i7 950 pre-overclock checklist

[momer85]

So Ive downloaded Prime95 and Realtemp, as well as CPU-z and a few videocard overclocking apps (Furmark and MSI Afterburner). I plan on getting HWmonitor asap as well. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

But in the meantime I have a few questions about stock temps.

so I had Prime95 tested for an hour (torture test) and got the following temps with realtemp

Idle (min) 34 33 31 31

Load (max) 61 58 57 57

Ambient temp was about 15~18c

I only saw the temps hit their max very briefly and the were usually no higher than 54~55

are these acceptable temps with a NH-D14 (Thermal compound AC MX-2) and a Haf X?

 

[tinytomlogan]

Those temps are a little high on load for a stock 950 tbh dude, you may want to go in and manually set it to 1.1 or 1.15v for a stock run because auto just emans the bios can do what it likes and it probs overvolting it.

 

[momer85]

Ok, I will give it a try and post the new temps back up. (and yes that was completely stock settings)

My initial concern was that I probably had a poor seating (considering this is my first go around actually building a kit).

Thanks for the response Tom.

 

[tinytomlogan]

It is a bit high, just stick a ball of paste about half the size of a garden pea in the centre of the CPU and let the heatink do the rest. Also plug the fans in to a molex so they are at 12v just while we are looking to gauge it (dont use the fan speed reducers either)

 

[momer85]

Well I re-stress tested the system and got pretty significant decreases in temp @1.1v (everything else the same)

Idle 35 34 33 33

load 57 55 54 53

Ambient 20~21c

Stayed around 52~53c average on across the cores for most of the test jumping to 55 here and there (and 57 for all of about 1 second and dropping back to 54c

Seems to be running around 1.098v and not 1.1v exactly but i assumed that was close enough.

(I edited because my room was actually hotter than i thought [heat kicked on, needless to say i turned it off completely])

also i have the 2 Noctua fans plugged into the Y connector and into the cpu_fan header (is that ok?)

 

[momer85]

I hope I'm not being pushy in posting again before a response but I just wanted to know if those were ok baselines before I start playing in the BIOS. I'm chomping at the bit here lol.

 

[Heebs]

Current cores for me are:

30

26

30

26

Ambient temp: 16-17 degrees.

Running both my fans off the on board CPU fan pins.

 

[momer85]

Hmm I guess I'm in the area, considering ambients but I'm assuming that's idle temps. Thank you heebs.

 

[AMD_PBz]

Just to give you an idea at 22c ambient i7 930 @ 3.8 1.176v using NH-D14 with MX-2 folding in a haf-x with an Overclocked GTX 460 on top and 470 below it my temps are 66 64 64 62 both GPU's are running 611 WU's

 

[momer85]

Sounds like I'm still running a bit hot even undervolted, guess I used too much mx2 (originally about the size of a pea)? I'll also see if I have any stagnant area of airflow (I don't think I do but I could be wrong.

 

[AMD_PBz]

Each chip is different so really it's hard to say you have done something wrong

 

[momer85]

Would you think those temps are good enough to proceed with playing in the BIOS a bit?

 

[Toxteth O'Grady]

Your load temps for an i7-950 are good.  Don't worry.

TOG

 

[momer85]

Well I started my journey with

160bclk

1.2v CPU (I may have panicked here because my first prime95 attempt BSODed and so i went from 1.1 to 1.2v. Could've probably got away with less)

LLC 100% (not sure which setting I should have used here)

1.64v RAM @1282mhz (9-9-9-24 as rated)

c1e & Speedstep off. And just out of Curiosity what is C1E and why do we turn it off?

now for the funny part

its about 20c in my room (possibly 19)

Temps after 40minutes of prime95 on blend (which is what i have been using for all stability tests)

are practically the same as my original stock temps maybe a degree higher here and there (ill post up the max temps when I'm done with the hour in prime95)

Temps

Idle (min) 35 35 34 34

Load (Max) 63 62 59 58 (Vast Majority of the time around 60-61c)

 

[cbiltsouris]

hey guys is 27.5 degrees at 1.081 volts @ 3.375 ghz decent? I just finished my big build and i have absolutley no idea how to overclock, just gonna go through some guides first

 

[slam159]

Hmm,

You tried stability tests with that voltage?

 

[cbiltsouris]

Hmmm haven't done any

but I've done heaps of things like gaming n everything I know I should use prime 95 to confirm that it's completely stable but I haven't had any issues yet