iSOblog

hi everyone!

i’m still there, and of course, from time to time, i need a new pc =)

this time i replaced my core2duo e6600 (2.4ghz) on a msi p965 neo-f with 2gb memory on it with my new:

• core i7 920 (2.66ghz)
• gigabyte ga-ex58-ud5 (with heatpipes, onboard power button, debug leds and everything…)
• 3x 2gb kingston ddr3 hyper-x
• and a zalman cnps-9900 led cooler

the machine now runs nicely, however it didn’t want to boot with the memory i first borrowed from a collegue at work (which was OZC fatal1ty memory).

the core i7 is a really nice cpu, and it has a lot of overclocking potential! i didn’t want to get it to its absolute max, however i thought that around 3.4 to 3.6 ghz should be possible without raising any voltages too much. so i modified the baseclock (on older platforms you would change the fsb) to get around 3.2ghz (multiplier is 20, so i put the baseclock to 160, instead of 133) and reached 3.2ghz easily. however, when i tested the machine under load, the cpu reached 100° C!!

after some research, i tried setting the vcore manually instead of letting the “auto”-setting decide,  which was the key to success! it seems that the auto vcore setting sets the voltage way too high which leads to very high temperatures. the cpu now runs at 3.6ghz with a vcore setting lower than the standard (at least lower than the standard the bios mentions) and it reaches “only” 80° C when all 4 cores (8 virtual cores btw) are under full load.

just another word about the mainboard: i installed ubuntu 9.04 64bit and windows 7 rc1, also 64bit, and everything works flawlessly. nice