Pulled the Trigger

You should have gotten the round cables. They improve airflow and cooling.

ed

"Journey" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 06 Apr 2007 20:43:44 GMT, "Nota Clu"
wrote:

and as threatened, bought a Digital Storm. Plan to over clock this biatch
to 3.0 GHz:
Did I make any mistakes?

When will you receive your PC? What do you plan on using it for. (if
anything is personal feel free to skip). Just want to focus on the
positives and the fun you'll be having.

When you say you want to overclock it, what will that gain you. You
aren't into games which would have first come to mind. Are you into
video processing?

I find the processor that you have speedy enough for all tasks I have
thrown at it (although I havne't done video processing with it yet).

I bought my XPS 410 from the outlet to have a XP desktop with maximum
specs with hardware that has drivers for XP. In a way it's insurance
because my E510 P4 is being stressed. I don't need two desktops, but
am keeping the E510 as a test PC for shareware and other programs.

Finally I love the 640m laptop (also Core 2 w 4M cache). I lucked
out. I didn't know there was a 1440 x 900 resolution. I thought I
would be getting WXGA. This makes the 640m the ideal laptop size from
Dell for me (although I suspect I might like some of the latitudes
better). I think I am going to extend the warranty a year (wonder if
I can do that after the fact for the same price as if I had purchased
it at time of purchase). That would give me 3 years of complete care.

Anyway, what are you planning on using your system for?
********************************************
Mostly video crunching with Roxio EMC9 (a PIG!) - making DVD's from mpg and
avi eats a ton of cpu cycles!
Also DVD picture slide shows with my Nikon D50 - photo editing eats a ton of
RAM!
Dictation with Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 - likes RAM and cpu cycles.
This system will easily over clock to 3.2 GHz. The Asus MB has built in
automatic OC'ing.
I expect delivery anywhere from 10 days to a month based on what I've read
on the net.
Why I chose Digital Storm over Dell we 1- XP available; 2 - reviews (see
Hard OCP.com); 3 - MUCH greater selection of components;
4 - built in over clocking and price.
Will probably load up some games - my 3.2 GHz P4 Dell was too slow for
modern games.

I'm thinking about adding that and the Stage 2 cooling option. I will call
them on Monday. My initial thoughts were that the Core 2 Duo run much
cooler so who needs it. Then I learned that the North and South Bridge
chips run hot on the Asus MB and since I want to OC....

"Ed Chait" wrote in message
thlink.net...


You should have gotten the round cables. They improve airflow and
cooling.

ed

Forgot to mention! Will take my current Dim 4700 to my office to replace my
decrepit Dell.

On Sun, 08 Apr 2007 13:57:10 GMT, "Nota Clu"
wrote:

I'm thinking about adding that and the Stage 2 cooling option. I will call
them on Monday. My initial thoughts were that the Core 2 Duo run much
cooler so who needs it. Then I learned that the North and South Bridge
chips run hot on the Asus MB and since I want to OC....


Can assure you if you have the Intel 965 chipset that the North and
South Bridge will run hot. I have 2 Intel boards running E6600 Core 2
Duo and with the stock HSFan the CPU runs cooler and much quiter than
my P4 3.2G Northwood.
The Intel board has a program for the sensors and the CPU runs at
36~48C while the fan runs at 1000~1200 RPM depending on computer (idle
or video processing + virus scan.) The North bridge runs at solid 45C
(4G ram and X3000 Video.) The South bridge is another story it runs at
70C so I added a 80mm fan to drop it back to 45~50C.
The North and South bridge are well within the Intel safe range but
without the extra fan just too hot to give me a warm fuzzy feeling.
Another note on the North and South bridge. The temps appear to be
solid and independent of load. For the North bridge the MB went from
1G to 4G and Onboard video to PCIe with no change in temp. The South
bridge went from 1HDD to 4HDD and normal ATA to RAID again with no
change in temps.

Art

I have had nothing but trouble with round IDE cables. And the problems
are not obvious, the system just gets flakey and unreliable, but you
can't pinpoint any specific problem. However, take out the round cable
and the problems go away.


Ed Chait wrote:
You should have gotten the round cables. They improve airflow and cooling.

ed

On Sun, 08 Apr 2007 13:40:02 GMT, "Nota Clu"
wrote:

Anyway, what are you planning on using your system for?
********************************************
Mostly video crunching with Roxio EMC9 (a PIG!) - making DVD's from mpg and
avi eats a ton of cpu cycles!
Also DVD picture slide shows with my Nikon D50 - photo editing eats a ton of
RAM!
Dictation with Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 - likes RAM and cpu cycles.
This system will easily over clock to 3.2 GHz. The Asus MB has built in
automatic OC'ing.
I expect delivery anywhere from 10 days to a month based on what I've read
on the net.
Why I chose Digital Storm over Dell we 1- XP available; 2 - reviews (see
Hard OCP.com); 3 - MUCH greater selection of components;
4 - built in over clocking and price.
Will probably load up some games - my 3.2 GHz P4 Dell was too slow for
modern games.

First question: how do you overclock? Are there risks? What are the
risks? Why doesn't Intel release it at 3.2Ghz if that's what it can
clock up to?

Games would probably benefit from a good video card.

I've never had problems with CPU for Dragon Naturally Speaking. It
always seemed to be processor friendly to me.

I also am going to try to do more video editing. It seems like video
conversion is what eats most of the CPU cycles.

First question: how do you overclock? Are there risks? What are the
risks? Why doesn't Intel release it at 3.2Ghz if that's what it can
clock up to?

Games would probably benefit from a good video card.

I've never had problems with CPU for Dragon Naturally Speaking. It
always seemed to be processor friendly to me.

I also am going to try to do more video editing. It seems like video
conversion is what eats most of the CPU cycles.
*********************************************
Over clocking is MB and BIOS specific. Dells, Gateways and HP's are all
locked systems and not
over clockable. A Google search on 'over clocking' will bring up 10,000
sites.
Basically, going into the BIOS at boot up and increasing the Front Side Bus
(FSB) speed
and/or CPU multiplier. The Asus MB has built in overclocking built in. See
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2894&p=3

There are risks of frying your cpu, memory and MB if you are reckless, but
less so than in the 'old' days.
That's why Dell will not allow OC'ing. Intel is not happy with OC'ing b/c
it eats into their profits.
However, If I remember correctly, Dell will 'unlock' their top end systems,
allowing OC'ing.

I agree that video editing/conversion are the most cpu intensive things you
can do with a computer.