Good evening. i'm hoping the good people of bit-tech can help me out. I've been toying with the idea of giving my PC a bit of a boost in the next couple of months. Overall I'm happy with it but its a good 2 years old now and in some of the more demanding games its starting to show a little. Currently I have the following: CPU: Intel Q6600 Quad Core 2.4Ghz GPU: BFG 8800 GTX Mother Board: ASUS P5K Premium RAM: 2Gb Crucial Balistix DDR2 1066Mhz PSU: Antec Truepower 650W HDD: WD 300Gb Raptor CPU Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 Operating System: Windows XP Pro 32 bit When i get paid in a weeks time I plan to upgrade to Windows 7 and go to 4Gb of DDR2 as it's now dirt cheap. I'd have about £200 spare after that to upgrade a component or possibly two. Any thoughts on what I could upgrade that might give it a bit more bang? I do have a couple of questions while I am here. I've noticed my CPU seems to be running rather hotter than I'd like. Current coretemp is telling me I have 51-54 degrees celcius across all 4 cores which to me seems very high considering it's not over clocked. Maybe my CPU cooler is not as healthy as it once was? When I last ran coretemp about 4 months ago I seem to recall idle temperatures of around the 35 degrees mark. I dust my machine regularly and it is very hot outside today but it still seems excessive. I've been reading good things about the Titan Fenrir coolers. Maybe drop the Freezer pro 7 for one of those? Secondly I know there is a link in the stickies but is there a good resource I can read regarding overclocking? I'd like to try it at some point and now seems like a good time to squeeze a little more out of my machine. Thanks for reading Tom
With regard to the cooling problem, what case are you running and how many fans does it have? Could it be that in the current high ambient temperatures you case+fans are not shifting enough air to cope? I know mine isn't.
First 4Gb and 2Gb memory doesn't exists... you have 4GB and 2GB. 'B' and 'b' means completely different units. 'B' stand for Bytes, while 'b' stands for bits. 4Gb = 476.84 MB if I calculated this correctly Ok back to topic: Windows 7 64-bit is an absolute MUST have. You have technology that your XP doesn't even use. Switching OS will provide you with a performance boost. 4GB of RAM is very welcomes as well. I am sure you can look into overclocking your GPU with Nvidia System Tool for an easy and stable overclock, which should cover you until Nvidia Fermi - take 2 chip (one that provide an interesting level of performance, low power consumption, and hopefully low heat compared to the GTX 480).
I apologise GoodBytes. I ment to say I have 2 x 1 gigabyte sticks of DDR2 and plan to go to 2x 2 gigabyte sticks of DDR2. Simply a communication error on my behalf. 2gig kits are far cheaper now than when I built the rig nearly 3 years ago now so an ideal time to upgrade them. Fingers666 I have the system wrapped up in an Akasa 62 Elcipe case. Probably not the best case in the world but I do have a couple of new fans kicking around I might try in it. Having just reinstalled core temp on what is probably the hottest day of the year so far certainly isn't the best of ideas to take a benchmark but when I saw 51 degrees on the window i was a bit "EEK!" I think I'll deffinately upgrade to Win7 and get the new ram and then take stock of the situation. it does most of what i want it to do perfectly well i was just wondering if there was a bit more bang to be had relatively cheaply is all. Tom.
Those temps are not bad - not dangerous at least. After the RAM, your bottleneck is almost certainly that old 8800 - what screen resolution do you have? Invest in a new GPU - perhaps wait a couple of months to see what the remix of the fermi architecture does - the gtx 460 might work for you at that time!
your cpu temps are pretty low 51c is really nothing on a chip that can take 90 + thrown at it no problem. replace the 8800gtx with either 5830 / 4890 ( second hand ) or 460gtx ( cant guarentee its in your budget) 5850 can be had for similar money to the 460gtx and the 5850 is faster from my point of view
idle temps of 51C even when its hot is too high unless its about 35C+ in your room it was 28C yesterday and my i7 920 @ 4ghz was idling at 38C. i know the Q6600 is based on larger manufacturing process but in normal i.e. around 20C ambient temps it should be at around 35-37C so i would expect about 40-45C when its hot
DDR2 ram cheap??? am i missing something. i Picked up 4GB of PC2 8000 OCZ Platnium for £32 this time last year. Now for similar memory its £85.
I concur. I have an E8600 @ stock speed + Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, in a very bad airflow case (Sonata II - 120mm exhaust only - no inlet fans), which is idling at 48C in the current ambient temps. Funny thing is that when I play BC2, it doesn't rise above 58C so I am not worried as long as the single exhaust fan is on high (loud).
