Questions on Performance and other things

[djhotcakes]

Hello all,

Just built my first pc yesterday (best experience ever), got everything up and running but I have some questions about what everything should be reading as, what I need to watch for, etc. So first I'll post my specs followed by a few questions to make sure im on the right track.

Case: Nzxt Phantom 410
PSU: Seasonic 620w (modular)
CPU: i5 3550 Ivy Bridge
GPU: Sapphire 6850 1GB
Motherboard: Asus P8z77-v lk
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 4gb (2x2)
CPU Cooler: Hyper 212+

1. What is the norm for CPU/Motherboard temps? (Im reading 26-28c idle 30-34 running Diablo 3 on max)
2. I have 1600mhz memory, how do I make sure im getting the most of it?
3. Also with the memory is it supposed to be seated in the mobo as:

CPU | Memory | Blank | Memory | Blank ?

Also any other advice things you guys think I should check out, like I said its my first build so Im all for ideas/advice.

Thanks

 

[nekulturny]

1. As long as you're under 75c, you're perfectly fine. They can probably go hotter than that, but I think thats reasonable, especially for a non-K Ivy.

2. Whats it running at now? Download CPU-Z and take a look, it will give you the memory speed, and you'll multiply that number times 2. Really though if its running at 1333mhz, you won't see a difference in performance if it were running at 1600mhz.

I would run memtest86 for a few hours to make sure the RAM is good (its not unheard of to get a bad module and it take awhile before you're aware of it).. Happened to me actually with one of my Corsair modules. Run Prime95 for a couple hours and watch your temps to make sure you had a good application of thermal compound, other than that should be good to go.

BTW, both memtest86 and prime95 are free programs.

3. Yes, that should allow dual channel mode memory to be enabled on that mobo.

 

[djhotcakes]

About to take off from work in the next 10min or so, when I get home Ill post the results.

 

[djhotcakes]

so I ran CPU-Z and heres the results:

Memory:
DDR3
4096 MBytes
Channels: Dual

DRAM Frequency: 680.0 MHz
FSBRAM : 1:5


CPU:
Core Voltage: .952v
Core Speed: 1631.95MHz
Multiplier: x 16.0
Bus Speed: 102.0 MHz

 

[nekulturny]

The ram is running at 1360mhz give or take, perfectly fine..'

Maybe I'm not getting it, but the CPU speed doesnt make sense to me. The stock multiplier is way too low, and the core speed based on that says you're only running at 1.6GHZ. The stock multiplier should be running 33 according to this.
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i5/Intel-Core%20i5-3550.html

(CPU Clock speed is multiplier x bus speed)

 

[nekulturny]

I found this on google, this guy is getting the same results.. I'm scratching my head on it, that doesnt make sense to me.. maybe someone else can chime in here and explain that one to us:

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2380346

 

[djhotcakes]

any word on that? what would be the problem/fix for it?

 

[djhotcakes]

Asked around and did some google research turns out its something called speedstep.