New Computer - Core 2 Duo 6400

Adcadet

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My old computer was getting a bit sluggish, and I wanted a new gaming machine. Thanks to everyone here for thoughts, tips, experience, etc. My new system is finally built:

Core 2 Duo 6400
Scyth Ninja cooler
Asus P5N-E SLI (nVidia 650i board)
BFG GeForce 7900GS
2*1GB Geil DDR2 800 memory GX22GB6400UDC
Raptor 150, Raptor 740, WD2000JB
FSP400-60THN 400W power supply
Antec P180B

I'm running a Samsung Syncmaster 904B flat panel and a Samsung 19" CRT. The flat panel has dual inputs, with the 15-pin D-sub going to my old computer so I can flip back and forth by changing inputs with the touch of a button for the monitor and an unplug/plug of my USB mouse plugged into my keyboard.

For now I'm running the onboard sound. I initially installed my old SB Live Value card, but during setup the board had issues so I removed it. The system wasn't booting properly, but I fixed it by moving my RAM from the black to yellow slots, which is odd since other people have noted better results with the black slots. I'm got the front audio port hooked up, but I can't figure out how I would get my SB live card to output through the front ports. The front port connected on the case doesn't seem to fit in the card, just on the motherboard.

The heat sink was a bit hard to install given its size, and one of the mounting pins seemed a bit loose, and the temp at idle was in the high 50's C, but came down to the high 80's after tweaking that pin a bit. I've got the two 120mm exhaust fans at the top rear of the case, and there's a 120mm fan on the lower part of the CPU cooler point up - I can't fit it in front of the cpu because the RAM is in the way. There's also the 120mm fan in the lower part blowing into the power supply. All fans are on the "high" setting, and the case is reasonably quiet. Perhaps if stress testing continues to run fine I'll experiment with thurning the fans down a notch.

The system seems stable running Prime95 at a FSB of 425 MHz for a CPU frequency of 3.4 GHz, or a 59% overclock on air. The memory is running at 16:15 for 398 MHz at 4-4-4-12 2T. The CPU is at 63 degrees C under load.
 

Adcadet

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The speed is great. I honestly don't notice any difference between the stock and 59% overclocked versions while doing most things, and I do wonder if some of the speed difference is moving from my old 512 MB to 2 GB of RAM. I also remember my old dual systems (celeron 400's, then P3-700's) feeling smoother than the Core 2 Duos, but again the major place I notice a lag is application loads - Firefox, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, games, and I'm sure that's hard drive-limited. I'll be installing Linux on the 740GD soon and I suspect I might notice the speed difference there much more than in Windows.
 

Buck

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The addition of RAM makes a big difference. Even with a WD740GD, you might want to consider isolating your swap file to a separate HDD. Maybe purchasing a low capacity SATA drive would work.
 

Adcadet

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OK, I spent some time last night and this morning switching between old and new computer. The software installed is virtually identical, but the new computer is MUCH faster in everything.
 

Adcadet

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No, no trouble at all except for the badness I got when using the black slots, contrary to what I've heard all over the net. My RAM claims to do 4-4-4-12, and as long as I keep it at 2T or auto it runs fine at 800 MHz at 4-4-4-12. I seem to remember that way back when a 1:1 FSB:Memory worked best. At a 425 MHz FSB the memory runs at 16:15 for 398 MHz. As I understand it, the Conroe chips really aren't memory limited and thus I haven't tried overclocking the memory. Is there any reason I should?
 

Adcadet

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So, I tried overclocking the memory. In short, it was a futile experiment from what I can tell. As long as I tell the board to run the memory at 800 MHZ 4-4-4-12 2T everything is fine. As soon as I try to get it above 800 MHz, even at 5-5-5-15 2T the computer will refuse to boot. I suppose I could play around with it some more, but I saw yet another review (at Tom's, I think) that showed that OCing the memory really didn't improve performance, at least not on a 4300 chip.

Ah, found the link:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/18/overclocking-guide-part-1/
 
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