- Joined
- Aug 8, 2007
- Location
- London, ON Canada
with a big push the last week, i have finally managed to put the Canadian flag in the HWBot top ten. a killer CPU, a lot of help, some long long hours, and very little to no sleep the last few days has accomplished my goal. i would first like to thank HardwareCanucks.com as they have been the driving force behind a lot of my success. without the opportunities Mike and the gang have provided, the goal wouldn't have been accomplished
another special shout out to MSI Canada, in particular William. in the last push for the top 10, MSI stepped up with 4 x MSI R4890 Cyclone OC's. i don't have a big budget and no sponsorship so for MSI to come through at the last minute in such a rush for something like this, it really is appreciated. these were the final pieces of the puzzle to making this happen for Canada. it may sound like nothing special for getting into the top 10 but for Canada and Canadian overclocking, this is a big day.
now, on to some screen shots and photos of the final push...
as mentioned, MSI really came through in supporting Canadian overclocking and managed to get four MSI R4890 Cyclone OC's in my hands. the cards are clocked in at 880/975 with a special cooler and non-reference design. both the non-reference design and special coolers actually work against me for my purposes as getting four of those into the Classy wasn't easy, and non-reference means no software volt mods.
it does however mean that the normal end user gets a beefier card and cooling...with no squealing from what i could hear. i will mention one thing, there needs to be more mounting pressure on the heat sinks. adding thin plastic washers to the back side made a night and day difference with these cards and their temps for me.
installing 4 x MSI R4890 Cyclone's in the Classified
...is definitely not an easy thing to do, but possible. obviously an HR-03 Rev.A is the first part that is needed, and a couple spacers to keep the second card off the third.
click for full size...
to say there is a bit of an angle to the cards - primarily the third one - is quite an understatement. the spacers on each side of the second heat sink at the top and bottom were necessary to keep the fan off the back of the third card. reference cards are much easier to mount in a setup like this but with the washer mods, these heat sinks stay cool as a cucumber with the fans turned up a bit...even jammed in here like this.
preparation is the key to success
...and preparation is half the battle.
click for full size...
all benchers know, preparation is what makes a good session go smoothly. before running any LN2 on the CPU, i shake down the cards and setup on phase first at -30C ~ -35C. this will allow me to find GPU clocks for each bench, setup the OS, get RivaTuner shortcuts setup, and the final clocks - minus the high CPU multi - dialed in for the LN2 run. then the OS's go off to the imaging farm ready for fixing borked OS's so no down time is lost to OS corruptions when under LN2.
unfortunately the MSI R4890 Cyclone's i have are just the "OC" version so there was no 1000/1000 clocks out of the box that the SOC version offers. i also didn't have access to software volt mods due to a lack of reference design. so my GPU clocks looked to max out around 920/1050. having volt mods with this beefy PWM design would definitely make these cards powerful. perhaps a hard mod is in the future for them. needless to say, the setup is ready for cold...
