Is 3.8Volts for the I/O voltage OK?

[SteveC]

Hi all,

I've been trying to do that voltage mod on my Asus A7V to try and get my 1gig tbird a bit higher, but have failed miserably. My voltage regulator daughterboard is a bit different to all the mods I could find for tha A7V and when I try them out, I get a high-low-high-low tone from the PC speaker and that's it. My daughter board looks like the A7V133 one, but that mod does the same thing for me.

Anyway, I've given up on that one, and invested my time on cooling the CPU instead (some bizarre photos to follow!). And I've also worked out how to get 3.8Volts for the VIO setting. There's the normal 3.3V, the default 3.5V for this board and a 3.6V setting, but I've found that if you combine all these (using a 3-way jumper! or, in my case a bit of wire soldered on ) thgen you can get 3.8V.

But is this too high? I found a site telling you how to get 3.9Volts or even over 4 volts for the I/O, but still I'm not too sure. After running for a little while, the RAM is a bit warm, but the clock generator is boiling! (I don't know if it usually gets very hot though.)

Any thoughts?

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[SteveC]

Some pics of the fans I was playing with:

Firstly, a 'tunnel' approach. The heatsink isa quite large Taisol one, with its Taisol fan one end, and a cooler master the other. The sides of the heatsink were taped up so that air only went through it.



Didn't work that great

Next up is a variation on the 'tunnel' - put a fan on top:



Air in on top, in on the left, out on the right.
Bit poor performance.

The Taisol heatsink and delta fan (before it died). Experiment with the fan drawing air out...



didn't work very well at all.


This 4th variation on the original 'tunnel' actually performed the best by a few degrees.



Bottom two-thirds of my PC after I put it all back together:



There's another of those huge 120mm fans at the top, both run at 7Volts to keep the noise down.

Currently 29'C mainboard temp, and 49'C CPU temp on my 1Gig Tbird running at 11x100 @ 1.85Volts core, 3.8Volts I/O, running SETI@Home for a couple of hours.

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[xortam]

V

[SteveC]

Already altered it a bit again cos now it's in the PC and I don't want to fight the laws of physics and so I'm helping the heat rise.

Anyway, after half an hour or so of Prime95, I'm getting no errors, butthe CPU is at 56'C - is that *too* high?

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[cbman]

Hey Steve... It seems a little high... but what would I know... My Cele stops working at 49-50 Degrees C

At Full out at 901 it sits at 48.5 Degrees

I might be able to get it higher if I can reduce the case's ambient temp which sits at 39-40 Degrees.

------------------
"Wouldn't it simplify things if Hettar, Mandorallen, and I go pick a fight with them? Five dead Murgos aren't going to follow anybody."
"I don't know if that would set to well with the Tolnedran legionnaires who police the fair," Silk drawled. "Policemen seem to worry about unexplained bodies. It upsets their sense of neatness."

From Book Two of the Belgariad, David Eddings

[xortam]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by cbman:
I might be able to get it higher if I can reduce the case's ambient temp which sits at 39-40 Degrees.</font>

I just solved my ambient temp problems. Got new premium windows installed yesterday which replaced some 43 year-old drafty, aluminum ones! I'm a happy guy!!

[SteveC]

Aaargghh! I was woken up this morning by one of the fans taped onto the heatsink - it had fallen off and was grinding against something!

Tip of the day: Don't use tape to hold on fans to heatsinks!

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[rubank]

SteveC,

I use doublesided "foam" tape at the four corners of the fan to attch it to the sink. It has worked great for a couple of years, never any mishaps. It gives you the bonus of reducing noice, since the foamy tape "eats up" the fans vibrations.

I also have a 2nd HD "hanging" under the drivebay cage with 4 small cushions of 3M foam tape, so it´s strong enough.

rubank

[cbman]

Yeah... we have that double sided 3M foam tape at work (as well as just double sided 3M tape)

Without it I don't think any of those Hiedelburg perfect binding machines would be holding together so well



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Canadian... Hell Ya!!!

[ayoub_ibrahim]

SteveC,have you considered changing your present cpu an getting an AXIA 1 GHz instead. you'll most likely get up to
1.4+ GHz. SCAN has some of these cpus in at present if you're interested!

[cbman]

I got up early to go out for breakfast with my father before work.. so when I got home instead of waking up the wife I played around with my case a little bit...

here are the pics (They are really crappy as its my little sisters Cheap IXLA Digital Camera she got in a 90 dollar makeover software kit... LOL)


Here Is My Messy Case as I decide how to put my fans today

I decided to wire a fan over some empty slots in the back of the computer blowing air towards the CPU (This will have to be moved after I get my GF2 Back from my little brother)

I decided to see how much dust was in my HS and wow... its plugged full of the $h1t

That pile of stuff that looks purplish is the dust out of the HS shroud... the greenish tinged thing above it is a standard sized canadain popsicle stick

This is me deciding to use the popsicle stick as a prop to prevent the Fanblades from contacting the HS and causing me go go through something like Steve has. (Thanks for the heads up Steve) Oh and yes that is 3M scotch tape holding it in place

This is the HS put back together with my puller fan + popsicle stick attached to the top of it to pull heat towards the top of the case where it gets sucked out the top front drivebay by three fans (not shown)

This is my Comp put back together sans side cover. As you can see my PS sits right above the HS and CPU which makes ordinary cooling situations tough... but it also gives me a chance to play around... you will also notice that on the slot mounted fan I taped two pieces of Mountain Dew Box that I had cut to help funnel the cool air towards the CPU instead of just generally at the upper part of the case... and voila... I doubt it will make my computer OC any better... but it passed away a good 45 minutes...



Being bored with lots of time and no qualms about screwing up can be fun...

EDIT - Added Descriptions to the pictures.

------------------
"Wouldn't it simplify things if Hettar, Mandorallen, and I go pick a fight with them? Five dead Murgos aren't going to follow anybody."
"I don't know if that would set to well with the Tolnedran legionnaires who police the fair," Silk drawled. "Policemen seem to worry about unexplained bodies. It upsets their sense of neatness."

From Book Two of the Belgariad, David Eddings


[This message has been edited by cbman (edited 15 May 2001).]

[Colin Morey]

SteveC, one thing I've remebered that may help. if you try and draw/push too much air into too small a hole, it will "choke" and you'll get less cooling, one way to solve this would be to use a smaller fan and arrangement like this,
_ _
/ ########## \
[] ########## []
\_##########_/

fan | heatsink| fan

hth, or move the fans away from the fins. (duct from outside the case.)

COlin