Trying to quench the "Greed for Speed."
Configuration
Athlon 500 - Processor has a 650 core 1/3 cache @ 1.9v
Globalwin heatsink air cooled
Asus K7M version 1.04
128MB Crucial PC133
Viper 770 TNT2 Ultra
Creative Labs SBLive
Adaptec 2940U2W
IBM 9.1GB LZX 10k rpm U2 Wide
Plextor Plexwriter 4x
Plextor 40X WIDE
20GB Maxtor 7200rpm ATA33
Viewsonic P810 21" Monitor
Ovislink 10/100 NIC
US Robotics 56k external Courier
Altec Lansing ACS 500's speakers
Enlight 7237 Case
300 watt Sparkle Power supply
For more information: mailto:troyo@elko.net
12-11-99
A number of you have requested to see some gaming numbers so, I whipped up some Quake 2 and Quake 3 timedemo's. Unfortunately these are
based strictly on my Viper 770 TNT2 Ultra at default speed. As I mention below the K7M does not like an overclocked TNT2 Ultra card. The
settings used for Quake III were (16 bit color,
texture detail was maxed, texture quality default, texture filter was bilinear,
lighting was lightmap).
12-10-99
First off, let me start by saying "WOW" I'd never expect this kind of response. For those of you who have email me, sorry for the slow replies
I've been out of town for past two weeks.
Now for the good stuff.
After doing some more tweaking and the addition of a better cooling setup for the heatsink this bad boy is now humming along at 901 Mhz!
To finally break the 900 barrier took an additional .5 volts to keep the processor stable. Here is a description and picture of a better cooling
solution for my Athlon. In the pictures below I was using a YS Tech 60mm and a small fan from a Pentium II heatsink. What I decided to
do was replace the 60mm with a 80mm and remove the small Pentium II fan and place the 60mm on the side of the heatsink. This increased
the amount of air flow through the fins on the
heatsink itself. Below are some more pictures of case and processor.
A number of you fine overclockers have asked me about the modification made to my Enlight 7237. Here is a better description of what has
been done to the case. First, lets start with the two fans just below the cdrom that you see in the pictures below. These are two 80mm case
fans that I've mount in the drive bays. The nice thing about this setup is that the fans almost perfectly line up with the processor. Now we have
a continual stream of cool air feeding the fans on the heatsink. The 7237 has a mounting place for a 80mm fan in the back which does a good
job of pulling air away from the processor. After installing the 80mm fan in the back there was just enough room to add another so with the help
of Dremel I added another 80mm fan. As you can imagine this created a cool wind tunnel with the processor right in the middle :) The last thing
I did was remove the 80mm front case fan and replace it with a 120mm Panflo. The end result is a system that never rises above 78F even
after 8 hours of Quake III or Primer 95.
Another frequently asked question from you OC'ers was, what is my opinion of the K7M. The board has been very solid for me. This came only
after formatting the hard drive and replacing my 250 watt PS with a Sparkle 300 watt unit. Now that the system has been stable for over a month
I've explore other areas of overclocking. The first place I went to was my Viper TNT2 Ultra card. Here is an area that I've always found room for
improved performance. After a few benchmarks it was obvious that the processor was not the limiting factor when it comes to higher resolutions.
It didn't take long to find out that the K7M does not like overclocked TNT2 ultra cards. Both Quake III and Unreal Tournament would lock or
crash shortly after start a timedemo even when mildly overclocked. Once the Ultra card is reset to default speeds the system will run Quake III
for hours with no problems.
Finally, I put together some benchmarks for the Athlon at different speeds. During the testing I managed to get this bad boy up to 910 Mhz before
it became to unstable for benchmarking. The numbers you see for the 910 Mhz mark are tests that it completed without a crashing. I've also thrown
in some more pictures of the case and processor.
12-4-99
Base Processor is the Pentium III 500
Processor | Sandra's Dhrystone |
|
|
|
Celeron 366 @ 616 Mhz | 1666 | 829 | 19 | 19 |
Pentium III 600 @ 690 Mhz | 1866 | 934 | 28 | 28 |
Athlon 500 @ 884 Mhz | 2949 | 1150 | 54 | 42 |
As you can see the heatsink/fan is no great Alpha but a jimmied globalwin with a small fan next to the power supply connector.
(Can you say Asus K7M)
The custom jobbie you see in the top part of the case is another home cooked idea, very effective!
Case temperature runs at 75F even under heavy uses (i.e., UT, Quake III, Primer 95)
The above fan is a Panflo 120mm that resides in the bottom front of the case. "We like'em big"