Here's some clock figures, this is pretty much my 'base' clock at the minute, oddly enough superPI doesn't stress the cores out properly, so I just left it crunching seti@home for a while to get the temps up 

ohhhhhhhhh i think it's time for me to upgrade


what's it like to use ? noticeably fast ?

core2duo at 4.3ghz here.... will i notice the difference ?

Quote from: knighty on January 13, 2011, 00:36:55 AM

what's it like to use ? noticeably fast ?

core2duo at 4.3ghz here.... will i notice the difference ?

Oh aye yeah, I mean I only built it for email and browsing the web but I've never been so productive in Farmville.

I lowered the VCORE slightly and it's still stable, for now this is what it's staying at. The temps are higher as LinX is the only thing to properly stress the setup, the higher temps are a result of running this, superPi gets nowhere near these temps

I've done a lot more reading now and am comfortable with the new UEFI bios.

The reason chips have been dying appears to be the fact you can dump far far far too many volts through VCORE than is even sensible, 1.35v is a suggested limit, this Asus board will put 1.9v through it if you tell it too

Example, if you leave everything on AUTO, and set the target to 4.8Ghz it will ramp the VCORE to slightly above 1.4v when in turbo mode, already unsafe, lord knows how high it will go if you say ok aim for 5.0Ghz on AUTO 

AUTO overclocking I found is safe up to 4.5Ghz, anything beyond that it starts to get dicey, and you need to manually set it up really, I think this is where the problem lies for many and why there are reports of a few fried chips

If you're happy to put the volts in, you can crack 5.0GHz, I however am not, I don't want it to last 5 minutes

Sound advice Matt,I not want to be overclocking mine any higher than 4.5 anyway 

anyone know if i can get waterblocks to fit any of the new motherboards ?

I was just about to order.... but then realised i can't find any water blocks to fit.... there's a few which might fit.... but I'd rather not chance it... i was expecting to find some reviews with other people already water-cooled so i could just copy them..... but can't find anything

Quote from: knighty on January 15, 2011, 23:00:44 PM
anyone know if i can get waterblocks to fit any of the new motherboards ?

I was just about to order.... but then realised i can't find any water blocks to fit.... there's a few which might fit.... but I'd rather not chance it... i was expecting to find some reviews with other people already water-cooled so i could just copy them..... but can't find anything

I was under the impression its exactly the same as 1156 tbh.

http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop/customer/home.php?cat=1301

Specialtech has loads in stock, but tbh i would assume they are 1156 blocks, maybe you can confirm it.

Same fittings as 1156 yes, I used my noctua 'intel' kit and it worked the same as it did on an older board 

i think my chip block fits, it's the motherboard chips / mofset thingamabobs I'm thinking about :-o

for anyone who has the asus motherboards there is a new bios out,it came out not long ago but seems they have sorted the major problems ppl where having,so i,m ready to go get my stuff now at last

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1578865

Yes, cold booting issues fixed 

in case anyone is looking to get one...

Intel Core i7 2600K Sandy Bridge *OEM* Unlocked, Socket 1155, Sandy Bridge, Quad Core, 3.4 GHz, 8MB Cache, 95W, OEM £246.20 Scan

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/intel-core-i7-2600k-sandy-bridge-oem-unlocked-socket-1155-sandy-bridge-quad-core/860393

Not sure if this is a great deal, I haven't bought a CPU in years, so a little out of touch... If it is then someone can post it in bargains

With Aria doing OEM i5 2500k for 156 quid, I have just ordered one with a few other bits:

ASUS P8P67 Pro, has 4x 6Gbps ports which is plenty for me. 
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz
2 x Asus HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 OC Graphics Card
Noctua NH-D14 Dual Radiator and Fan CPU Cooler
Kingston 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz
Gelid GC-Extreme Cutting Edge Thermal Compound

Decided I might as well go to DX11 card's while I was at it and the cooler looks a real beast!

Having looked at matt5cott's results I thought the numbers looked good, but having not ran any benchmarks in some time I decided to fire up the same apps and see what my desktop and laptop got. The results are utterly depressing for me:

Desktop, E8400 @ 3Ghz, 8Gb DDR2 PC8500 + HD4670


Brand new laptop, Intel i3 + 6Gb DDR3 + dedicated HD5650



I didn't think my hardware was that old (it certainly doesn't feel old/slow) but looking at those numbers up above again... 


Also has anyone else noticed the CPU core speed and multiplier seems to jump around a lot in cpu-z?

To be fair your desktop is 2 generations old now, I just looked on Wikipedia and Wolfdales were released on January 20 2008, I was an early adapter and picked one up within a month or 2 and it didn't feel old or slow in my gaming PC just before I upgraded, tbh I was more than happy with it, I didn't feel any real need to upgrade until the NDA was lifted on Sandy Bridge then I was astonished by the performance numbers that were reported.

Think the thing is the speed of hardware has vastly outstripped the gains in software and games over the last few years, so the usable life expectancy of hardware is a lot longer. 10 years or so ago a midrange PC was out of date within 18 months or so, now I think that usable life time is far longer.

The speed dropping at idle in CPU-Z is Speedstep at work.

If you want to freshen things up get a SSD for it and you could always overclock it, most Wolfdales hit 3.6GHz even with modest cooling, 3.8 or 4GHz if you're lucky.