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Domain: overclockers.com.au

Stories and comments across the archive that link to overclockers.com.au.

Comments · 66

  1. Re:Australian Overclockers by xcomputer_man · · Score: 2 · on Choosing a Good Case

    And for some of the weirdest looking, coolest looking, or scariest looking cases you could possibly find, check out their PC Gallery.

    That car one is absolutely incredible. :)

    --
    This space for rent

  2. Australian Overclockers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative · on Choosing a Good Case

    Australian Overclockers have great ideas for cases. Some of them innovative.

    60623
    siliconghetto

  3. Heres the correct link to the story at OC-AU by cOdEgUru · · Score: 1 · on Intel Moves To 533MHz FSB

    AMD Thoroughbred reviewed here

    Also for now this should only concern the Overclocking community because of the ability of this chip to run at higher clock speeds due to the .13 process

  4. Black? Why limit yourself to simply colour? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Black Is The New Beige

    People around the world have broken out of the standard case. Check out The PCDB which shows what PC cases really can and do look like and the crazy ways people cool them.

  5. SiSoft Sandra .... by afxgrin · · Score: 1 · on Intel's 2.4GHz Pentium 4 Unleashed

    To me it appears that SiSoft Sandra's memory bandwidth measurement is completely useless.

    It literally takes specific values and just calculates what the bandwidth should be. I really do not understand what the true purpose of even providing this benchmark is anymore.

    Ever since I saw THIS I thought SiSoft Sandra and other synthetic benchmarks are obsolete and completely inaccurate.

    Like - here's a 12.8GHz processor.

    I wish these benchmarking people would just drop the synthetic benchmarks completely.

  6. SiSoft Sandra .... by afxgrin · · Score: 1 · on Intel's 2.4GHz Pentium 4 Unleashed

    To me it appears that SiSoft Sandra's memory bandwidth measurement is completely useless.

    It literally takes specific values and just calculates what the bandwidth should be. I really do not understand what the true purpose of even providing this benchmark is anymore.

    Ever since I saw THIS I thought SiSoft Sandra and other synthetic benchmarks are obsolete and completely inaccurate.

    Like - here's a 12.8GHz processor.

    I wish these benchmarking people would just drop the synthetic benchmarks completely.

  7. The Hitachi just has a heat pipe like most laptops by DABANSHEE · · Score: 2 · on Hitachi Demos Water-Cooled Notebooks

    Gez every 2nd laptop currently being made has a heatpipe - its no big deal

    "Heatpipes" are nothing new.

    Although heatpipes are mainly utilised where things are cramped arround the heatsource, to move the heat to another spot where there's more room for a heatsink (hence its popularity in laptops, where they move the heat from the CPU to behind the screen, where there's room for a wide albit flat heatsink), there are a couple of Socket 7/370/A heatsinks that utilise the heatpipe effect. The "Zen Radiator", which uses the heatpipe as the core of a radiator like arrangement; & the "Coolermaster HHC-001 Heatpipe Copper Cooler", which has long (as in high) fins & uses heatpipes to help conduct heat to the top of the fins.

    All this article shows is that PC World employs a laptop reviewer who doesn't know what he's talking about in regards to laptops.

    Really if a tech mag is going to have someone write a blurb about laptop cooling they should employ someone who actually knows something about laptop cooling.

  8. My quiet case project : it's an answer ... sort of by Prozzaks · · Score: 1 · on Building Quieter Computers

    Well, it seem these days, most of the power user just care to get something like 200fps in Quake III. Why ? Beat's me ! I'm not on a quest to get the ultimate frame rate, I just want my box to be quiet as possibly can be.

    To help you understand my take on the subject, here is the background :
    My PC has the following components :

    • A OEM case
    • A 235W OEM power supply
    • ASUS P3B-F
    • Intel Pentium II rated 400Mhz @ 400Mhz
    • A cheap OEM SECC2 Heat-Sink made of aluminum
    • A 128MB CAS2 no-name DIMM
    • Two 32MB CAS3 Samsung DIMM slowing down my memory timing, but preventing the appearance of the all mighty evil SwaP
    • A ATI All-In-Wonder Rage128 16MB
    • A Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value
    • A Realtek 8139 Ethernet NIC
    • My beloved USR 56Kbps ISA Real Modem. Sorry but to me a component that uses CPU power to do it's processing instead of taking the load off is not worthy of being in my computer. Not to mention the M$ Win part...
    • A Creative 48x CD-ROM drive. It's the loudest damned thing in my computer when it's spinning
    • A Quantum Fireball AS PLUS 40GB (7200RPM) in a removable tray
    • A Quantum Fireball CX1 10GB (5400RPM) mounted inside the case
    • Of course the stupid old 1.44 MB floppy drive only used for booting Tomsbrt in case of emergency

    Soon to be :

    • A Adaptec 2940UW
    • A Diamond Monster 3D II for Glide games

    It turn out that the Quantum Fireball AS makes less noise than the Quantum Fireball CX1. I still have to figure it out ...

    I use my PC for :

    • Running Linux and learning as much as time allows me (Jez I had so much time when I was a student... Think of all the time I wasted in High-School running the evil W monster)
    • Doing some gaming i.e. : Diablo II, Unreal, UT, Undying (Although that thing is going to cost me a new box)
    • Spending numerous nights filling my brain @ Slashdot, Tomshardware, Anandtech, Arstechnica, StorageReview, Developper.Intel.com, and most importantly, hounding the web for all the case manufacturers and their take at a quiet box.

    As I'm writing this post, that is probably going to be the base documentation for my Silent Case Project, you're guessing that my sleepless night of browsing have not yielded the desired result.

    I've check out many options such as water cooling, moving the PC to the closet, returning to the forest where a PC is pretty far from your everyday quest for survival. None of them suits me.

    The objective of my project is to build a case that meets the following criteria :

    • A silent as possible
    • Accessible
    • Provides sufficient ventilation to maintain all the components running within thermal specs
    • Be light enough to be easily transportable (Let's not forget the Lan parties ;-)

    To attain those goals I have to :

    • Read all I can about noise, sound, aerodynamics, PC specs
    • Find suitable materials : A case is not just a protection against unwanted fingers and dust ; it must provide EMI shielding, proper grounding, resist to impacts, and fit into my conception of the king of object you want in your bedroom (If you were thinking about plywood and a box of rusted leftover nails, forget it)
    • Find the tools or the companies or individuals with the means to work the materials I choose to build the casing

    For the sound isolation I was thinking about some kind of foam. Mineral lint would be affective but that takes too much space and it's not the kind of thing I want beside my bed. Form the casing itself, metal is almost inevitable if you want EMI shielding and grounding. And as for you who wonder why I have not mentioned water cooling yet, the greatest source of noise is not my CPU cooler and your just moving the problem out of the case (Nice ; you have water heating up but unless your reservoir is like a bathtub or something you will have to transfer the heat for the water to the air).

    That about as far as I am. If you have any idea that might help me, please fell free to send me some bits forming ASCII characters at Prozzaks@operamail.com

    To finish up, here is a list of thing that might help people wanting to achieve similar goals :

  9. Re:Linux Progress Patch by marnanel · · Score: 1 · on Making Linux Booting Pretty
    When it can be integrated into a users system in a matter of seconds is when people will start checking it out more.

    Unfortunately, I'd guess that most people will start using it exactly when one of the big distros adopts it as standard. Oh well; they already have a Debian theme.

    (Also, you need to put a ml at the end of the Energy Star link in this story).

    And in case that page is as hugely slow to load for you as it is for me, here's Google's cache of it. The process is also described at:

  10. Serious accusations towards SiS by Rurik · · Score: 1 · on The AMD Duron Gets A Home - Sort Of

    Just found this link: http://www.overclockers.com.au/techstuff/a_sis_ski pframes/

    That reports that SiS has been using partial-frame skipping in it's onboard video chipsets. While true that most serious buyers wouldn't buy such a mobo with an onboard video chipset, it does raise questions about SiS cheating at benchmarks to raise their value and reputation.

  11. Voodoo 5 9000? by jkujawa · · Score: 1 · on Voodoo5 6000 Preview

    I thought that this was just a joke, but apparently 3dfx is actually going in this direction.
    http://www.overclockers.com.au/images/v59000big.sh tml

  12. The Turbine by redial+1 · · Score: 3 · on Do It Yourself Cool Cases

    This one is circulating the hardware sites today:

    The Turbine

    A very cool case.

    -redial

  13. Observations from a pathological overclocker.. by Agg · · Score: 1 · on Do Overclocked CPUs Need a "Burn In" Period?

    From my observations, burning in simply refers to the fact that chips seem to be able to run at higher stable speeds over time. I have seen this with quite a few of the 60 or so C366@550's I sold and a few personal chips including a P3 and a classic Athlon (750 taken to 1080MHz water-cooled)..

    I've not seen or done any proper experimentation to see what kind of things make it work better/faster, but as it seems to depend a lot on the particular chip anyway, you'd need a pretty large sample set to get any kind of usable information, and the rules might completely change for different types of cores..

    You can speed up the process by locking the CPU at 100% load for a while. I've heard that people think it's mild electromigration (not sure how this would INCREASE stability, though, but I'm no electronics engineer). Some people say higher voltage improves it but from my observations it's not REQUIRED to see the effect. If your chip is more than a month or so old I don't think you'll push the limits much higher.. the effects mostly happened in the first 48 hours or so (of continuous 100% load) for me.

    Then there's the whole thing about cooking your CPU deliberately. I've heard 3 separate instances now where a pelter's cooler has failed and the chip has been raised to some incredibly high temperature.. instead of dying, it actually became BETTER at overclocking once it had cooled and the cooler was fixed. I do not recommend trying this, though..

    So, it may all be related to heat somehow.. the cooking, cpu loading and overvolting all are heat-increasing activities - which may suggest electromigration (or a zillion other things).

    Regardless, this kind of thing almost certainly has an effect on the longevity of your chip, if it's the classic 10-years to 5-years then yeah, who cares, but if it shortens it down to a year or so (not inconceivable for "cooked" chips) it may be more of a worry..

    Anyway, IMHO, burnin seems to be a normal part of the chip's lifecycle. When you first get a chip they sometimes don't overclock very well at all, in fact I had a couple that I'm pretty sure I damaged by trying too high too soon (616@C366) .. they became unstable even at 550 then, when they'd been fine for an hour or so before, I called this "shocking" the chip. After a while they seem to have been run in a little.. [shrug] .. I offer no explanations, only observations.

    Ramble ramble..

    BTW, this has come up a few times in our own forums, you might want to check out this thread for a recent debate on the topic.. not that you won't get enough opinions on Slashdot. :)

    Agg
    Overclockers Australia - http://www.overclockers.com.au

  14. Observations from a pathological overclocker.. by Agg · · Score: 1 · on Do Overclocked CPUs Need a "Burn In" Period?

    From my observations, burning in simply refers to the fact that chips seem to be able to run at higher stable speeds over time. I have seen this with quite a few of the 60 or so C366@550's I sold and a few personal chips including a P3 and a classic Athlon (750 taken to 1080MHz water-cooled)..

    I've not seen or done any proper experimentation to see what kind of things make it work better/faster, but as it seems to depend a lot on the particular chip anyway, you'd need a pretty large sample set to get any kind of usable information, and the rules might completely change for different types of cores..

    You can speed up the process by locking the CPU at 100% load for a while. I've heard that people think it's mild electromigration (not sure how this would INCREASE stability, though, but I'm no electronics engineer). Some people say higher voltage improves it but from my observations it's not REQUIRED to see the effect. If your chip is more than a month or so old I don't think you'll push the limits much higher.. the effects mostly happened in the first 48 hours or so (of continuous 100% load) for me.

    Then there's the whole thing about cooking your CPU deliberately. I've heard 3 separate instances now where a pelter's cooler has failed and the chip has been raised to some incredibly high temperature.. instead of dying, it actually became BETTER at overclocking once it had cooled and the cooler was fixed. I do not recommend trying this, though..

    So, it may all be related to heat somehow.. the cooking, cpu loading and overvolting all are heat-increasing activities - which may suggest electromigration (or a zillion other things).

    Regardless, this kind of thing almost certainly has an effect on the longevity of your chip, if it's the classic 10-years to 5-years then yeah, who cares, but if it shortens it down to a year or so (not inconceivable for "cooked" chips) it may be more of a worry..

    Anyway, IMHO, burnin seems to be a normal part of the chip's lifecycle. When you first get a chip they sometimes don't overclock very well at all, in fact I had a couple that I'm pretty sure I damaged by trying too high too soon (616@C366) .. they became unstable even at 550 then, when they'd been fine for an hour or so before, I called this "shocking" the chip. After a while they seem to have been run in a little.. [shrug] .. I offer no explanations, only observations.

    Ramble ramble..

    BTW, this has come up a few times in our own forums, you might want to check out this thread for a recent debate on the topic.. not that you won't get enough opinions on Slashdot. :)

    Agg
    Overclockers Australia - http://www.overclockers.com.au

  15. Proof? - that the pictures were faked. by K_Wolf · · Score: 1 · on AMD Ends Overclocking On Durons
    It seems that my HTML skills were a little lacking in my last message.
    Sorry

    Here is the proper link to the Overclockers.com.au - Forums
    - where it appears that the AMD 'pinless' are pictures are infact a fake.

    http://www.overclockers .com.au/ubb/Forum10/HTML/000163.html

  16. Proof? - that the pictures were faked. by K_Wolf · · Score: 1 · on AMD Ends Overclocking On Durons
    It seems that my HTML skills were a little lacking in my last message.
    Sorry

    Here is the proper link to the Overclockers.com.au - Forums
    - where it appears that the AMD 'pinless' are pictures are infact a fake.

    http://www.overclockers .com.au/ubb/Forum10/HTML/000163.html