A questions on fans, power, and the quest for that tiny little bit more...

digitalwanderer

I'm trying to push Bubbles limits to get a feel for my new set-up, and I can't seem to clock her as high successfully as I did with the exact same CPU, mobo, memory, & viddy card in Blue. The ONLY difference I can think of is power...but Bubbles has a sweet Enermax 400w and Blue has a cheapy 350 that came with a $20 case. (Did I mention I'm a cheap bastard? I'm a cheap bastard. ) So if anything Blue should have better/cleaner power...so what's left?

Fans.

Both my boxes probably have more fans than most peoples, but Bubbles is really sort of a pc built in a windtunnel now. 2-120mm, 3-80mm, & a little 60mm tornado fan that I have shoved in a back corner on a switch (the whine is just too annoying to have on all the time.); and that's in addition to the CPU tornado, crystal orb on viddy, and I think that's about it. Now the rest of them don't really concern me as Bubbles is a straight gaming rig with just a DVD, HD, video card, soundcard, modem, & NIC; (and right now she's without her DVD as my wife's pc's crapped out on her and I had to swap mine in last night & order a new one. ); but the fans that connect directly to the mobo...CPU tornado & crystal orb (I got the PS hooked up to the third fan plug & it's just a monitor, it don't draw any current.)...I got a question about.

Now I've heard that the 8500 is a bit of a power-hungry beast, could the amount of fans I have hooked to the mobo affect how much current is available to my 8500? I don't know enough about mobo's to know the answer to this one, but would it help my overclocking endevours any if I disconnected those fans from the mobo and directly wired them to the power supply?

Sorry for the lengthy rant but I've found that the more info I post about the problem the quicker/better the response I get. (Plus it's been another one of those weeks, I can't wait for school to start again!!!!!!!!!!! )

DallasStar

Just use motherboard monitor or a similar utility to check that the +5, +12, and +3.3 voltages are all within 10% of where they should be (5.5, 12, & 3.3 are the correct voltages )

digitalwanderer

Well, I should have mentioned that I did that and they're all within about 2-3% tolerance pretty disgustingly consitantly.

I gave up playing with it for now since I got her nice & stable with a decent 3dm2k1se score. At 120 FSB I can keep her vcore at the default 1.5 and she runs about 5c cooler than if I keep her up around 123 FSB w/vcore@1.65.


It just don't seem worth the strain to get those extra 200 points, I'd rather hold her back a bit for now and leave myself a bit of headroom down the road for playing I've decided. I just want to settle down and play some games now.

TiredGeek

Really fans plugged into the motherboard shouldn't have any effect on you ability to overclock 'cos they suck 12v and theres not much else on there that does. The 3.3 / 5v are much more important and you say they are OK so forget that.
Personally, I plug as few fans on the motherboard as I can, maybe 1 monitored so the board will start up (if you have that sort of motherboard). I prefer them directly on the power supply 'cos the tracks on the motherboard can only take so much power before melting, and that is obviously not a good thing to have happen. The big fast fans will destroy the board very quickly, they just drag to much power.

And don't think that Enermax is better than the cheapo, I have had a system unstable with an Emax 550 that was happy with a crappy 300 that came with the case.

My advice is this: Unplug as much from the motherboard as you can.
Make sure you have a good flow pattern thru the case with no dead spots (it's no good putting 5000cfm into the case if it just sits stagnant), in at the front bottom out at the rear top. If you can unplug the video card fan and plug it into the mboard instead do so (it just gives the vid card a cleaner power signal).

If you do all that, you have done all you can.