NCIX Now Carries XSPC Products!

04:46

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Hardware Tweks

NCIX Now Carries XSPC Products!

They’ve landed! It’s been a long time coming, but these products really represent a tremendous value.

My original hesitation to bring in XSPC came about because of the reports I was hearing about some of their blocks leaking. That coupled with the low price made me think “cheap crap” and I don’t want to take a risk like that with my customers…

   

They’ve worked hard to turn that around though. They’re using a more expensive delrin substitute for their traditional plexi tops, and the machining on the base of the blocks looks more than adequate.

You can check out the range of XSPC products we’ve picked up at the XSPC store. I’m hoping to get images and product descriptions updated ASAP.

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Powerline networking is the solution to my problems.

04:39

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Hardware Tweks

Powerline networking is the solution to my problems.

Well, I’ve been a die-hard wireless user for a lot of years now. It’s been a bit of a love-hate relationship. When I was going to UBC wireless was an essential part of my day and fairly reliable. They have an excellent network there and with a decent wireless card you can walk around campus with a laptop in front you and browse the net.

Not that I ever did that.

As many of the people who game with me on a regular basis know, I’ve been having a lot of trouble with wireless in my home. I’ve tried 3 different routers and about 1/2 a dozen different wireless adapters (USB, PCI, PCIe) over the last year or so and I just can’t find something that works consistently. Either my connection always sorta sucks, or it’s really good, then just totally craps out for 2-3 minutes at a time. It can be very disruptive if the tank shows up while I’m sitting there teleporting around because my ping is 900ms.

So I bought one of these (by the way there’s a smoking deal coming on these in the next sale or two).

  

The instructions are basically “plug them into the wall, then plug an ethernet cable into them, but make sure you don’t plug into a power bar or it might cause interference”. I was like “Okay. That’s pretty simple”. I unplugged the power bar for the family computer, threw the powerline unit into position on that side, ran over, plugged it into my switch and the wall on my side and…. nothing. No network connection. Turns out the power bar I unplugged on the family PC end also had the router plugged into it. I’ll be needing that. So after I corrected that mistake I could see all the computers on the other side of the powerline network, but still no internet access. A quick reboot resolved that and now I’m golden.

For a little over $50, it’s nothing short of a miracle.  Transfer speeds are absolutely dismal, but since I don’t need gigabit to that side of the network anyway, I don’t really care. The gigabit switch on my side (pictured below) connects me to my girlfriend’s computer and the Windows Home Server. On the other side is just the media PC and the family PC to which 2-3MB/s is fine.

  

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CoolIT Boreas – Initial testing done

04:26

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Hardware Tweks

CoolIT Boreas – Initial testing done

So far I’m really enjoying my time with the CoolIT Boreas. I set it up last night on a test bed PC running a Core i7 860, 4GB Corsair RAM, an MSI P55-GD65, and a Topower OEM 900W PSU. Overall at idle the unit is reasonably quiet and performs quiet well, but I’ll definitely be making some changes to it. Here I show idle temps with the Core i7 860 running at 3.6GHz using OC Genie. At load though it jumps up to 60C. It’s very important to manage the heat output of your CPU for the Boreas to perform well. Unlike a conventional water cooling system which can actually dissipate more heat as the CPU gets hotter, the Boreas will perform exceptionally well until it is overwhelmed as we’ve seen demonstrated in reviews and end-user testing.

I’ll be making some major changes to this unit including new CPU block, new pump, new (bigger tubing), and we’ll see what it’s capable of.

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Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 Overclocking Results

04:19

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Hardware Tweks

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 Overclocking Results

Intel’s first 45nm “Pentium” chip showed up quietly in the last week or two and there doesn’t seem to be much buzz about it, but I decided to take it for a spin to see what kind of overclocking results I could get out of it. I don’t know if the one that I have is exceptional or not, and bear in mind this IS a suicide run, but I think what you’re about to see may shock you.

Will update later with pics of the water cooled test bench as well.

Okay here’s my update with pictures of the test bench. I’m using a Maximus Formula X38 motherboard with OCZ Reaper PC2-8500 C5 RAM modules, a Corsair 750W power supply and a GTX 280 video card.

I’ve also included a photo of the box from the CPU I used. This is a regular retail sample. No cherry picking going on here. this is one cool chip :)

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Core i7 Overclocking Report

04:13

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Hardware Tweks

Core i7 Overclocking Report

Well I had a chance to play with an engineering sample Core i7 with a Gigabyte EX58-EXTREME motherboard and 12GB of Aeneon DDR3-1333 C8 memory for an upcoming NCIX Tech Tips, and I’m actually very impressed with the platform.

I’ve mellowed out in the last couple years going from balls to the walls overclocking (think E6600 @ 4.0GHz 24/7 with a custom -25C chiller under my tower) to being more concerned with overall platform stability and maturity (while also loving speed).

On another note, I have a confession to make. My name is Linus and I have a memory addiction. I don’t need lots of memory. Frequently with 8GB in my system I was looking at up to 7GB of “cached” memory under Vista only being used to store frequently used programs. That didn’t stop me from salivating when I saw that high end X58 motherboards were going to feature 6 RAM slots. Naturally the first thing I did was load each slot up with 2GB of RAM.

Here’s a shot of the test bench I used including the less-than-stellar stock heatsink from Intel (got an APOGEE GTZ hold down en route from Swiftech), a 6800GT that has served me well over the years, and my ghetto sleeved OCZ GameXSTream 600W (also present in the top picture with my chiller). I will be doing a complete overclocking walk through for Nehalem on NCIX Tech Tips, but I wanted to share my initial impressions with a dog CPU, all 6 RAM slots loaded up (far more stress on the memory controller), and terrible stock cooling:

- 200x base clock multiplier without much fuss

- 1480MHz C8 @ 1.66V on this random set of 3 dual channel kits of memory primed for 12 passes overnight.

- QPI speed of over 1700Mhz without much trouble

- 3.7GHz on the CPU before running into what I think was a combination of a thermal limitation (80+C under load) and having a less than steller overclocking chip

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Trying to repair a broken PCIe slot

10:25

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Hardware Tweks

Trying to repair a broken PCIe slot

This is one of those projects that clearly isn’t worth the time I’ve already invested, but it’s more of a “can it be done” adventure than a practical thing. I got my hands on an eVGA 790i board that was damaged in a shipping accident. There’s no insurance, there’s no warranty (eVGA won’t put on a new slot for me), so I’m left to my own devices here. I tested the motherboard and it works fine with a PCI video card, but not with a PCIe video card in either of the other slots. I get an error message telling me to move my video card to the top slot (I wish) for non-SLI operation.

      

Here’s my first attempt at removing a PCIe 16x slot from a 680i donor board. I figured if I torched it I might be able to remove it in one piece with all pins attached. Also I was hoping the pins would be relatively clean for re-insertion into the 790i board. It worked very well except for that fact that the slot bent from the heat while I was removing it.

     

     

   
Then I tried a more brute force approach and simply ripped off a PCIe slot. I’m currently in the process of re-pinning this one using pins from the other two that I tried to torch off.

As for the 790i board, well, I’m going to have to get pretty creative when it comes to removing the pin nubbs that are left over. If anyone’s got any ideas, I’m open to them. Right now it looks like what I’ll need is an incredibly fine soldering tip, and then something else to poke through and make a hole. Once I do every hole that way, I should be able to insert the new slot and solder it from the back. Wish me luck… I’m not exactly skilled with a soldering iron so the temptation is obviously also there to just run the board with PCIe video in some sort of “non-gaming” machine like the girlfriend’s sister’s media PC or something… It kinda kills me to use a 790i and DDR3 for something like that though………

                                                                                     

          

     

    

  

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Gigabyte EX58-EXTREME – Suitable for Water Cooling?

09:10

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Hardware Tweks

Gigabyte EX58-EXTREME – Suitable for Water Cooling?

My quest for a suitable X58 platform began with the requirement for SLI compatibility. All of the high end X58 boards I’ve seen so far have that checkbox filled. The next big requirement was slot layout. Currently I’m using two dual slot water cooled graphics cards (no desire to go full cover at this time), a PCI sound card (that can go as I’m only using it for mic in with an optical connection to my Onkyo TX-SR605), a PCIe 1x Intel gigabit NIC, and I’d really like to upgrade to a PCIe 8x RAID card in the near future.

           

Gigabyte really FUBARed the slot layout of the EX58-EXTREME with that weird heatsink that attaches to the northbridge… It blocks the top PCIe 1x and the PCIe 4x slot… But at least you can remove it. Boards like the Foxconn Blood Rage and the ASUS P6T, although appealing, simply won’t accommodate my expansion needs. The P6T Deluxe layout I just don’t understand… Why put the two bottom PCIe 16x slots next to each other?

Here you can see the integrated water cooling solution with 3/8″ ID 5/8″ OD Primochill tubing on it. It fits great and these barbs are surprisingly good quality for an integrated affair. Gigabyte recommends 1/2″ OD tubing though and you can see the reason for it. With the Extreme Heatpipe dealie installed, 5/8″ OD tubing is a tight fit.

 

I was a little disappointed with the overall fit and finish of the water cooling solution. It does appear to be ALL copper (kudos to Gigabyte), and the base appears very flat and shiny, but the finish on the actual northbridge heatpipe assembly is VERY rough and not flat at all. I can’t imagine it will make very good contact, especially without thermal compound over the whole thing. That said, it’s good enough for my purposes and I’m not looking to set any world records.

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Ghetto Mounting for LGA775 Blocks on Nehalem

08:48

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Hardware Tweks

Ghetto Mounting for LGA775 Blocks on Nehalem

It looks like with some bolts, nuts, springs, and washers, it may be possible to mount your LGA775 block on LGA1366. This picture is a Swiftech APOGEE with the stock hold down from like 2 years ago using a bolt-thru mounting kit from the D-TEK FuZion V1 (any bolts and nuts would work I think).

The second pictures is me holding up my board by the CPU block… I think it’s secure enough to get some serious mounting pressure at least as a short-term solution.

PS I haven’t tested it because my FuZion V1 is in my system right now, but I believe it would also work on the FuZion V1 with the classic hold down plate.

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