A Cooler, Kinder Pentium 955 Extreme Edition
New D975XBX motherboard and Pentium 955 Extreme processor wedged into the Antec P180 case (FYI: Intel has asked for the old parts back for study, darn!) and things have changed for the Intel's desktop bad dog.
If you remember (and, if you don't, you can check here), when last we left the 955EE it was hotter than a hound dog in the Sahara during a heat wave. It idled at 140 F and easily zipped up to 190 F when rendering. Odds were good, when it did that, the system would shut down shortly thereafter.
Things are bit different with the new stuff. (And yes, the motherboard does have a different version number and the UI for the BIOS has changed slightly. The CPU looks like the CPU.)
This time, the idle temperature is down at 109 F and the bump during rendering only hits 111 F, That's quite a change.
One note of disclosure: I was still unhappy with Intel's revised fan. The architecture was fine but the attachment technology still seems a bit rinky dink for this class of CPU. So... I drove over to CompUSA and picked up a ThermalTake Big Typhoon heatsink/fan combo. This is a huge mother - 120mm fan with 6 heat pipes, pushing 54.4 cfm at 1300rpm at only 12dBA of sound. (Okay, I admit it. I bought two because I thought I would be playing with the old, bad stuff and wanted to see if the fan made any difference. I'll be returning one in the morning. Darn!) I had to grind off about 1/8th inch of the top clamp (simple job if you have a grinder) to clear the heatsinks on the motherboard's voltage regulators but it fit.
I'm running benchmarks as I write and it's a long and arduous process so I have no results right this moment. I'll update here when available.
By the way, I've mounted the 4 Seagate ST373454SS SAS hard drives in the case but I haven't received permission yet from the vendor to attach the mystery PCIe interface card, More as it unravels.
If you remember (and, if you don't, you can check here), when last we left the 955EE it was hotter than a hound dog in the Sahara during a heat wave. It idled at 140 F and easily zipped up to 190 F when rendering. Odds were good, when it did that, the system would shut down shortly thereafter.
Things are bit different with the new stuff. (And yes, the motherboard does have a different version number and the UI for the BIOS has changed slightly. The CPU looks like the CPU.)
This time, the idle temperature is down at 109 F and the bump during rendering only hits 111 F, That's quite a change.
One note of disclosure: I was still unhappy with Intel's revised fan. The architecture was fine but the attachment technology still seems a bit rinky dink for this class of CPU. So... I drove over to CompUSA and picked up a ThermalTake Big Typhoon heatsink/fan combo. This is a huge mother - 120mm fan with 6 heat pipes, pushing 54.4 cfm at 1300rpm at only 12dBA of sound. (Okay, I admit it. I bought two because I thought I would be playing with the old, bad stuff and wanted to see if the fan made any difference. I'll be returning one in the morning. Darn!) I had to grind off about 1/8th inch of the top clamp (simple job if you have a grinder) to clear the heatsinks on the motherboard's voltage regulators but it fit.
I'm running benchmarks as I write and it's a long and arduous process so I have no results right this moment. I'll update here when available.
By the way, I've mounted the 4 Seagate ST373454SS SAS hard drives in the case but I haven't received permission yet from the vendor to attach the mystery PCIe interface card, More as it unravels.
posted by Bill at 1:05 AM
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