Ltooz
Building, Fixing and Improving Stuff...
i7 & MSI X58 PLATINUM
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Our recommendation is stay away from BFG Tech for any rebates!!!!
After spending average of 12+ hours of shrinking blu-ray to 1920x1080 mkv and avchd dvd using the old E4300 (@3ghz), we decided to try the i7 platform. There are tons of reviews on i7 and its x58 motherboards on the internet. We took a chance to buy an oem board from NewEgg.com. So here is our i7 system.
1. MSI X58 PLATINUM (OEM) $150.00 which includes no accessories from NEWEGG.com. We choose this board because it got everything we wanted: Esata, Firewire, 2 Ethernet, 2 ps2, 3 PCIe 1x, 2xPCI.
2. BFG V2.2 GS 550W POWER SUPPLY $29.00 (after rebate) from MicroCenter, we don't need 700W for what we do.
3. CORSAIR 6GB 1333 Triple Channels $64.00 (after rebate) from NEWEGGS.com
4. HITACHI 1TB 7K1000.B $85 from MicroCenter. We don't use Seagate due to many returns (2 in a row).
5. i920 $142.00 (Intel Employee discount) or $220 @ MicroCenter.
6. KINGWIN XT1264 CPU COOLER $39.99 @ Fry's
Total =$513.99 we are using our nice old case.
Now, is the money well spent for our purpose? Can we over clock this 2.67Ghz? Yes, we can and it's running @ 180x21 = 3780Mhz after all the trials and errors. We can push it for more, but why? The $1000 extreme 965 only runs @ 3.2Ghz.
MSI X58 PLATINUM (OEM). The box came quickly from NewEgg.com as usual. It has 15 days to try out and return, it doesn't come with any accessories supposedly and here it is.
3 CD drivers are from different chipset, we downloaded the current drivers for this board in advance since we expected nothing. The back io plate is missing which we hope we got one, but no problem.
The heatsink on heatpipe is bent upward at the south bridge, this may be the reason for the return (over heating?).
This really worries us, but we got it already, removed the heatpipe, bent the pipe to make it straight, apply some heat conductive paste on both ICs and the heatsink surfaces and hope for the best.
The board looks brand new.
The socket is missing a capacitor, let's just hope it's by design.
The i7 came in time for the assembly.
BFG V2.2 550W POWER SUPPLY
CORSAIR 6GB 1333 TRIPLE CHANNELS
Hooked up everything, only installed 1 stick to make sure that it boots up first before loading all 3. Hit the power button... nothing happened, oh my gosh, we're dead... Wait, the power supply switch is off... switch it on first... all lights are on... No beeps? after 15-20 seconds... beep!!! the monitor has some life... WOW.
Can we get in the bios... YES... let's see if the health is good.
It was a hot night in April.
Turn off the system, populate all 3 memory sticks and voila... everything is running.
We keep touching the heatsinks to see if they're hot to make sure they actually touching the IC surfaces and they're warm.
Leave everything at optimum setting in the bios, no over clock or anything fancy yet. Load windows XP 64 bit in 30 minutes.
Intel drivers
These days with HD audio driver from Realtek, the Front Audio Panel doesn't work because of the jack auto detect setting. To enable front audio headphone and microphone jacks, DISABLE the detection in Audio I/O, Analog Settings, Connector settings. This one will work with all motherboards that have HD Realtek Audio driver.
Overclock the MSI X58 PLATINUM.
We went to the bios, by the way the version is still 1.10, we downloaded v1.13 but we don't flash it yet. Tried to increase the frequency and it wouldn't boot for anything, even with 135mhz instead of 133mhz. Darn, no wonder they returned this board... But wait... instead of leaving intel EIST to auto, set it to "enable" and voila... the board posts @ 150mhz = 3150mhz without touching anything. Now after trials and errors, we found the optimum speed which this motherboard & ddr3 & i7 will best perform.
BIOS SETTING
NO NEED TO RAISE CPU voltage and DRAM voltage much.
***MAKE SURE EIST (ENABLED) & PCI Frequency [37.5]***
When EIST is enabled the system will be at the lowest freq & power consumption which will prolong the life of the CPU & CHIPSET besides saving us some electrical bill.
Multiplier is @ x12 NOT x20, power = 31.34W/130W
Now let's try shrinking Deathrace 1 hour 50 minutes long, 20gb m2ts, dts, 1920x1080 @ 8192Kbs, 2 pass using RIPBOT264 v1.13.3 which took 12 hours in E4300 oc to 3GHZ. Unbelievable, it's running at 37fps.
It's 1:30AM, let's go to sleep and see how long it would take to finish this one.
Woke up @ 6:30AM and it's already done!!!! DONE!!!! We don't know when it actually finish but not more than 5 hours. We didn't believe it, look for the mkv file and there it is, 7.7GB of 1920x1080 and played beautifully... WOW. WOW. WOW. and it's only running @ 3150MHZ.
Let's try HANDBRAKE 9.3, look at the fps... We usually see 18-20fps max. This system really ROCKS!!!!!
FINAL STABLE OC- Set base clock to 185MHZ - Encode mkv using 8000kbs @1920x1080 using Handbrake9.3 or Ripbot264 - If it encodes the whole movie without BSOD then the system is stable.
Download speed using wireless N150 Airlink101 with Router downstairs
How fast can it beIf we hook up the main Hard drive to SATA 7 (Jmicron chipset), load the driver and take a nero cache test, we should see great numbers.
The Best OC setting for MSI X58 Platinum & i920.
After reading about the turbo mode & EIST, the best settings for this i920 is to turn on Turbo mode + EIST. Set the base clock a little lower 178Mhz x 20, but in turbo mode, it will run at 178Mhz x 21 =3738Mhz. The EIST will turn off the turbo mode when the CPU utilization is over 70% and temp rises above 70C. With normal operation, we noticed the CPU never reached 70% utilization and above 70C, therefore, all programs will be running @ turbo mode. The 2nd pass encoding is the only time the CPU utilization @ 100% and temp rises above 80C.
How much time do we save by OC? Using 830Mb M2TS full Blu-ray 1920x1080 resolution and Handbrake & ripbot264 to encode 1920x1080 @8Mbs Mkv file, we got the data as follow.
@133Mhz x20 turbo mode with EIST on, Ripbot264 did it in 8:32 minutes and Handbrake9.3 in 7:12 minutes
@178Mhz x 20 turbo mode with EIST on. Handbrake9.3 ran the whole 1st pass @ 178Mhz x21 and 2nd pass @ 178Mhzx20
348 seconds vs 432 seconds = 20% faster
403 seconds vs 512 seconds = 21.3% fasterThink with 20Gb blu-ray file, we would save lots of time when we OC.
KINGWIN XT 1264 CPU COOLER
To be safe in OC, we got the XT1264 CPU cooler from Fry's for $40.00. After reading all the reviews from other CPU coolers, this one is the best for the money. The best part about this one is that we don't have to remove the motherboard to install it due to weight like other brands heavy duty CPU coolers. XT1264 is big, but it fits this board perfectly well...
This one has 4 pins fan socket which supports every power setting we can have to save power and noise level. @2400 RPM max, this one is pretty loud. We're setting in the bios to 50% @60C, which means it only runs @ 50% capacity until CPU temp goes pass 60C and adjust the rpm accordingly. With this cooler our settings will be
180Mhz x 21 = 3760Mhz @ load under 60% which is all other applications besides Video encoding 2nd pass.
EIST ON, TURBO ON.
@idle, it's amazingly cool, the fan runs low and with the case closed, the northbridge got air flow and it's also cooler, too.
@Max CPU load
NO MORE 95C & 100C with Intel Cooler
Cheers,
4/22/09
5/5/09
