocking and let me find the unfortunate electrical appliance that I'm gonna put all the blame on haha! RM9.80 a month was not a very huge amount and definately not something I should be so worried about. Yay! :)

For those looking for the same product, check it out in ebay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120432557865QQssPageNameZMERC_VIC_RCRX_Pr4_PcY_BIN_IT&refitem=110394878567&itemcount=4&refwidgetloc=closed_view_item&usedrule1=CrossSell_LogicX&refwidgettype=cross_promot_widget&_trksid=p284.m183&_trkparms=algo%3DCRX%26its%3DS%252BI%26itu%3DUCI%252BSI%26otn%3D4

As always, appreciate the comments. Have a nice day!

SC's Build

2009-06-09T23:36:00.028+08:00

My department has a habit of giving out 'free' Intel CPUs to it's employees for the purpose that we get to feel more connected to the products we work on (I so hope they will give out a Larrabee! Haha). We know it as the Beta Unit Program and this time, we are all getting Q9550 (2.8Ghz) Yorkfield processors. Great job hoh? (More like softening us up so that they can squeeze more life force from you everyday to do work haha)

One of my colleague, JG went down during the long weekend/Agong's Birthday public holiday to KL LowYat to help himself and another colleague pick up items for their PC build. He was planning to get the new Radeon 4770 card and plan to CF in the future and I thought he made a pretty good choice.

However, I did not know that LowYat traders practiced this kind of business attitude: He was told by X shop's person that they will not be selling new stock of the 4770s as it is affecting the other product's stock movement. He was then forced to get the alternative Radeon 4830. I mean, customers are getting forced to pay more for less performance here for the sake of profit. The 4770 they were selling was not exactly selling under priced at RM399 since AMD did launched the 4770 initially at USD109.99 or RM384 after all. What should have happened was they should have dropped the prices of the current cards since they do perform weaker to the 4770. I know doing business is not easy and every possible profit margin should be pursued but man I'm disappointed. Telling people the whole of LowYat not one single 4770. Just my two cents.

Anyways, I got the item and price list from JG, took a look, and was telling another colleague (SC) that was also interested to build his own PC with the beta unit that if he was OK, I could help him out to do his. SC agreed and I suggested to JG that once we were done (his was still missing the OS at the moment), we could do benchmarks to see which build ended up better just for the fun of it :P. Just throwing in a challenge to make things alittle bit more exciting (I could always cheat by OC-ing some parts hehe). Budget will be a RM1,500 total without keyboard/mouse/speakers/LCD. Windows 7 will be the OS.

Without delay, let me introduce the contenders *ding ding ding*

JG's Build
Gigabyte P45 UD3L Motherboard
2x2GB Kingston DDR2 800Mhz
Seagate 500GB 7200rpm Hard Disk
Sapphire 4830 512MB GDDR3
CoolerMaster 460W RealPower PSU
CoolerMaster ATX Casing (dunno which and have not seen it yet)
Stock shaped Intel LGA775 CPU cooler
LG 22x IDE DVD-RW

Total Price : RM1,520

SC's Build
Asus P5Q Pro P43 Motherboard
2x2GB Kingston DDR2 800Mhz
Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB 7200rpm Hard Disk
PowerColor 4770 512MB GDDR5 (PC Depot had stock!)
CoolerMaster 460W RealPower PSU
PowerLogic Quatro 200 Casing (Free 460W PSU but no 12V rail or 6pin for graphic card)

CoolerMaster X Dream4 LGA775 Cooler
Liteon 22X Sata DVD-RW
CoolerMaster 460W RealPower PSU

Total Price: RM1,478

OK, some reasons and comments on my choices. Mainly the difference between the two builds is the motherboard and graphic card. From the budget, it was pretty obvious that CF ready mobo is going to cost too much. A CF ready P45 mobo will cost aboout RM500 (cheapest was Asus P5Q Pro P45 for RM489 @ PCDepot) and you will then be forced to break the budget to get the 4770s. Since CF is out of the question, there is no point to get a P45 board anymore. A P43 board is basically a P45 board with 1 less PCIE x16 lane and is still equally as capable as the P45 in all other aspects. This allowed me to save about RM70 and it was then well placed into the more expensive but better performing 4770.

I also chosed ASUS due to the many motherboard feature it supported including it's Quick Boot feature that allows you to enter into a ASUS mini OS with internet browsing capabilities in 5secs! The Asus mobo also came with BIOS protection and offered alot of overclocking capabilities and settings.

On to the build! Counting this time, it would be my 4th time configuring and building a PC for me or someone else but this will be the first time I'm documenting it hehe. Hope I get this right and pardon for the blur photos. Took it with my Nokia 5800 cos too poor for DSLRs :(

The traditional lay-out-everything-on-the-floor-and-take-a-picture lol:

ASUS P5Q Pro P43 Motherboard. 6x SATA and 1 IDE cable. Too bad it's a brownish color for the PCB. Black would've been perfect but rare to find in midrange mobos. However, I did find a mATX with black PCB before. The ASUS P5KPL-AM, a pretty nice G31 board.

The new Radeon 4770

With the space ship designed cooler :S

It was pretty much a nice build. The casing was a big surprise. For the price of Rm105, it really felt well made and even the plastic front did not feel cheap. The paint job on the side panels was also very well done and the aluminium-like insides gave it a slightly classier look. At one point I was complaining to SC that this cheap casing does not even provide screws or PCB stands. We actually went on to impovised and screwed the mobo on anyways with whatever screws we could find until we saw the packet of screws/PCB stands tied together with the supplied power cable that came with the case (the casing comes with a PSU ready remember?). OMG!! Should've noticed that much earlier! Anyways, my apologies to the PowerLogic casing. sorry if I hurted your feelings. I will learn to respect cheap casings from now on haha.

Completed build:

The idle temp as seen from BIOS was about 55C which is a little too high if you ask me. Thinking to replace the exhaust fan with a 120mm, add a 120mm intake at the front and a 80mm at the side panel directly moving air towards the processor area. The pleasent surprise was the system was pretty quiet. The 4770 boots up with 100% fan speed and then lowers down to nearly an inaudible level after that. So far so good.

Since there is still the OS to install so stay tuned for the bechmark results much later. I'll probably run 3dMark Vantage and some game FRAPS and will try to post up by this week. I'll also do some cable tie management for the cables and post up a few more pics. It's still an ugly jungle right now. Do you think I made the correct choices? Let me know! :)

P.S. Thanks to SC for allowing me to spend his money for him. Hope you like your new PC!

Do you like framerates?

2009-06-08T10:44:00.004+08:00

If you must absolutely have the greatest graphic solution ever at this moment? You want to see triple digits in Crysis? Too much electricity to spare? This is what you will want: ASUS Mars GTX295

The current reference GTX295 offered by NVidia is actually two GTX260x2 packed into a single card solution. This works well for people that do not have SLI capable motherboards or only have a single PCIE slot.

What ASUS has done here (risking the wrath of NVidia) is to take two GTX285 to create this monster. Yes, you read that correctly, two of the most powerful single card graphic cards available in the market currently.

We are talking about 4GB of GDDR3 goodness, 512bit memory bus and 240 shader processors. And if that is not good enough, this cards are SLI ready right off the bat which means Quad-SLI is very much supported. The card also works with current drivers. According to ASUS, it estimates the Mars to beat the reference GTX295 by a whopping 21%!

Check out the pics captured at the card's introduction in Computex 2009 recently.

There will be only a limited 1000 cards for sale and if you have some spare arms or legs, go for it. I can imagine the first time you turn on your PC, all your lights will start to flicker and the entire house starts to shake. It's afterall a card that is 'out of this world' :)

StarCraft2, Bioshock 2 & Assasin's Creed 2!

2009-06-07T19:59:00.014+08:00

Ooo...new game trailers has been released for this 3 popular games after the recently concluded E3 event!

I think StarCraft is going to be one of the biggest game for this year. Estimated to be released this September (many things happening in Sept it seems, Windows 7 & new Intel Lynnfield processor also slated for the same time)

Bioshock 2 this time, you're going to take the role of that Big Daddy that was a pain to kill in the original. Should be fun haha

Exciting year it should be. for those who haven't seen them, enjoy the trailers I've posted below (had to skip StarCraft 2 gameplay trailer due to size limitation..too bad but you can view them from http://www.gamespot.com/).

Bioshock 2

Assasin's Creed 2

HAF932 & Cosmos S Water Cooled

2009-06-07T17:16:00.003+08:00

Since I'm planning to upgrade the water cooling of my HAF932 and also to do some interior case painting (the dull steel colour is starting to get to me), I was browsing around for ideas and inspiration and came across these stunning pictures. Probably some have seen this before, else enjoy :)

I especially like the dual loop color combination and contrast of the black interior in the Cosmos S

Anybody knows where to get that blue color coolant in Malaysia?

This will be more of what I will aim to do for my PC

I'm still considering either red or blue for my loop. Suggestions will be welcomed. I'm leaning more to blue currently

Best value for money graphic cards

2009-06-07T14:53:00.010+08:00

I know for a fact the majority of the PC users these days do not go for the highest end graphic card they can find when they are making a new build. There are many of us that are looking for a solid card while not hurting our bank too much. Of course there are always those with deep pockets and are looking for bragging rights for the highest framerates possible in Crysis but I'll leave that for another topic. At the end of the day, both NVidia and AMD knows that the mainstream market is where the highest sales will be registered.

Note that although these cards are grouped in the mainstream market, I consider them to be of the higher mainstream portion as these cards can get you the magic 30 frames minimum in Crysis for 1280X1024 so do not underestimate them!

NVidia 8800GT 512MB

I did my first build in 2007. I bought the NVidia 8800GT card which was just launched at that time and I have yet to find a game I cannot play today at 1280X1024 with all high details with it. I remembered it costed me RM860 at that time. It was still considered a very good buy due to its price to performance ratio that no other card could beat. It was able to give nearly 8800GTX performance while priced 50% cheaper than it. It also consumed less power due to its new G92 core. At that time, you just could not ask for more.

Radeon 4850 512MB

Then we had the new Radeon 4800 cards, the Radeon 4850 and 4870. While the 4870 is still considered the high-end card (a new 1GB version has been introduced now) even till now, the 4850 was unchalleged as the new bang for buck champion. But the impact it made was not as impressive as when the 8800GT first launched. This was because the gains 4850 have over the 8800GT was not much after considereing the card is priced slightly higher that the 8800gt. It will make alot of difference only for new upgraders (from older hardware) or people looking for a new build as Crossfire was also a big factor to consider. SLI was proprietry to NVidia at that time and the efficiency of the Core 2 processors by Intel meant more people owned Intel motherboards that only support CF. You could consider the 4850 as the first card from AMD/ATI that could challenge the value for money previously held by NVidia.

Radeon 4770 512MB GDDR5

At present, we have a new attempt by AMD/ATI to hold on to the king of price vs performance crown from , the Radeon 4770. This is the world's first 40nm card combined with 512MB of very fast Qimonda GDDR5 memory (The only other card with GDDR5 is the 4870). The card has a memory bus of 128bits which is pretty low but compensation from the GDDR5's larger bandwidth compared to GDDR3s makes the actual bandwidth offered comparable to 256bit cards. The 4770 is targetted at the low cost HTPC market as well as the everyday gamer. It launched with a price of USD109.99 and can be found in LowYat for as low as RM350 each which is pretty awesome. The closest competitor from NVidia from pricepoint perspective is the 9600GT but there is actually no competition when looking at the benchmark results :).

The 8800gt has sinced been refreshed as the current 9800GT with slightly better performance and the price has dropped 50% (you can easily find one for about RM400+ these days! OMG!!). The 4850s are also hovering in the RM400 price zones as well. As you can see, the economic situation does have an impact to the PC world. You can today get the same performance levels as 2 yrs back for 50% less cost.

The 4770 performs generally between the 4850 and the new 9800GT(RM100 more expensive) with the 4850 at the front. But when overclocking comes into play, which is very much the forte of the 4770 due to its 40nm fab process and dual slot cooling (which I think is an overkill), it easily surges ahead of both the cards and even the 9800GTX at some games. However, cranking the resolution up to 1080p, it falls back to its place behind the higher memory equipped 9800GTX but still maintained its lead over the 4850 and 9800GT. AMD/ATI is doing really well!

Anybody wants to take my 8800GT? It has voltage mod jumpers :)

I want to get 2 of these in CF in my PC, water cool them and just push and push the core clocks

My first post :)

2009-06-07T14:24:00.006+08:00

Ahh, my first post. I wonder what goes through all the bloggers mind when they were in this position. I don't know about them but I know I took nearly 15 minutes to get this done! It was harder than I thought. Had to crack my brain to think of what to write haha. But once I started to type alittle, it all just came pretty easily

Anyways, I guess its only natural to intro the blog by introducing myself first right? :)

OK...I'm a 24 yr old guy currently living in little Penang, Malaysia. Currently working in Intel under the Product Development Engineering (PDE) department. The job is pretty demanding but some perks of the job includes me touching, handling and even benching (yes, benching!) Intel's latest products before it even gets to anybody else. Anyways, this is not the main things I'm sharing on this blog as I don't want to end up with blogging being my main job at the end of the day after Intel kicks me out the door!

I do have a great deal of passion about computer hardwares. Be it overclocking, case modding or anything you could do with your hands and admire later. I've had my share of overclocking with Intel Quads and I'm starting to look in to case mods for my PC. This is where this blog comes in. I'll basically share news, pictures or videos with my own personal comments on the latest hardware or coolest modifications I happen to come across. I'll also add some work logs from time to time of the mods I've done to my own PC as well (I've posted pics of my PC at the side with specs in the description).

I hope you guys will enjoy the blog. Comment is always welcomed and have a nice day!