Jeremiah Hoyet

I don’t have the budget to use “extreme” cooling solutions like LN2, nor the budget to build or buy a phase change cooling system. The best cooling my budget has allowed for is a high-end water cooling setup, but even this is still limited by ambient temperatures. So how do I overclock my hardware even farther, without running the risk of overheating components?

Well, it just so happens that I live in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina. I live at the base of Marion Mountain, and every morning I get to wake up, stand on my back porch and enjoy the cool mountain air. . . . That’s right, with a little help from low-tech mature nature, I can push my high tech computer system to it’s limits, without breaking the bank on temperatures.

The past few days have been fun as an overclocker. At night, temperatures have been dropping near freezing, as low as 34F. Using a $10 window fan (and a jacket, sweat pants, and hot cup of coffee after hot cup of coffee) I achieved some pretty amazing temperatures and thus some pretty amazing test results.

Continue reading ‘Progress With Hardware Testing’

Intel released it new (and expensive) Core 2 Extreme CPU yesterday, the QX9650. The stock clock speed comes in to just 3ghz, but as reviews have already shown, this chip has more power hiding under the hood than first meets the eye.

TomsHardware (UK) writes:

Finally, we attempted to reach the magical clock speed of 4 GHz. This time, we reverted to the 333 MHz FSB and used a 12x multiplier, giving us a clock speed of exactly 4 GHz. In our first attempt, we were just barely able to glimpse the BIOS POST before the motherboard froze.

Since the board wouldn’t even boot with these settings, we knew that we would have to increase the voltage further – a lot further. With a heavy heart we set the voltage to 1.4375 V in the BIOS, which amounts to an increase of 0.1875 V. At this high voltage, we were not only able to get the QX9650 to boot, but also to complete the Prim95 stability test.

4ghz, 4000mhz, on a Quad core, on air cooling. This is simply amazing! To put that into perspective for you non-geeks, the current Conroe “Core 2 Quad” Q6600 runs at about 65C on all four cores under full load at 3.6ghz - with water cooling. In TomsHardware.co.uk’s review, the full load temperatures at 4ghz were merely 60C - with air cooling!

These exciting times really bring out the geek in me, but at $1000 a chip, I’m waiting for the “mainstream” Penryn release in Q1 of 2008.

I just spent $400 on an 8800GTS 320MB video card and a water cooling block for it. . Now Nvidia is releasing this monster mid-range card, the 8800GT tomorrow and it’s KILLING the video card I just bought and it cost less. I’m not a happy person, but I know where my next $400 computer upgrade is going. . . two 8800GTs and some water blocks anyone?