Throttlestop overclocking Desktop PCs

[Aaron_Henderson]

Always wanted an older Mac Pro...Where'd you put the pics?

 

[Retrorockit]

I didn't post pics. yet. Just finished making the 130W heatsink for the POS. More photos to take. You mean pics. for the POS at OCN? I got sidetracked by researching the Mac Pro.
My big question for LGA771 is will the CPUswap work the other way? Electrically the sticker should convert LGA 775 to LGA771 also. One of the BIOS mods just swithces Platform ID#11 to ID#44.
The CPUID numbers are the same for similar Xeons. X5365 is a 3Ghz 1333 65nm CPU, so is a QX6850 both have CPUID# 06FBh. So maybeeee 2x unlocked CPUs on LGA771? I wanted to try QX9650 on a T7400 but couldn't get one. QX6800 would pinmod to 3.66GHz even if it isn't TS unlocked. It won't be much of a computer no matter what you do. Might as well have some fun.

 

[Aaron_Henderson]

Funny enough...I've also been curious about 775 to 771 mod...I actually have a board to try it with but no longer have any 775 CPU...my concern is FB-DIMM...please share your results as it's something I've thought about since first doing the popular 771 to 775 stuff.

 

[Retrorockit]

FBDIMMs first. Great bandwidth for the era. Each module has it's own memory controller. So each module basically opens up another channel. One is the master but throughput works that way. Great for server duty. But the overhead of all the controllers adds huge latency, so for gaming it's actually lousy. This was the Achilles heel of Skulltrail. 3 modules/channel was the sweet spot I think. Also very power hungry needing heatsinks/fans on the RAM and added power connectors on the MB. I was trying for a T7400 Skulltrail clone. Pinmodded X5470s for dual 4GHz system. Or dual QX9650 if the 771 mod worked. Since it probably wouldn't go much past 4GHz anyway no big deal if it didn't work. But I couldn't get a T7400 and one Xeon is in my Opti 380, and 1 QX9650 is in an XPS420 and the other in a T3400. The Mac Pro with 2- QX6850 and a TS Overclock would be such a freak at CPUZ! If you can just disguise the QX6850 as an X5365.

I've got the POS fitted up and took some photos I have afew up at OCN. No capyion tool. kind of random order.. 92x38mm 115cfm naked fan fits. 6 heatpipe Optiplex 745 Pentium D cooler fitted to MTG plate. Opti 745 DT BTX cooler shroud trimmed to cover fan and cooler completely. Looks OEM. GPU riser test fitted with ZotacGTX 1050Ti, and MSI GTX 1060 3GB OCV1. I have one dead PSU. I guess I'll look into some airflow modding there.
Edit- No good airflow mod on the PSU, so I stuck an Antec expansion slot blower in the emty PCI slot above the GPU.
I came across something on SetFSB crashes. ZDnet made a Mac FSB tool. They found that ECC RAM could correct errors caused by bus speed changes and allow higher overclocks. Also different brands of RAM behaved differently. It seems the RAM crashes are due to the change in speed, but not the speed itself. Small changes and ECC RAM is what worked foro them.

 

[Retrorockit]

A little more on the Mac Pro 1.1 idea. I did find some Core 2 Duo running single CPU on a Mac Pro at Geekbench, and Xeon BSEL tapemod, and VID mods are confirmed. So there is quite a bit of common ground there. Somebody has LGA775 CPU running on LGA771.
AHA the C2D that were running were both 45nm not the 65nm it's supposed to run! E8600 and E7400. Mac 3.1 BIOS perhaps?
In the Mac Pro 2.1 which seems to be 65nm also there is this overclocked Q9450. ASFAIK 2.1 is just a BIOS flash?
http://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/2526236

The good news is above. The bad news is Geekbench is also showing some AMD, and i7 CPUs running in the Mac Pro 2.1 so now IDK what any of this means? Relistically if it was possible to run 2x LGA775 CPUs together some IT guys would have done it long ago considering the money that could have been saved doing that. Of course maybe things have been learned since then. Maybe Mac left something open that Intel didn't. So there's no reason not to try it anyway.
I had fun spoofing Geekbench with my E520 TS overclock. It didn't recognize the OC and charted the result for 3.73GHz as 2.93GHz. They had to extend the top of the chart to fit the score on the graph.

 

[BouziGolouM]

Im planning to get a pair of XEON X56** but im thorned between the 130W and the 95W version, what's the real difference between the two variant, is there one that OC better than the other one?

 

[unclewebb]

The 95W version will start to power limit throttle and slow down sooner. It will reduce the amount of Turbo Boost before the 130W version does. In terms of CPU quality, there is probably not a lot of difference. Intel is famous for creating new CPU boxes. Not a lot of difference between the actual CPUs inside.

 

[BouziGolouM]

thanks you, really appreciate all the time you put @unclewebb and @Retrorockit really appreciate all the help/explanation you guys did put here... Also shoutout to everyone else that their name don't come to my mind.

 

[Retrorockit]

I found a nice CPU cooler that's as close to a bolt in as you're going to get with a Dell workstation.
The Dynatron G17 8 heatpie LGA1366 cooler.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Dynatron...QEAj5YBMZ3b_ZWkQAkf8qdEKiKeQv5BRoCjzwQAvD_BwE
The fan is a waste of time. .2A. or something like that. But a direct contact 8 pipe 92mm cooler is pretty nice. Of course the Dell hollow bolt mounting takes some adapting. But actually it's very simple. Remove the Dell bolts and springs from the stock cooler by snipping the speed nuts. Remove the bolts from the new cooler. Add a 3/16" I.D. x 1/16" thick nylon washer (8) on each side of the new cooler mounting arms. Install the Dell bolts and springs with the C clips you removed fron the new cooler. This adds .030"-.040" more tension to the Dell springs. If that bothers you then use a metal washer on the top side instead of nylon. I of course attached the biggest fan I could find a 1.6A. 130 CFM 92x38mm Nidec Beta V. On a 2 CPU machine you'l need a thinner fan.

This is on a T5500 MB The 38mm fan exceeds the footprint and blocks the riser socket. But you can see the dell hardware with the Nylon spacers.
The 2nd and 3rd photo is the same but it shows the "Sprongs" I made to hold the fan on. A piece of wire bent 180* to hook into the fins, and the other end folded past 90* to make a prong to hold the fan in place.
The last 2 photos show it in an unmodified ( Imagine THAT!) T3500. The wires were moved from under the tray to clear the fan. But the tray closes w/o hitting. I will glue a piece of plastic foam under the tray to keep it that way. That's one of the thermal controlled fans that doesn't need a PWM signal to run. Just 12V. and that's it. They don't throttle down as much though.

That kind of a ratty looking fan. I have a nicer one and a chrome grille for it. PWM too. I'll put that on and get a better photo up tomorrow.
I'm ordering a Silverstone PWM fan splitter with 4.5A power available. Almost enough for what I have in mind.

I've ordered a couple of GTX1060 6GB GPUs with2 fans. This will give me a reason to stop playing with Optiplexes and get some of my (4) mid towers running.
I had heard that DX12 didn't support SLI, and that GTX1060 didn't either. Guess what! DX12 supports MDA which I guess stands for Multiple Diplay Adaptors. It send GPU work to whatever threads are available on the PCI bus. Doesn't matter what brand of cards and no crossover cables needed. Ashes of the Singularity is it so far.
https://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2326-amd-nvidia-sli-directx-12-benchmark-explicit-multi-gpu.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I found a nice CPU cooler that's as close to a bolt in as you're going to get with a Dell workstation.
The Dynatron G17 8 heatpie LGA1366 cooler.

Nice effort this!

 

[Aaron_Henderson]

Small feat but managed to set my W3570 that has typically been clocked 3.866GHz on all cores as any more was at the cost of stability...to 3.866GHz 4 core load and 4GHz 2 core load...and it's stable. Still wanting that W3680 but it's just not necessity at this point...I really only play Quake Champions and my current setup is good for 100+ fps minimums, so yeah.

 

[Retrorockit]

Small feat but managed to set my W3570 that has typically been clocked 3.866GHz on all cores as any more was at the cost of stability...to 3.866GHz 4 core load and 4GHz 2 core load...and it's stable. Still wanting that W3680 but it's just not necessity at this point...I really only play Quake Champions and my current setup is good for 100+ fps minimums, so yeah.

Did you try any significant cooling upgrades? We don't have any reports yet on whether that moves the goal posts for us or not. Everybody just wants to stick a fan on the stock cooler and quit there. I guess that's a question for me to answer. Waitng on my GPUs to arrive. The 45nm LGA775s would go slightly past 4GHz. I don't see why the Nehalem should be slower. But I've had people ask at Tomshardware how to build a $100 gaming rig. There's the answer!

Something I used to do for stability testing on my QX6800 was to run 3 threads of Prime 95 instead of 4. This put the P95 workload into a more realistic realm w/o dropping down to 2 cores which is equally unrealistic. May be turn off HT. I mean if you're running 8x threads of small FFTs that's going to limit you also. 4.15Ghz is a normal OC on a QX9650 T3400. That with triple channel memory would be pretty sweet.
Could you run that at userbenchmark.com so we can see what the CPU score looks like? The OC QX9650 score 57%, and the OC W3680 goes 83%. it would be interesting to see where the $20 Nehalem ends up.

 

[Aaron_Henderson]

Did you try any significant cooling upgrades? We don't have any reports yet on whether that moves the goal posts for us or not. Everybody just wants to stick a fan on the stock cooler and quit there. I guess that's a question for me to answer. Waitng on my GPUs to arrive. The 45nm LGA775s would go slightly past 4GHz. I don't see why the Nehalem should be slower. But I've had people ask at Tomshardware how to build a $100 gaming rig. There's the answer!

Something I used to do for stability testing on my QX6800 was to run 3 threads of Prime 95 instead of 4. This put the P95 workload into a more realistic realm w/o dropping down to 2 cores which is equally unrealistic. May be turn off HT. I mean if you're running 8x threads of small FFTs that's going to limit you also. 4.15Ghz is a normal OC on a QX9650 T3400. That with triple channel memory would be pretty sweet.
Could you run that at userbenchmark.com so we can see what the CPU score looks like? The OC QX9650 score 57%, and the OC W3680 goes 83%. it would be interesting to see where the $20 Nehalem ends up.

I do have an AIO liquid cooler on my CPU, and I have a small fan on the NB heatsink of the motherboard. Also...I have 2 x Corsair radiator fans on the top exhaust of the case that push a ridiculous amount of air for a 25mm thick fan. I think this W3570 just isn't the greatest one...I am sure there are ones that would be stable at 4GHz all cores...mine just isn't. And not just in synthetics...I'll get crashes just doing what I do normally on my computer. I am happy with it anyway...and still will get the W3680 eventually. Also...still haven't tried messing with my gf's Z400+SetFSB without a SATA based OS, but still plan to.

Edit - ran userbenchmark, and keeping in mind I don't have true tripple channel due to only having 10GB RAM, and I don't overclock GPU, I scored 63% for gaming, 59% Desktop, 44% Workstation.

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/13763674

 

[Retrorockit]

I would say nice solid scores all around and a worthwhile step up from LGA775. The CPU single core, and 4 core scores are almost at 80%. You're scoring 96th % for that CPU so maybe I'm wrong. there might not be much left in it.
This page shows the difference TS makes.
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/12630/IntelR-XeonR-CPU-----------W3570----320GHz
If you click show 193 more the ones at 4.2GHz show up. I can't save that sub page here.

 

[storm-chaser]

Funny enough...I've also been curious about 775 to 771 mod...I actually have a board to try it with but no longer have any 775 CPU...my concern is FB-DIMM...please share your results as it's something I've thought about since first doing the popular 771 to 775 stuff.

I would recommend the quad core Xeon X5470 as a good candidate for the LGA 771 to 775 swap. This CPU runs stock at 3.3Ghz using a 10x multi on a 333mhz FSB. That means, with a 400mhz FSB you can easily hit 4.0Ghz right out of the gate. That's as fast as I wanted to go, but it would be possible to push it further with the right motheboard.

 

[BouziGolouM]

Retrorockit really neet fan hack.
Aaron_Henderson I can try to play with my W3570 soon to try to hit an high oc, got my W3690 stable at 4.7 so far, but not experienced enough to try trough the FSB yet and overvolting messing with too much voltages. I'm still wondering if blowing more air on the VRM to cool them will help... Is ocing through the fsb help in getting higher clocks.
Does having 3 out of 6 ram slot helps in stability too? heard it could but haven't seen a difference really. Also feel like something is wrong since ive seen lots of 4.5ghz hitting over 1000 in cinebench and never been near that even at 4.7

 

[Aaron_Henderson]

I would recommend the quad core Xeon X5470 as a good candidate for the LGA 771 to 775 swap. This CPU runs stock at 3.3Ghz using a 10x multi on a 333mhz FSB. That means, with a 400mhz FSB you can easily hit 4.0Ghz right out of the gate. That's as fast as I wanted to go, but it would be possible to push it further with the right motheboard.

We're talking about doing the reverse of that mod, converting 775 CPU for use on dual 771 socket board...771 to 775 is well documented and I've done the mod several times myself with CPU ranging from E5430 to X5460.

 

[storm-chaser]

Interesting. Never thought of that but I guess it would be fairly straightforward. Going to have to do some research on this one!

 

[Aaron_Henderson]

Aaron_Henderson I can try to play with my W3570 soon to try to hit an high oc, got my W3690 stable at 4.7 so far, but not experienced enough to try trough the FSB yet and overvolting messing with too much voltages. I'm still wondering if blowing more air on the VRM to cool them will help... Is ocing through the fsb help in getting higher clocks.
Does having 3 out of 6 ram slot helps in stability too? heard it could but haven't seen a difference really. Also feel like something is wrong since ive seen lots of 4.5ghz hitting over 1000 in cinebench and never been near that even at 4.7

I honestly have zero experience overclocking 1366 outside of my two OEM based systems using Throttlestop and SetFSB for mild OC. 4.7GHz W3690 is pretty beastly though!

 

[Retrorockit]

The W3570 and the W3680 have completely different memory controllers. The 3500 series will slow down with 6 slots populated, and the 3600 series won't. The i7s run at 1066, and so do some of the slower Xeons.
In the locked BIOS computers that Throttlestop overclocking is mostly used for the chipsets that support 400 fsb-X38, and X48, don't support the Xeon swap. You could pinmod a QX9650 and get there, but they go 4.15GHz anyway. The T7400 supports 400fsb. the T5400 doesn't. Of course that according to Dell.
As far as VRM cooling goes I have found that more power is available if you put heatsinks on the VRM MOSFETs. I gained .050V. on the E520 in my sig. Gained another .100V. moving the Delta fan off of the MB header to the PSU Molex cables.
I would love to see a userbenchmark run for a 4.7GHz TS overclock.

 

[Aaron_Henderson]

My W3570 let's my 5 x 2GB run at their rated 1333MHz speed. Also curious what a userbenchmark might look like on that 4.7 GHz 6 core...what board are you using BouziGolouM?

 

[Retrorockit]

My W3570 let's my 5 x 2GB run at their rated 1333MHz speed. Also curious what a userbenchmark might look like on that 4.7 GHz 6 core...what board are you using BouziGolouM?

Maybe I'm repeating old info. Perhaps a BIOS update improved the RAM situation, or newer modules are fast enough.

Retrorockit really neet fan hack."
BouziGolouM- If you like that fan mod you'll love the one back on page 8/9

 

[ManGupta]

I found a nice CPU cooler that's as close to a bolt in as you're going to get with a Dell workstation.
The Dynatron G17 8 heatpie LGA1366 cooler.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Dynatron...QEAj5YBMZ3b_ZWkQAkf8qdEKiKeQv5BRoCjzwQAvD_BwE
The fan is a waste of time. .2A. or something like that. But a direct contact 8 pipe 92mm cooler is pretty nice. Of course the Dell hollow bolt mounting takes some adapting. But actually it's very simple. Remove the Dell bolts and springs from the stock cooler by snipping the speed nuts. Remove the bolts from the new cooler. Add a 3/16" I.D. x 1/16" thick nylon washer (8) on each side of the new cooler mounting arms. Install the Dell bolts and springs with the C clips you removed fron the new cooler. This adds .030"-.040" more tension to the Dell springs. If that bothers you then use a metal washer on the top side instead of nylon. I of course attached the biggest fan I could find a 1.6A. 130 CFM 92x38mm Nidec Beta V. On a 2 CPU machine you'l need a thinner fan.View attachment 114340View attachment 114340This is on a T5500 MB The 38mm fan exceeds the footprint and blocks the riser socket. But you can see the dell hardware with the Nylon spacers.
The 2nd and 3rd photo is the same but it shows the "Sprongs" I made to hold the fan on. A piece of wire bent 180* to hook into the fins, and the other end folded past 90* to make a prong to hold the fan in place.
The last 2 photos show it in an unmodified ( Imagine THAT!) T3500. The wires were moved from under the tray to clear the fan. But the tray closes w/o hitting. I will glue a piece of plastic foam under the tray to keep it that way. That's one of the thermal controlled fans that doesn't need a PWM signal to run. Just 12V. and that's it. They don't throttle down as much though.
View attachment 114341View attachment 114342View attachment 114343View attachment 114344View attachment 114340View attachment 114341View attachment 114342View attachment 114343View attachment 114344

That kind of a ratty looking fan. I have a nicer one and a chrome grille for it. PWM too. I'll put that on and get a better photo up tomorrow.
I'm ordering a Silverstone PWM fan splitter with 4.5A power available. Almost enough for what I have in mind.

I've ordered a couple of GTX1060 6GB GPUs with2 fans. This will give me a reason to stop playing with Optiplexes and get some of my (4) mid towers running.
I had heard that DX12 didn't support SLI, and that GTX1060 didn't either. Guess what! DX12 supports MDA which I guess stands for Multiple Diplay Adaptors. It send GPU work to whatever threads are available on the PCI bus. Doesn't matter what brand of cards and no crossover cables needed. Ashes of the Singularity is it so far.
https://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2326-amd-nvidia-sli-directx-12-benchmark-explicit-multi-gpu.

Nice Mods, Good Effort and good R&D ........... Well-done!

 

[Retrorockit]

Nice Mods, Good Effort and good R&D ........... Well-done!

Just about everything we do here is R&D. Even stuff that doesn't work is helpful knowledge. I'm just glad that I don't have to do it all alone any more. I have as many questions as anyone else here. My hardware mods can be photographed, but lot's of people here buy CPUs, RAM, and motherboards and post their results too. So I'm grateful to everyone who participates here. Especially Unclewebb. Without Throttlestop the sport of OEM/workstation overclocking basically wouldn't exist. Who new cheap thrills could be a team sport?

 

[BouziGolouM]

My W3570 let's my 5 x 2GB run at their rated 1333MHz speed. Also curious what a userbenchmark might look like on that 4.7 GHz 6 core...what board are you using BouziGolouM?

6 cores, between 4.5 and 4,7ghz, i get almost 1000 in cinebench, IPC wise, it's about the same as a newer i3 or first gen ryzen, and multicore perf is about the same as a stock 6700. I'm using an Asus Sabertooth x58 and just got a wonderful evga sr-2 that I'm gonna play with this weekend.
I've been able to boot at 4.8 but it wasnt stable enough to bench it, raised the VCORE to almost max (without using the Overvoltage jumper) and didn't had luck, I know I could get a lil bit higher by playing with the other voltages, but not there yet. I also wonder if I can reach an higher OC if I boot with only 3 sticks instead of 6 and I wonder if max OC is hinder by ECC ram.
Also wonder if I better cooling on the VRMs would help in reaching an higher clock, just don't have any idea how to as it already have a ceramic heatsink on it.
voltages are now sitting between 1.264 and 1.448 (oc'ed with an offset), didn't reached higher clocks with a set vcore. Still happy with that though.

I wonder how well I can oc my sr-2 though, only have 1 dual qpi link cpu at the moment, so wouldn't be able to OC dual cpu yet but ill comeback with the result and pretty sure I can hit something near the 2000 mark on cine with that board.

@Retrorockit found the mod you're talking about, yeah, that's a nice one, found a way back to put an evo 212 myself a couple years ago, but the way i did it wasn't as neat as you nor the page 8 mod.