A 70 percent overclock - 2.4 to 4!

I am very impressed with this budget overclock. The Q6600 is an amazing chip and the X38-DQ6 really takes advantage of it. Although the system was Prime95 stable on all four cores and temperatures stayed well under 35 celcius, 3DMark06 CPU tests were really pushing this system hard. Frame stuttering was evident on the SM 2 and SM 3 benchmarks. Because temperatures stayed so low I really think the system could run at higher speeds with the ghetto .. err budget cooling set-up. The memory which is only designed for 800 runs was pushing 890.

Here are the steps taken to hit 4 GHz

1. Acrtic Silver 5 - the cpu was covered with as thin a layer as possible and a small drop was place in the middle. The water block was pressed on top and moved around to insure contact with no bubles or dry spots. There were definately runs where specific cores ran hotter indicating some installations did not have adequate cpu to block adhesion. Always run new installs at conservative levels and check temperatures for each core seperately at idle and at load. The CPU water block was reinstalled and temperatures were now low and consistent.

2. Cooling - to insure proper air flow the side cover was left off and fans were placed above the CPU, NB, and memory

3. Video card - since the target was high CPU scores not SM 2 and SM 3 scores, I left the card at stock speeds and stock volts.

4. CIA 2 was turned off in the bios and the PCIe bus was locked to 100.


5. Memory was manually loosened to 7-7-7-22, and voltage was raised to 2.1, the rating from Corsair.













6. CPU speed was set to 350, and voltage was set to the Intel listed 1.5v. I ran Prime95 to make sure the temperature range for the cores at idle and load were within range (7 and 22.)


7. The system was then turned off and the wiper fluid and ice was added to the immersion bin. A small fountain pump moved the cold water from the bin into a simple manifold attached to the radiator with wire ties. Adhesive foam stripping was used to minimize leakage.





8. After covering the ice with salt and immersion fluid was stirred and allowed to chill down to -4 celcius.

9. The system was started up again and in the bios the FSB speed was set to 400 (3.6 GHz with the Q6600 9 multiplier.) Memory is locked to 2.00 which is a very comfortable 800 for the PC-6400C4 chips.

10. Once the system boots in XP I used Gigabyte's EasyTune to monitor temperatures and slowly bump up the FSB and run 3DMark06. This lasted until I hit 415.

11. In the Bios I pushed the NB voltage up, and gave the FSB a mild increase involtage as well. The key here is to push as few volts in as possible to keep down temperatures, and yet bump volts up as needed to maintain stability. The secodn you bump up votage and see no stability increase back off and try something else. Always be sensitive to maximum voltage for your various parts and monitor all temperatures.

12. Back in XP I again bumped up the FSB in Easytune and ran Prime95 to check temperatures. The machine never went over 40 degrees celcius with this setup but Prime95 was not stable over 465. So I jumped in and ran 3DMark06 again.

13. 3DMark06 had no problem with SM2 and SM# tests but the CPU benchmark would fail until I settled at 445. This FSB speed translated to a 4005 CPU speed giving me the 6181 score found here.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=4778765

I am sure the with better memory the cooling setup could have pushed me up to at least 475 FSB. I am very impressed with Intel, Gigabyte, and Coolermaster's contributions to this project, and when I upgrade my memory it will probably be some Corsair PC-10000.

The next task will be closing the box up and finding a speed which allows me to run 24/7 stable at a reasonable temperature - without the ghetto .. err, budget immersion system!

The video will be up soon!

The Final Run - 6181

I will be adding more details about what it took to get the final score but here is the screen shot.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=4778765

Drives - Western Digital Caviar 750, and SATA DVD

A system without a ribbon cable, what a dream!

Having SATA for both the primary drive and CD/DVD drive must have a measureable impact on airflow in the case. Even the wrapped IDE cable are thick heavy beasts. The Western Digital Caviar 750 runs very close to the Raptors in the benchmarks, and is very hard to beat for the price. It is selling in the $150 to $170 range and was the biggest splurge on this box, but I needed the extra storage space at home so it could be justified. We picked up a disk-less camcorder over the holidays and we are quickly chewing up space on available drives in the house. The WD750 also runs pretty quiet which is nice.

It is not expected that the choice of hdd or dvd drive will have any impact on scores.

The Operating System - XP or Vista

Another project was to determine which OS to use. Initially I wanted to run Vista since I need to get some experience on the OS and I though there might be some advantages to running in a native 64-bit OS. Bottom-line XP is faster for 3DMark06 right now.

I charted the results of my tests along side posted results found on the web. Using Vista I was losing performance. I was running Home Premier and could not get the number of processes running below 45. I dug up every trick I could find including manually shutting down every extra process possible before launching 3DMark06.

I also used tools like HWMonitor, CPUid, and Prime95 to help tune the system.

CPU Cooler - Coolermaster Duo VIVA

WHAT .. you can't expect anyone to believe that you are going to enter an overclocking contest using a cooling system that is designed for a single GPU card ..!

Okay, so even I had doubts about this working but again the "Price was Right" since during the holidays a online retailer was practically giving these away (provided you called in you order at midnight before they sold out and sent your rebate off on time.)

The reviews on the Aquagate Duo were not kind when comapred to the top air cooling units. I had a Typhoon in my primary box as a back-up, but the new Aquagate Duo Viva did show some improvements over the first generation. With an improved pumping system and better water blocks I thought it was worth a try. The water system would also give me 2 advanatges;
1. The radiator allows me to move the heat out of the case
2. Additional cooling could be applied to the radiator to help disapate heat

I did consider using the second water block to cool the NB chip and since the block had a mirror finish on both sides I even looked into adding a heat sink to the back to help shed more heat. But air cooling on the NB heatsinks proved to be sufficient and I definately preferred running the CPU in a single block configuration (one block, one radiator, one chip to cool.)

Since this is a ghetto .. err, budget overclock I also decided to involve some ice in the final run. At drag strips we used to pack the intake manifolds with ice to help improve short-term performance, and I decied to do the same thing here. The big surprise was that 0 degrees celcius would not be cool enough. I ended up using some additional agents to get the immersion system temperature down (salt, and wiper fluid.) I immersed the radiator in wiper fluid and ice, and with the help of some kosher kitchen salt, got the immersion temperatur down to -4 degrees celcius. The idle temps on the CPU held at 7 no problem and at load the CPU barely touched 22. Not bad using $10 bucks worth of tubes, bins, wire ties and wiper fluid from Home Depot.

With a larger bin, more ice, more salt, and more patience it is documented that the immersion fluid can hit -15f.

The Video Card - Nvidia 7900GS

Since the contest is based on the CPU benchmark in the 3DMark06 software I was too worried about the video card. The video card only really impacts the SM2 and SM3 tests (shader model 2 and 3) so the impact was expected to be negligible.

The 7900GS does overclock nicely and tests showed significant improvements in the SM2 and SM3 scores, but higher speeds also reduced stability and had no measurable effect on the CPU score. In the end the 7900GS was left at stock speeds and performed like a champ. If 3DMark06 was gonna crash it was going to do it during the CPU benchmark.

The 7900GS was also one of the last 7000 series designs produced by Nvidia and benefits from a generaling cooler running chip set, another plus in a performance box targeting CPU score. The clincher was the fact that I had a 7900GS sitting on the shelf. Ya just can't beat free when building a low cost box.

Memory - Corsair XMS2 pc-6400 C4 (4-4-4-12)

If you have read the reviews the timings on the Corsair C4 memory are impressive. Across the board Corsair is doing really well in performance comparison right now. The best part of the ddr2-800 XM2 C4 chips is they are shipped in a 2x1024 configuration and are being heavily discounted through Fry's. If your are good about sending your rebates forms out these chips are awesome.

The C4 chips performed as expected and ran at 4-4-4-12 with 1.8v with no problems. The only drawback to Corsairs chips right now is they tend to be soft on overclocking so I ran these with very loose timings to help get the FSB up for the CPU (7-7-7-22.) You can't complain for the price, but I am sure that spending money on faster memory would helps improve the overclocks. The Corsair PC10000 chips would be nice but they are not cheap, so they don't qualify for the project.

The cost of DDR3 chips and the low performance gains necessitated that this project use DDR2. Faster DDR2 chips are also being released now which should give the DDR2 boards and chipsets some additional shelf-life. But as mentioned the DDR3 chips do provide some overhead for clocking and the boys with the Extreme Intel CPUs are clearly using this memeory to get some really nice numbers.