Core 2 duo is great!

The core 2 duo is running smoothly without any problems, and the temp is ok, meaning 47-49 degrees Celcius according to Speedfan 4.33.

I tried running a super pi 1M test on the system. It ran through the 19 loops in 24 seconds. Thats pretty ok, from what I have seen others do it in. My old system, an Opteron 165 (1,8 GHz) dualcore opteron slightly clocked to 2,0 GHz did the 1M test in 42 secs. The super pi is, however a single core application.

Did not try to optimize my old Dual Core Opteron system very much though.

Had a sound card problem on the Asus P5B. Win XP did not detect that any sound card was present. After a little wondering, I tried to go to the BIOS again. And sure enough. The soundcard was disabled! The previous owner must have had a dedicated soundcard when he used the motherboard. Lots of surprises and things to wonder about when you buy preowned hardware :-/

Have started working on building a computer in a Chieftech High tower, which is planned to be a server:




















Gigabyte K8N Pro SLI (passive chipset cooler) - http://www.gigabyte.co.nz/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=1883

An Opteron 146 (running 2,0 GHz, but bought in Germany as pretestet to 2,9GHz)
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/SellAMDProducts/0,,30_177_4458_3505^8796^9240,00.html

Thermalright XP-90C CPU cooler
http://www.thermalright.com/a_page/main_product_xp90C.htm

2 x 1 GB PC-3200 Kingston Hyper X
http://www.valueram.com/datasheets/KHX3200A_1g.pdf
















ATI X600 PCI-e graphicscard.

Decided to go for some passive cooling for the gfx-card, so I bought an Arctic Cooling Accelero S2 http://arcticcooling.com/vga2.php?idx=125

After installing the cooler and ram heatsinks I put it in the computer and booted.
Beepcode error. 1 long beep and 2 short. As far as I can figure it means either graphics card not properly in place, or that it is broken. Tried to move it to the other PCI-e slot on the motherboard, but same error. Have not had time to look further into it. But I sure don´t like the sound of that :-(

Overclocking...

Time to try overclocking...

I know it can be done :-D

Started by setting up the FSB to 300 meaning the speed is raised to (300 MHz x 8) 2,4 GHz.
The temp in BIOS (idle):
CPU: 42 degree Celcius
Motherboard: 35 degrees Celcius

Speedfan 4.33 (idle) reads:
CPU: 43 degrees Celcius
Motherboard: 34 degrees Celcius

Downloaded Prime95. After running torture test for ½ hour speedfan reads:
CPU: 49 degrees Celcius
Motherboard: 35 degrees Celcius

FSB set to 325 (325 x 8) meaning speed is: 2,6 GHz
The temp in BIOS (idle) after 10 mins. stabalized at:
CPU: 46,5 degrees Celcius
Motherboard: 35 degrees Celcius

Speedfan 4.33 (idle) reads:
CPU: 50 degrees Celcius
Motherboard: 37 degrees Celcius

Prime95. After running torture test for ½ hour speedfan reads:
CPU: 62 degrees Celcius Motherboard: 38 degrees Celcius

New core 2 duo setup!

Got a hold of a used Asus P5B Deluxe and an Intel core 2 duo E6400 (2,13 Ghz, 266 FSB x 8 multiplier, 128 kb L1 cache, 2 MB L2 cache, socket 775). Standard Intel heatsink/fan.
Bought some RAM (Corsair PC-6400 - 800Mhz, 200MHz quadpumped, CL4)
Used Arctic silver for thermal grease.

Problem 1:
CPU got very hot! Watched in the BIOS, it just kept rising. I Could not figure out why, until I saw the CPU was overclocked! The FSB was 380! The temperature of the CPU was at 78-79 degrees Celcius when I de-clocked it to default speed (2,13 GHz).

After de-clocking to default, the temp stabalized around 49-50 degrees Celcius.

Problem 2:
I planned to have a SCSI-raid array (striped, raid 0 for performance), an adaptec 29320 ALP-R with 2 Maxtor15k2 36 GB disks for OS, a 500 GB WD SATAII RaidEdition for storage and 2 CD/DVD drives on the IDE connector.

Could not get the motherboard to detect the IDE drives. And since I want to install OS (standard WinXP Pro) from one of the CD/DVD drives, that is a pretty important feature to have working :-D

Turns out, that a thing called JMicron controller had to be enabled in the BIOS. After that, both IDE/PATA CD/DVD drives were detected.

Problem 3:
Installing the OS on the SCSI raid drive.

REMEMBER to get drivers for the controller from the adaptec website. AND remember to get the right drivers! There is either with HostRaid or without.

After downloading the correct driver for the Win XP install everything was ok.

Problem 4:
I wanted another CPU-heatsink that was more efficient and more silent than the original Intel, and I got me a Zalman CNPS7000B which according to the salessite of my local computer dealer would fit with the socket 775. When I got home and tried it on, it of course did not.

So I had to buy en extra part: ZM-SC1

I disconnected all wires and pulled out the motherboard from the case, mounted the extra part, and after that the CPU-heatsink itself. Fits like at charm. Only remember to install the extra part correctly, or you cant change the CPU because the lifterarm for unlocking the CPU will be stuck.

After that I just had to connect all the wires, and last but not least the connecter from the Zalman to the motherboard connector... But of course there was the problem. The Zalman connecter is 3-pin she-connector, and the connector on the motherboard is a 4-pin male-connector... SIGH!!!

BUT after closer inspection of the motherboard, the 3 pin connector actually can be connected to the 4 pin connector on the motherboard.

And now everything works just fine. The temp in the BIOS has now lowered to 38-39 degrees Celcius for the CPU and about 33 for the motherboard.