Itx oc/mod Thread!

__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________

Hello Everyone!

For anyone that wasn't following my previous thread where I was going to water cool the one of the ITX
systems posted in here, though I decided to take a different route and simply air cool it as well as build a second ITX system.
Welcome to the rest, I am glade that you've decided to stop by and take a peak.

I hope that this entertains you a bit.

to avoid confusion I will be naming the systems:
> ION1 & ION2
> Stock
> OverClock


__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________





ION1

Intel Atom N330 1.60GHz @ 2.1GHz
GeForce 9400M (Core/Shader) 450/1100 @ 535/1230

The GPU was downclocked to match the ION2 it also fixed the heating issue.



Zotac IONITX-A-U (Link)

*** Spec from manufacture's website ***

Model IONITX-A-U
Chipset MCP7A-ION
CPU Socket BGA 437
FSB 533 MHz

Memory Size Up to 4GB RAM
Memory Slots 2x 240 pin DDR2 DIMM
Memory Type DDR2 667/800
Onboard Audio 5.1
Onboard LAN 10/100/1000Mbps
Onboard Video GeForce 9400M

Click to expand...

Crucial Ballistix (Link)

*** Spec from manufacture's website ***

# Module Size: 4GB kit (2GBx2)
# Package: Ballistix 240-pin DIMM
# Feature: DDR2 PC2-6400
# Specs: DDR2 PC2-6400 • 4-4-4-12 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR2-800 • 2.0V • 256Meg x 64 •

Click to expand...

Seagate Momentus

2.5" 7200rpm 16mb cache 250GB HD

Click to expand...

Case #1

Bellow are pictures of the old setup which consists of an old ITX case that had it's side panel removed due to a bad cut (remember folks, measure twice, cut one!) though it turned out to be fine later when I cut out the shape of the fan and installed a 100x100x10 @ 800RPM Fan to push air directly on the HSU. It worked well but I wanted more power, more cooling!










Case #2

In my quest for better Cooling, I changed the case to an Antec-ISK 300-65 which had a few good reviews. Upon the arrival of the case I changed the twin 80mm Antec 3 Speed fan's with some noctua 80mm fan's so that the case would run a bit cooler and quieter, this wasn't really the case unless the fan's use the resisters that are included though your airflow takes a hit.

To try and fix that small noise issue I installed a 140mm Noctua fan (max 1300RPM) above the HSU and had both 80mm fan's pushing air into the case rather then working as exhaust fan's like they should have been. The results where not that great...

CPU Reads about 19C (66.2F) & GPU Reads about 38C (100.4F) idle. The GPU does not go above 45C (113F) Under load.


I realized that the 140mm Fan is not pulling in any air, it's simply taking the small amount of air that it can get from within the restricted amount of space in the case and pushing it down which results in the air not exactly being cool, so I will cut a Hole in the side of the case above the 140mm Fan and change it so that both 80mm act as exhaust. this should help a bit. Other things that I intend to do are as follows:

1. Lap Heatsink
2. Lap Copper Shim on CPU

I am aiming to lower the temps to low 30's and have the GPU reach no more then 40C (104F) Under Load, at which point I may bring the GPU Core Clock back up to 625Mhz anything above that will make the GPU unstable and cause artifacts (I've already tested that) as for the shader, I don't want to push it any farther then that. The HSU Build is pretty flimsy though I don't think Zotac expected people to take there board and start cranking it up to something like this... though it's very nice of them to have given users a lot of freedom in what they can do (all changeable through the bios).


Pictures of the Case #2:


Components in case prior to to it being completed:




The 140MM Fan is slightly Deformed into an almost oval shape due to the case dimensions being slightly two small for the fan this case did give me the insight and knowledge to improve the next case that will be Cut/Moded.






...

140MM Fan is held in place with a few bolts & nuts, the nuts and bolts. The part's that could not be held down with a bolt are hot glued to the steel frame. Open case - end result.

ION 2

Intel Atom D525 1.8Ghz @ 1944Mhz (1.9GHZ)
Geforce GT218 535/1230/790 @ 535/1230/790

*** GPU Core source is Wikipedia, shader & memory is from GT 218 speculation sites, the mystery will be revealed once the board is up and running.

The core is clocked at 550MHz and shader clock at 1375MHz. The card comes with 512MB of DDR3 memories onboard clocked at 800MHz on 64-bit memory interface. With 16 Shader Cores.


*** after verifying in GPUZ, the wiki was wrong.

Click to expand...

ASUS AT5IONT-I (Link)

*** Spec from manufacture's website ***

Dual-core Intel® Atom™ processor D525
Chipset Intel® NM10
Memory 2 x DIMM, Max. 4 GB, DDR3 800 Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory
Single Channel memory architecture
Expansion Slots 1 x PCIe x4
VGA Integrated Next Generation NVIDIA ION graphics processor
Support CUDA technology
Supports DVI with max. resolution up to 1920x1200x32Bppx60Hz
Supports HDMI with max. resolution up to 1920x1080x32Bppx60Hz
Dual Display support
DVI & HDMI
Dedicated video memory 512 MB
Storage Southbridge
2 xSATA 3.0 Gb/s ports support AHCI mode
LAN PCIe Gb LAN
Audio ALC887 8-Channel support DTS Surround Sensation UltraPC
USB Chipset built-in
- 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports (back panel)
Chipset built-in
- 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports (2 ports at mid-board, 2 ports at back panel)
ASUS Unique Features ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3
ASUS EZ Flash 2
ASUS MyLogo 2
AI NET 2
Stack Cool3+
Home Theater Gate
Express Gate
Back Panel I/O Ports 1 x DVI
1 x PS/2 Keyboard
1 x HDMI
1 x PS/2 Mouse
1 x External SATA
1 x S/PDIF Out (Optical)
1 x LAN(RJ45) port
6 -Channel Audio I/O
2 x USB 2.0
2 x USB 3.0 (compatible with USB 2.0 device)
Internal I/O Connectors 1 x USB connectors support additional 2 USB ports
1 x Chassis Fan connector & controller
1 x CPU Fan connector
1 x PWR Fan connector
1 x Front Panel connector
1 x High Definition front panel audio connector
1 x 4-pin ATX 12V Power connector
1 x 24-pin ATX Power connector
BIOS 8 Mb Flash ROM , AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.5

Click to expand...

4GB (2x2GB) Kingston KVR800D3S8S6/2G

Kingston KVR800D3S8S6/2G 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM 2GB DDR3 800 @ Cas Latency 6 Voltage 1.5V ECC No

Click to expand...

4GB (2x2GB) Kingston KVR1333D3S9/2G

Kingston KVR1333D3S9/2G 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM 2GB DDR3 1333 @ Cas Latency 9 Voltage 1.5V ECC No

Click to expand...

Note:
The reason there is two different sets of RAM posted is because the 4GB (2x2GB) Kingston KVR1333D3S9/2G @1333 will not boot, This is suppose to have been fixed with new bios but the only way to update the bios is to order the other kind @800. I ordered two sticks incase the @1333 doesn't work even after bios update.



Seagate Momentus

2.5" 7200rpm 16mb cache 250GB HD

Click to expand...

Antec ISK 300-150

Steel Case & 150watt PSU

Click to expand...

SunbeamTech Notebook Memory Heat Spreaders

Copper Memory Heatsink with 3M Thermal Tape

Click to expand...

Motherboard Compared to 140MM Fan



Motherboard & Fan in case.



To see how much of Motherboard the fan will cover.

! Reserved !

ION1 VS ION2

Games:
Team Fortress 2: ION1 25-60 FPS @ 1920x1080 / 0 - 24 Player Server / Running Custom Config: Chris's MAX FPS TF2 Config (Link)
Team Fortress 2: ION2 25-120 FPS @ 1920x1080 / 0 - 24 Player Server / Running Custom Config: Chris's MAX FPS TF2 Config (Link)

I tried to run it without changing any configurations and it works though honestly if you have more then 10 players in the server, its not going to be enjoyable. I found Chris's TF2 configs and followed the instructions on how to install them (I messed up at first but then realized what I did wrong) and can now play in servers with 24 people or more without any issues. Be warned though that the graphics do take a pretty big hit though if you are someone like me and play the game for the overall experience rather then for the shiny game play, it shouldn't bother you that much.

As for those that are wondering how much it affects the graphics, I will take a screen shot and post it. Till then the most I can say is that they remain better then TFC for HL1

Overall, the ION2 preforms better in the sense that it offers a much larger FPS range, this may be due to the fact that it has its own dedicated memory.

-

TorchLight: ION1 20-35 FPS @ 1920x1080 All Settings High / No Shadows.

From what I gather after playing a good 4 - 10 hours of Torchlight, the systen is liable to lagging up a bit or feels sluggish depending on what level you are on and what lass you are playing. For example both the vanquisher and alchemist so far have not caused any really lag with there abilities though the destroyers spell that increase his block rating and causes a big purple armored figure to appear above him does seem to slow down the game play a bit and drop it a few frames.

I would love to test the game more thoroughly though I play on Very Hard Hardcore and the Pygme people seem to get me every time. Overall it's playable, decreasing screen resolution will help.


When Tested with the ION2 I will simply update the spec, I will not go ahead and provide a full description of how different the system ran (at least I don't intend to for now) other then saying that it run's the same, a little better or a lot better.
.



Starcraft 2: ION1 FPS?? @ 1280x1024 / 1 - 12 Players / Running Custom Settings @ LOW
Starcraft 2: ION2 FPS?? @ 1280x1024 / 1 - 12 Players / Running Custom Settings @ LOW

Overall the game is playable though pretty much only at low settings if you intend it to run smoothly, I could always lower the resolution to 1024 x 768 and increase the settings to medium though in my situation it would look even worse (I use 24" Wide Screen lcd's with a 1920 x 1080 native resolution). I would not suggest that anyone plays this game on an ITX system unless you use a motherboard that allows you to have a x16 pci-e graphics card and desktop processor unless you don't mind having low settings. As for what you can do at low settings... The single player campaign is very playable, I have done a lot of 1v1 match's without any lag issue as well as a few 2v2 match's without any lag issues. 3v3v3v3 footmen frenzy can get a little intense and will cause a slow down and the GPU may flicker the screen once or twice if the are above approximately 80 units fighting on the screen.

! Ram has arrived, I will build the ION2 system tonight.
! Purchasing Windows 7 Premium & installing it

I will also be playing Starcraft 2 with a friend on both systems so I will be able to tell you how it goes, Maybe even make a little video!






.

ION2 is now up and running after some issues which where kind of stupid. I find it funny that Asus kind of threw things up on there site without really testing them properly and by that I mean there bios utility does not work. So there was no way for me to update to the 3.16 bios that fix's the ram issues...

That's until I remembered that I had just built my brother a PC with a P5G43T-M PRO motherboard and had his CD's so I used the older bios utility to update the system bios and now everything is fixed.

Upon entering the bios there is more disappointment when I found out that only the CPU seems to be overclock-able via bios unlike Zotac that allows you to unlike the GPU and crank it as high as you want.

... More to Follow ...

Over All

After having a fair amount of time to play with both systems I came to the conclusion that ASUS did a poor job on several diffrent aspects of this motherboard, I may have also been to blame in the sense that I might of had some dissilusion of what this small board could have become and that much like its older zotac counter part, it could be transformed into a beast.

Unfortunatly for me that was not the case. After finding compatible ram and updating the bios (with some difficulty) I was able to put the new 1333 RAM in though it does not seem to be running at the speed that it's intended to though there is no way of changing that! This was the first and biggest issue I had with this board:

THE BIOS

The bios is has barely any options and it feels like a standard factory pc (DELL/HP ETC...) where most of the options are unavailable or very limited. Unlike Zotac the Asus Motherboard will not let you set your bus speed past 250, now most people can do the math and say well 250 x 9 = 2250Mhz... do you really need more? the answer I would typically give to that is "no" not unless someone makes a custom water block to cool it. Though to me that wasn't the real issue, I was not able to clock it higher then 216 x9 = 1944Mhz without it crashing and refusing to boot up.

I tried serveral times with both set's of ram and did not manage to push it any higher. I thought to myself, if that's all it has to offer then I will have to settle and decided to push the GPU clock speed up & once again I was dissapointed, there is no bios GPU clock controller so any overclock has to be done outside the bios. I thought to myself "lets see how it handles first" and played some Starcraft 2 for approximatly 4 hours back to back and the temps never broke passed 49C (120.2F) though what I did notice is as soon as a large scale battle would take place or any sort of massive effect that would cover the screen, the card would start to jam up and cause artificats (streaks of colors and sharp jagged lines, the textures would mess up as well till you alt tabed to the desktop).

I had this done to me a good 5 - 6 times. There where no crash's though.

As for what I mentioned about the ram a little higher in this post, the bios has NO ram clock settings so if your system decides to run it @800Mhz, you have no say and must accept it as is. I have yet to try playing Team Fortress 2 on this machine though I will be doing that tonight (when im done this post) though I repair a little less optimistic that it will out preform the ION1 at this task,


-----------------------------


As for the Zotac N330 @ 2.1 Ghz and a downclocked Graphics to match the ION2 System that I had built, It ran starcraft with about the same skill though did not produce any artifiacts. Though it did crash twice with fatal errors which isn't much better.

Though I believe that these errors are related to the ram as it seems that the OS is not reading things correctly since it says "4GB RAM (3GB Usable)" and since 512MB is dedicated to the video, I could forsee some issues there. I have yet to look into that though. Other then that it works like a charm, no complaints and with the lowered video clock I fixed the heating issue that was occuring where the video card was going above the temps in which I felt confortable with.

I assume that with some tweaking on both systems a lot of issue can be resolved though it remains a fact, that if you are looking to build yourself an ITX System and intend to do something with it, you will gernerally be doing Video play back as both systems work wonders and have not given me any issues with watching 1080p playback; This includes any flash playback as well. When it comes to gaming they will support all older games so if you are someone that plays the retro stuff and watchs movies, then you will be please.


As for future hopes. I wish ASUS would get the things straight and release a new bios giving a GPU overclock fearture, more control over ram speeds and voltage, more memory support so that Kingston 1333 Hyperx memory can be used rather then value and in the future to test there products better prior to releasing it then not offering any support, as seen on the asus forums and many place around the web...

If anyone has any questions please feel free to ask and I will answer them. More pics to come including those of CPUZ and GPUZ.

Great write-up!

@madhatter256
Thanks


After a short Test in Team Fortress 2 with Chris's TF2 Config "MAXFPS" I noticed that it would run the game fine for a few seconds then it would give a massive spike and drop from 60FPS to 4 FPS for two or three seconds before returning to its 60FPS. I will take a look on the web to see if anyone has experienced this issue...

I recall someone saying that newer intell CPU's try to do GPU functionality though I would highly doubt that it would be done on a D525 atom CPU.

If anyone knows anything about this let me know.


EDIT:

Nvidia Optimus Graphics Switching (Monitors GPU usage and will switch between the GMA 3150 and the GT218 depending on the application.)

Click to expand...

Source: http://www.overclock.net/

This was probably done to save battery life on netbooks.

Another small update.

I did some research on "Nvidia Optimus" and this may very well be the source of the problem, If you look for "disabling Nvidia Optimus" in google you will see that this issue is much more common then I though. Though it mainly affects netbooks / laptops, Nvidia Optimus seem to not really know when to switch from intel GMA on N10 Chipset to Nvidia GT218 or which ever other chip in which the mobile pc is using. This causes people to be stuck with horrible graphical issues, such as the one's that I experienced which people have dubbed "the colorful screen of death".

The reason this happens is because Nvidia Optimus will switch back and forth between intel GMA & the Nvidia GPU depending on the GPU usage. SO that means if I where to play Baldures Gate it may think that the GPU usage is not high enough and leave me with the intel GMA running. If this is the case I can see how a small Starcraft 2 battle can run but when the battle becomes large scale all of a suddon, the intel GMA might just not be able to handle it and I don't know if the switch would be done or not.

I will open a trouble case with Asus this week to try and see what they have to say concerning the NM10 and Nvidia Optimus running on there boards. Ideally, much like mentioned above... A bios update would be the best solution which allows users to disable the Intel GMA. The question still remains in my mind if this is only Asus that can fix this issue or if Nvidia has some say in all this as well.

To be determined I guess.

Probably the last post for tonight.

The lag issue in Team Fortress 2 has been fixed, turns out I was right with my thought that the Nvidia Optimus doesn't know when to do the switch properly. I went and found the drivers at:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/optimus_technology.html

Once I update the drivers for Windows 7 64 bit. My FPS stays stable at 120FPS in a low pop area or server and will be between 25-60 on a 24 player server. So if anyone reads this and is having the same type of issues with there computer and it uses the NM10 Chipset, chances are this may fix it for you. I will have to test Starcraft 2 again to see if it fixes the massive amount of artifact that is created in large scale games.

OH I LOVE COMPUTERS! It challenges the brain constantly.

Edit:

Stracraft 2 has been re-tested and my final opinion of how the game runs has been posted in the games section a little higher in this thread.