- Joined
- May 3, 2007
$800 buys a really nice system these days! Ok, well for $830 shipped from Newegg I built the following system last night:
Rosewill RCX-Z775-SL 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler - Retail
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 Allendale 1.8GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E4300 - Retail
Rosewill R218-P-BK Black SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
Rosewill RD450-2-SB ATX12V Ver.2.2 450W Power Supply - Retail
GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3 LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
2 sticks SUPER TALENT 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model T800UB1GC5 - Retail
PNY VCG88GTS32XPB GeForce 8800GTS 320MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail
Update HITACHI Deskstar T7K500 HDT725032VLA360 (0A33435) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
SAMSUNG 18X DVD±R DVD Burner With 12X DVD-RAM Write, LightScribe Technology Black SATA Model SH-S183L - OEM
My goal was to build a nice gaming rig for cheap. I was looking for the most bang for the buck. I'm dubious of $200 mobo's, $100+ power supplies, water cooling, SLI (not enough performance gain for the money IMHO) , million dollar "Special O/C memory" and am kinda sick of glowing LED's being on everything I own. I used a plain-jane black case and a decent power supply.
The build was fairly easy. The above case is actually pretty nice. It has plastic standoffs molded into the motherboard cradle so you don't have to add any and the board is insulated from the chassis. It has a large but quiet 2000 RPM 120mm exhaust fan. It has a side mounted CPU fan duct that had to be removed due to the oversize cooler. They are plenty of drive bays and everything lined up. The case has a front mounted USB and audio pod and the connectors were actually all molded together into one connector that properly fit the mobo. All my previous cases had like 15 single pin connectors that you had to figure out where the !$#@D@ they went. The case had only 1 drawback for me, it has that weird 1 screw rail that holds down
all of the PCI/PCIe cards. I prefer the ones with one screw per card.
Motherboard feature placement was pretty good. I'm not using the IDE or floppy connectors but the SATA connectors are free of obstruction. The large heatsink cleared all of the caps around the CPU. I personally don't like the socket 775 cooler fastening system. I've always wondered what guy actually gets paid to come up with these. I've always thought bolting in a cooler using a torque wrench with a specified inch/pound rating would be cool...
The Rosewill power supply has a lot of heft to it and seems to work well. The thing only included 1 screw and the case included no screws for the power supply. I had some spares so no biggee. It fit great and the wires are wrapped together for each connector so it looks pretty clean. Everything reached and nothing is getting cut off by fans.
The 8800 GTS wasn't rubbing on any caps or otherwise in the way. It's wide and takes up 2 slots but isn't any longer than a 7900 series card. All of the connectors reached easily and nothing was being chewed up by a fan so I fired it up. It booted the Windows XP Pro CD first try. Both the SATA DVD and HD were correctly detected and the install went great. Everything at stock 1.8 Ghz went fine. I use Quake 3 as a CPU benchmark running the stock demo on 1.30 with 1024x768 with all of the option up to full and sound enabled. It hit 411 FPS. 3dMark06 total was around 7300. With decent numbers and everything working I decided it was time to clock it up.
I simply raised the FSB to 266 from 200, changed the RAM multipler to 3x and it posted fine. It booted and everything seemed cool. I ran Quake 3 at the new speed expecting some nice gain at 2.4 Ghz. It ran SLOWER. It ran a 337 FPS. Weird. I'd installed some utils on the mobo CD and wondered if it was clocking itself down or changing the multipler. I removed those. I tried numerous other bus speeds with no success. I was able to eek out some performance by raising the bus and leaving the RAM multiplier at stock. Every increment would be overclocking the RAM more though so I would have needed to run the RAM over 1300 Mhz just to get 3 Ghz. That ain't happenning. Not even if I had "ultra special" RAM. Through more testing, I found that CPU only benchmarks were not affected by this problem. I could clock the CPU and adjust the memory multiplier and would instantly see the gains. I thought maybe it was Quake 3. 3dMark06 did the same thing as Q3.
Overclocked scores were in the 3000's! I changed the PCIe bus from AUTO to 100 thinking it was playing with the setting. I reloaded XP and
flashed the mobo BIOS to the latest with no results. I finally did some digging on this forum and found a similar system with the same
issue. He had to change his PCIe bus to 101 for some reason. That failed for me. Sad. Very sad was I... Turns out 102 did the trick! Overclocking now works with the results you'd expect.
The build is only about 15 hours at this point but I think I've already met my goal. I was able to push 9x370 with a 2x RAM multiplier for 3330 with 740 Mhz RAM. It booted fine and ran Q3 at 669 FPS. Orthos locked after 2 minutes and rebooted at 3330. Bummer. I next set the CPU at 9x360 with a 2.5 RAM multipler. This was 3240 Mhz with the DDR2/800 running at 900. This yielded 665 FPS in Q3 plus a 3dMark06 score of 9208. I tried again using Orthos and after 2 minutes, instant reboot. I am now running 9x350 with a 2.5 RAM multiplier for 3.150 Ghz with 875 Mhz DDR2. I ran Orthos for an hour on the CPU stress test and the CPU temp was 55 degress celsius with the case cover off. I put the side cover on and ran Orthos RAM stress test for an hour without incident. I checked the temp with the cover now on and it was 56 degrees. The money for the Rosewill cooler was well spent. I've seen a lot of reports with C2D's around 3.2 running 70 or higher on more expensive coolers.
I'm not exactly done yet but it appears getting 3 Ghz out of a $116 e4300 has been achieved easily. I need to stress test the system more but it
appears 100% stable at this point. My 3dMark06 score at 3150 is now 9162. I would like to say that up to this point I've allowed the motherboard
to adjust all of the voltages and timings on it's own. It did a lousy job with the PCIe bus when I let is manager that so maybe there is more room
to tinker. It's still a great board for those that want a cheap overclock but don't want to be concerned with the particulars. I would like to add
that I did try for the holy grail O/C of 9x400 with the RAM set at 800 and it simply failed to boot
I'm not exactly upset by that considering my
goal. This system runs circles around my older 3700+ clocked to 2.8 with a GeForce 7900 GT.
Rosewill RCX-Z775-SL 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler - Retail
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 Allendale 1.8GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E4300 - Retail
Rosewill R218-P-BK Black SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
Rosewill RD450-2-SB ATX12V Ver.2.2 450W Power Supply - Retail
GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3 LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
2 sticks SUPER TALENT 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model T800UB1GC5 - Retail
PNY VCG88GTS32XPB GeForce 8800GTS 320MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail
Update HITACHI Deskstar T7K500 HDT725032VLA360 (0A33435) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
SAMSUNG 18X DVD±R DVD Burner With 12X DVD-RAM Write, LightScribe Technology Black SATA Model SH-S183L - OEM
My goal was to build a nice gaming rig for cheap. I was looking for the most bang for the buck. I'm dubious of $200 mobo's, $100+ power supplies, water cooling, SLI (not enough performance gain for the money IMHO) , million dollar "Special O/C memory" and am kinda sick of glowing LED's being on everything I own. I used a plain-jane black case and a decent power supply.
The build was fairly easy. The above case is actually pretty nice. It has plastic standoffs molded into the motherboard cradle so you don't have to add any and the board is insulated from the chassis. It has a large but quiet 2000 RPM 120mm exhaust fan. It has a side mounted CPU fan duct that had to be removed due to the oversize cooler. They are plenty of drive bays and everything lined up. The case has a front mounted USB and audio pod and the connectors were actually all molded together into one connector that properly fit the mobo. All my previous cases had like 15 single pin connectors that you had to figure out where the !$#@D@ they went. The case had only 1 drawback for me, it has that weird 1 screw rail that holds down
all of the PCI/PCIe cards. I prefer the ones with one screw per card.
Motherboard feature placement was pretty good. I'm not using the IDE or floppy connectors but the SATA connectors are free of obstruction. The large heatsink cleared all of the caps around the CPU. I personally don't like the socket 775 cooler fastening system. I've always wondered what guy actually gets paid to come up with these. I've always thought bolting in a cooler using a torque wrench with a specified inch/pound rating would be cool...
The Rosewill power supply has a lot of heft to it and seems to work well. The thing only included 1 screw and the case included no screws for the power supply. I had some spares so no biggee. It fit great and the wires are wrapped together for each connector so it looks pretty clean. Everything reached and nothing is getting cut off by fans.
The 8800 GTS wasn't rubbing on any caps or otherwise in the way. It's wide and takes up 2 slots but isn't any longer than a 7900 series card. All of the connectors reached easily and nothing was being chewed up by a fan so I fired it up. It booted the Windows XP Pro CD first try. Both the SATA DVD and HD were correctly detected and the install went great. Everything at stock 1.8 Ghz went fine. I use Quake 3 as a CPU benchmark running the stock demo on 1.30 with 1024x768 with all of the option up to full and sound enabled. It hit 411 FPS. 3dMark06 total was around 7300. With decent numbers and everything working I decided it was time to clock it up.
I simply raised the FSB to 266 from 200, changed the RAM multipler to 3x and it posted fine. It booted and everything seemed cool. I ran Quake 3 at the new speed expecting some nice gain at 2.4 Ghz. It ran SLOWER. It ran a 337 FPS. Weird. I'd installed some utils on the mobo CD and wondered if it was clocking itself down or changing the multipler. I removed those. I tried numerous other bus speeds with no success. I was able to eek out some performance by raising the bus and leaving the RAM multiplier at stock. Every increment would be overclocking the RAM more though so I would have needed to run the RAM over 1300 Mhz just to get 3 Ghz. That ain't happenning. Not even if I had "ultra special" RAM. Through more testing, I found that CPU only benchmarks were not affected by this problem. I could clock the CPU and adjust the memory multiplier and would instantly see the gains. I thought maybe it was Quake 3. 3dMark06 did the same thing as Q3.
Overclocked scores were in the 3000's! I changed the PCIe bus from AUTO to 100 thinking it was playing with the setting. I reloaded XP and
flashed the mobo BIOS to the latest with no results. I finally did some digging on this forum and found a similar system with the same
issue. He had to change his PCIe bus to 101 for some reason. That failed for me. Sad. Very sad was I... Turns out 102 did the trick! Overclocking now works with the results you'd expect.
The build is only about 15 hours at this point but I think I've already met my goal. I was able to push 9x370 with a 2x RAM multiplier for 3330 with 740 Mhz RAM. It booted fine and ran Q3 at 669 FPS. Orthos locked after 2 minutes and rebooted at 3330. Bummer. I next set the CPU at 9x360 with a 2.5 RAM multipler. This was 3240 Mhz with the DDR2/800 running at 900. This yielded 665 FPS in Q3 plus a 3dMark06 score of 9208. I tried again using Orthos and after 2 minutes, instant reboot. I am now running 9x350 with a 2.5 RAM multiplier for 3.150 Ghz with 875 Mhz DDR2. I ran Orthos for an hour on the CPU stress test and the CPU temp was 55 degress celsius with the case cover off. I put the side cover on and ran Orthos RAM stress test for an hour without incident. I checked the temp with the cover now on and it was 56 degrees. The money for the Rosewill cooler was well spent. I've seen a lot of reports with C2D's around 3.2 running 70 or higher on more expensive coolers.
I'm not exactly done yet but it appears getting 3 Ghz out of a $116 e4300 has been achieved easily. I need to stress test the system more but it
appears 100% stable at this point. My 3dMark06 score at 3150 is now 9162. I would like to say that up to this point I've allowed the motherboard
to adjust all of the voltages and timings on it's own. It did a lousy job with the PCIe bus when I let is manager that so maybe there is more room
to tinker. It's still a great board for those that want a cheap overclock but don't want to be concerned with the particulars. I would like to add
that I did try for the holy grail O/C of 9x400 with the RAM set at 800 and it simply failed to boot
I'm not exactly upset by that considering my goal. This system runs circles around my older 3700+ clocked to 2.8 with a GeForce 7900 GT.
