Outdoor temperature ranges from 27 to 33 degrees celcius during hot sunny days and drops to 25 to 27 degress in the night. My room temperature is usually maintained at 24 degrees with the air-conditioner turned on during hot periods. I don't normally turn on the AC during nights unless if it's very warm (for me). The temperature shown in the picture is taken at around 10pm, with the AC turned on.

I'll post a more complete picture of the casing and it's position to help you to find out if there are any errors in reading - most probably the on-board sensor related. Also please keep in mind, that this is a new board, and the temp. is somewhat similar to the classic system's temp I posted at marvin. Unless of course, if you think both these sensors are at fault.

More pictures :

The top of the case has another of that huge fan under the surface to let out the air. Instead of blowing towards the cpu-heatsink-complex, I made it to suck out the air from the said complex :

There are 5 hard drives :

So much of the "system temperature" heat comes from the crossfire cards and these drives.

The side fan blows air IN :

Gigabyte's EasyTune6 utility showing temp. :

From what I read in the benchmarks, the Radeon HD 6950 has better temperature and heat emission level when compared to the 6970.

And the i5 2500K runs cooler and uses less power than an i7 K series. ANd when overclocked, the i5 K series can rival the i7 K series. That's what I read from few benchmarking sites. But I can't confirm, but the temperature reading I get in my system so far seems nice enough for me.

This is the babe...err...heatsink that I'm using :

sliderider wrote:

The rush of moving air still pushes the heat your body radiates away from you even though the surrounding air is warmer.

Sorry, but that's not how it works. When you turn on the fan you are basically allowing the laws of convection to work- in simplified terms this demands that there is a difference in temps in at least 2 zones for heat to be transferred fom one zone to the other. The act of switching on the fan speeds that process up. As does your body's reaction by sweating.

Doesn't work if there is no "cooler" zone and "hotter" zone present- i.e. like inside a computer case with little to no ventilation. It's all hot- so you cannot lower temps below ambient, even with a thousand fans.

E.g. If you've ever been in a desert, there are strong winds there but because ambient temps at daytime are 40+ c, what you get is a hot blast of air like a giant hair dryer, not a cooling seaside breeze. Or another example is sitting inside an oven and switching it on while fanning yourself.... there will not be a "rush" of air "pushing" the heat away.

Tetrium wrote:

sliderider wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Not true, if the surrounding air is warmer then your body temperature, your body uses evaporizing sweatdrops to cool down. A CPU cooler can do no such thing 😜

I agree with you.

Pushing hot air doesn't make it cooler. That's really what you call heating. Which is not what we want 🤣

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Intel is 32nm, AMD is still on 45nm.

AMD's 45nm fabrication process is more mature and better than Intel's 45nm process ever was... Can you imagine how volcanic a 6-core 45nm i7 chip would be?

Anyway i don't really care if i go with AMD or Intel... It depends who has the best bang for buck (it's usually AMD). Intel are definitely better performance wise although it seems you have to buy a whole new motherboard everytime they release a new chip! I can't decide if i should build a Bulldozer rig or wait for Intel's Ivy Bridge?

I sold my i7 940 PC while it was still worth something as i don't use it too much and it was being wasted. With the money I built a budget micro-ATX PC using an Athlon II X4 645 CPU and Radeon 6870 GPU (perfectly fine for gaming) and still had plenty of cash leftover. My i7 rig was also raping my electricity bill!

AMD fanboy here as well thinking of switching to Intel since AMD is so far behind and having some many long delays. Intel maybe more expensive but, usually your paying for that much more power unless it's unlocked or extreme edition.

Personally seen the amount of abuse and Intel/Asus build will take several times that and the shop i work for builds computers with the same combo and rarely have problems.

But, yeah AMD is starting to really fall behind.

EDIT, yea AMD doesn't even have a 32nm out yet i think that bulldozer witch isn't looking so hot by the sounds of it. I'm sure Intel can and will refine 45nm if they ever touch it again. Speaking of witch I'm still wanting a 9550 or better for my 776 machine, speaking of witch intel needs another long term high compatibility platform like 775.

PowerPie5000 wrote:

AMD's 45nm fabrication process is more mature and better than Intel's 45nm process ever was... Can you imagine how volcanic a 6-core 45nm i7 chip would be?

Not sure what you mean. I don't think anyone can argue that AMD has a better fabrication process. Intel does set the benchmark here.

When you say "45nm process", what stepping are you talking about? Sure a very first generation 920 will draw lots of power. But so did the first generation Phenom and it was slow and buggy.

The latest generation Lynnfield (i5 760) however is very energy efficient and comes with a tiny cooler. Also don't forget that Intel had 32nm CPUs (the dual cores with CPU) one and a half years ago! AMD will be almost 2 years late with bulldozer...

On another note, today I treated myself to some parts. I have a two week break from Uni and just felt like upgrading. Parts are so cheap at the moment and I'm bored 😁

I got an Asrock full ATX H61 board, i5 2400 and 2x4 GB DDR3 1333. Now keep in mind, I came from a Phenom II quad core 3.2 GHz.

Now I knew that there wouldn't be much of a performance difference, at least that's the impression I got from the reviews.

But I could tell right away. Just opening things, shutting the machine down, installing software just happens so much faster. I ran some benchmarks on the old machine yesterday and I couldn't believe it. The 3D Mark 11 CPU score and the Resident Evil 5 benchmark show a 50!!!! % higher performance!

So yea, I have first hand experience now. And the thing is, the benchmarks on the net don't show this performance difference, so not sure what is going on. I don't think going from 4 to 8 GB is responsible here.

The Asrock board comes with this Xfast USB software which also speeds up USB 2.0 performance. I tested this and it really copies things faster. Nothing like what they claim (300%), more along 15% faster...

Here some pictures I took today:

PS:

Had a "damn I'm getting old" moment today. At the shop I packed all the stuff into a bag. When I got home I noticed that the sound card I also got wasn't in the bag.

I left it at the counter 😒

Getting it tomorrow. It's a PCIe X-Fi Xtreme Audio, because the audio chip on this board is VIA (not that great for games) and the board is only PCIe, so my PCI Xtreme Music is now paper weight.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

PowerPie5000 wrote:

AMD's 45nm fabrication process is more mature and better than Intel's 45nm process ever was... Can you imagine how volcanic a 6-core 45nm i7 chip would be?

Not sure what you mean. I don't think anyone can argue that AMD has a better fabrication process. Intel does set the benchmark here.

When you say "45nm process", what stepping are you talking about?

AMD have pretty much optimised and perfected the 45nm fabrication process compared to Intel... Intel could never get 6 of their 45nm cores in one package (Core 2 or i7). Basically AMD's 45nm process is now better than Intels 45nm tech.

If someone told me a couple of years ago that AMD will squeeze 6 Phenom II cores into one package i would have laughed (Thats when the quad core Phenom II 965 had a TDP of 140W!). Now you can get a 6 core AMD chip that still uses a 45nm process with rated TDP of only 95W and 125W. AMD have clearly done a better job with their 45nm tech and their CPU's now run relatively cool with a maximum temp of 62C (way below the 1366 i7 temps).

Anyway, Intel is already using 32nm (and soon 22nm) with AMD slowly catching up, so it's hardly worth talking about 45nm chips anymore 😁

Now an 8 core (or 4 module) AMD chip using a 32nm process and rated at 125W or less would be nice 😀

Hmm yea AMD has certainly shown great progress. 6 cores that is indeed quite impressive.

I admit that I don't care much about TDP because it's really hard to compare CPUs. I wish reviewers had something like a CPU adapter for reading the correct power draw.

Because Intels new i5s and i7s are still 95W, but the coolers have shrunk quite a bit.

Regarding Bulldozer, as harsh as it sounds, I simply have no faith in AMD for this one. Too little too late...

The Llano presentation recently was a joke. They had the balls to tell us they can't show us Llano, but guess what I have in my pocket? Trinity!!! And it will be 50% faster!

Just makes you go, oh well I might as well wait some more 🤣

Regardless of the new 32nm Core i's and Bulldozer, I'm gonna skip this round of updates. I used to be a serial upgrader, having built new systems every year from 06 to 09. But now when my "ancient" Phenom 955/ GTX460 build can play TW2 on high settings at 1680x1050 and my E5200/ GTS250 can do the same with Dragon Age/ Fallout 3/ WoW, etc, I just don't see the need to upgrade.

In any case, I don't really play any of the new games actively anymore, many of them are still lying unopened on my shelf. Plus most of the time I'm downstairs using an eclectic collection of old junks- like the machine I'm using this month and typing this on is actually a Katmai 600mhz/ GF256/ 256mb ram/ Win98SE2ME system. Most of the time though I use a 2002 Northwood 2.8B/ 1gb ram system and it does most things I need it too- except play TW2 of course. 😜

So I'm a gonna wait the next generation out till I really feel the need to upgrade, and then when I do it must be a quantum leap in performance like it was going from a P3 to an Athlon 64 back then.

So there....

Fair comment. If you asked me why I upgraded, I haven't got a good reason. It was mostly because I was bored and wanted to play with some shiny new hardware 🤣

PowerPie5000 wrote:

AMD have pretty much optimised and perfected the 45nm fabrication process compared to Intel... Intel could never get 6 of their […]
Show full quote

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

PowerPie5000 wrote:

AMD's 45nm fabrication process is more mature and better than Intel's 45nm process ever was... Can you imagine how volcanic a 6-core 45nm i7 chip would be?

Not sure what you mean. I don't think anyone can argue that AMD has a better fabrication process. Intel does set the benchmark here.

When you say "45nm process", what stepping are you talking about?

AMD have pretty much optimised and perfected the 45nm fabrication process compared to Intel... Intel could never get 6 of their 45nm cores in one package (Core 2 or i7). Basically AMD's 45nm process is now better than Intels 45nm tech.

If someone told me a couple of years ago that AMD will squeeze 6 Phenom II cores into one package i would have laughed (Thats when the quad core Phenom II 965 had a TDP of 140W!). Now you can get a 6 core AMD chip that still uses a 45nm process with rated TDP of only 95W and 125W. AMD have clearly done a better job with their 45nm tech and their CPU's now run relatively cool with a maximum temp of 62C (way below the 1366 i7 temps).

Anyway, Intel is already using 32nm (and soon 22nm) with AMD slowly catching up, so it's hardly worth talking about 45nm chips anymore 😁

Now an 8 core (or 4 module) AMD chip using a 32nm process and rated at 125W or less would be nice 😀

AMD is going to be releasing 28nm GPU's shortly. How long do you think it will be before they start using 28nm in their CPU's?

PowerPie5000 wrote:

AMD's 45nm fabrication process is more mature and better than Intel's 45nm process ever was... Can you imagine how volcanic a 6- […]
Show full quote

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Intel is 32nm, AMD is still on 45nm.

AMD's 45nm fabrication process is more mature and better than Intel's 45nm process ever was... Can you imagine how volcanic a 6-core 45nm i7 chip would be?

Anyway i don't really care if i go with AMD or Intel... It depends who has the best bang for buck (it's usually AMD). Intel are definitely better performance wise although it seems you have to buy a whole new motherboard everytime they release a new chip! I can't decide if i should build a Bulldozer rig or wait for Intel's Ivy Bridge?

I sold my i7 940 PC while it was still worth something as i don't use it too much and it was being wasted. With the money I built a budget micro-ATX PC using an Athlon II X4 645 CPU and Radeon 6870 GPU (perfectly fine for gaming) and still had plenty of cash leftover. My i7 rig was also raping my electricity bill!

I noticed this also, AMD keeps refining their 45nm process, increasing efficiency while staying at the same process. "Kinda" the same when AMD went from Thunderbird to Palomino.

Apparently Intel has the best fabs but I do have to salute AMD for being the only one to be able to keep up with Intel (and for a while even being number 1!) even though AMD seems to always be behind the fab race

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

On another note, today I treated myself to some parts. I have a two week break from Uni and just felt like upgrading. Parts are […]
Show full quote

On another note, today I treated myself to some parts. I have a two week break from Uni and just felt like upgrading. Parts are so cheap at the moment and I'm bored 😁

I got an Asrock full ATX H61 board, i5 2400 and 2x4 GB DDR3 1333. Now keep in mind, I came from a Phenom II quad core 3.2 GHz.

Now I knew that there wouldn't be much of a performance difference, at least that's the impression I got from the reviews.

But I could tell right away. Just opening things, shutting the machine down, installing software just happens so much faster. I ran some benchmarks on the old machine yesterday and I couldn't believe it. The 3D Mark 11 CPU score and the Resident Evil 5 benchmark show a 50!!!! % higher performance!

So yea, I have first hand experience now. And the thing is, the benchmarks on the net don't show this performance difference, so not sure what is going on. I don't think going from 4 to 8 GB is responsible here.

The Asrock board comes with this Xfast USB software which also speeds up USB 2.0 performance. I tested this and it really copies things faster. Nothing like what they claim (300%), more along 15% faster...

50% is VERY impressive! But I have to say that when it comes to opening files etc, it also depends on how old your install is (and more importantly, how fast your harddrive is).

I've noticed my Phenom 2 955BE (=quad 3.2Ghz...dang new naming scheme 😵 ...I wish BOTH AMD and Intel would start using more normal names again, those numbers may sound logical when comparing chips of the same generation, but if I see someone selling some particular chip I AL-WAYS have to look up the part number! -_- ).

And the tiny Intel cooler is also a curse, their boxed coolers are so tiny because it is cheaper that way.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

PS: […]
Show full quote

PS:

Had a "damn I'm getting old" moment today. At the shop I packed all the stuff into a bag. When I got home I noticed that the sound card I also got wasn't in the bag.

I left it at the counter 😒

Getting it tomorrow. It's a PCIe X-Fi Xtreme Audio, because the audio chip on this board is VIA (not that great for games) and the board is only PCIe, so my PCI Xtreme Music is now paper weight.

Shit -_-

Lets hope the people working there are the more honest kind 😉

Edit:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Fair comment. If you asked me why I upgraded, I haven't got a good reason. It was mostly because I was bored and wanted to play with some shiny new hardware 🤣

Lol, I wish I had the money to do that. If I had, I would've build rigs with every single socket out there! ;D

I'm not much of an upgrader. I tend to build a new rigs and stick with it for a long time, perhaps upgrading only the memory, harddrive and may-be the graphics card (though I never actually have upgraded my graphics cards in any of my former "main" rigs before, I tend to stick with +memory and +harddrive 😉 ).

Edit2:

sliderider wrote:

AMD is going to be releasing 28nm GPU's shortly. How long do you think it will be before they start using 28nm in their CPU's?

How are we supposed to know? 😜

Personally I don't know the -exact- way AMD uses to make it's chips.
Perhaps reading into the matter can provide an answer?

I "might", but I got much more threads to read, haven't been online in 24h 😜

sliderider wrote:

AMD is going to be releasing 28nm GPU's shortly. How long do you think it will be before they start using 28nm in their CPU's?

Ok we need to clarify some things. And I totally forgot to mention this earlier.

AMD isn't making any GPUs anymore. AMD is now fab less. They sold all their fabs (Global Foundry).

Secondly the 28nm GPUs will come from good old TSMC just like with all the previous cards. TSMC have been doing this for a long time and had massive issues with the 40nm process and the 28nm process has also been delayed.

And so does Nvidia.

GF needs to sort out their 32nm process first. You know what I mean when you look at the power draw of Llano.

I wish that Intel would buy Nvidia, then we would have awesome 22nm cards by next year!

Tetrium wrote:

Lets hope the people working there are the more honest kind 😉

Lol, I wish I had the money to do that. If I had, I would've build rigs with every single socket out there! ;D

Hardware is cheap as chips at the moment. The board and the 8 GB Ram cost only ~ 70 bucks each. The CPU was the most expensive part with 180 bucks, but keep in mind this is Intels third fastest processor!

That's the main benefit of being a bachelor. Instead of buying shoes I can afford to upgrade once in a while 🤣

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I wish that Intel would buy Nvidia, then we would have awesome 22nm cards by next year!

I think theres a good chance of this actually happening ever since AMD aquired ATI and NV left the chipset market.
NV has very little other places to go

Tetrium wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I wish that Intel would buy Nvidia, then we would have awesome 22nm cards by next year!

I think theres a good chance of this actually happening ever since AMD aquired ATI and NV left the chipset market.
NV has very little other places to go

It would be hilarious if they sold out to someone other than Intel. Someone like VIA, maybe... or Matrox 😳 🤣

Or S3!

🤣

NV is trying awfully hard to outmaneuver the x86 companies with their ARM CPUs. And of course the GPGPU thing that they lead in right now, even if it's not exactly an amazing success story.

swaaye wrote:

NV is trying awfully hard to outmaneuver the x86 companies with their ARM CPUs. And of course the GPGPU thing that they lead in right now, even if it's not exactly an amazing success story.

I think it's because they have little options left. NV lost their GPU dominance to ATI (not counting the onboard stuff here) and their formerly successful chipset division is all but gone now.
Bumpgate didn't help them much either.

sliderider wrote:

It would be hilarious if they sold out to someone other than Intel. Someone like VIA, maybe... or Matrox 😳 🤣

I don't see Matrox in this picture, but potentially with VIA they could create x86 CPU's, though iirc the license VIA has (or had) wasn't transferable or something?

Apparently AMD gaining market share over nVidia was in part due to bitcoins. A heap of people started building mining rigs using AMD cards because they are better for bitcoin mining than nvidia - some people had half a dozen Crossfire machines in their home exclusively to mine bitcoins.

Unfortunately bitcoins work on diminishing returns (the more bitcoins already mined, the longer it takes to mine new ones) so now a heap of people have sold their mining rigs 🤣.

I don't mine bitcoins or participate in the community, I've just read a bit about it because a lot of the people there are delusional and some of the stuff they say is hilarious 😀
see www.buttcoin.org