No, everything is stock. I'm using cpuspeed to lock the frequency at 1.6GHz when crunching on all cores; it's all I can do to prevent the CPU from over-heating.

If your motherboard supports undervolting, and if you don't have a philosophical objection to it, you probably could save quite a lot of CPU power dissipation (even at idle--because of leakage) by lowering the voltage. My E5620 is on a different technology than your i7, but I observed it to run a full BOINC workload (8 threads) with a detected CPU voltage of .90V (requested was .912 and my motherboard has an antidroop option which I had enabled) at fully stock timings giving 2533 GHz. That saved 8 watts over the 1V requested level, and considerably more over the default level (don't recall precisely, but think CPU-Z was reporting a measurement of 1.13V, perhaps). True, some of that power difference goes to conversion inefficiency in the power supply, but the rest either goes directly to your CPU or else to power conversion circuits so close to your CPU that it might as well be there.

But if you are more inclined to tinker with cases, fans, HSF, and cpuspeed than with BIOS options you may wish to steer clear of this. I'm willing to run some exploration on a new build (with little investment in software installation to be redone if I get very unluck), to find the boundary, then I run at settings with some margin to the boundary--typically five "clicks" (the minimum CPU voltage increment) above the level I found to run without error for a week.

Good luck

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This has been an expensive project. Got the new case, but the motherboard did not survive the transplant. Ordered a replacement board last night.

Details here.

I took pictures of the case with components installed. Perhaps I should write a review somewhere? I have not found any pics online of this new case in action (just empty).

I may try the undervolting thing once I get this new board. I just want everything to work first.

Well, the only thing that can keep the i7 from overheating is a 2000RPM fan on the heatsink. I don't remember having this problem when I first installed it. I wonder if I used enough thermal compound or did something else wrong? I only used one drop in the center as the directions said.

Thanks for all the suggestions from everyone.

PS You can see a pic of my rig below.

Waauw, looks really nice Starfox !
(looks a bit like a disco computer;)

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Music
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Something I have'nt seen mentioned is ambient temperature or how cold is the air being fed into the PC?

Here in the UK we are hitting average daily highs of 20C and 10C at night with some reports of snow & frost. So what? Well, that's free airconditioning if you leave a window and/or door open. A 10C drop in ambient temperature will probably result in larger drops inside your PC ...

Whatever the outside temperature, it's going to be cooler than the air inside the PC so FRESH, outside air is A Good Idea.

HTH, Ray

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The difference between 0 and 1 is greater than the difference between 1 and 1,000,000

10C sounds nice to me! I live in a tropical area. Keep the house at about 74F (23C).

I have a PCI cooler fan being shipped right now; hopefully this is the last piece of keeping this SFF system cool.

My system specs are below, here are the main points. It is a fairly high performance cube designed to be small, quiet, dust free, eye catching, and lightweight. The power supply fan is the only exhaust fan and its speed is determined by the power supply load. The two intake fans are independently controlled by built in temp probes and are protected by fine metal mesh dust filters. The CPU fan is also independently controlled by a built in temp probe.

I designed this so that the air pressure inside the case would be higher than than the pressure outside and draw all incoming air through dust filters because I live in a rather dusty environment. I vacuum the filters once a week or two and it stays cool and clean internally and quiet externally.

At idle I am getting 115F thermal margin on the CPU with the CPU fan at 1230 rpm. At full load I get 90F thermal margin with 1750 rpm (readings from Intel Desktop Utilities). The case cpu probe reads 95F at idle and 110F at full load.

I don't know how good this setup is or the numbers it produces (comments welcome), but it works well for me as a cruncher and Star Trek Online box.

X-Qpack2 windowed cube case
DG45ID mainboard
Q6600 G0 CPU (95W TDP)
2x 1GB DDR2 800 Crucial Tracers
GIGABYTE GV-N250-1GI GeForce GTS 250 video card
2x WD2500BEKT 250GB Scorpio Black hard drives (RAID 0)
600 Watt OCZ ModXstream modular power supply
ZEROtherm CF900 92mm CPU cooler
12cm and 8cm Apollish intake fans

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The H50 is old news, I'd go for the Corsair H70 which has a thicker radiator and a thinner water block than the old H50. You want quiet? Go H70, Noise go Air... Looking at the case specs, he may not have the room for a double radiator, which I why suggested the H50, it's smaller. The only available fan space is only one 120mm.

The Corsair H70 does not have a dual radiator - dual fans and a thicker radiator but you don't need to run both fans. The extra surface area will make a big difference even if you are only using one fan to blow cooler air across the radiator from the outside of the case.

Todd

Team GPU Users Admin and #1 Leader RAC for the world

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I have a PCI cooler fan being shipped right now; hopefully this is the last piece of keeping this SFF system cool.

Well, the PCI cooler doesn't fit by less than 1 cm. :( So, I re-routed some cables to allow better air flow, and under full load my i7 stays under 75C. Without going to a bigger heatsink or water cooling, this seems like the end of my efforts.

Final specs:
Lian Li PC-V354 case
Intel Core i7 920
Noctua NH-U12P heatsink w/ slim fan
6GB OCZ DDR3
Nvidia Geforce 8600GT
2 x WD 500GB drives
3Ware 9650SE RAID card
Corsair 650W 80PLUS power

There are several people who installed the H50 in this case over at the Hard Forums. Probably going to continue discussion over there and not here.

Thanks for everyone's help. I hope SETI is back to 100% by Thanksgiving.

P.S. The old case is for sale if anyone wants it. Cheap. :)

Use liquid helium. You'd be amazed how high you can overclock once your CPU begins superconducting. ^^

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I have a PCI cooler fan being shipped right now; hopefully this is the last piece of keeping this SFF system cool.

-[ snip ]-

Final specs:
Lian Li PC-V354 case
Intel Core i7 920
Noctua NH-U12P heatsink w/ slim fan
6GB OCZ DDR3
Nvidia Geforce 8600GT
2 x WD 500GB drives
3Ware 9650SE RAID card
Corsair 650W 80PLUS power

There are several people who installed the H50 in this case over at the Hard Forums. Probably going to continue discussion over there and not here.

Thanks for everyone's help. I hope SETI is back to 100% by Thanksgiving.

-[ snip ]-

Greetings DJ,

I would like to share a bit of my experience with my i7 build. First the specs:

SPECIFICATIONS:
Intel i7-860 2.80 GHz CPU
Corsair H50 CPU cooling system
Asus P7P55D-E Pro MoBo
Evga nVidia GeForce 960 GSO PCI-E Video Card (CUDA Enabled)
Kingston 4GB PC3 10600 DDR3 RAM (Dual Channel)
Western Digital 500GB 3G SATA HDD x 2 = 1TB Storage
Micro$oft WinXP Pro 32 bit
BOINC v6.10.58

In doing some research on the i7-860, after I had already built the PC, I found that the 860 has a bad habit of running excessively hot. This was proved to be true by monitoring my CPU temps. It would run as high as 75C and average between 65C and 70C. This would set off an alert several times a day. I believe the upper limit, for the 860, was 72C. I used TThrottle to help regulate the temps, but my CPU would only run BOINC at 5% to 35%.

A couple weeks ago I installed the Corsair H50 cooler and haven't seen an alert since, and the CPU is running at 100% all the time. I have not seen the CPU temp get over 55C since. I really have no need, now, for TThrottle.

My i7 has 2 fans, the PSU fan and the radiator fan for the liquid cooler. Oh, I forgot, the video card has a built-in fan. Basically, I have 2 fans for cooling the PC.

As for noise: If I had my Linux PC shut down, I could barely hear the i7 running, and that includes any noise that the cooler pump may be generating. To be certain the i7 is running, I have to look to see that the internal and the front panel LEDs are lit, unless I happen to be doing work on it as I am right now. This baby is quiet with a capital Q! :)

DJ, you cannot go wrong with installing a liquid cooling system! And, you could eliminate most of your other fans to boot! :) That would eliminate much of the noise from your i7.

Just thought I would share my i7 experience. :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

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CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

... you cannot go wrong with installing a liquid cooling system! ...

Oooooh, that sounds like a challenge.

Possibly a damp one ;-)

OFF TOPIC
Never heard an ATI card, EAH5870, with an 4850, next to it, making so much (fan)noise, running DNETC, I just stopped it, no way of controlling it, in a manageble way. Their 5kxxxx WU's push both cards to their edge, or above.
(Crazy RAC :) of 300K, this isn't fun anymore, I'll choose another project, this is insane.....)
This rig uses ~600Watt running DNETC 5Kxxxx WU's.
Back on topic ;-)

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... you cannot go wrong with installing a liquid cooling system! ...

Oooooh, that sounds like a challenge.

Possibly a damp one ;-)

I agree Siran. I chose liquid for my newest build, which is an i7/930. Having had cooling problems with one of my other systems, Q6600/DP35DP, I went to the Corsair H50 and havn't looked back. LQS now resides on all three of my machines, one of which is currently down for maintenance.

Since these machines sit in a second story room w/o a/c and the breeze coming from the wrong direction, even when outside temps reaches 30-40c, the CPU temp is never above 65c. With all 8 cores running on the i7/930 running 100%, 24/7, I still average around 55c. Another plus, and it's a BIG PLUS, is the silhouette; its much more pleasing to see then an big ugly air cooled radiator sitting in the middle of a case.

Siran, et. al.,

Thanks for sharing your setup.

Those i7 chips run very hot. Intel specs say 72C is max temp, but there must be some headroom since I've seen my chip at 80C without any errors. I run BOINC 50% of processors (4 of 8 cores) and that gives me 1) cooler temps (always less than 72C) and 2) extra processing power to use for real stuff.

I don't have money for a water-cooling setup at the moment, but when I get the money, I'll definitely consider the Corsair H50.

Switching to the Lian Li case actually helped a lot on the noise and heat. All fans are at least 120mm now (instead of 60mm/80mm before), and case airflow probably doubled compared to previous case. My refrigerator is actually louder than my computer (next to kitchen area), so noise problem is solved. There's a total of 4 case fans + power supply fan + CPU fan--all are 1200RPM or less.

Try the CoolIT VANTAGE A.L.C.

HTPC cases + i7 = high temps w/air.

Water cooling is the greatest solution without getting too crazy. The H50/H70 is pretty decent with dropping temps, but once you reach heat saturation in your system that will be as cool as it gets. Hence the big water cooling kits have large lines, multiple radiators and fans.

I wonder what an H50 with a tec would do :) Small footprint, but you have condensation to worry about. So you could look into peltiers/tec. Have you looked at Cooler Masters V10? It has a peltier system built into the heatsink, but I don't think it will agree with an HTPC case since it's quite large.

I wanted fullsize size, in a mid tower, so I recently went with a Corsair 600T and couldn't be happier. Double 200mm fans in the front and top, 120 pushing out the back, plenty of room for cooling, has cable management grommets, remountable HD cages, water cooling pass throughs, cut out to get to swap cooling without removing he motherboard, tool less etc etc. Give it a look. ;)

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

I see no reason you could not TEC the radiator without condensation problems. Direct on the CPU, you would have to monitor against over-cooling, perhaps with a variable resistor to control the output.

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Janice

To quote another of my favorite movies........

"Why don't you just SHOOT her???"

LOL.....
I guess I just don't understand the end game.
If you want it to be quiet, just turn it off.......

Just kidding.......
I understand that the questions was about how to make it as quiet as possible whilst still crunching.

Never my game, my friends. If it ain't makin' noise, something is wrong in my book.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Nicely said Mark:)

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