So I upgraded to Q6600 + GTS 640

[Kurt]

What with all the good deals you can get on processors and DDR2 800 right now ... and I'm happy. Performance has gone through the roof compared to my old system (3800+ single core and 7800GS).
After initial problems with incompatible RAM that I had to swap out, I now have a stable system - six hours prime95 is good enough for me but one remaining question: Is it normal for the CPU fan to stop spinning when the system is idle every now an then?

Temperatures as per Speedfan are between 27°C and 30°C for each core and system is at 42°C idle. Ambient temp is about 25°C right now, so I *think* everything is fine. Under load the fan picks up again but I'm still a little worried. I only noticed this when I had Fan Failure Alert enabled in the BIOS and it kept beeping intermittently. I then opened the case and noticed the dormant fan coincided with the beeping .

As I said, the system is rock-stable but as I've never heard or read about CPU fans shutting down completely, I was wondering if someone knows more.

PS. Forgot to mention, my board is a low-end Gigabyte GA-P35-S3 if it matters.

 

[Accord1999]

Gigabyte has a SmartFan feature which slows or even shuts down the fan when it thinks the CPU is cool. You should be able to disable it in the BIOS.

 

[Davros]

do you have any benchmarks comparing your 2 systems ?

ps: ive never heard of that either id be worried, maybe if you powered the fan from a differnet connector it would solve it
or a bios setting ?

 

[Mize]

Lots of MBs have this fan-speed-stop control feature. Nothing to worry about, just disable it in the BIOS.

 

[Kurt]

Thanks for the quick answers!
I noticed the option in the BIOS but as I usually tend to ignore stuff I consider not essential I completely missed it. Teaches me to pay attention and read the manual more closely
I'll probably leave it enabled though as I like it quiet and you really only notice the fan spinning up when the case is open.

As for benchmarks I haven't done any but I will try and see if I can find a 3DMark score for my old system whose innards are in the process of being sold on ebay piecemeal, so I can't really do any actual side by side comparisons anymore. I ran Oblivion very briefly and it was absolutely fluid, same as Supreme Commander. In SupCom against three allied Supreme AIs framerate used to be in the low teens and even single digit, now it's between 25 and 35FPS regardless of the action or duration of the game.

The only thing I can tell right off the bat is that power consumption has increased by roughly 50W The old system used to draw 130W idle and 160W under load from the wall, while now it hits 220ish with all four cores and graphics card busy. Substract 40W for the LCD and you get an idea. Powersupply is a 2 year old 520W BeQuiet. At the moment I only have 2x1GB RAM installed but since im still on WinXP Pro that's of little consequence to me. Other than that there is two 500GB Western Digital SATA drives and an old LG DVD writer.


PS. I just bought and installed STALKER and it runs very well, all options at max, grass shadows and what not @1280x1024 and lots of in-game AA

 

[breez]

The only thing I can tell right off the bat is that power consumption has increased by roughly 50W The old system used to draw 130W idle and 160W under load from the wall, while now it hits 220ish with all four cores and graphics card busy. Substract 40W for the LCD and you get an idea.

That's quite impressive. My PC alone takes 210W from the wall without LCD and I only have 3GHz C2D + X1950Pro (no OC) with a high efficiency PSU (hitting 85% around this wattage).

 

[Rainbow Man]

Gigabyte has a SmartFan feature which slows or even shuts down the fan when it thinks the CPU is cool. You should be able to disable it in the BIOS.

Why disable it at all?

If the CPU already is cool enough to keep the system stable there's no need to have the fan running.. It helps keep the box more quiet after all. And it might save the bearings of the fan motor a little bit too.

Well unless you get irritated by listening to rising and falling fan whine - which can be quite distracting if one has one of those 4-pin PWM fans I might add.

Peace.

 

[Kurt]

Newsflash - I'm not happy at all anymore. It looks like the videocard may have died. I had simply shut down the system and upon restarting the videocard fan began to spin up to max and nothing more, no beeping, video output, nothing. I tried a spare Trio64 PCI and Voodoo Banshee PCI since I don't have another PCI-E lying around but both don't seem to work in this board/PCI slots. With the GTS in I get no beep (just the fan revving up and staying at max), but with either of the old cards I get one long - two short beeps which I think means bad video adapter/connection. Any ideas?

 

[Davros]

sorry to hear that

strange that the pci cards dont work though
is there a setting in the bios (look in the manual)

 

[Malo]

I've found that the fans will spin up to max and the computer won't post when the power supply connections to the video card either aren't plugged in in there is a fault or insufficient power issue.

 

[Mize]

I've found that the fans will spin up to max and the computer won't post when the power supply connections to the video card either aren't plugged in in there is a fault or insufficient power issue.

ditto.

If PCI cards don't work it's either psu or mb I'd guess.

 

[Kurt]

Found the culprit - bad RAM stick. You're right the board wouldn't post, so I tried different banks, removed them one by one and nailed it to that one. Updated BIOS to latest Beta, still no go with that particular stick. Hence why the other cards wouldn't boot either. BTW, I noticed insufficient power results in Geforce cards giving off this really high-pitched whining alarm sound, so you know immediately something's not right, which wasn't the case here.

In the end I'm somewhat relieved it wasn't the videocard and the rest of the components all seem to be in working order still. I'm typing this on the one remaining RAM stick, kinda bummed though, cause playing games which I rarely do anyway, is now out of the question till replacement arrives.

PS: This is Corsair CM2X1024-6400 5-5-5-12 and before that I had some OCZ Titanium *something* which was really unstable even with manually adjusted timings. Either the board is really picky or I'm just unlucky. Never had problems with RAM before. Oh and the replacement I ordered is Mushkin 6400U which I know works because I had used it as a stop gap between the OCZ and Corsair. Phew!

 

[Mize]

Call/email Corsair and they will handle it quick and well.
Good trouble-shooting.

 

[Davros]

a quick question do your pci cards now work ?

 

[Kurt]

Just popped the S3 back in and it went through POST no problem. I didn't bother to boot into XP so as to not confused it too much .