Overclockers

Overclockers writer and Benching Team member hokiealumnus (HWBot profile, author profile) , will be benching sub-zero Monday, January 16th at ~9:30 a.m. EST! (Preformatted, sorry; I don’t have a habit of talking in third-person.)

Tune in to Overclockers Live! at ~9:30 a.m. EST (plus or minus 15 minutes) for some overclocking with liquid nitrogen (LN2). I’ll be starting with Intel’s Sandy Bridge-E platform and (time & LN2 allowing) will move on to AMD’s FX platform afterwards pushing for maximum frequency.

Both will be performed on ASUS motherboards and a big shoutout goes to their team for helping publicize today’s day-long excursion.

System One

• Mobo: ASUS Rampage IV Extreme
• CPU: Intel i7 3960X
• RAM: 4 x 2GB G.Skill Ripjaws Z DDR3-2133, 9-11-9-28
• GPU: AMD Reference HD 7970
• Cooling: Liquid nitrogen on the CPU, air on the GPU
• Focus: Anything goes. I’ll start with 2D and after that we’ll see how far 3D can be pushed with this 7970 on air.
• Click here to watch on Overclockers Live!
• Date & Time: January 16, 2012, around 9:30 a.m. EST

Benching will wind down whenever the LN2 runs out or around 4:30-5:00 p.m., whichever occurs first. I was preparing the hardware over the weekend, so there should be little (if any) prep required in the morning. Before leaving you, here’s a little preview of the setup.

Rampage IV Extreme + 7970 Prepped

Hope you can stop by and say hi!

-Jeremy Vaughan (hokiealumnus)

Related posts:

1. Dolk Benching Live Today – April 15th at 6:30pm EST! – CANCELLED
2. hokiealumnus Benching Live April 23rd
3. Hokiealumnus Live Benching Tonight
4. bmwbaxter Benching Bulldozer Live Tonight!
5. Miahallen Live Benching

Tags: 3960X, asus, benching, f1 dark, hokiealumnus, i7 3960x, intel, kingpin, liquid nitrogen, live, livestream, Rampage IV Extreme

28 Comments:

Scrub206

01-15-12 08:45 PM

thats so early ;o; ill be at work. gl hf!

hokiealumnus

01-15-12 08:50 PM

Yea, I'm lucky enough to have the day off to torture hardware tomorrow.

Janus67

01-15-12 08:55 PM

Nice, maybe I'll check in while doing some mFW benches

Mario1

01-15-12 08:57 PM

Will tune in for sure! Skipping school tomorrow.
Could you please tell me the correct time for my timezone(GMT+2)?
My calculations say 11:30AM, but then again - I suck at math.

Janus67

01-15-12 09:08 PM

EST is GMT-5, so that will be a +7 hour difference, which would make it 4:30PM your time?

Bobnova

01-15-12 09:27 PM

Aww I thought this was today. Oh well.

I should be able to show up from 11:30am pacific to 1:00PM pacific, that's my lunch break.
Assuming I'm not busy reviewing or some such thing.

hokiealumnus

01-15-12 09:38 PM

Today would have been nice too, but unfortunately empty dewar is empty.

notJUSTguitar

01-16-12 12:22 AM

Sweet!
I'll finally get to watch live instead of pre-recorded.

Why aren't you using the 7970 with the amd rig?
I know that the scores wouldn't be as good as on the intel, but it would be nice to see how different they are.

hokiealumnus

01-16-12 12:32 AM

In a word: time. For HWBot benching it is fruitless to use AMD for 3D benches. With limited time and LN2, I need to optimize benches-per-liter(-per-minute).

notJUSTguitar

01-16-12 12:33 AM

Oh ok.
Well I look forward to watching

hokiealumnus

01-16-12 01:48 AM

Will be glad to have you!

Also, FWIW, that's the sort of thing you want to compare using ambient cooling. When you already know the answer, you don't want to waste LN2 reseaqrching a foregone conclusion.

dejo

01-16-12 03:43 AM

I will try to stop in for a while Jeremy. Hopefully it will be nice and productive just as the last livestream you did. Always enjoy watching and learning

Convicted1

01-16-12 03:59 AM

I'll be there.

galador

01-16-12 09:29 AM

I'll be watching

This will be interesting I am sure.

Mario1

01-16-12 11:53 AM

May I ask - what keyboard do you use on your benching setups?
As you may know I've contacted Gigabyte regarding our POST problems on the 990FXA-D3 and your UD5 and they've told me I'm transferred to the correct department that will ask me for my keyboard so they can test with it.
I figured out I could add yours too, since I've already let them know that I'm not the only one experiencing this problem.
Blaming it on our keyboards is bogus, but I'll let them have their fun testing so they'll stop blaming it on both of my keyboards.

hokiealumnus

01-16-12 02:44 PM

Live now! http://www.overclockers.com/overclockers-live

My benching keyboard is a cheap Microsoft PS/2 keyboard. I think you have me confused with someone else re: UD5 though, I haven't ever had one of those.

Mario1

01-16-12 03:20 PM

Ah, Bobnova had an UD5, sorry.

hokiealumnus

01-17-12 03:59 AM

Today was a very fun if only partially productive day. The 3960X was a massive fail on cold. Its 5.1GHz brick wall on water didn't move one MHz on LN2. So I just ran the Mini-Forum Wars benches and tore it down.

(htpp = hardware team power points & ugp = user global points)

3960X Benches

SuperPi 1M: 7.375s - 2.1 htpp
UC Bench: 1831.2 - 2.4 htpp
WPrime 1024M - 100.999s - 2.0 htpp / 3.8 ugp

3D Bonus Benches

3DMark03: 158711 - 2.2 htpp / 16.7 ugp
Heaven DX9: 4944.39 - 3.6 htpp

Then I tortured the hell out of the FX-8150. I mean that quite literally. It wouldn't get above 7651MHz for validation. So I ran all the benches at the highest I could.....then made it scream. It was going to give me some more megahurtz or it was going to die trying.

FX-8150 Benches

SuperPi 1M: 11.468s - 5.4 htpp
SuperPi 32M: 11:54.813 - 5.5 htpp
PiFast: 21.36s - 6.1 htpp
UC Bench: 1670 - 6.3 htpp
WPrime 32M: 4.765s - 2.9 htpp / 9.3 ugp
WPrime 1024M: 151.172s - 2.6 htpp
CPUz: 7651.2MHz - 3.6 htpp / 18.9 ugp

.....it died trying at 2.3V. RIP.

Now pictures!

3960X light freezing.



FX-8150 all kinds of frozen.



Cool frost formation.



All in all a very fun day. Thanks to everyone that stopped by and watched!

Janus67

01-17-12 04:24 AM

You went on for quite some time. I can't believe you had the cajones to put 2.3v into that 8150.

hokiealumnus

01-17-12 04:27 AM

Its obstinacy angered me.

If the 3960X died, you would have probably seen me crying on camera. If the FX-8150 had to die trying to do what it was best at, at least it went out in a blaze of frozen glory.

Brolloks

01-17-12 04:29 AM

Pity the SB-E did not play nice under cold

Janus67

01-17-12 04:33 AM

I guess on the bright side your RIVE hasn't started sparking like Nick's!

Section8

01-18-12 08:22 PM

What issues are you guys having with your keyboard? I have a Gigabyte board and I can't get into the BIOS unless I use a PS2 keyboard? Is this the same issue you guys suffer from?

EarthDog

01-18-12 08:28 PM

Try switching USB ports to the ones closest to the PS/2 ports.

Bobnova

01-18-12 08:47 PM

Yeah, I've had that issue with GBT 1155 boards.

Section8

01-20-12 03:57 AM

Hmm OK I will try that. Thanks. Hopefully that does the trick. Very annoying bug with this board.

******************* UPDATE!! *********************

That worked!!! I moved my keyboard to the USB port directly across to the PS2 connection. I have been able to restart the system and get into the BIOS 5 times in a row now. Wow thanks for the tip. I had previously tried no less than 12 different USB keyboards some how thinking maybe this will be the one that works :-( None of them allowed me to enter the BIOS. I ended up just plugging in a PS2 keyboard and leaving it tucked under the desk so every time I needed to get into the BIOS it was available and possible to do so. Now hopefully I can get rid of the extra PS2 keyboard for good. This is a first for me and I have been building systems for 18 years. Thanks again guys for the tip!!!

Bobnova

01-20-12 04:15 AM

Drove me absolutely nuts before I figured it out. I always plugged my keyboard into those ports out of habit from the old days :P

EarthDog

01-20-12 02:14 PM

Indeed. Had this happen to me so now I always plug my USB k/m in to the top ports.

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