What is the best Core 2 board?

[Kingfisher]

I turn mine off, I never have tried it though. I read that you are asking for trouble while overclocking with it enabled so I just leave it disabled.

[Chump]

Chump,

 

That is very interesting news. All of the Intel o/c guides I've read suggest turning C1E off to prevent potential instability problems. Glad that you've brought this up because I think it is an interesting topic that should be explored. Any other forum members have any experience or opinions on enabling C1E when overclocking?

 

Start a new thread & ask others for there opinion.

 

I think the CIE function is an excellent feature & I know from experience it helps keep my CPU stress free & cool all the time I am using it for light tasks or not at all.

 

This morning it was 19oC in the study & the CPU temp in Coretemp was 21oC

[scrapser]

Chump,

What are you using to cool your northbridge. I ordered the Tuniq Tower as well along with an HR-5 but have since been told there are issues getting the two to fit. Maybe the HR-5 SLI will work...I will have to wait and see. In the meantime, perhaps whatever you are using may prove to be the solution.

 

Thanks

[Chump]

Chump,

What are you using to cool your northbridge. I ordered the Tuniq Tower as well along with an HR-5 but have since been told there are issues getting the two to fit. Maybe the HR-5 SLI will work...I will have to wait and see. In the meantime, perhaps whatever you are using may prove to be the solution.

 

Thanks

 

I am using a 40mm fan mounted on the stock heatsink re seated on AS5

 

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=FG-031-AK

 

The NB runs high 30's @ 1.6v 3.6GHZ with the fan at 3000-3500rpm.

 

The NB normally runs low 40's under load @ 1.6v 3500rpm.

 

When I was running at 3.8GHZ with 1.9v the NB was running mid 40's 1.9v 5500rpm ambient 20-22oC.

 

I left the study door closed one night during an Orthos run & in the morning the central heating had came on when I got into the room the ambient temp was 27oC & the NB was still only 51oC.

 

You can use Smartguardian to throttle the NB fan to a suitable noise level.

[Guest YuKoN]

Chump,

 

That is very interesting news. All of the Intel o/c guides I've read suggest turning C1E off to prevent potential instability problems. Glad that you've brought this up because I think it is an interesting topic that should be explored. Any other forum members have any experience or opinions on enabling C1E when overclocking?

 

i like the C1E function- at 4ghz+ 24/7(even tho not a conroe yet......) i'm idling right now at 23C. when my comp is in actual use ie gaming i'll hit 50ish- usually high 40's- but have never noticed any higher or lower oc with it enabled or not.

[White_Hair]

I got a lot of information from reading this thread. Even though I am not the original poster who post this thread, but many thanks everyone.

 

I am also looking for a new board as well. (Returned my Asus Strker becoz the board is filled with problems and the support is not great. Bought the board only becoz it can fit my tuniq tower into my Lian-li PC-V2100 case without hitting the psu compartment wall)

 

I thinking of going for DQ6. But still have couple questions. I have an E6600 and I am aiming at high FSB (400+) with lower multiplier to get the max out of my Corsair 8500C5D ram in 1:1.

 

Is the board capable of high FSB? I heard there is performance drop for 965 chip once the FSB is over 400. (Heard 975 performs better with FSB higher than 400 due to tighter internal timing, is that perfomance difference really significant?)

 

Is the Tuniq tower's back plate (or other air cooler) installable on DQ6 due to the crazy cool on the back of the board?

 

Is it suggested to add extra cooling for the NB or the SB for the DQ6 board?

 

People suggest to go for 975 board with E6600 or above. Is that the best combo? (I kind of need 6 sata ports because I am thinking of running 4x74G raptors in 0+1 and with two more hdds as backup) I would like to have the DFI Infinity but it only comes with 4 sata ports.

 

How about MSI's 975X board. Any thoughts?

 

Many thanks guys.

[sofarfrome]

there's a pretty significant difference between watercooling and air cooling at those speeds/voltages

 

Everyone in these forums so far (and most other forums) are hitting mid-to-upper 70's or higher on even the best air cooling

 

I've yet to see anyone do 3600Mhz in a REAL environment (ie not ducting freezing winter air in etc) without hitting 70C or higher, and that is simply too high for prolonged periods.

 

you simply cannot compare watercooling to air cooling in this situation.

 

I use 1.45vcore on the gaming rig in my sig and after 8 hours of orthos I am at 62C using this Scythe. Not bad I believe but I do have water to install soon. We'll see how much better it is.

 

EDIT: I now have the vcore at 1.4v and pass all bencmarks including 8hrs orthos and my temps never go above 58C. However, I am using coretemp to read the CPU temps. The smarguardian tells me the temps are much higher but a conversation with a DFI tech told me to ignore that and go with the coretemp values.

[Oceanborn]

Anybody heard anything about this board??

 

http://www.pccanada.com/viewitem.asp?id=5627

 

it seems like a steal for the price, I'm thinking how good it overclocks..

[Guest ElAguila]

I have not heard anything about it but the chipset is the 965 and that seems to be a pretty solid performer. I am not sure what type of oc settings are in this bios though.

[Oceanborn]

I have my eye on it...specially for the price...not to mention it has TWO IDE Ports and it ditches the crappy jmicron controller...for that price is very tempting...I just need to know if it reaches 350mhz FSB that's enough for me...anyway, lets wait and see if any other members heard of it...

[politbureau]

OK so I know tons of people have had trouble with the EVGA and 680i boards in general, but I have had absolutely nothing but positive results. I held off and bought the A1 revision and have been 100% satisfied with it's performance.

 

The MCP and SPP heatsinks absolutely need to be replaced to overclock. Running 1.5v on the SPP and FSB shot the stock temps over 60°C at idle. With the HR-05, it now idles at 32°C.

 

My results are in my sig. I stress that unlike the P965/975 boards (I had the DFI Infinty and P5B Deluxe before the EVGA), the 680i board is a dream to overclock. I changed just 10 settings in the BIOS to reach 3600MHz, first try. And with unlnked RAM support and EPP, you can totally take your memory settings out of the equation.

This is a very, very early build of the system, before I swapped out all the watercooling gear:

 

 

As an aside, I also use the C1E function - it keeps the CPU about 3 degrees cooler when idling for long periods. I have tested it with 3dmark though, and my scores drop about 4-5% when it is enabled. I am totally baffled as it should have no effect when the CPU has any kind of load? Maybe some kind of latency overhead on the board?

[Nehil]

I've got to say I'm very happy with my board. Just amazing, and I say this after using one SLI-DR and two Expert boards for 939. Simply amazing product, no problems whatsoever, and I'm still using stock BIOS.