Best fan configuration

Bobnova said:

You check it with a glass case side and a smoke machine or something? Airflow tends to be hard to see.

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Smoke machine... You could say that. I used to be a smoker. I used the "lit cigarette airflow test" method

I had a temperature probe sitting right under the intake-repurposed-to-exhaust vent. Turn computer on. Room temp and had airflow. Watched the temperature climb and the airflow decrease. Eventually the airflow stopped and the temperature dropped.

I was actually quite taken aback. I would not have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes.

Jim

That's pretty wild. Hard to argue with smoke testing though. Thanks for going into detail.
I'm going to have to play with this and see what kind of results I can get!

Well if you think about it, it makes sense... a PSU has per definition not the best of "freeflow" otherwise it would burn itself up... add to that a relative weak fan in the PSU and it has to work really really hard. Especially if it was an "old" design which was supposed to be sitting at the top of an ATX case.

What probably didn't help was that very likely any "hot" air exhausted by the PSU was then "sucked" back into the case by the fan mounted above it... creating recirculation.

With re-circ, it goes fast.. try it in a car: set your heater to recirc and it gets hot ( & stuffy) very quickly Same goes for cold (A/C) air, but a bit slower.

Can anyone point me to a couple thorough, reliable, step by step guides for first time over clocking?

In my signature is a link...

Is there a more thorough guide that goes through the basics? I feel like your writing that guide for people who know a lot about overclocking. For instance, I found my CPU to be doing 4.4 GHz at 1.270V at 70°C max. Now what? And what is 'BCLK' anyways? And why is my CPU clock constantly at 4.4 GHz at idle right now even though the temp is 28°C and CPU utilization 1%? My fans are killing my ears! Is there some kind of auto regulation disabled when overclocking?

Well.. clockspeed is function of BCLK*CPU multiplier. So 100(BCLK)*35(default CPU multi)= 3.5GHz. You have an 'unlocked' CPU so you really only need to use the multiplier. Your CPU is sitting at a constant clock because you, presumably when following the guide, disabled the sleep and power savings features. That said, once you are stable at an appropriate clockspeed, voltage, and load temperature, you can enable that if you choose. Though, I have no idea why your fans are loud... you should be able to adjust them I would imagine.

EarthDog said:

Well.. clockspeed is function of BCLK*CPU multiplier. So 100(BCLK)*35(default CPU multi)= 3.5GHz. You have an 'unlocked' CPU so you really only need to use the multiplier. Your CPU is sitting at a constant clock because you, presumably when following the guide, disabled the sleep and power savings features. That said, once you are stable at an appropriate clockspeed, voltage, and load temperature, you can enable that if you choose. Though, I have no idea why your fans are loud... you should be able to adjust them I would imagine.

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I figured out the power saving features, but I give up overclocking. Can't even pass an aida64 stress test for more than a couple hours without the blue screen even as low as 4.2-4.3 GHz with 1.27-1.28v. Temps ran up to 85-88C on that voltage

My suggestion is to start a thread on your overclocking and let the members here help. It really is as easy as setting the multiplier, raising voltage, and checking if it is stable. The guide is a bit convoluted and there are a lot of not needed things to do, really. But should give you a general idea of what to do.

You are temp limited already...