Bang for the buck Overclocker

[Cptn Vortex]

Looking good! Man I wish I had a kitchen table. Would make life easy.....

[Boldeagle]

There good pics and I like that Video Card it looks very nice. I would be willing to say that Vid Card HS will cool the cards RAM sufficiently as it looks like it will be getting nice airflow whereas the reference stock cooler has them covered with thermal pads but no flow.

Excellent vCore there, nice and low and should give you a lot of headroom. It will be nice to see some load temps and vCore in OS and a run on OCCT to see how your vDroop is.

[1Tanker]

Originally Posted by Boldeagle

There good pics and I like that Video Card it looks very nice. I would be willing to say that Vid Card HS will cool the cards RAM sufficiently as it looks like it will be getting nice airflow whereas the reference stock cooler has them covered with thermal pads but no flow.

Excellent vCore there, nice and low and should give you a lot of headroom. It will be nice to see some load temps and vCore in OS and a run on OCCT to see how your vDroop is.

Yep....then...pour the coals to 'er. 4GHz+ baby.

[Alwaysrun]

I decided to put everything in the case and see what I'm working with. I tossed out the plastic cable barbs that run verticle down the right side of the mobo, I found them cumbersome and my goal is to see as few cables as possible so they had to go. The next thing to get the axe was the Ram cooler Corsair included with the pc2-8500 Dominator kit, with the tall heat spreaders on this ram and the fan attached I found it obstructed airflow to the bottom half of the Vendetta 2 so I nixed it. I highly doubt I'll ever need to OC this ram enough to warrent active cooling and I don't plan on going WC but who knows what the future brings and thats why I went a lil overkill on the 4gigs of 1066.

It's been a long time since I built a computer that I almost forgot how aggrivating the small details can be and I haven't even started modding anything yet. The CM 690 is a real to get the front and top covers off and I thought I'd break the cheap plastic several times but I just took it slow and easy and managed not to tweak anything.

The biggest problem I had was getting the Corsair TX750watt installed. The case has a handy cable hole right beside the cables comming out of the tx750 but because of it's length about 1/3 of this hole is covered by the body of the power supply. Also the PSU mount CM so gratiously padded with 4 rubber stoppers to gently rest the PSU on wasn't really designed for a PSU using a 140mm intake fan as 2 of the rubber mounts rest on the PSU fan grill. Nothing to worry about as the rubber stoppers don't effect the fan and the bulk of the PSU is held in place by the 4 exterior mount skrews. Anyways I crammed 1/2 the power cables through the side and the others I guess I'll have to hide in the drive bays somewhere. The TX750's cables are very stubborn to work with because of their thickness.

I'm loving the 2 Noctua NF-P12s I got. Without a doubt the quietest fans in my case and they really throw the air around, I've got a splitting headache from the Palit 4850s fan, it just won't gear down but I'll fix that lil p.o.s once I'm finished this format and OS install.

[Alwaysrun]

We had a BIG windstorm here in Qualicum last night and went without power for 20 hours so I was forced to stop my gaming and get down to some cable management. I tried like hell to route the 20/24 pin power to the backside of the mobo tray but there was no way to get it around the support bar to connect and still have the back cover closed so I trailed it inside the case behind the handy bottom fan mounts. I spent the most part of the day between chainsawing fallen trees in the backyard and mucking about with the new comp but I'll let a few picts tell the tale.



Noctua Powah, blowing down on CPU


Pesky 24pin cable had to stay on this side


Cable-gami a go-go


Had some fun b4 I started heh, low tech VPU cooling


OMG. It Is Alive...!

Well guess I'm done for now but I still have to wrap some fans and do minor stuff but I think I'll hold off on moving the Power and Reset buttons for the time being. All things considered the CM 690 really wasn't that bad of a case to work with and as time goes by my familiarity with it will only make working on it easier. Ohh and I still have to paint it...Maybe after a week of gaming 1st

[Boldeagle]

Obviously you have the EIST and C1E on in that pick and it throttled the CPU down to 1.1GHz.

[Alwaysrun]

Ohh that, I thought it was speedstep. I've turned it off in bios 3 times and it keeps coming back like a desperate ex. I canned XP and installed Vista 32bit today cuz XP Catalyst drivers were giving me a headache. So far everythings working ok in Vista so I'll flash my bios tonight and see if I can't fix that downclocking. Funny isn't it how the mobo tries so hard to save energy all the while I've got 6 120mm 1300rpm+, 1 140mm 1200rpm, and 1 80mm fan cranked to the max. Seriously it way to loud but it's very frosty. I played 2 hours of Crysis today on high settings having a ball and my cpu didn't go past 39C and the Radeon OC at 665/1023 didn't go past 44 C. I played with headphones on of coarse. Something else I need to tweak in the Bios to intelligently controll those fans...heh

[Boldeagle]

Originally Posted by Alwaysrun

Ohh that, I thought it was speedstep. I've turned it off in bios 3 times and it keeps coming back like a desperate ex. I canned XP and installed Vista 32bit today cuz XP Catalyst drivers were giving me a headache. So far everythings working ok in Vista so I'll flash my bios tonight and see if I can't fix that downclocking. Funny isn't it how the mobo tries so hard to save energy all the while I've got 6 120mm 1300rpm+, 1 140mm 1200rpm, and 1 80mm fan cranked to the max. Seriously it way to loud but it's very frosty. I played 2 hours of Crysis today on high settings having a ball and my cpu didn't go past 39C and the Radeon OC at 665/1023 didn't go past 44 C. I played with headphones on of coarse. Something else I need to tweak in the Bios to intelligently controll those fans...heh

Well it probably is SpeedStep as well read your manual because they bring out more "green" power options all the time.

[Alwaysrun]

As some of you know I've been experiencing some heat issues in my attempt to overclock my new rig but hitting 79C at a mere 1.35V-core I knew something had to be done. Well my earlier attempts to use the Thermalright bolt-thru kit got sidelined because I just couldn't fit it on my first attempts, but these heats made me redouble my efforts as I wanted lower temps.

So here goes a plethora of shots I took today in my journey to cooler climes.


Some suggested maybe my pushpins were not secure..nope they looked great

Paste coverage on CPU looked good.

As did the bottom of the HS and those pesky grooves

Ewe, after cleaning I notice in good light the aluminum base fingers that hold the heat pipes were taller and the heat pipes themselves look like crap

Time to Lap. Some stuff I used and my great work space my dining room table

Look at those aluminum lines! I swear I sanded off nothing but silver for 30+mins

Ahh finially hitting copper but as enaberif knows be carefull. "Not the Babies" haha

All done after 2 hrs. 1hr at 600grit and 1 hr at 800grit. Thats the way a HS base should look imo.

went against my X pattern paste technique this time tried some lines instead.

Think I made sure as shit those grooves were covered this time.

[Alwaysrun]

Temproraily seated and then checked paste spread. I'm a Super TIM Ninja

Tough angle but as I say alot these days "Get'er Done!"

Checking screw depth on backplate to make sure every screw is at equal tension.

Yeah All done.

One last thing I did was rip out the stock fan that came with the Vendetta 2 and put on one of my Noctuas and so far it seems to be working well. But it's hard to tell which one of my alterations is responsible for the cooler temps now. I've Got Prime 95 going atm so I'll check back and post results if any.