- Joined
- Mar 7, 2008
I'm about to go away for the new year, but I spent today preparing for a crunching challenge at PrimeGrid starting early January. I'm going to throw everything I have at it, including my older systems. The challenge is a number sieve, so is in no way Prime95 like demand. I think it is integer only.
The last system I'm preparing I call Cubit, after the Hoojum Cubit 3 case it is in. This is small, and was basically mini-ITX before it existed.
http://www.hoojum.com/new/html/more_c3.htm
Motherboard is an Aopen i945GTt-VFA This was one of their "MODT" or Mobile On DeskTop designs. It takes a mobile CPU, and SODIMMs, with limited upgradability beyond that.
http://global.aopen.com/products_detail.aspx?auno=2158
Processor is a relatively high end T7400. This is basically a Core 2 Duo, with two cores at 2.16 GHz and 34W TDP. This compares with the desktop E6400 at 2.13 GHz and 65W TDP.
https://ark.intel.com/products/27256/Intel-Core2-Duo-Processor-T7400-4M-Cache-2_16-GHz-667-MHz-FSB
Ram wise there's two modules at 1 GB each of DDR2 at 333 CL5. Hard disk is a WD 160GB with Windows 10 installed.
Problem #1: when running some stress test I saw temps reach 100C and thermal throttling kick in. This was never a cool system, but it never hit thermal throttle before and the ambient right now is lower than average. There wasn't any excess dust so rather than mess around further with the small case, I decided to relocate it into a Silverstone SG13 I have spare. The mobo fits with room to spare and thankfully the mounting holes still match up. The SG13 is a small mini-ITX case, but it is practically empty with the board in it, since the space provided for an ATX PSU is not needed. Load temps reduced to the mid 70's which was a significant improvement in itself.
Problem #2: I had noticed the bios kept getting wiped every time I removed power, so I finally got the battery replaced. The old one measured 0.7V which is far below the nominal 3V it should have been. For whatever reason, since doing that temps have dropped further to mid 60's. I'm not complaining!
Finally, I can consider overclocking. Here I'm venturing into the unknown. The bios has minimal options, but does allow you to change the FSB. That's it. I have no control over the ram, timings, voltages, nothing. Implicitly I'd also be overclocking everything else... so I have no idea how sensitive things were in this generation to messing with the bus.
This is where I'm going to leave it for now. As said I'm about to go do some other things for new year celebrations, but this will be one of the first things I do when I'm back.
The last system I'm preparing I call Cubit, after the Hoojum Cubit 3 case it is in. This is small, and was basically mini-ITX before it existed.
http://www.hoojum.com/new/html/more_c3.htm
Motherboard is an Aopen i945GTt-VFA This was one of their "MODT" or Mobile On DeskTop designs. It takes a mobile CPU, and SODIMMs, with limited upgradability beyond that.
http://global.aopen.com/products_detail.aspx?auno=2158
Processor is a relatively high end T7400. This is basically a Core 2 Duo, with two cores at 2.16 GHz and 34W TDP. This compares with the desktop E6400 at 2.13 GHz and 65W TDP.
https://ark.intel.com/products/27256/Intel-Core2-Duo-Processor-T7400-4M-Cache-2_16-GHz-667-MHz-FSB
Ram wise there's two modules at 1 GB each of DDR2 at 333 CL5. Hard disk is a WD 160GB with Windows 10 installed.
Problem #1: when running some stress test I saw temps reach 100C and thermal throttling kick in. This was never a cool system, but it never hit thermal throttle before and the ambient right now is lower than average. There wasn't any excess dust so rather than mess around further with the small case, I decided to relocate it into a Silverstone SG13 I have spare. The mobo fits with room to spare and thankfully the mounting holes still match up. The SG13 is a small mini-ITX case, but it is practically empty with the board in it, since the space provided for an ATX PSU is not needed. Load temps reduced to the mid 70's which was a significant improvement in itself.
Problem #2: I had noticed the bios kept getting wiped every time I removed power, so I finally got the battery replaced. The old one measured 0.7V which is far below the nominal 3V it should have been. For whatever reason, since doing that temps have dropped further to mid 60's. I'm not complaining!
Finally, I can consider overclocking. Here I'm venturing into the unknown. The bios has minimal options, but does allow you to change the FSB. That's it. I have no control over the ram, timings, voltages, nothing. Implicitly I'd also be overclocking everything else... so I have no idea how sensitive things were in this generation to messing with the bus.
This is where I'm going to leave it for now. As said I'm about to go do some other things for new year celebrations, but this will be one of the first things I do when I'm back.
