The stock Core2 hsf occupies about 1/6 the total volume of the heatsink in my pic above Of course, that is quite an extreme example.

The AMD stock heatsink can get away with being smaller than Intel's because of its far superior design -- big copper base and heatpipes compared to teeny little base and no heatpipes. I've never owned an both Intel and AMD cpus of the same generation, but I've had an even mix of them over time and it seems the AMD stock hsf has always been much better.

i openned the box for my case yesterday, and it's really awesome. the frontsie is all bay mounting, but 6 of 9 are blocked by 2 120mm fans. if i move one to the top 3 bays it lines up perfectly with the rear 120mm and crosses the spot where my CPU sits on my mobo... it's really, really perfect. there's also space to mount a 120mm on the back of the bays; i can basically create a wind tunnel (especially with the right HSF).

btw, any of you have experience with copper vs. aluminum with heatsinks? i know copper radiates better, but does aluminum have any advantages compared to copper besides lower cost (like lower weight)?

it looks like really a great case for modding and air circulation in general.

edit: comparing stats for otherwise identical models on the Zalman homepage, aluminum appears far lighter. 500g for the CNPS7500-AlCu vs 848g for the CNPS7500-Cu.

would it be possible to drill holes in the case and get longer screws? maybe use a few rubber gromets to cushion the space between the board and the case.

I don't know, maybe. Both the AMD and Intel HSF units exert a lot of pressure on the CPU. The motherboard has to support that force. AMD motherboards have a beefy backplate that takes the brunt of it. It seems Intel boards don't so the board gives way. You'll see what I mean if you look at it endways with the HSF installed. The bowing at the CPU socket is quite obvious. The AMD design is worlds better and I'm surprised by such an oversight on Intel's part. Though, it could be on Gigabyte's part, but usually board makers simply comform to specifications from the CPU manufacturer, especially when it comes to the HSF/socket arrangement.

maybe it'd just be possible to copy the backplate? i was searching around for stuff like this yesterday and found a few posts in various forums - didn't bookmark anything of course.

If you're concerned about the mounting system, why not ditch the Zalman and go with one that has a better system instead? The 7500 doesn't cool any better than the stock hsf when the fan's turned down to comparable noise levels anyway.

oh i wasn't necessarily saying it'd get the 7500; it was the first model i could find that had otherwise identical Cu and Al versions.

Gotcha. On that subject, it appears that the best performing heatsinks have copper bases and heatpipes, and aluminum fins.

The Thermalright SI-128SE is a really nice unit, what separates it from other Thermalrights is that it shares the IFX-14's extremely robust mounting system. Take a look at the installation page to see what I mean. Plus it's got mounting options for Intel and AMD, and enough performance to handle any upgrade path you'd choose in the future.

There may be after market units that use a better mounting system, I haven't looked. Anyway, it's together and working so I don't think I'm going to mess with it. Motherboards are designed to withstand an amount of flex, but it would be better if the bowing wasn't there. Worst case, it does throw out the alignment of the PS/2 ports with the I/O plate a little bit. BTW, according to the BIOS, the CPU is idling around 100F so it runs even cooler than my Athlon, if that's possible. It used to be you couldn't keep your CPU cool enough, now they hardly even need fans. It's the northbridge and video card that get toasty these days.

Hi,

If it's a bad power supply, why can't you just buy
a replacement for it? Is there more issues other then a
bad PSU?

That's not true. First, older CPUs didn't have nearly as much difference in power consumption/heat output between idle and load states as newer ones do. And second, when a C2D idles, it's running at a reduced multiplier (and possibly reduced voltage, can't remember).

Compare your temps at idle and with Prime95 running and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Yea, that's the ticket right there. If they dont' improve the design, I'll bail on the stock HSF next time. Since I already have this one installed and working, I'll just live with it. However, that's a price point against Intel. The stock AMD cooler works fine and a good after-market cooler isn't that cheap.


I'll do that. I haven't had a chance to do any benchmarking on it, but I'll check it out. If it does get pretty hot, I'll think about using a different HSF. My Athlon is a late model and has a fluctuation of about 10F between idle and load. I would expect a similar result with the C2D, but I don't think the Athlon has variable frequency/voltage. We'll see.

Bwahahaha, if you're used to seeing a 10F difference between idle and full load, prepare to be horrified. :LOL:

Coretemp is good for temp readings, some utilities are really innacurate with Core2s.

The OP discussed this earlier in the thread. It just took him a while to come to the obvious conclusion, it was time to put together a system for himself. It's pretty much the the issue with any big maker system. They tend to use the cheapest volume discount components they can get.

Hehe, experience is the best teacher, isn't it

I think they must have mis-boxed my CPU. It's running stable right now with a host clock of 433 MHz which puts the CPU at 3.5 GHz and the memory at 1040 Mhz, all with stock voltages. That's a 30% overclock...wow!!! The best system I had before that could make about 20% on stock voltages so this is an awesome build. I'm not going to run it that high normally, but with such a huge margin, I'll probably run a 15% overclock. Very nice, can't wait to benchmark this sick puppy.

BTW, CPU temps are still cool even at these high clock rates. With prime95 running on one core and CPUburn running on the other, the CPU hangs around 120F, which is fine as far as I'm concerned. Heck, my old T-bird system *idles* at those temps. I did find a good, relatively inexpensive CPU cooler with a beefy backplate so I *will* be changing out the exceedingly lame stock one.

That's actually pretty typical for a C2D.

IT LIVES!!! (well, sorta, but back to this in a moment)...



i had a very unusual system from Dell, an XPS 200 (dimension C...something). basically the PSU was a very strange shape and wouldn't take any standard design as a replacement. i decided it was better to build a new one than to sink any more money into a Dell.



i need to read up on what OC'ing involves before i try it myself. i'm still installing some of the more peripherial drivers (USB wireless adapter... i lost the driver CD).

the airflow in my case is great, but the wiring is a mess right now. i've seen sites that detail how to dremel out holes in the mobo tray and run the wires behind everything else, and i think i'm going to try that sooner or later. the ATX 12v is extremely close to the CPU cooler as it is.

i'll have to take some pics soon.

Core2 is the best thing to happen to overclockers since the Celeron A

That Core 2 is amazing. What a great product.


The Gigabyte BIOS makes it really simple with a bunch of automatic overclock options in the "Intelligent Tweaker" section. Since I was just checking stability, I ran up only the host clock, one setting that ups the CPU core frequency, Front Side Bus (FSB) frequency, and memory bus frequency simultaneously. Increasing voltages is generally something done to push things to the limit and that's where the risk of damage comes from. The Gigabyte BIOS can do that for you automatically and it trys to coax you into it by flashing a red "not optimized" banner until "System Voltage Control" is set to automatic. However, I was able to run up the host clock surprisingly high without it and I didn't even push it past the limit. I may have been able to run even higher, but a margin that huge is more than good enough for me. I imagine you could get amazingly high up there with increased voltages.

One thing that I was dissapointed about with the Gigabyte P31 board, it doesn't provide access to memory timings. The Crucial memory I have is capable of running 4-4-4-12 timing, but the board is running it at 5-5-5-18 and there's no option to change it. Well, nothing's ever perfect. It still blows away my fairly new Athlon 64 system on just about every benchmark and that system is no slouch. I'm not going to get too concerned about it.

...ugh talk about a work day from hell.

so yeah, i just haven't had time to mess around with this thing yet. right now i'm downloading GC2 because i want to scope it out with the new graphics card.



two obvious questions: have you updated your BIOS? and i know you have the P31 model, is it rev 1 or 2? (just curious to keep an eye our for differences between the two versions).

PS: i love Gigabyte's Engrish :LOL: 

Your journey is not yet complete, my son.

I updated to the latest BIOS as soon as I was confident everything was working right. It came with F1, it's at F6 now. Don't know what the hardware rev is.


Yea, hehe, I'm always cursing those Chinese when something doesn't work the way I want it to


Hey, thanks a ton for that link. I've never seen a "hidden" BIOS screen before. In that article, they complained about another wierd thing I didn't like , they don't show actual voltages, just increments.

You wouldn't happen to be good with Linux would you? I'm having trouble building a kernel that can recognize the ICH7 Southbridge and disk drives. I know it's supported because my Debian installer CD can see them with kernel version 2.6.17, but the kernels I try to build don't. Can't figure out what I'm missing in my kernel config.

Sorry, I haven't been a Linux guy for years. I finally decided that I didn't really need it for anything and it wasn't worth the trouble.

Which ironically enough is what Linux users generally think of Windows :LOL:

Yea, I have a love-hate relationship with Linux. To be honest, if it wasn't "free", I probably wouldn't use it at all. But, it does have some value. There's a few very handy utilities that don't really have Windows counterparts. I run it on my personal server and it's great for that, firewall, connection sharing, email hosting, etc. Also, it's useful for working with my TiVo system since TiVo is Linux based. You can handle upgrades and maintenance with a Linux computer. Well, I'll just keep at it, I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually and can usually find help on the Linux kernel mailing list. I went through the same thing with the nForce chipset on my current workstation computer.