Pentium D system woes.

[DevilsAdvocate]

Ok - I purchased a Gateway Pentium D 3.2 Ghz system, and I am trying to figure out a few things...

1) Why in the hell does it run whisper quiet for a long time, and then suddenly sound like a leaf blower for no apparent reason at all? The system is not even running anything - other than IE. Ponderous.

2) Who would sell a system with 512MB of DDR2 - in a single channel?

Any ideas on how to cool this box? I'm actually a little worried about it.

 

[stevty2889]

Well I can tell you the reason it goes from quiet to a leafblower. Those chips run hot, so it doesn't take much for it to heat up, even IE could be enough to kick the fan in high gear. Yeah, 512mb of single channel is a killer, single core P4's take a big enough hit from single channel, so it's probably a lot worse for the pentium-d. I would recomend adding a second stick to run dual channel. Don't know what to say about the cooling. If the motherboard has the standard mounting for heatsinks, you could replace it with something like an XP-90, and I've always had better luck with the thermaltake jungle 512 for cooling prescotts, but that will probably involve removing the motherboard to mount it, assuming they aren't proprietary and you can't swap the heatsink to begin with. And people keep wondering why we try so hard to convince people to stay away from pentium-D's...

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

I scored the whole rig for $550 or so, so I really should not complain. I just thought it would be a lot quieter than it is.

 

[imported_Dimicron]

Slightly OT, but would you mind running three benchmarks (Aquamark, PCMark '04, 3D Mark '05) on it? What are your P-D system's specs?

I'm trying to lean a friend of mine into the AMD world, but would like some comparisons that are from personal experience and not a review. I ran those three benchmarks on 2 AMD systems, and here's what I got and their specs:

--Specs--

Silentium: Athlon 64 X2 "Manchester" 3800+ @ 2.0GHz 2 x 512kb cache/DFI Lanparty UT nf4 SLI-dr motherboard/2 x 1GB PC3500 RAM/eVGA 6600GT 128MB/1 x 74GB Raptor HD/1 x 200GB Maxtor 7200RPM 8MB Cache

Luminus: Athlon 64 "Clawhammer" 3200+ @ 2.0GHz 1024kb cache/Albatron k8x800 pro ii motherboard/2 x 512MB PC2700 RAM/eVGA 6800GT 256MB/1 x 74GB Raptor

--Tests--

Aquamark3:
Silentium- 8724GFX 9922CPU 60601
Luminus- 9048GFX 8741CPU 59636

PCMark04:
Silentium- 6412
Luminus- 3870

3DMark05:
Silentium- 3647
Luminus- 4953

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: DevilsAdvocate
I scored the whole rig for $550 or so, so I really should not complain. I just thought it would be a lot quieter than it is.

heh, thats what makes them so tempting, the super low prices you can get them for. If your motherboard will take an aftermarket cooler, you should be able to get the noise down.

 

[AkumaX]

nice... market value can run anywhere between 350-550 for that chip

512mb of single channel ddr2 is just... !??!?! hopefully its using at least pc4200 if not pc5400

the 8xx series is just.. inconsistent. vcore fluctuations, temp fluctuations, i bet that thing will throttle, too. in one of duvie's/mark's threads, i made an excel graph of how ThrottleWatch and RMClock recorded CPU mhz. let's just say they weren't exactly in synch...

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Originally posted by: stevty2889

Originally posted by: DevilsAdvocate
I scored the whole rig for $550 or so, so I really should not complain. I just thought it would be a lot quieter than it is.

heh, thats what makes them so tempting, the super low prices you can get them for. If your motherboard will take an aftermarket cooler, you should be able to get the noise down.

I have another motherboard sitting here, and I'm thinking about rebuilding the rig in another chassis

 

[DrMrLordX]

Makes me wonder how well OEM Pentium D systems will hold up in the long-term. In this thread here:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=1711973

keysplayer indicates that 4 Pentium 830D machines, ones that are relatively new and in an air-condition environment, run 62-64C at stock. Keep in mind the shutoff temp for these chips is 70C. As that TIM dries out, and as dust collects on fans etc, those temps will go up. I remember what happened to my old Thunderbird(it was hitting temps as high as 74C before I got rid of it) due to the same factors.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: DevilsAdvocate
Ok - I purchased a Gateway Pentium D 3.2 Ghz system, and I am trying to figure out a few things...

1) Why in the hell does it run whisper quiet for a long time, and then suddenly sound like a leaf blower for no apparent reason at all? The system is not even running anything - other than IE. Ponderous.

2) Who would sell a system with 512MB of DDR2 - in a single channel?

Any ideas on how to cool this box? I'm actually a little worried about it.

I scored the whole rig for $550

There's your answer.

 

[zahir5776]

Intel's fan is noisy. Fan noise/speed increases as temps. I changed my heatsink fan with thermaltake silent 775.

You see crystalmark results on forum, I recommend Pentium D on P4 3.2 GHZ or below.

 

[Markfw]

They also throttle well below 70c. I have both, and I have a thread about it in case you are interested. You need a Big Typhoon cooler just to keep it from imploding IMO. I will run PCmark for the one guy who wanted it, along with my 3800. They are both at max OC, but even with the big typhoon coller, I have to keep the case cover off, and a 1200mm fan exhasting air in the open side cover area !!!!!

 

[Duvie]

70c may be the throttle point or higher at default vcore, but as soon as your raise the vcore we noticed that point occurs sooner....

1.45v set in the bios deliverd around 1.39-1.4v and it would start showing signs of throttling around 55c in S&M....

1.4v set at 3360mhz we saw throttling occur at 59-60c.....

The mobo was set to shut off at 70c but may very from different bioses and mobos..

 

[ND40oz]

What style case is it? We haven't had any problems with our Dells GX620s temps and haven't noticed any throttling. I'm wondering if HP just dropped the 840s in an existing setup instead of in a case with a cooling setup tailored to it.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Originally posted by: ND40oz
What style case is it? We haven't had any problems with our Dells GX620s temps and haven't noticed any throttling. I'm wondering if HP just dropped the 840s in an existing setup instead of in a case with a cooling setup tailored to it.

It is the Gateway BTX case.

 

[stevty2889]

Well I am gonna have my 830 in a couple of days, for $160 it was too much to pass up, even if only to see how bad it really is for myself. I got unopened retail chip, so don't have to worry about it being and e-bayed dud, just hope my 420w thermaltake PSU is up to the task for at least stock speed.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
Well I am gonna have my 830 in a couple of days, for $160 it was too much to pass up, even if only to see how bad it really is for myself. I got unopened retail chip, so don't have to worry about it being and e-bayed dud, just hope my 420w thermaltake PSU is up to the task for at least stock speed.

420W ThermalTakes... eeek :Q Got anything with a beefier 12V rail you could use instead?

 

[AkumaX]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
Makes me wonder how well OEM Pentium D systems will hold up in the long-term. In this thread here:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=1711973

keysplayer indicates that 4 Pentium 830D machines, ones that are relatively new and in an air-condition environment, run 62-64C at stock. Keep in mind the shutoff temp for these chips is 70C. As that TIM dries out, and as dust collects on fans etc, those temps will go up. I remember what happened to my old Thunderbird(it was hitting temps as high as 74C before I got rid of it) due to the same factors.

no way the shutoff temp would be 70C... it should be at least 80-85 to give leeway for 2 press-hots on the same PCB. my 820D went as high as 76c, but didn't shut down or did anything bad ('throttle' is kinda iffy, since results were so inconsistent).

i had a k6-2 400 o/ced to 500, ran windows ME (gasp!) for 28 days straight (no gasp). had to install a different cd-rom, only to find out the fan was so clogged w/ dust, it didn't even spin at all! and yet the comp was still chuggin along fine. GO AMD!!!

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Originally posted by: stevty2889
Well I am gonna have my 830 in a couple of days, for $160 it was too much to pass up, even if only to see how bad it really is for myself. I got unopened retail chip, so don't have to worry about it being and e-bayed dud, just hope my 420w thermaltake PSU is up to the task for at least stock speed.

420W ThermalTakes... eeek :Q Got anything with a beefier 12V rail you could use instead?

Not at the moment, the 450w antec is in my dual core system, my SFF system has 300w antec, and my old 1.6 northwood is running a 350 turbolink PSU, so all I've got left for now is the thermaltake thats powering my 3.45ghz prescott.