Throttlestop overclocking Desktop PCs

[Retrorockit]

If it has removable brackets, look at the fan and see what brand it is. If it's AVC (Asian Vital Components) there may be other AVC ILM coolers that can help.

 

[frankr2994]

No removable brackets. Big thick chuck of aluminum with the hold down screws through but cut in a way that I can't relocate the screws in the cooler. I'll take pictures later. The cooler was only 35 bucks. I'll hack it up to make it work if it can be made to work. I honestly like the design of this better than the small market of aftermarket coolers that should fit this system.

Stock 5810 cooler on left in all photos. Comparing to the 7810 cooler.

 

[Retrorockit]

I've found that Thermalright hardware kits have the same threads as Dell workstation MB, and they have narrow ILM brackets available.
Suggestion #1- Maybe an adapter could be made to bolt to the MB with countersunk screws to make it a wide ILM pattern. A couple strips of
1/2"x 3 1/2" steel or aluminum strap should do it. Does that heatsink fit between the memory sockets at all?
#2- Try the $5 fan I suggested added to the 5810 heat sink until you find something better.
Dell cooling mods are always a challenge. They make enough of each system that they treat them all as unique designs. Not at all like the world of ATX computers where everything fits everything else. I have some Dell MB that don't seem to follow any standards at all for cooler bolt pattern.

 

[frankr2994]

Best I can come up with is this.
Supermicro 4U Active CPU Heat Sink Socket LGA2011 Square and Narrow ILMs (SNK-P0050AP4)

It should clear the dimm slots and the ilm bracket doesn't look like a joke. I've seen a few brackets that I know can't be putting enough pressure down.

And looking at modding mine.... about the only thing I could do would be to mill it out the same way as say this super micro cooler and bolt a narrow ilm bracket to it. Would not be able to access any of the screws through once done so it's a no go. I'll toss it back on ebay for less than I paid to get rid of it. Once I have a cooler that works I'll be able to see how tall my heatsink has to be for the vrm to get it in good airflow.

 

[Retrorockit]

Supermicro participates in the same server, workstation marketplace that Dell does.

As far as adapting a cooler to a MB, I'm a build as you go kind of guy. But I was thinking of adapters matching the MB to the cooler, not modding the cooler to match the MB. That way the hidden screws would already be in place before the cooler is installed.

But the Supermicro solution looks even better to me. The fan extends below the fins on the heatsink, so VRM airflow should not be a problem.
That's one of the good things about the old BTX format. VRM was specified as being right next to the fan, and got cooled before the CPU.

FWIW Supermicro computers might be a good candidate for overclocking. They follow ATX more closely than Dell, and maybe the BIOS isn't as locked down, either as is, or for BIOS modders.

 

[frankr2994]

FWIW Supermicro computers might be a good candidate for overclocking. They follow ATX more closely than Dell, and maybe the BIOS isn't as locked down, either as is, or for BIOS modders.

Looked a little bit and couldn't find a good deal. If I could find a single xeon v3 server/workstation from them under 400 bucks I'd sell off the Dell. I've been buying Dell business grade stuff for a few years now for everyone I know. It's cheap it's good and the driver support is crazy good. My personal laptop is a e6430s and it has full driver support for xp through win 10 lol. I used to just switch out the hard drive in it for whatever os I needed. My 5810 was 370 shipped with that cpu,32gb ram 685 watt psu and a win 10 license. I couldn't come close to building anything for that...

 

[Retrorockit]

Most of us here are Dell modders. So no reason to jump ship just yet. But if a deal is found on one it would be interesting. IDK about the others here but I'm pretty lame at BIOS overclocking from being immersed in Dells for so long. But there are plenty of experts available.

 

[Retrorockit]

I looked up Supermicro overclocking and found this. Dual CPU LGA2011 overclocking.

Supermicro X9DAX range, overclocking from Supermicro

Just spotted these new Dual LGA2011 CPU range of motherboards supporting overclocking, unheard of from Supermicro till now. What's in the range: X9DAX-iF Key Features 1. Dual socket R (LGA 2011) supports Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 2. Supports Overclocking 3. Intel® C602...

forums.servethehome.com

 

[frankr2994]

Well I'll keep a look out in the future. Chances are this Dell is going to over shoot what I actually need it to do whenever I actually get it done. I got that super micro heatsink , Dell 5 pin to 4 pin fan adapter and I stole a vrm heatsink out of an old ibm server I had that I can cut down and drill and I have spring pins from an old quadro card to attach it to the motherboard. I also got some thermal pad for it. Was all supposed to be here today but I think the recent weather here in the northeast screwed that up. Going away for the weekend so hopefully Monday or Tuesday I can report back with some good clock speeds. Another side note I made another thread on here about the caps for the vrm thinking I had a solder issue. I borrowed my friends usb microscope and did not find any bad solder joints. If my power issue persist after this I'll have to start monitoring psu voltage to possibly replace the psu or I'll do all the caps for the 12v rail on the motherboard

 

[Retrorockit]

I would take a look at the power rating on the Dell 5 pin fan vs the Supermicro. Dell tends to use powerful fans, and tone them down with a lazy PWM curve.
The Dell fan with the Supermicro cooler might be the way to go.

 

[frankr2994]

Ok got my stuff....not enough though lol. I was hoping I would be able to drill the narrow ilm bracket for the Dell hold down screws but it doesn't look like I'll be able to. Not enough material. So I have to buy another ilm bracket from digikey that has the threaded post in it opposed to using the threaded post attached to the case underneath the motherboard. Second thanks for the fan tip and this is what I've come up with. Factory 80mm fan draws .36amps new 92mm fan draws .35amps lol. Obviously I'm not going to put an 80mm fan on a 92mm heatsink but my case fans are 92mm and they draw 1.5amps...big step up. They are a 4 wire 4 pin pwm fan vs the 4 wire 5 pin factory cpu fan. Same pins and same pinout so I'll swap that over to the 5 pin connector and it will plug right in. Another 9 bucks buys me another case fan and I may buy 2 and utilize the hdd fan port on the motherboard and add a rear exhaust fan. Also bonus the new cooler clears the dimms. I'd have to pull it to add memory but it's just a hair taller than the sticks so it all fits

 

[Retrorockit]

When modding Dells it's normal to end up with a pile of spare parts that didn't quite work out one way or another.

 

[lexluthermiester]

When modding Dells it's normal to end up with a pile of spare parts that didn't quite work out one way or another.

This is so true!

 

[frankr2994]

Ok half way up and running now. Heatsink drilled for Dell hold down screws. Mounted a case fan on the cooler and modified an ibm vrm heatsink to go onto my vrm. Have another case fan on order. So far running diag test bios is happy with the case fan as a cpu fan but I stuck the cpu fan in as a case fan and it doesn't like that lol. Vrm heatsink gets just warm. Chokes beside the mosfets actually get hot so I'm probably going to get some of those little copper stick on sinks for those. Here is some pictures. One thing I'd like an opinion on is keeping the dimm fan shrouding. I'd have to cut it up to get it to fit but without them I still have air passing through the system I don't know if they are needed.

 

[Retrorockit]

I'll give you my thoughts on this. The fan/cooler setup looks good.
But IDK for sure what will happen when you power up a 1.5A fan on a MB header that had a .35A. before?
Since you're buying another fan anyway. The one I listed before is 92x38mm and 1.8A. You will need to reverse the cooler to a pull through setup. Then the fan can run off of any 12V. line since it's non PWM. It regulates off of the air temperature flowing through it. For blow through you could also just wire the thermistor to the back of the cooler if that pleases you. It was a CPU fan back in the Pentium4 PentiumD days. It can cool a high Watt CPU.
To avoid a fan fail message any small PWM chipset fan/blower can be stuck on the MB header. Once a fan error is set you may need to manually remove it in the BIOS. They don't usually go away when you resolve the problem. The thermistor fan curve is more aggressive than the Dell PWM curve.

As far as RAM cooling goes. Dell has used organized airflow in their systems since BTX days. ATX aftermarket overclocking with more chaotic layouts has gone to heatsinks on the RAM Modules. Forced RAM cooling started with the FBDIMM DDR2 that had actual controller chips on each module. I suppose with the faster DDR4 speeds it may be needed again. TS overclocking doesn't change the RAM speed. Probably nothing really needs to be done there.

You asked about the shrouding on the cooler. I would leave it. The cheaper Dynatron cooler just fold the fins over to close in the sides of the cooler to form a duct. But the closed sides introduce a boundary layer of non moving air in the corners. the fact that there is a shroud, and it's cut away to relieve the boundary layer tells me some thought went into it. The Dell cooler probably had a full duct, but some gap between the cooler and the shroud. That's actually the technically correct solution. But the bean counters won't allow any more cooling than is actually required. Supermicros may cost more for a reason. Less of a mass market approach to things.

 

[frankr2994]

Ok. I actually wasn't asking about the shrouding for the cooler itself just that the dimm shrouding hits it. I'm pretty sure I'm leaving the dimm shrouding out. As far as the fan I ran dells epsa for a while last night. It has no problem with that big fan on the cpu now I plugged in the old stock cpu fan to the system fan header and it didn't like that. That fan was spinning faster than the other 92mm fans. Nice thing is those 92mm fans have zero problem ripping up to it insane rpm so it thinks everything is ok on the cpu cooler. I booted up and lit up TS. Runs cooler but still has a crap fan curve but I can't make it hit 80c anymore. I can run linpak up to about 4.4ghz without fault. If I try 4.5 I get the same current limits. Ts bench lets me run 4.5 but hits current limits at 4.6. My vrm heatsink can get hot under load and my chokes get too hot to touch. I may add heatsinks to those. I'd really like to find a way to increase the iccmax which is greyed out for me in TS. Not positive that's what is going on but I'd sure like to try.

 

[unclewebb]

increase the iccmax which is greyed out for me in TS

Unfortunately the IccMax setting only applies to the newer CPUs. There is a Current Limit in the ThrottleStop TPL window for the 2nd to 4th Gen Core i based CPUs.

 

[frankr2994]

My current limit is locked at 208. Could this be the reason for my problem?

 

[unclewebb]

Could this be the reason for my problem?

EDP throttling is caused by the current limit being set too low so yes, this could cause throttling.

No way around this unless you can find a modified BIOS with this setting unlocked.

 

[frankr2994]

I found a discussion on another forum that a member was able to change the scale for cpu power to make it think it was using half the wattage. That person was asked multiple times in that thread how to do said trick and the response was that it was dangerous to do.....not sure if it was even real or not. I have been looking into ways to mod the bios but it quickly gets over my head. I may try getting another t5810 motherboard and setting it up as a test bench and maybe try some stuff on that and not panic if I brick it lol. But for right now I am fighting with the pc not wanting to go to sleep which I need for TS to work. I'm probably just going to settle for a stable 4.2 all core clock and just be happy it's not 3.5.

 

[Retrorockit]

HWInfo 64 can let you tweak the fan curve some ( raise idle speed). But basically you're at the mercy of the Dell PWM curve no matter what PWM fan you have.
The new fan may only be drawing a few Watts more power than the old fan if it's still under PWM control.
A sacrificial MB is a good idea. Then you can disconnect the blue PWM lead from the 1.5A. fan and see if the MB header can actually handle it at full power. The Dell 5 pin header on the old BTX could all handle a 1.8A fan. But IDK if that's still true on the later computers.
I have taken a hot air gun and dimpled the blue plastic RAM shroud on other Dells to clear bigger coolers. IDK about the black stuff.
But aftermarket RAM heatsinks would add some bling, and gain some street cred with the ATX gang.

 

[frankr2994]

I've already had the fans at 100 percent through the bios. Again everything seemed fine. Way way too loud at 100 percent. I played with the fan control in hwinfo. I think I could do something with that but it's vague on setting up. From the software I don't actually know what fan it's spinning up. I'll actually have to feel around in the case to see what's pushing more air. You can actually build a full curve based on temp but again it's going to take some playing. Right now I'm investigating getting another bios chip and a flash tool. I'd love to see if I can make a custom bios and actually have full control on everything. That's totally out of my realm of experience but this pc is just a play thing for me. At some point it has to turn into more but until I can buy a gpu at msrp it's just a play thing .

 

[Retrorockit]

A few of the guys at BIOSmods.com know how to mod the Dell BIOS at some level. But mostly added CPU support from what I've seen.

Bios Mods -The Best BIOS Update and Modification Source

www.bios-mods.com

IDK if anyone has added controls that aren't already there. TS/HWInfo comes about as close as anything I've seen, by reaching back from the OS.
I like the Dell 1.8A. fans but I run the big 150x50mm ones that are also quiet. But at 100% fan speed even though it's loud you can test to see what the added cooling does for your overclock. Then you will know if a bigger ( quieter) cooler/fan setup has anything to offer.
But most people here get a Dell workstation, add some simple cooling mods, and enjoy an easy TS overclock. Bang for the buck is usually pretty good.
You've definitely raised the bar here! Thanks.

 

[frankr2994]

Well I downloaded amibcp last night. Bios is obviously locked out so I can't pull a dump file for it. I'm going to order a flash programmer and hook it up to the bios chip and play. Programmers are really cheap and maybe just maybe I can totally unlock this motherboard and do whatever the hell I want with it. If I can pull a file and figure out how to configure it at that point I'll buy another motherboard as a test bench because ultimately I want my current system to stay operational and I don't know what I'm doing lol. Different subject. I found information that there was a t5810XL which I guess is a larger chassis. I can't find any but if anyone knows where I could buy a bare case that would be awesome. Actually have room for hard drives.

 

[Retrorockit]

Dell DCCU is a useful utility. It's used to update BIOS files remotely. The modders use it to install modded BIOS files.
The datasheet for your PLL chip should give you some insight into how the BIOS is locking down the FSB. TME is the method I've come across.
If you get it unlocked the frequency is usually just the desired setting converted to Hex. There was an old laptop hardmod to pull down the TME input signal, But they usually add a 33mhz clock output on that pin to defeat it.
RWEverything is another program that gets you into hidden registers and settings for many of the IC chips on the MB.
I taught my self how to read the PLL settings, but never advanced to changing any of them.