Unfortunately I am no longer avalible for being an officer in unions. I am moving right now. If anyone has questions for me they can PM me and I will try to answer as best as I can. Another unfortunate is that I will be missing the lauch of Core 2 (will not have internet access at that time). I will there for be unable to recommend Core 2 systems until I post a further notice. IE I will be unable to say which motherboard to get. I would say an Asus P5B board that is based on the Intel 965 would be a good start but then I have no actual experience with this board. Feel free to PM me anyways and I will get back to you when I can.

So I have been playing with my Ram timings for a bit here...
My memory is rated for 4-4-4-10 with 2.0 Volts so I wondered what I could get with 2.1 Volts...

http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc?id=96301

Of course I am only running the default speeds and I have not tried to overclock that much but still to get the ram running at those timings is pretty good. There is not much ram that runs @ 3- anything with DDR2. This should be good memory for Core 2. As that CPU can actually use low latency memory...

  Well Guess what? You can join the MS beta team right here

No need for illegal downloads you can do it all totally legally...

I don't know. I need to take some time off.. I've reached 15000 posts.. Oh well. I've been a good boy and have not spent any money on my PC lately... I'm saving for Core 2.

I should have done this a week ago... But anways I got myself a propper PSU instead of the poser I was using a for the last month...

Well actually. The Antec Smartpower 2.0 450 Watt PSU is not exactly a poser. It's just not up to the stuff I need anymore... Throwing a 7900 GT and a P4 @ 4.0Ghz seems to drop it to it's knees... No everclocking the GPU at all.

So anyways. I did a lot of reasearch and decided to get an Antec Neo HE 550 Watt PSU. Wonderful PSU with 85% efficiency... Really nice looking not a bad price (came to $170 Canadian after taxes). So I get it home an plug it in all good. But wait... The computer won't turn on... So it goes back to the store... Turns out that all current gen Neo HE PSU's from Antec do not work with Asus boards... I thought it was an Intel only problem but it occured with some Asus A8N-SLI and A8N32-SLI boards too. So in otherwords I cannot recommend the Neo HE as a reliable solution...

But anyway I was looking at the OCZ Powerstream 700 Watt PSU figuring that should do the trick for me. But my local shop wants me to wait three weeks for it... But another local shop offered me an Enermax Liberty 620 for $250 canadian (after goverment contributions - taxes). I got that and all is working good now. I can heartily recommend the Antec Smartpower PSU's and the Enermax Liberty PSU's  (I must comment that the packing on the Enermax is first rate but then for $250 it better be...).

Okay I am so crazy. I keep doing these... It's still a CTP and definitly that...

Check it out here.

I finally had the confidence to push this CPU a little bit on this board...

I have still not reached the limit of this board (I think that is why 3.7 was my limit before). The Asus P5LD2 is rated for the EE chips which use a 266 FSB and is supposed to do up to 450 FSB.. I don't think I can reach that...

SPecs...

• FSB 1064 QDR (266 real)
• 4006Mhz
• Load 53C
• Idle 34C
• DDR2-667 ram

Result = 33% CPU OC...

Anway... 29 Seconds on Super Pi SSE3 Patch and 42 seconds with two instances running (the only way to really load an HT CPU). Below is the image @ 3.9Ghz

CPU-Z Certification V 1.33

Okay so I just got all those new parts... Is it helping any?

Well so far I have been moving slowly...

The CPU is @ 3.6 doing just fine with 1.31 volts (hopefully it will be on auto by the end of the week)

The GPU on the other hand is kindof disappointing... I cannot seem to overclock it much more then 20Mhz on the core or 80 MHz on the ram. Mind you it does not need it anyway. My CPU is holding it back. Or the amount of ram... That said...

The Mushkin EM2 DDR2-667 ram... Does DDR2-750 just fine with 5-5-5-15 timings. with 4-4-4-12 timings I can only get 700 totally stable.

The new case.... Is awesome. The Temperatures are pretty good. The AS5... I am not sure what to think of it yet. I am not really seeing much of an improvment over the OCZ Ultra 5+ so I may go back to that later. I did like the Arctic Clean stuff.. Wow that is nice. and 1200 Grit sandpaper is not enough... 1500 Grit or higher is needed. I need to find some 2000 grit next...

The motherboard... Is doing quite well. So far stable @ 240 FSB though it is supposed to support 450 FSB and since it supports the EE edition chips (1033 FSB) I should be able to get to 270 without overvolting the northbridge. Maybe even 300 if I can find a way to keep the CPU cool enough.... Or maybe conroe will be out before I get that far...

I decided my last case was too small so I got a used Xaser III for $70 Canadian...

I also tried out Arctic Clean (more on that later) and am using AS5 now (instead of my normal OCZ Ultra 5+)

Go Here to see my new setup.

I now have a slightly upgraded system...

Intel 630 @ 3.52Ghz
eVGA 7900 GT CO SC
Asus P5LD2 (945P chipset)
2X Raptor 36 GB in Raid 0
2X512 Mushkin EM2 DDR2-667 (4-4-4-12)
X-Fi XtremeMusic
Sony DRU-720A
Seagate 80 GB 7200.7
WD 160 GB Caviar SE IDE 7200 RPM
TT Soprano w/450W SmartPower 2.0