ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:

Assassinator Wrote:I can easily do a downclock by reducing the multiplier or something, but the thing is... I don't really want to underclock.

What goes on in an overclocker's mind... My $150 cpu > your $200 cpu. And underclocking would be the other way around. That's like not really cool.

Multiplier underclocks generally don't work as well.  Well, underclocks are a cheap way to reduce heat/sound...

Aren't the only ways of overclocking either increasing the cpu multiplier or increasing the reference clock (aka. FSB or whatever else it's called)?

If I decrease the reference clock instead, that would underclock everything else as well...

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:That's actually better than mine...
Three temps in the middle could be misc motherboard sensors or something like that (like chipset temperatures).

Something in the chipset reaching almost 70 degrees seems bad...

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Ah, missed that part.  But try raising the voltages slightly, since you seem to have plenty of room heatwise.  I know my Gigabyte board won't resume from sleep if the voltages are too low.
Does sound like a power issue though.  What's the brand/power rating of the PSU?

Power rating is 480W. Brand is unknown. Some generic brand I don't know. Hell, I can't really even figue out the brand. It's not like anywhere on the PSU. Got a model number... I guess I can websearch that.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:By the way, have you gotten any BSoDs with the Catalyst 8.12 driver?  I've gotten some, but don't really know why they occur...

Haven't gotten any yet.

(This post was last modified: 11/01/2009 01:07 PM by Assassinator.)

Assassinator Wrote:Aren't the only ways of overclocking either increasing the cpu multiplier or increasing the reference clock (aka. FSB or whatever else it's called)?

If I decrease the reference clock instead, that would underclock everything else as well...

The multiplier is typically locked at a certain level, and, in fact, is probably the only distinguishing factor between the range of CPUs in the same family (ie, the difference between a ~$265 Core 2 E8400 and ~$415 E8600 is that the former is locked at a 9x multi, and latter is locked at 10x).
The Phenom Black Editions have an unlocked multipler, however.  Thus you typically overclock by increasing the core clock.
Can't remember how the AMD HyperTransport system works, but I think it's separate from the CPU core clock.  With Intel, the FSB is the core clock x4.

Assassinator Wrote:Something in the chipset reaching almost 70 degrees seems bad...

You can try Everest and see if it identifies more for you...  The BIOS may display some temp info too.

Assassinator Wrote:Power rating is 480W. Brand is unknown. Some generic brand I don't know. Hell, I can't really even figue out the brand. It's not like anywhere on the PSU. Got a model number... I guess I can websearch that.

Probably the brand.  Have heard that a lot of cheap PSUs, the power rating is sometimes completely made up.  My current Antec Earthwatts 430W seems to work a _lot_ better than my old 550W "generic" (Hytec) PSU (which also had a 12cm fan).

---

EDIT: unrelated, but have you tried the new x64 builds of x264 yet?  I might give it a shot - 64-bit AVS plugins seem a little scarce, but most of the ones I use often can be found here.

(This post was last modified: 11/01/2009 05:47 AM by ZiNgA BuRgA.)

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:You can try Everest and see if it identifies more for you...  The BIOS may display some temp info too.

I guess I can try sometime.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Probably the brand.  Have heard that a lot of cheap PSUs, the power rating is sometimes completely made up.  My current Antec Earthwatts 430W seems to work a _lot_ better than my old 550W "generic" (Hytec) PSU (which also had a 12cm fan).

Heh, fake numbers.

My brother's power supply does seem to run a lot cooler than mine.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:EDIT: unrelated, but have you tried the new x64 builds of x264 yet?  I might give it a shot - 64-bit AVS plugins seem a little scarce, but most of the ones I use often can be found here.

Nope. Wasn't even aware there was a 64bit version. Since I usually get my builds either from either http://x264.nl/ or MeGUI and neither places show any signs of an x64 version.

Ok, I'm getting a build from here » http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=89979

I'll go do a speed comparison sometime later today. EDIT: Doesn't work with normal avisynth? heh, should have thought so.


As for 64bit avisynth, it doesn't support 32bit plugins... and that's like most of them. So I'm probably not going to bother, until it gets more support.

Incadude Wrote:assassinator can you give a link to where i can find that hard drive? please.

I got it from an MSY Technologies, some Australian computer store.

Here's the catalogue, but since you live in the US, that probably won't help you much.

http://www.msy.com.au/Parts/PARTS.pdf

For US residents, supposedly, newegg is a good place to get stuff.

(This post was last modified: 12/01/2009 06:20 AM by Assassinator.)

Assassinator Wrote:

Tried to overclock, and couldn't even do a measly 5%. Crashed 2hr into stress test. Probably mostly due to a combination of my box, fan and power supply being poo poo, or maybe the motherboard, which runs quite hot. What's weird is that Prime95 never returns an error, the whole system just crashes with no signs of error whatsoever. And when the system crashes, it cannot be turned on without completely draining the power. That is, pressing the start or restart button does nothing. Only way to start it again is to pull the power cord, and put it back in. I'm thinking it probably has something to do with the motherboard or power supply rather than the CPU or memory, due to the weird behaviour of the crash. I'm going to try underclock the memory and the cpu one by one to try to isolate the problem.

...

I crashed during an encode not even being overclocked. Same problem. And this time afterwards, it took 3 rounds of taking the power out to get it to start. The other 2 times it just powered on for like 1 second and turned off again.

I'm seriously doubting this crappy power supply, which I can't even identify the brand of. I'm going to borrow my brothers for a while and test it to see if my suspicions are correct.

Assassinator Wrote:...

I crashed during an encode not even being overclocked. Same problem. And this time afterwards, it took 3 rounds of taking the power out to get it to start. The other 2 times it just powered on for like 1 second and turned off again.

I'm seriously doubting this crappy power supply, which I can't even identify the brand of. I'm going to borrow my brothers for a while and test it to see if my suspicions are correct.

Ok, I swapped my power supply for my brothers, and ran Prime95 and a multithread x264 encode over the night.

Guess what... it didn't crash... Problem identified!

So it was the PSU after all. Heh, that was the more likely case. I'm not even running a GPU, so I shouldn't even really hit half of that 480W. Ok, I'm going to buy a new box + PSU combo. My box also needs to be updated.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Probably the brand.  Have heard that a lot of cheap PSUs, the power rating is sometimes completely made up.  My current Antec Earthwatts 430W seems to work a _lot_ better than my old 550W "generic" (Hytec) PSU (which also had a 12cm fan).

At least yours had a brand.

My PSU is also about 3 times lighter than my brothers Thermaltake 430W. And runs a LOT hotter.

(This post was last modified: 13/01/2009 05:55 AM by Assassinator.)

From what I've read, people recommend these from MSY (though they're a little more expensive)
- CoolerMaster CAC-T05 ($109) [apparently the cheaper CMs have cheap PSUs]
- Antec NSK____ ($119 for 380W, $128 for 430W)

Personally think you could probably get away with a cheaper PSU, but there's quite a few people who wouldn't even think about it, so you decide...

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:From what I've read, people recommend these from MSY (though they're a little more expensive)
- CoolerMaster CAC-T05 ($109) [apparently the cheaper CMs have cheap PSUs]
- Antec NSK____ ($119 for 380W, $128 for 430W)

My brother wants to get that Antec case, so I don't really plan on getting it. I mean I don't want our comps to look exactly the same...

Another option available to me is to just be cheap and use his would-be-retired thermaltake PSU after he gets his new case. But I think I'll probably just buy my own instead.

Thinking either that Coolermaster Canturion CAC-T5 case you listed above, or one of the cheaper Coolermaster Elite cases (probably around $70 or so).

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Personally think you could probably get away with a cheaper PSU, but there's quite a few people who wouldn't even think about it, so you decide...

It's a PSU. It just needs to work and not stuff up like mine is currently doing. It's not going to make my system run faster or anything.... so I don't see why it needs to be particularly high end.

$50CPU vs $150CPU = big difference.
$50PSU vs $150PSU = quieter? blue lights on it? more wattage? (more wattage is quite useless to me, as is fancy lights).

(This post was last modified: 14/01/2009 04:38 AM by Assassinator.)

Mainly reliability and efficiency from what I've heard.  Cheap PSUs have, apparently, a higher chance of burning the insides of your PC, though I personally think it's unlikely.  Cheaper PSUs will probably be less efficient than "better" PSUs.  As you've discovered, reliability is also an issue.
As for wattage, it needs to be enough to power the PC, but the wattage rating is somewhat arbitrary (some base it on peak power, some base it on average power, some are completely made up etc).

If you (or anyone in Australia) are interested, I just saw the following two threads which may be of some interest:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-rep...?t=1126047
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-rep...?t=1101725

Unfortunately, in Canberra, they might not respect the discount since there isn't an MSY branch in Canberra.
Might be useful if you have an Officeworks branch close by.