Project Overclock: XP1700+ to XP3392+

[smilodon]

sweeeet

but you appear to have wallpapered your entire house in graph paper  :?:  :?:  :?:

[TeaLeaf]

Yeah, but by doing that I know exactly how far I have stuck a sharp thing into JB for his depressing replies.  He is beginning to sound like a moaning minny.......oh, he IS a moaning minny   :lol:

TL.  

PS  JB: Smite wanted you to commit to either Chinky or Indian so that we could al commit to the other one  :wink:

[JB]

I'd be more than happy with KFC. If only March wasn't such a backwards place, and had heard of 'fast food'

[JB]

Anyway what's this about my depressing replies?  You try dealing with lesser mortals all the time and see how depressed it makes you.  I'm one of the Emperor's infidels, the Emperor has instructed me and i am doing his wishes.

Fjeer teh painstick.

[Stryker]

hmm, be careful, over time your motherboard can warp  8O

Nice looking heatsink TL.  Make sure the bottom is totally clean before application, not even fingerprints!

[TeaLeaf]

Woot!  

The rest of the bits arrived today, so I have had a chance to start building the machine tonight.  So where do we start?

The Power Supply - Enermax 550W EG651P-VE FMA Blue

You got to love this baby - what a PSU!  550W and cool as you like with 2 variable speed fans: one sucking air in from above the simmering cpu and a second expelling it out of the case rear.  The rear wall (where the power leads exit the PSU case) is actually a huge air intake with most of the blue metal case having been neatly cut away to leave a large ventillation grill.  This allows the rear fan to pull air on a straight path through the psu innards - this gives it a slightly better control over its own temperature as it is able to get a much higher airflow rate through the psu case with the extra grill.



The Case - Lian Li PC-65

Fitting the PSU into the case could not have been easier.  With the removal of 4 chromed thumb screws both side panels slide off to allow easy access to the case innards.  Another 4 thumbscrews and the PSU retaining plate is off as well.  The PSU just slides in to position and is then screwed to the retaining plate.  This PSU has extra power connectors as well as the additional cooling and massive power capacity, just right for lots of overclocking bits to be tested!  It also provides copper shielding for the major power lines, which really look the business with their aluminium finish.  



The Lian Li case looks great from the front, but also catches your eye from the rear too - highly polished PCI blanking plates are difficult to photograph with their mirror-like finish (it almost looks like they are not there!), but they really make the back of the case look nice.   Note the hard drive cage at the bottom righthand side - this just slides out so that you can install your latest HDD with ease.  Lian Li also do a range of removable aluminium drive bays......may be I should stick one of those in too  



Right, I'm off to unpack the motherboard and have a wee look at that now  

TL.  

[TeaLeaf]

The Motherboard - Abit NF7-S Rev 2.0

As Radman would say, the motherboard is a 'beaut' and with the removal of some more chromed thumbscrews from the Lian Li, you can slide out the motherboard tray.  The mobo provides onboard ethernet, USB2, official PC3200 DDR RAM along with the full nForce2 capabilities.



The Lian Li case comes with a massive bag of screws, motherboard mounting clips and various clips and cable ties.  It took about a minute to insert mobo mounting clips (they just click into place) and another minute to screw the mobo to the tray.



The Graphics Card - Sapphire Radeon 9700 128Mb

The Sapphire is a well reviewed and highly regarded graphics performer, so it should be able to deliver some stonking good frame rates.  nfortunately, my sample came with the Infineon 3.3ms RAM rather than the Samsung 2.8ms RAM and the general consensus is that the red pcb 9700 with Infineon RAM doesn't overclock quite as well as the black PCB 9700 with faster Samsung RAM.  Never the less, I have high hopes for this card.



The CPU - Athlon XP1700+ (JIUHB)

This is the baby that started all the fuss in these forums - the JIUHB stepped Athlon XP1700+.   FatBob has already spun one up to 2.3GHz and we'll see exactly how fast we can crank up my one later in this thread     Put your fire extinguishers on danger money  :wink:



The Thermal Compound - Arctic Silver 3

The one on the left came with the cpu heatsink - we can throw it out!  But the one on the right is the new Arctic Silver 3 and it is destined to assist us in achieving overcloking greatness!  One small blob (with the emphasis on small) on the cpu core, spread carefully with a credit card to a more or less even 0.5-1.0mm depth.  Try to leave a bit of a gap around the edge so that when the heatsink is attached there is room for the surplus to squeeze out towards the sides and provide a perfect interface between heatsink and core.



The CPU Heatsink - Aerocool DP-101 Deep Impact

Now this hefty beast should really knock 'n' degrees of something off the cpu!  A copper base and cylinder conducts the heat away fron the cpu, whilst the fan on the rear blasts air across the cooling vanes to remove the heat.  Where does the heat go I hear you ask?  Straight towards the exit vent on the rear of the Lian Li case.  You will not see a straighter air path to help you cool your cpu and case than this one  



Now where did I put that ram?

TL.  

[Stryker]

just shows how good careful choices can make for such a sweet system!  Like your detailed review, keep it coming chap.

[TeaLeaf]

Memory - OCZ Twin 2 x 256MB PC3500 Dual Channel DDR RAM

Lovely fast memory with very heavy copper heatsinks on each stick.  OCZ (like Corsair) make some very fast and very overclockable memory.  I've used Corsair in the past, but as they don't yet do any XMS Dual Channel PC3500 then OCZ got the nod for this project.  You can add similar heatsinks to your existing RAM if you want to overclock it - they are on sale at most of the usual overclocking haunts.



Extra Cooling Needed

The Sapphire 9700 comes without any heatsinks on the 4 RAM chips and this is something I would like to add, but I haven't had a chance to look around for suitable hardware yet.  The ability to overclock the card and the memory in particular can really be helped by adding sinple things like the RAM heatsinks.  If you know of any good ones then please let me know  



You Got Connections? - The Lian Li System

When you are fighting with tiny wires and trying to connect them to even smaller pins, the Lian Li system really comes up trumps.  In addition to the removable motherboard tray (every case should have one!) they also provide a cable clip so that you can make all of these connections whilst the motherboard and tray are still outside the case     Et voila!



And Finally - Tonight's work is done!

Now that the wires are clipped back together I can just slide the mobo tray back into the case.  4 thumbscrews later and she is done up tight.  I'll put things away now until tomorrow evening now, at which point I'll finish the connections, add the storage devices and then install the OS and of course, CS  



nn peeps!

TL.  

[Stryker]

There are all sorts of ram sinks, right down to these limpet style ones.

Tweakmonster BGA Ram Sinks 4 pack #CP242
http://www.pclincs.co.uk/acatalog/PCLincs_..._Coolers_5.html

These ones can work well and look nice when attached properly with the correct thermal glue.

[TeaLeaf]

Well it has been a quiet night on the Project Overclock front.  I have taken the front off the case and taken the FDD cage out.  It is a heck of a sight simpler to work on things when their mounting cage slips out of the case, it stops all those grazed knuckles etc, not that the Lian Li has any rough edges that is  :lol:   With the front off, you can see the circuitry for the variable speed fan switch (middle right), the 2 x 80mm intake fans at the bottom (with a washable filter behind the grill) and the 5.25" drive bays.



The FDD has been screwed into the FDD cage and I have put the cage back, courtesy of another 3 thumb screws - it is nice to be able to access bits of the case without the need for a screw driver all the time     And even if I do say so myself, the faux aluminium finish on the FDD looks really cool!



Final hardware step for today, is to slot the CD drive into place.  It looks awful, but I am intending to do a stealth mod on it using one of the surplus Lian Li aluminium drive face plates.  I won't get that bit done in time for the LAN, but it shouldn't be that long afterwards before the ugly beige of the CD drive is totally masked by a shiny aluminium plate  



RAM heat sinks have been ordered (along with some Arctic Silver Alumina Thermal Adhesive) and when they arrive I will be adding them to the 8 RAM chips on the Sapphire 9700.  For the moment I have put in normal ribbon cables, but these will be replaced with rounded cables next week when I know it is running properly.  A Lian Li Temp LCD bay is awaiting fitting, but I am going to wait to do that until after the round cables have been fitted.  In that way I can do all the cable run planning at the same time so that the interior of the case looks neat and tidy.

So the hardware changes have been made.  I have just booted the system up and it powered up nicely first time (always a satisfying moment).  The machine is currently running at totally stock speeds and I have just started an NTFS format of the HDD.  A clean install of XP Pro SP1 will then be put onto the HDD.  When the system is up and running I will install a few benchmarking software packages and run a variety of them to get some base lines to work from.  And then we'll start to ramp the speed up a wee bit at a time    

Total time to build system so far - 2 hours.
Total time to write these reports - 3 hours  8O
More reports soon.......I hope you are enjoying them - if not tell me real soon and I'll stop wasting my time  :wink:

TL.  

[sheepy]

whats that silver cable wrap u have used?

[Stryker]

keep writing TL, I think this is going for the most read topic :-)

[TeaLeaf]

Cheers Stryker  

Sheepy - it is the stock wrap that comes with this PSU.  The main power cables are copper shielded and finished with that nice metallic silver look      

I am currently burning some stuff onto CD to transfer to the new machine so that I can run some benchmarks.  I'll post them when they have been run along with the stock settings.

TL.  

[Gandalf]

That is slowly turning into a real nice machine. Would you like any etched glass stickers for it? PM me with details if you do. I can cut anything if you can supply a vector. (You do have a window, right?)

Service only for really cool looking machines