Config

Casing: Lian-Li V-350 (Aluminium, Black colour)
PSU: CoolerMaster RS-460-PCAR-A3
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.0Ghz (45nm)
RAM: Corsair DDR2-800 1GB x 2
Motherboard: Asus P5K-VM
Display Card: HIS HD 3870 IceQ 3 Turbo 512MB

The Casing

The casing is of a cube design.  The CD-ROM bay opens sideway.  The harddisk bay is located at the back of the casing, with an 8cm fan behind it to draw hot air out.  The motherboard sits horizontally in this casing, with the power supply on top of the CPU.  This pose a problem to removing heat from the CPU, as some heatsinks blow downwards but power supply is drawing air upwards, resulting in a higher than normal temperature inside the casing (about 8-9 degrees higher than room temperature).

The audio jack issue

The audio jack on the left side of casing is not sturdy enough.  When I plug in my headphone, the panel seems to be pushed in at the same time.  For this reason I bought a short extension cord in order to prevent possible damage made to the panel when I switch between headphone and speaker.  I think the panel can be made more sturdy as the panel is only mounted on one side but not both.

Photos

The casing from the back before stuffing the things in. There are 2 12 cm fans for air intake and hot air is drawn out of the casing through the power supply, the 8 cm fan behind the harddisk bay and the display card.

The case from the right.

The harddisk bay. An 8 cm fan is to draw air out of the casing and keep the harddisk cool.  It is advised that you have the angled SATA connector or you may have difficulty installing the fan as there are not much space.

 The "front panel" (for audio, USB and firewire) is actually on the left side.

The power LED (blue) is so bright. The red is for the harddisk.

Motherboard

When I first boot up the machine, the temperature monitor shows my CPU is running at around 10 degrees, which is certainly abnormal.  After some search on the net, it turns out that the BIOS needs an upgrade; the one shipped with the board is about one year old and there's been a few updates, including support for the new 45 nm microprocessors.  After update, temperature readings become normal.

Another issue is that although there are three fan connectors on the board, only two give a speed reading (cost consideration?); sometimes there is no reading for the chassis fan, and I don't know why.

The Heatsink

The stock heatsink that comes with the processor is smaller than the previous generation and the copper base is gone.  While the old Core 2 heatsink (on 65nm processors) measures 61x90x90mm, the one that comes with E8400 is just approximately 48x90x90mm (height measured from the contact surface to the top of the fan), with the aluminium part approximately 2 cm high.  The bad point about the stock heatsink is that it's not easy to install.  It is difficult to press the four pins down, and it caused the motherboard to bend.  The good thing about it is the silent operation, 1200 rpm when idle and 2100 rpm when CPU is under load.  As it's summer these days and temperature gets to around 30 degrees, I decided to buy a new heatsink for the CPU.  When I remove the stock heatsink I find that the pre-applied thermal compound does not spread to the entire heat spreader, just around 70% so this may be a reason why the CPU is hot.  So my advice is try to get some thermal compound rather than relying on the pre-applied one.

 The heatsink bent my motherboard...

The new heatsink (http://www.pccooler.cn/Products/83cu/83CU.htm) is made of copper with a fan that spins at 2800 rpm.  The fan has only 3 pins so PWM is not available and it always run at full speed.  When using air conditioner and the room is quiet, I can hear the noise from the fan.  It does drop the temperature by a few degrees, though.  I'm thinking of getting a speed controller for the CPU fan to make it less noisy.  (The motherboard for my old PC has PWM for the CPU fan using the 3 pin connector, which is excellent.)

The Display Card

I chose this display as it offers good at removing heat from the display (directly out of the casing).  It's heavy (at least 800g I guess) and there's even heatpipe to conduct the heat away from the GPU.  The "fan" sounds like a hairdryer when you turn it fully on, but normally the speed is adjusted according to the GPU temperature, and is about 25% (~52 degrees) when it's idle and 70-80% (~65 degrees) when gaming, which is acceptable.  (Room temperature: 28 degrees)

I learn from some websites that this display card (3870) can adjust the GPU and RAM frequency and the core voltage depending on the mode.  I fired up the RivaTuner to see if that's the case.  This display works at a pre-overclocked frequency of 850/1190 Mhz (core/RAM) and that the voltage is also tuned up to 1.30V (normally it's 1.23V?).  I then followed the instructions and modded my display card so that it runs at 300/900 Mhz and at 0.98V when it's not running 3D intensive applications like games.  After that I can see the frequency jumping up and down when 3DMark switch scenes.  But due to this switching, the score seems to drop (from 11100 to 9400) but I don't think that hurts when it comes to gaming --- it'll just run at full speed.  (Warning: Flashing the BIOS can be risky.  The screen just hangs for a few minutes and if you try to reset the machine, you'll need another display card to boot up the machine and restore it.)

The case from the left showing the display card. I chose this case because it can accomodate long display cards.

The CPU

The E8400 achieves 3 Ghz by 333 Mhz x 9.  Compared to my old CPU, which score less than 100 in CPUMark99, this one can run 2 instances at 420 marks each.  On overclocking to 3.6 Ghz (400 Mhz x 9) the score is 505.

I tried to make it to 4 Ghz (444 x 9) using Auto setting but failed.  This is expected as Auto won't push the CPU too hard.  Of course, with the not-so-good ventilation in the casing, I won't add voltage to achieve a higher speed.  3.6 Ghz is good enough.

Since I find that the Auto setting is good for the CPU when overclocking, I wonder if the CPU can run at a lower voltage when running at stock frequency.  The lowest voltage offered by the motherboard is 1.1V, and the CPU is happy with it.  The temperature drops by 3 degrees under load as a result.

Testing

Room temperature 32 degrees; motherboard temperature 41 C;
burn using CPUMark99; voltage reading from CPU-Z

3.6 Ghz @ Auto : idle 1.264 V, 50 C; burn 1.232 V, 65 C
3.0 Ghz @ Auto : idle 1.120 V, 46 C; burn 1.168 V, 58 C
3.0 Ghz @ 1.1V : idle 1.064 V, 45 C; burn 1.040 V, 55 C

More Testing on RAM

(updated 15 Sep 2008)

I came across the wiki page on Core 2 processors, which mentions the use of synchronous memory modules on Core 2 platform may enhance the performance.  I read the article and decided to give it a try.  The default timing of my RAM is 5-5-5-18 at 800Mhz.  I ran two copies of Super PI Mod 1.5 which displays time to finish to 3 decimal places.  I tried the config of 4-4-4-12 at 667Mhz which is considered "synchronized" with my 1333 FSB CPU.  The test shows a drop in performance so that trick seems not applicable to my machine (if my RAM can run 3-3-3-9 maybe the result will be different). Anyway here's the result: (CPU runs at 3Ghz in all tests, result is the average of two 4M tests run at the same time)

5-5-5-15 @ 800Mhz : 1:42.242
4-4-4-12 @ 667Mhz : 1:47.677
6-6-6-18 @ 887Mhz : 1:39.524 (at 1.9V)
5-5-5-18 @ 800Mhz : 1:43.094 (stock rating)

(I once had a pair of GEIL DDR-333 RAM which rate at 2.5-3-3-6 and I ran them at 2-2-2-5 for 3 years before they deteriorate and fall back to stock rating.)

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