Hardware Settings And Overclocking
Hardware installation was almost as easy as a typical system, but we do have a few notes.
1.) The motherboard’s bottom slot is partly blocked by the water pump and lower radiator hose. The half-length, half-height Asus Xonar DX fit perfectly, though we’d have preferred to use a PCI card in the upper slot.
2.) The Corsair CMPSU-1000HX power supply has ferrite rings on the flat, removable PCI Express power cables that prevented them from being run between cards. We had to use the soldered-on "round" cables for the top card.
3.) The photo above shows the "wrong" optical drive installed. Our BD-RE drive arrived late, so we began overclock stability tests using a substitute part.
4.) Purging air from the liquid cooling system should be done with the CPU water block removed, as detailed in our earlier liquid-cooling case comparison.
5.) The side fan of our Zalman LQ1000 case didn’t provide enough air pressure to effectively cool our memory at its rated speed. We had to use lower voltage and speed, with increased timings as detailed below.
Component | Base Settings | Overclock Setting |
---|---|---|
CPU | Intel Core 2 Quad Q96503.00 GHz, FSB-1333, 12 MB Cache | 4.14 GHz (9x 460 MHz), FSB-18401.4125 V Core, 1.40 V FSB Termination |
CPU Cooler | Zalman LQ1000 Integrated | Zalman LQ1000 Integrated |
Motherboard | Asus P5E3 Premium WiFi-APIntel X48, BIOS 0605 (09/02/2008) | Intel X48 Boot Strap : 400 MHzNorthbridge Voltage : 1.49 V |
RAM | 8.0 GB OCZ PC3-12800 Platinum Edition4x 2048 MB, DDR3-1600, CL 7-7-7-24 at 1.90 VUnderclocked to DDR3-1333 8-8-8-24 at 1.76 V | DDR3-1533, CL 8-8-8-241.76 V |
Graphics | 2x MSI R4870X2 OC Edition (Crossfire)2x ATI 4870 GPU (Per Card), 780 MHz2x 1024 MB GDDR5-3600 (Per Card) | 787 MHz GPU, GDDR5-3840 (960 MHz) |
Hard Drives | 4x Samsung HD103UJ (RAID 0)1.0 TB, 72000 RPM, 32 MB Cache | Unchanged |
Sound | Asus Xonar DX PCI Express7.1 Channels, DDL, DS3D GX 2.0 | Unchanged |
Network | Integrated Gigabit Networking | Integrated Gigabit Networking |
Power | Corsair HX1000W ModularATX 2.2, EPS 2.91, 2x 40A 12 V Rails | Unchanged |
Optical | LG GGW-H20L BD-RE/HDDVD-ROM6x BD-R, 2x BD-RE, 16x DVD±R | Unchanged |
Software and Drivers | ||
Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit, SP1 | Unchanged |
Graphics Driver | ATI Catalyst 8.8 64-bit Edition | Unchanged |
Onboard Device Drivers | Asus P5E3 Premium DVD Rev.360.01 | Unchanged |
With stability tests out of the way, it was time to finally install the "correct" optical drive and move forward to benchmarks.