Temps and settings.

[Oblivion]

Im running 4gb of the 2200mhz cas 7 ram. I am able to get the ram stable at 2000 mhz, with 1.5 qpi, 1.65ram. I have a few issues, 1st is most every OC forum i read anything above 1.4 qpi is considered an "extreme" OC and could effect the longevity of the CPU.

My second problem is temperatures, I almost wish i bought a 920 instead of a 950. WAY easier to cool the 920's. I "was" running liquid cooling with the ECO COOLIT kit. I find this cooler just cant keep up with my OC's. I either have to lower my ram clock or my cpu clock, Both have dramatic effects on CPU temps.

At a 3.5 OC and 2000mhz ram, i was getting temp spikes in the high 70's and avg load temps in the high 60's. I decided to experiment with a cooler master hyper N 520 air cooler. The reason for this is because i bought my bro one for christmas and was rather impressed with the temps he was pulling on his 920 i7.

After installing the new cooler, i found the air cooler to out perform the liquid cooler in some areas. At the same clock i was peaking 77c on liquid, i would peak 78c on air cooling. What is interesting is i found the air cooler to perform better at moderate clocks then the Liquid. The liquid cooler only shined at higher clocks but a negligible difference at best and not enough to make any real difference to maintain the high clock.

What i like about the Air Cooler is all my Threads are now reading Identical temps most of the time... when the core temps peak.. they all peak at the exact same temp. Consistency, i love it. With the liquid cooler my cores rarely read the same temps and could be as much as 5c off per core. Some would think maybe its not seated correctly? I reseated it a total of 3 times with no difference. I'm thinking the problem lies in the cooler, like the copper is thicker in one spot then another or the grade of copper is not as good.

Anyway, the liquid cooler just isn't cutting it and the air cooler rocks my socks off but I'm looking for something that will allow me to run my memory at its rated freq.... any suggestions?

I have a Large "Custom" case with massive air flow. I was even contemplating modifying the cooler for ECO but don't have any specific plan in mind.

[Tradesman]

Could you post your BIOS settings, to give us something to work from. I'd start at stock w/ your 950 and try and get the DRAM stable first at 2200, then work on the CPU OC, taking it up gradually. Another thought would be what thermal did you use when installing the Cooler Master, and how long did it cure before you starting OCing on it, with most, if they don't have some time to cure and then you start jumping around with different OCs, it won't set up well

[Oblivion]

I find it somewhat humorous when people ask what thermal paste i use.. Various tests have been done between generic pastes and arctic 5 silver... at best its only 2c improvement, really nothing to write home about.

I spent 10$ on the arctic crap for my liquid cooler, and i let it cure for weeks before i attempted any OC.

If my air cooler was setup wrong at all, it would not be outperforming my liquid cooler.

I did not let the air cooler cure like the liquid cooler like I should of but after initial temp readings the next day after further curing i noticed a 5c drop in load temps, These 950's just run hotter then typical i7's especially when you start OC's. I setup this exact aircooler the same as a 920 i7 i installed one on... the 920 idles around 25c stock. and at Xtreme OC reaches 55-60c full load.

I just need a BADASS cooler, just didn't want to spend over 100$ on one :-( . I spent 80 on the Eco cooler... disappointed with it. I paid 35 for this air cooler<performs well for the price>, total heatsink costs now 115$.

If I could get me temps under control i Could easily pull off a 60k+ CPU Vantage score. Current settings give me a 53k score :-P.




Right now the air cooler out performs the liquid cooler by 6c under typical loads "BC2" Peak temps are only seen during map loads.

But under benchmarking conditions is where the ECO shines... what i mean by shines... is by 1-2c improvement... probably do to the higher quality paste i mentioned earlier.

[Tradesman]

I use Zalman 9900s and the Noctua NH-D14 (the U12P is very good also), and the reason I asked about the thermal was simply to find out if you were maybe using one of the newer 'no-cure' compounds, but it seems to be self defeating to first say that there is 'only' about a 2C difference between a generic paste and AS5, and then to go into where the ECO shines by 1-2C....

As to the DRAM might better hit 2200 with the CR at 2, or you're showing 1926 above at CL9, at that speed should be able to run CL7 easily which would provide a performance boost

[Oblivion]

so just change the CL? Right now CR 1 runs fine at my current memory clock.

I might be able to get it to 2200...The problem is my QPI voltage is going to be way to high.. even if i could get my temps under control at that clock. right now im running 1.5 QPI, 2000mhz requires 1.6 QPI. These numbers are just getting too scary for me to push it any further. I would run it at 2000 mhz, but my current issue is strictly temperatures.

I think the Noctuo is going to be my only option. The zalmans performance seems similar to my current cooler master hyper N 520.

bringing the clock down from 2000 to 1925 dropped my temps down roughly 4c.
I mentioned earlier i had 2000mhz stable at 1.5 QPI. but that was only when it was auto volted
So if i tried to manually set the voltage to 1.5 I get blue screens of death. The reason behind this is even though ive manually set it to 1.5 in reality its only running at around 1.4 QPI. same goes with the 1925 clock.. auto volts to 1.4 but when i set it manually i have to set it to above 1.5v to replicate the auto voltage. Confusing... i know lol

[Tradesman]

That's the joys of OCing, every gain also poses possible losses, think you'll like the Noctua, I've only used 5 of them (the 14) but they have done well (up to -5 from the Zalmon 9900s)