Hi All So after my GPU expired my watercooling gear got shelved since I didn't plan on watercooling my next one. More recently I've been using handbreaks apple TV3 setting, and it could really do with a speed boost, so time to cool just the CPU and overclock it. I have available to me, two PA120.2 (old style) and a off brand 120 rad. I already have mounting points from my last setup for the PA120.2 in the front and roof, though having one on the roof cuts off a lot of access to the motherboard. MY current plan is to just have a 120.2 in the front with gentle typhoon fans set to push/pull to also increase airflow over the graphics card. Will this handle an overclocked i7 920, or should I add the second radiator or just the 120? Cheers!
one 120.2 should easily be able dissipate the heat from a i7 920! even a 120.1 should do for smaller overclocks!
Did you change anything hardware-wise, or anything in the BIOS that might have caused instability? Does your system crash when you run a stress test, or does it happen randomly? If you didn't change anything and it only crashes when you run something like IBT, your chip may be degrading, in which case you'll have to increase Vcore a bit.This can happen over time; my own 920 used to be rock solid at 1.337 (hell yeah) but I currently have it at 1.375 because it couldn't make it through even a single pass in IBT any more, it never crashed outside IBT and P95 though.
My system was perfectly stable. It's just painful watching a trans coding take 4 hours when I know I can push the chip to go quicker. I've now over clocked it, and need to run some stress tests. There is very little difference in temperature between the fans on full speed and low speed, is this the limit of the heat transfer from the cpu, or is the block not perfectly seated? UPDATE Stuff getting toasty....
You could probably get 4.0ghz out of that chip using around 1.275v to 1.325v. If you do see what your temps are like, my rule with the I7 1366 chips was never allow the core temps to go above 75c. I used a Heatkiller cpu block but it was all copper block LINK I swapped from a XSPC Delta block to that block and it knocked nearly 10c per core off the temps. I was using a 360mmx35mm (120.3) rad on it, with a single set of Scythe Kazi Jyuni 1900rpm fans though on a I7 920 @4.0ghz and then a I7 950 @ 4.2ghz. If I switched to Push/Pull it knocked about another 2c of each core. If you feel like the temps are not right or could be lower you could try adding the 2nd 120mm rad and see if it helps.
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R. Tell me about it, it's the base model, most had 6 slots, but I didn't think I'd ever want more than 6gig on this system.
Just to let you knowi have had my 920 do running at 4ghz for over a yearor so with no issues. I currently use an h50 with a pull configuation and the max temps i get is around 65 degrees. For info i used 1.35v to keep it stable.
I'm having trouble getting a stable over clock, but at stock with the re-seated (rotated as well) block I have idle of 38°C and a load of 48°C, which is a delta of 19°C and 29°C. Still seems high to me, but then all the fans for the system are on the radiator.