My new hardware came and it looks a bit like this:
Looking sexy
First things first - time to rag out my old kit and clean out seven years of accumulated dust.
Before: I wish my girlfriend was this dirty (that's not really my PC).
After: Loads cleaner than your mucky mother.
Brilliant, time to put it all together, that heat sink is an absolute beast and it was a bit of a sod to bolt to the motherboard. The Asrock Z97 Anniversary motherboard is only about 2/3 the size of my old Asus so there is a bit more room for messing about with the drives.
Assembled: The heatsink fits in the Cooler Master Centurion C5 case no problem if you remove the pipe attached to the case side.
After a fresh install of Linux Mint 17.1 with the Xfce desktop, we're ready to rock. The Linux 'sensors' command show that things are running pretty cool at stock speeds:
coretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Physical id 0: +27.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 0: +27.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 1: +26.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Testing
Before attempting any overclocking I wanted to make sure the new hardware was stable enough and cool enough with the out of the box configuration.
First I used Memtest86 to make sure that there were no faults with the memory, downloadable here:
http://www.memtest86.com/download.htm
Faultless
Memtest86 took about half an hour to run on 8GB RAM, and reported no errors after one pass. I couldn't really be bothered running it for more time - I was going to overclock it whatever the result.
Booting back into Linux, I installed Prime95 and ran the 'Small FTTs' torture test to bring the CPU up to full utilization. Prime95 is downloadable from here:
http://www.mersenne.org/download/
The 'sensors' command showed the temperature immediately go up to the low 40°C range, still pretty cool, and increase slow by about 1°C per hour:
coretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Physical id 0: +42.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 0: +42.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 1: +38.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
+1 hour
coretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Physical id 0: +43.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 0: +43.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 1: +39.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
+2 hours
ccoretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Physical id 0: +44.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 0: +44.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 1: +40.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
No errors or warning were reported during the tests:
[Worker #2 Mar 7 21:21] Torture Test completed 182 tests in 2 hours, 23 minutes - 0 errors, 0 warnings. [Worker #2 Mar 7 21:21] Worker stopped. [Worker #1 Mar 7 21:21] Torture Test completed 181 tests in 2 hours, 23 minutes - 0 errors, 0 warnings. [Worker #1 Mar 7 21:21] Worker stopped. [Main thread Mar 7 21:21] Execution halted.
Stock Benchmark
I benchmarked the new setup at stock speeds using the same tools and tests as used in part 1.
I ran GeekBench three times to make sure the results were consistent:
| Run | Single-Core Score | Multi-Core Score | Full Results |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 2871 | 5180 | http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/2048335 |
| 2nd | 2869 | 5178 | http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/2048351 |
| 3rd | 2869 | 5178 | http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/2048367 |
I ran each of the GpuTest fullscreen benchmark scripts, as before:
| Module | Points | FPS |
|---|---|---|
| Triangle | 39818 | 663 |
| Plot3D | 3718 | 61 |
| FurMark | 394 | 6 |
| PixMark Volplosion | 176 | 2 |
Compared to the benchmark from part 1, my new system is roughly twice as fast:
| Test | Number of times faster |
|---|---|
| Single-Core Score | 2.2x |
| Multi-Core Score | 1.6x |
| Triangle | 2.0x |
| Plot3D | 1.7x |
| FurMark | 2.8x |
| PixMark Volplosion | 3.2x |
