Ah crap, the Danner is doing something [lots of pics]

[red930]

I was going to say...that CPU should be the limitation of the board...not the other way around....

 

With AM2 you gotta get the ram dialed in to get the CPU to fly regardless of what Memtest says....I tune all AM2s in with Orthos and pass right by Memtest...

 

I have had Memtest say 100xs the rams fine but Orthos crap in a minute...change a secondary ram timing and what do you know it starts lasting longer and longer...

 

Did you use the nf590 at all? I mean, this processor should be a piece of . (clearly it's not) but from what I've experienced prior to this the board would never completely boot past, say, 324 FSB. Messed with the secondaries towards the end, dropped a heavy divider on them and upped 'em to 2.35vdimm just to be sure. Memory couldn't help me out any more at the end, neither could lower multipliers, or dropping the HT link to 2x. I've been searching online the past hour or so while running Prime/Orthos, and in between runs of 3dmark2001. Everything I've come up with says pretty much the same thing. I'm guessing the latest BIOS I put on it (latest official...didn't try the Betas and can't use the Phenom one) is the help for this guy.

 

This is the highest I managed to boot at, couldn't pull off any higher than 370. However, that's a helluva lot better than I could do before. The downside of course is that to make this stable would probably take a miracle, but I could see 350 being feasible pretty easily. Maybe it has something to do with it being the lowest-end Sempron money can buy?

 

 

 

 

First we see everclear.. then hot sauce.. next i'm gonna see a beer.. then tomato juice.. lol.. then we'll top it off with tequilia rofl.. cable management is gonna be a biznick.. but it should look reallly good if you already taking precautions and drilling wire holes.. ^_^ are you gonna sleeve everything?

 

Probably no beer...I'm going to try really really hard to not drink this weekend. However, there are various screenshots of my desk in a few threads around here that may suggest I'm somewhat of an alcoholic. So we'll see how it goes.

 

*cough*

 

Anyways, I thought about sleeving and really wish I had bought some when I was ordering other stuff. The only things that really need it are the fan extensions so I might rig something up, we'll see. The downside is no matter how I "hide" the cables they'll be partially visible.

 

 

Not that big of a deal to me though since overclocking is more my thing than aesthetics. And this board is actually getting me back into overclocking in a big way.

 

Unfortunately, it wasn't to last. I almost certainly have to swap in the X2 soon, as much as I like playing with this Sempron that X2 has only seen 2500MHz and needs to be picked on for it.

[dr_bowtie]

I see the DFI nf590 being like the SLI-DRs in the fact that 320fsb on other brand boards will perform like 350-370 on the DFI NF590....

 

did you keep any benchies from other boards to compare from?

 

I didnt use that board A_G had me send it back a couple days after I got it...or atleast the one I had in my possession...

 

from what I see around the web is that the nf590 is a decent clocker all around but has the same limitations other boards have with the CPU being ram dependent....

 

most all the AM2s I've played with rather like the HT to be around 1200-1300mhz for best stability more so than 939 liking it to be no higher than 1000mhz...AM2s are definitely a strange bread when coming away from 939 but once you find all the CPUs ability lies in the secondary ram timings it's all down hill...

 

It didnt take me long to learn why I couldnt get passed 2885mhz on the 4000 Brisbane but once I found the secondaries played a huge part I said right to and passed 3.2ghz darn easy...

[red930]

I see the DFI nf590 being like the SLI-DRs in the fact that 320fsb on other brand boards will perform like 350-370 on the DFI NF590....

 

did you keep any benchies from other boards to compare from?

 

From what I've seen the DFI nf590 was pretty much on par with the other high-end boards with the same chipset.

 

No benchies from other boards, I don't really do any all that often and when I do it's merely for stability purposes so I usually don't hold onto that stuff.

 

In any case, I'll get much more time to play with it, we'll see what she can do.

 

Today I didn't do much, all I'm really waiting for to put the whole thing together are the packages from Terry and Carl now. Neither critical by any means, but both nice to have.

 

I decided that since I seemingly maxed out the board yesterday I'd try my X2 in it today, while the board was sitting naked I also applied a Thermalright HR-05 to the Northbridge. I never checked the temps on it when overclocking yesterday, I do know it felt awfully warm to the touch despite a fan directly on it.

 

Elano hinted that I might have better luck mounting the HR-05 with some bolts instead of the plastic clips provided, so I headed to the hardware store to buy these for $2.50. Seemed awfully expensive, but whatever.

 

 

Turned out to be the perfect length, which is great news since these were the longest I could find at anywhere close to this size.

 

I had to fire the board up to remove the existing heatsink, that sucker was on tight. It was the stock thermal pad of course. Surprisingly, the base of the sink was very polished still. I'll probably never have a use for it but I'll hold onto it anyways.

 

For those that thought it was just a rebadged VC-RE, it isn't. The sink itself is bigger but the fan seems slightly smaller. I guess DFI decided it'd be a good idea to get something similar at least.

 

 

Anyways, here's the thing mounted on the board. I didn't like mounting it at an angle but I pretty much had to. The bracket I used was the shortest one provided and it sort of got hung slightly on the corners of the base of the heatsink. I didn't like that, so had to twist it a bit. This isn't a big deal in terms of contact or anything, it may slightly interfere with PCI devices should I ever have one though. The biggest thing I didn't care for is now that little pad that came with it sits on top of some of the surrounding chips.

 

 

And lastly a pic of OCCT running on my 'monitor'.

 

 

I ended up getting 260x10 stable on the X2 with 1.425 volts running through it. Unfortunately, this put it at 50C already. One core would sit just fine at 40C or so and the other much higher. I reapplied the sink a couple times trying to fix this but happily it's an IHS issue.

 

This is a problem for me, because the memory speed is linked to the CPU speed. CPU/5 is the best I can do, meaning the best I can do is DDR2-1040. Pretty fast yeah, but not fast enough for someone wanting to get their damn money's worth. So I put the Sempron back in and leaving it. I considered using the X2 despite my reservations, but the temps I was seeing was in an open environment with the CPU fan spinning at 100%. I can't put that in the case like that as I'm certain the flow in there will be just above awful but somewhat below crappy. The Sempron, on the other hand, performed admirably with ~43C peak temps even when priming at 2800, which is what I'm going to be shooting for 100% stable use. 350x8 should be doable, and that gives me the ability to go up to DDR2-1120 which I think should be possible at reasonable voltages and possibly 4-4-4 timings as well.

 

If I had cash I'd consider getting one of the new dual cores, but of late I've been wondering why I care. The quad core system I'm borrowing now feels incredibly sluggish in comparison to the Sempron rig I had running. Sure, this is somewhat due to bloat and lack of RAID 0. But even at first boot it didn't feel very responsive. Yeah, it's useful as hell for encoding videos. But I don't intend to do that on my rig. It'll mainly be for internet use, watching videos, listening to music, and playing the occasional game. But even the games for the most part will be older, any of these new ones that look good I refuse to play until I have a rig that can play them well. STALKER and Bioshock are at the top of that list. Oblivion is there too, though I've played and beaten that one to hell already. I want to see it in 1080p, maxed out, with all the texture mods and whatnot applied. And if I wait a year not only will the hardware be around that can do all that, but it'll be cheaper and more affordable. I'll stick with Max Payne, Jedi Knight 2, HL2, maybe even a little BF2...too.

 

The boards i had the most fun with in the past have been an NF2-Ultra B and an NF3 250GB, both DFI. I purchased both with great processors in them, lots of fun to overclock. The first time I ran Vista was on that Ultra B and even that experience was a blast. If I were to buy any processor today it'd have to be a single core Conroe, just to see what it could do. I dunno, they just seem like more fun, like less of a workhorse, like a Mac vs. a Dell or something.

 

Back to the basics. Overclocking used to be about getting the most out of lower-end stuff, hopefully I can step back to that point a little with this.

 

Anyhoo, weird tangent to run off on, but I'm excited about this computer, I really am.

 

Oh yeah, I found a tube of AS5 I bought when I got my first DFI board. I'm trying that now instead of the Ceramique. Dunno if it's any good anymore, so I squeezed out a bunch (it was a big tube) and used some from the middle. Looked and tasted okay, so I assume it'll work. Hoefully it'll get me down a couple more degrees. I've also got a little idea to improve airflow in the case, but it'll come at a slight cost of style. We'll see what happens.

[ReelFiles]

...just above awful but somewhat below crappy...

 

That had me cracking up at work, everybody looking at me like wtf is wrong with THAT guy?

 

...Looked and tasted okay, so I assume it'll work...

 

Nice, wanna taste my lead toy soldiers while you're at it?

[Guest Blooz1]

And now a word from "The AS5 Gourmet"!

[Guest SuppA-SnipA]

nice samsung, which one is it?

[red930]

nice samsung, which one is it?

 

You already know (now) but it's the sh-s183 SATA. Wish I could make an acrylic face for it, but it'd probably look funky like that anyways:angel:.

[pikachinks]

You already know (now) but it's the sh-s183 SATA. Wish I could make an acrylic face for it, but it'd probably look funky like that anyways:angel:.

 

i have the same drive rofl.. i wonder what an acrylic face would look like on a dvd drive lol.. DAN DO IT!!

[red930]

I couldn't do it any better, very nicely done. What's funny is that stock fan for that 7600GT looks exactly like the fan on the previous nVIDIA card GainWards 4200 TI AGP 8X. lol!

[dr_bowtie]

Dan....

 

what X2 do you have for the 590? what core is it...a Brisbane core would be much better and a 3600 will usually hit a high bus speed with little coaxing and alot more learning curve on the ram...the brisbanes are way more ram dependant than Windsor chips but run much cooler...I had mine at 3.1ghz on the 550 with 30c load temps at 1.45v and will run 2800mhz at 1.25v easy

[red930]

i have the same drive rofl.. i wonder what an acrylic face would look like on a dvd drive lol.. DAN DO IT!!

 

Can't be done by me, and I don't have the funds to have someone else do it either.

 

I couldn't do it any better, very nicely done. What's funny is that stock fan for that 7600GT looks exactly like the fan on the previous nVIDIA card GainWards 4200 TI AGP 8X. lol!

 

You know I thought that thing looked familiar from somewhere else!

 

Dan....

 

what X2 do you have for the 590? what core is it...a Brisbane core would be much better and a 3600 will usually hit a high bus speed with little coaxing and alot more learning curve on the ram...the brisbanes are way more ram dependant than Windsor chips but run much cooler...I had mine at 3.1ghz on the 550 with 30c load temps at 1.45v and will run 2800mhz at 1.25v easy

 

Windsor. It sucks balls and I honestly considered chucking it. But I still have a really nice mATX board I might bundle it with and just sell for cheap to get rid of them.

 

 

Quick update:

 

I haven't done much recently and I'm too lazy to post any pics, but I received the film yesterday (thanks Carl!) and decided to wrap the drive in the carbon fiber film. It looks really, really good outside of the case but looks kinda funky when inside it. I have it and the fan controller mounted inside and ready to go.

 

I changed up my hard drives a little bit. Originally I had intended to use 2x80gb hitachis and my 320gb storage drive. The Hitachis were in their own cage and the Western Digital all by itself. I've since found what appears to be a working 160gb Seagate I had lying around that I may or may not use for Linux. I haven't decided exactly how that is going to go, but decided to install it in the cages at least to keep it out of the way. I also mixed up the order of the drives and put an 80gb Hitachi in each cage on top, covering the other drives. This will keep at least a semblance of symmetry.

 

I was going to mount the cages in the case then, but discovered I had misplaced a number of little baggies that contained the screws I needed, despite my efforts to keep them all together. And so I head back to the hardware store...

 

Edit:

 

I'm a helluva lot less excited now. My back xxxxing hurts after this bull crap.

 

Ow.

[soundx98]

decided to wrap the drive in the carbon fiber film.

It looks really, really good outside of the case but looks kinda funky when inside it.

 

It's always going to look better than a bare drive.

Glad it's working for ya.

Take care of your back but we are looking for pics.