Well that explains the CPU Fan message on boot, and the random lock ups. CPU fan had completely locked up. A few more fans are starting to fail too. Those Kaze fans move some air, but at the trade off for life span. Lots of bearing noise on all but one of them. I guess I'll buy a crate of whatever my favorite Cooler Master fans used to be.

EDIT: Newegg has a $6 savings promo code on the Cooler Master Silent 120mm 4-pack. Picked up the 4 pack for $17.97 shipped with 3 day UPS. Only move 1/3 the cfm, but still good enough.

Promo code good for 4 more days.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835103052

O hai.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1391933851

Ello ello

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1391943292

For in-car (Megasquirt + Audio testing) I use a 2009 MacBook Pro I bought used a year ago for $320. It had 8GB RAM and I've replaced the battery, added a 125 GB Solid State drive (SSD) in place of the OEM 250 GB HD and a 1TB conventional drive (HD) in place of the factory DVD drive.

Running OSX 10.9 "Mavericks", with Parallels9 I have two main WindowsOS Virtual machines (VM); one WinXP SP3 and one Windows8 Professional. The WinXP VM is used for motor tuning, and to run Dynomation5. A Belkin Serial to USB adapter works flawlessly.

Dafuq?

Five SSDs, dual Xeons, a K5000 and a fucking Tesla K20?

What are you doing with this machine?!

Rendering movies? Very intensive CGI?

Well, my old xw8400 already had two dual-core Xeons. So yet again, I opted for two Xeons, quad-core this time.

I will be autorouting PCBs on this machine for several projects, including 8"x6" 8/16-layer boards at 0.025mm routing grid. That takes a lot of processing power to do.

Yeah, but a K20? I mean, that's teraflop-level performance.

For those who don't know, the K20/K40 is practically a supercomputer on a PCI card. Totally useless for 99.9999% of "ordinary" computing applications, but just the thing when you need to compute the trajectory of every single subatomic particle in the first few milliseconds of a thermonuclear explosion, for example.

Lets just say that someone else ordered the system, had already paid a deposit since this was a built-to-order system, then backed out of the deal. The price I paid for it was way less than what the MSRP is. It like I got the K20 and the SSDs for free.

Welp. Let the lapping commence. When taking off my H212 fan the other night I felt the compound that was dried up pop and then the entire heat sink starting floating. So I'm guessing the contact patch is all fuxxored now. Will go all out on this lap, down to copper, with a full polish with compounds on both processor and the H212. I need to come up with something to make the heat sink lock down tighter. I could never get it to pull down tight enough to not slide down under its own weight, putting it off center of the processor. I'm also going to do some case mods. I'm going to drill a grid of holes on the mobo side of the case, and through the mounting plate and install a fan to blow directly on the back of the processor and northbridge. The back side of the motherboard must get pretty hot since it has little to no ventilation. Might even get around to rigging up some of my spare 80mm case fans on the memory modules to draw air away from them and the motherboard.

I'm thinking I'm going to forego using any thermal paste. Once I get both surfaces lapped, I think I can take some fine compound and lap the two surfaces against one another to further flatten them together. They probably still won't be PERFECT, but it should be damn close. I guess it's worth a try anyway. Do it without, then try it with and see if it changes. If I do put any one, it's going to be super thin. Maybe use a razor blade to spread a tiny bead down the middle, just to cover the die.

This ought to be interesting.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1392045204

I don't think that is a good idea. From what I remember from way back in the day was that you would end up with higher temps then normal. I would not trust doing it unless you had the cpu just sitting there doing nothing and did not mind if it burned up.

Why would that be a bad idea given both surfaces are flat and fully in contact? All thermal paste can possibly do is lessen heat transfer, again, given that both surfaces are perfectly flat. Even if it's not better, it's not going to burn up in the time it takes to load the OS and check the temps. I've run with no cooler for more than a few minutes without much issue. I've rear quite a few threads on various forums with people getting better results without it, since both metal surfaces are in direct contact, instead of a paper thin silicon/metallic paste layer between them. Probably will end up with some on there though. It's meant more as an experiment.

I would never do it with non lapped processor and heat sink, since you would end up with a pocket of air between the two surfaces, which will make for higher than normal temps. Especially with Intel.

Because at a microscopic level, the surfaces are neither flat nor smooth.

If I was doing this work in a laboratory, using whatever honing machine they use at NASA JPL when they need something to be flat and smooth, even then I'd still use a tiny little schmear of thermal paste between the two surfaces.

I assume that you are using sandpaper, a kitchen table, and your hands.

Even those microscopic pits are enough to cause issues still? Oh well. I guess all of the accounts I've seen saying otherwise are false or hoaxes. Using a piece of glass, 600,1000,1500,2000,2500 paper and some ultra fine polishing compound. Should be able to get a glass like finish, but I guess that's not enough, so say you. Oh well, I have several tubes of AS5 laying around. Thin schmear it is then. I'm still mounting it without to see exactly how detrimental it is.

On the one hand, I'd be curious to see these accounts which claim that no thermal paste is needed after lapping of the CPU and cooler.

On the other hand, hey, what do I know? I'm sure that a couple of kids polishing their CPUs in their parents' basement know more about thermodynamics and heat transfer than the engineers who design spaceflight-certified embedded microcontrollers. I guess they (the engineers) are just pawns of the thermal-paste-manufacturing cabal.




If you get really bored some afternoon, have a look at a piece of glass under a scanning electronic microscope.

Whos paying the electric bill? because you could probably earn a few bucks when youre not using it to mine bitcoins.

Yeah, what the fuck do you know!?

I know a piece of glass isn't anything near flat or free of pits, valleys, ridges, ect. I just wasn't aware that microscopic air pockets would be enough to cause cooling issues on something like a processor. I was thinking it would need to be on an almost visible to the eye level before it would cause major problems. Or something on a much higher temp range.

Not surprisingly, it draws less current than the previous workstation without the K20, which has been removed, as its not supported by my PCB program.

Microscopic or not, heat transfer through conduction can only occur when two materials are in direct physical contact with one another. Any gaps between them, be they an inch or a tenth of the thickness of a spec of dust, and you instead switch to radiant and convective transfer, which is less efficient.

Also, don't fear thermal paste as being somehow evil. Below the surface of that heat-spreader (the metallic outer shell of the CPU), there's thermal paste between it and the actual die itself.

Here's what a Haswell architecture i7-4770 looks like with the lid pried off:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1392059083


And here's an Athlon x2 5600, similarly dismantled:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1392059083


A lot of older CPUs used fluxless solder between the die and the heat-spreader, but these days they're using a paste much like what you put on the outside between the case and the fan/heatsink assembly.

Thermal paste is just as evil as thermodynamics. It's not in the Bible, so it's the work of the Devil! You and all of your voodoo thermodynamics.

I'm already seeing HUGE differences between unlapped and lapped. Even with the first start up, and no time for things to settle in, I'm seeing a peak temp of about 51C under load, running a heavy Prime95 cycle, listening to music and 2 Chrome browsers open. And my case is wide open, and one of my fans isn't installed. Once I close up the case I bet it drops a few more degrees, since the flow is all messed up right now. I can't recall the exact number, but I used to have to watch my temps very closely when running Prime95, because the temp would creep up close to the max recommended temp. Not even close now. In a few days the temp will drop a few more degrees once the paste cures, or goes through a few cycles, or whatever voodoo magic shit it does.

My FX-8350 was far worse than I ever thought it would be. I had been into copper in the center and edges for a long time, and I could still read the laser etched AMD logo in a low spot. And I must have some older version of the Hyper 212. I guess the non EVO version, since my heat pipes have large gaps between them. Not ideal, especially since there are 4 pipes, and the two center ones split the center running die in the processor. So the hottest spot is sort of missed, and only the two center pipes catch the edges of the hot spot. Might have to look into an EVO version.

Mine:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1392061706

EVO:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1392061706

Me thinks you were using too much paste before.

Do you have the 212 that has the aluminum heat sink around the heat pipes with the 2mm gaps between the heat pipes? If so thats the 212 plus, the 212 evo is the one i have.

Yeah, I have the Plus. I think it's an earlier version. Doesn't look nearly as efficient.

I wasn't using much. A very thin bead down the center, flattened out with a credit card edge, and excess close to the edges wiped away. Maybe a bit more than ideal, but not what I would call a lot of paste. I used even less this time though, just barely enough to see when spread out. So it may be partly due to the paste amount.

Dont do the spread method. Thats old school and has been proven to be full of fail.

Put a single blob about the size of a pea in the middle and use the heatsink to spread it. It does a much better job of keeping it even. The amount you use is critical though. If its squeezing out the sides youre using too much.


Also, here is some cool benchamrking on different compounds

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...k,3616-18.html


Dont sweat the heat-sink design so much. That direct heat-pipe contact deal is just a marketing gimmick. A layer of aluminum between the pipes and the CPU would have a negligible effect. Thats how the used to build them and thats now heat pipes still are used outside of the enthusiast aftermarket.

^ This.

It's how the OEMs do it. (Or you can run a thin line across the major axis of the CPU, which is to say, roughly aligned with the orientation of the die.)

That's what I did. A rectangle, thin bar centered over the die. Almost like an OEM pad of compound, just rectangular not square, and much much thinner. But by the time I got done fucking with the aggravating mounting system for the heat sink, the shit was probably spread all over the processor anyway. It'll be coming back off in a few days anyway, when my new fans arrive. So I'll clean it up and do it again and hopefully not fumble around with the mounting system too much. The screws weren't aligning correctly for some reason. I guess I bumped one of them and moved it to a different slot by mistake.

Hell. I think I'm just going to let my ASUS 990FX R2.0 handle the overclock. Set in performance mode, it throttles between 1550mhz at idle, and when running any programs it jumps to ~4375mhz. It also plays with the FSB and does a nice job of kicking the memory in the ass and gets it overclocked pretty well, with tight timing, good stable voltages. I've been running it Prime95 for max temp and it hasn't gone above 52C in 45 minutes to an hour. That's good enough for me.

Yep. I'll hang with this for now. If I find myself needing more, or bored, I'll go back to manually tweaking. But this is doing a surprisingly good job. It has underclocked my memory by 200mhz, but I can live with that very negligible issue. I would like to see the temp drop to below 50C, which I think it will after a week or so. Plus it's a little warmer in the house than usual.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1392071909

as I feared, these new weak ass fans aren't up to the task like the old monsters were. Somehow the idle temp is down 2 degrees, averaging around 29C, but the under load temp has gone up 9-10 degrees to around 60C. At least it's still stable, so I'm not too concerned. It'll last until my next build, which should be due in the next year or two, going by my usual PC build schedule.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1392395509

I posted the article 2 pages ago but i take it u didnt see it.

Thermal Paste Comparison, Part One: Applying Grease And More - Everything You Wanted To Know About Cooling A CPU

I guess I missed it. Good read. I just wasn't thinking on such a microscopic level. This makes me think even more about my old Hyper 212 Plus not being a very good cooler, at least not on the level of the EVO. All that contacts the processor is the heat pipes themselves. The metal pieces of the plate between the pipes are raised a good .010" and contribute nothing to cooling, or if anything trap hot air in. Or I suppose with enough compound it would fill the gaps, but I don't want to use so much. The EVO is MUCH better in that way, since the heat pipes cover the full surface with no gaps. Probably completely worth the upgrade.

I wish I could find just the mounting plates for the fan of the EVO, so I could mount a push/pull fan setup. Thought I guess zip ties would work the same.

Actually there were some tests i saw when i was looking at my setup. The push+pull setup was only 2 degrees better than the push setup.. a pull setup on the other hand was 1 degree better than the push setup.

Run it on a pull setup and leave it like that. IMO the extra fan noise for the single 1 degree improvement isnt worth it.

It's always been a pull, but any improvement for a little noise is worth it for me, since the noise is absolutely zero bother to me. I sleep with white noise, and my computer used to be my white noise, until I swapped the fans back to less powerful ones that I could barely hear. I had to go buy a new box fan. :giggle: My old setup was by most peoples standards REALLY loud and unacceptable. At one point there were 7 fans, 4 of which were 3000rpm, 133cfm monsters and one small 80mm at 3000rpm that gave off a pretty high pitch hum.

Anyway, going to order an EVO, and another matching fan for a push/pull. I bet I drop at least 4 or 5C in the swap over.

Also, what do you think about blocking off the sides in a push/pull configuration? Surely the push fan pushing air out the sides, while the pull fan is trying to pull air back in through the sides causes some turbulence and probably slows movement of air through the fins of the cooler. I'm thinking covering those sides and sort of making an enclosure would help a bit. Could be completely wrong though.

Could be worth trying. I havent wasted any time on it since i'm satisfied with the performance now. 51 degrees at 4.5 gigs is fine to me considering before with the old stock cooler it ran at 62 degrees at only 4.1 gigs.

With these shitty new fans, I'm seeing 62-63C max at 4.4, which is not at all acceptable, considering I was more than 10C cooler with the old fans and no lapping. I wasn't anticipating such a loss of performance with these new fans. I did have it stable at 4.3 and only 52C with these fans, but I wasn't satisfied with the tune. New cooler and fans, and then try again. If I could get 4.5 stable at less than 55C I'll be happy.

Not sure why I always like the hard route. Same with cars. Start with less than ideal performance mods (n/a) and try to squeeze every drop of performance out of it. I could just throw water cooling on it (turbo) and be done, and get better numbers for not much more money than I've already spent on cooler and fans.

Dude, maybe you need thermal compound, lol.

? I have thermal compound. AS5. It's just these new "silent" fans. I fart a stronger breeze than these things. I was expecting a little more performance out of them than when I got. I have another use for them, so it wasn't a complete waste of $16.

Oh I thought you were not going to use it because of your lapping.

No. I was thinking I was going to try it without just to see what would happen, but after the discussion I decided it wasn't even worth the trouble of trying and having to take it back apart to put some compound on it anyway.

AS5, arctic silver 5? How much did you put on there? Very hard to apply without over doing it.

Not enough to squeeze out the sides, but enough to spread and cover the die. Like I said before, I used the tape method. The thickness is about that of a piece of masking tape. By the time it spreads under weight, it pretty much goes to the edge side to side, and 7/8 of the way top to bottom. I will admit to having lifted the cooler off of the processor a good 5 or 6 times, so there is no telling what kind of mess I made of it, or even what possible air pockets I created by pulling the paste apart like that. But again, it'll be redone soon anyway, so no harm.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1392469706

I have always just used what is applied on the coolers from the factory and never remove them. This has always granted me the best results. Though i don't care to run my components on the very brink of meltdown like you guys, i do overclock a little with no issues ever.
I think everyone is over thinking this to a certain extent. My "hot as hell" quadcore AMD runs at or below 100F during normal tasking. Seeing 50C after hard use is very very rare.

Maybe i just get lucky...

You dont really have an option in the matter when u lap the cpu.

Personally i'd do the X method and then clean off any extra if it squeezes out.

The stuff that comes on stock coolers seems like way too much to me, at least double what would be more optimal. But I guess the OEM has to cover their ass and make sure they indeed put enough. If you put that much on a lapped processor and aftermarket cooler with a backing plate, you would have compound running out all over the place.

4 new 110cfm fans on the way, and I reapplied the compound. Apparently I was right, I did move it around too much and it got really sloppy and spread out. This time I tried just applying a thin bead along each heat pipe, and already my temps are down a good 3 or 4C, prior to any sort of curing taking place. I sort of wish I had put just a little more on the processor itself, dead center over the die, since that is between two of the pipes, and might not have gotten full coverage. But so far, so good.

Current tune is a safe 4.35Ghz at 1.325v idle and 1.36v load, idle 30c and full load of 62c. The fan on the cooler now only flows half the air of the stock 212 fan. So I estimate a temp around 46-48c with the new fans with this same tune. Maybe 48-50c at 4.5Ghz where it used to be.

Shine on, processor.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1392486877

Fucking computers! Getting my CPU stuff all sorted out, and now notice I have a GPU problem. I had been noticing lately some bogging down and lag when processing in Photoshop, and playing games. After running a benchmark, where most people with this GPU (MSI R7850 Twin Frozr 2GB) are getting 50-60fps, I'm only getting 20-25fps, with lows all the way down around 5fps. Uninstalled all drivers and reinstalled the newest, and still no go. Defaulted and readjusted all GPU settings through AMD CCC. Doesn't look like a CPU problem, since during benchmarking, the CPU load never goes above 20% or so on this particular benchmark. Played with NB and HT overclocking, and that did nothing. What ze shite!? It used to work awesomely, and I'm not sure when it went to shit. I don't auto update anything, and I haven't touched drivers or any other settings in a long time, so I'm not sure what the cause could be.

Ambient Air: 22C

---------------

Old Idle: 34C

New Idle: 29C

---------------

Old Load: 64C

New Load: 56C

I can live with that. I guess I'm done with it for now. Still need to figure out this GPU issue though. These new fans move almost as much air as the old ones, but are about 60% quieter maxed out. If you include the big PSU fan and the GPU fans, I now have a total of 12 fans in my case. A bit much.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1392752131

CPU: i5 3570k
GPU: EVGA GTX 970 SSC w/ ACX 2.0
Mobo: Asus Z77-A
Ram: 8GB Corsair Vengeance Low Profile DDR3 1600
PSU: Seasonic M12 520w
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB
PSU: Seasonic M12 520w
Case: Coolermaster Elite 361 (needed a case to lay horizontally while still fitting an ATX mobo and full sized GPU)

Recently swapped the gpu

Old vs new (EVGA GTX 970 SSC)
http://www.overclock.net/content/type/61/id/2679107/GTX 760 vs GTX 970 by superkamikazee, on Flickr

http://www.overclock.net/content/type/61/id/2679108/GTX 970 HTPC by superkamikazee, on Flickr

http://www.overclock.net/content/type/61/id/2679109/GTX 970 HTPC 2 by superkamikazee, on Flickr

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f5a984d141.png

http://www.overclock.net/content/type/61/id/2679110/

http://www.overclock.net/content/type/61/id/2679111/

Full build thread
? [BUILD LOG] ? BASEMENT THEATER 100" SCREEN | Coolermaster Elite 361 | GTX 970 | 3570k | IMPOSSIBRU!!!

I run a 4770k with r9 290x, 8gb of ddr2400, two 512gb 840 pros in raid, and other stuff that doesn't make a difference. It is quiet though, practically silent at full tilt and entirely silent all other times. All enclosed, fill port through the front and a temperature/water level gauge.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1452792630

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1452792630

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1452792630

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1452792630

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1452792630

And the wheel setup, not pretty but it works.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1452792630

Here's mine:

Intel Core i5-4690k @ 4.5ghz
Corsair H80i Liquid CPU Cooler
8GB Corsair DDR3 1800mhz
512GB SanDisk SSD
Nvidia Geforce 980 Ti 6GB @ +150mhz/+300mhz
EVGA Geforce Liquid Cooler

Monitor is an AMH 40" 4K IPS from Korea.


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1452798239


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1452798239


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1452798239

Unless they are both intakes, good placement on the cpu cooler radiator, shit placement on the gpu cooler radiator.

Each fan has a puller, meaning there's one continuous horizontal column of air. It works well, keeping the i5 at 4.5ghz < 60c under Prime95. GPU gets a bit warmer but that's because I game at 4K. Still below 70c, though.

Is the gpu rad set as an intake or exhaust?

I'd have both pull, then a large fan up top for exhaust. Should balance well.

Exactly, you dont want the gpu to be exhaust since then its sucking hot air from the other rad and whatever else heats it up inside the case.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1452822495

I tested multiple scenarios and this had the lowest temps. Interrupting airflow with a top-mount exhaust actually increased temps.

The air coming off my CPU cooler isn't warm at all, even under load. This is a living room computer too, so I went with a minimal setup and quiet fans.

So intake on each side and exhaust on top didnt work better? Very surprising. Also which temps are you talking about specifically? Both or just the cpu?

I had similar results with my setup. I have a 80mm intake at the hdd's (front of the case), two 80mm exhaust back of the case, and the CPU cooler exhausting as well. That gave me the lowest temps.

Before that I had a positive pressure setup, hdd 80mm fan still on intake, two 80mm rears on exhaust, and the CPU cooler on intake. I was actually getting higher CPU temps, system temps, and hdd temps.

I don't have a ton of air being pulled into the case by the small 80mm intake, and the gpu just pulls air from the side of the case with the holes on the door.


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1452874791


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1452874791

I added two new drives to my rats nest.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1453070085

now running win10 off a 500GB SSD. and added a new 2TB drive cause I was basically filled up.


EDIT: wow. just finished installing the amd catalyst, reset, and I'm back up within 20sec.