Going to have a shot at self-assembly...

Right, I'm a complete donkey - I pushed the audio connector to the point I thought I was breaking the pins - and all is well now!

Was too timid when I was connecting - didn't want to trash the header!

Thanks for all suggestions - apologies for being an arse...

 

Nice one philby...now you really can enjoy in magnificently glorious stereophonic sound...

At least you plugged the thing into the wall. I've been summoned to the offices of CEOs before on numerous occasions to fix their IT problem just to plug the darn thing in and flick the switch. haha Love seeing their embarrassed faces...

The feedback I wanted in a few weeks time was just around overall stability etc. Like I said before I'm looking to build a new system and ASRock could be a possibility for me. Any feedback would be appreciated as I've never used ASRock before. Thanks, vic

 

OK - will keep you posted. Everything has been stable for 48 hours now (except for me, that is ) - no errors or blue screens or anything else.

One oddity is that I get an A6 error on the debug display if I boot only to the BIOS - which I understand means the board is looking for an SCSI drive. The display is blank when I'm in Windows though...

philby

 

Good thing you got it figured out!

New audio ports are sometimes a little... tight. Of course you shouldn't use violence, but it might take some force in the first tries.

 

Thought I'd give the fan controller a spin before deciding whether to get some new fans, but I'm not sure how to connect it as there's nothing in the manual at all and I can't find anything on the net. Maybe this task is really simple, but I don't want to destroy the PSU or anything...

Even I can see I should connect the fans' leads to those 3 connectors on the red and black wires, with the 4th going into the bracket.
The problem is the 2 large (molex?) 4 pin white connectors, which are 'daisy chained' - do I plug one or both of those to the PSU? If only one, what happens to the the other? (You can't see it in the picture but there is also a yellow / black wire connector from these that goes to the bracket.)

Even if I finally get this connected, does it override the fan settings available in the BIOS and Asrock fan control software, or supplement them in some way?

Probably elementary stuff, so thanks for your patience...

philby

 

The picture doesn't show it, but if there is a connector for that 4-pin molex wire which connects to the fan controller itself, then you should only use one of the molexes on you PSU. The reason for multiple options is that someone may have PSU configuration which has for example male connectors, not female. Use the one native to your PSU.

The fan controller, once plugged in, does override BIOS completely as the fan isn't plugged at the motherboard. If you use the controller with a fan that is crucial, look up your temperatures to determine how fast it should run.

 

OK - got it installed and connected. THANKS!

Case is MUCH quieter using the f/c than adjusting settings via board + BIOS.

Of course, now I'm worrying about CPU temp. - the BIOS says 42 centigrade whereas the board's s/w utility says 30 (at idle).

Do you generally trust the BIOS reading or the s/w reading or neither?

philby

 

BIOS reading is higher because the power-saving features of the CPU don't kick in. So the board utility should tell you the "real" temperature, BIOS only tells what your idle temps are when the CPU is constantly fully powered. Those temperatures you reported are very good - but you probably should test maximum temperatures with Prime95 to determine if there are any problems with the cooling when CPU is under stress.

 

FWIW I generally leave my cpu fan plugged into the mobo and controlled by the mobo. Too many features built into the boards today that I want to utilize.

But for case fans, either way works usually. There are usually more of them so controlling them helps with noise.

On my current build, my fans are all at 20-30%, very quiet. Even when all cores go to 3.8ghz, the cpu temp is only 50deg C, and the fan is barely above idle. Stress testing it with all cores at 100% shows a few degrees higher but barely any fan speed increase, that is in both system fans and cpu fans. My loudest fan now is my video card fan, which used to be almost inaudible, although it only revs up when needed.

Sul.

 

Spysnake - Regarding BIOS temps being higher - understood. I've run CPUID HW Monitor and idle numbers look like this:

I realise load temps are more significant so I will run Prime95 soon...

Sully - I've left the CPU fan plugged to the board and now have the 3 case fans wired to the controller - is it normal that this way the fans don't spin up at all at boot if I set the dial below a certain point? They do cut in after a few minutes or when I task the CPU.

The case is so quiet now that the whine/hum of the stock Intel HS is somewhat annoying - I am dithering now over an H50/60 or a Noctua NH-U9B.

Funny how silence didn't matter until I did my own build...

Incidentally, I have both the old Samsung mechanical and new M4 installed - but that HW monitor doesn't acknowledge the SSD...?

philby

 

Since you're going to be stress-testing the cpu you should also test the ram for errors. I recommend memtest86+ to perform this task.

 

You have 2 types of fans: voltage driven and pwm (pulse width modulation). Your cpu cooler uses a PWM fan, indicated by a standard "small" connector, but using 4 pins.

Voltage driven fans have the same "small" connector, but are only 3 pins. Other/older voltage fans would use the larger "molex" 4 pin connector, like the ones you use for hdds or cdroms.

Voltage fans vary thier rpm with more/less voltage. They generally need 5-7 volts to start spinning up, and reach full rpm at 12volts. Some require a startup voltage of 7 volts, but can actually run as low as 4-5 volts. Running them at less will cause them to stall. It will then require 5-7 volts to get them spinning again.

When you hook multiple fans to a fan bus (aka fan controller), there is sometimes circuitry that limits the low voltate output, so that you cannot turn them off. Others allow you full 0-12volt control. The limitation of these controllers are the transistors used to control the voltage. A normal potentiometer could control one, but not 3 most likely. Most of these units have transistor for 1-2 fans, and have a limitation of how much current they can use.

All that to say, that is how voltage fans work. Not a pro or a con, just the way it is.

PWM fans on the other hand always get full 12 volts, but have a special motor that utilizes a "sense" input. This input tells the motor to use 12v 100% of the time, or if the sense input says to use only 50%, the motor only gets the 12v half the time, thus the rpm reflects this. It allows a pwm fan to go very low and still run without stalling. I have one fan that will go as low as 10% and barely spin, and increase to 15% without needing a voltage boost at all.

The downside, if you want to call it one, is that the frequency you give to a pwm fan can vary. maybe you give it 10khz or 25khz. Some fans at a certain frequency will develop a commutator noise. This is inside the fan motor, and is a very light "clicking or pulsing" sound. Changing the frequency can clear this up, but most controllers/mobos don't allow this in my experience. My last board did, and that was great.

Another thing unique about pwm fans is that if they have led lights on them, and the frequncy is low, the lights will pulse dim/bright. As the rpms increase or you change the frequency, it usually goes away.

I use all pwm fans on this build. On my last build, I used all pwm as well. They are not as abundant, and don't offer you much really other than being able to run the fans at lower speeds. I use the mobo fan headers because they are pwm. I either use the bios control or speedfan.

I have been stress testing my 2600k. The best program I have found so far is called IntelBurn Test. It produces about 15-20 c higher temps than prime 95. I have OCd my cpu to 4.49ghz, and reached temps of about 79c max. I have an aftermarket cooler with 2 x 120mm fans. If I use one cpu fan, temps reach 79, if I use both fans, temps reach 75, if I turn on case fans 100%, temps reach 72 max.

If I am not OCing, temps barely reach 58c max, and doing something like playing bfbc2 uses about 25% of the cpu, and temps don't go above 40c max, even though the cpu fan (single fan) is only at 20% and the case fans are at default 30%. So with my aftermarket cooler, things appear to idle at 34c and under normal use, never reach 60c and the whole while it is barely audible. I mean that, barely audible. The quietest I have ever had a system. But that is not stressing the processor. I find with the 2600k, that I don't need the case fans to run at all. The temps don't go past 60c at stock speeds, so that seems plenty good for me.

Maybe more info that you would like, but maybe not

Sul.

 

cozumel - Have run memtest and all is well. Will get round to Prime / IntelBurn soon...

Sully - what a fantastic answer!! I've ordered the Noctua heatsink (the stock cooler hum is currently the only audible noise - the Fractal fans are surprisingly quiet) and a P-14, which I'll run on low speed just to augment the case intake.

The case has a very much unwanted side vent that I thought of blocking up with some 3mm mounting board I got from an art shop - safe or fire risk...? Not sure - on the one hand it seems crazy but then a fire in the case will stay in the case...??

Now for a 'softer' question: If there's 8GB RAM, I shouldn't run a pagefile to make life easier for the SSD, right?

philby

 

My experience with SSD is that you want to minimize excessive writes. I would suggest that you take a look at SSDTweak tool and do a little research on what you don't want to have running. I have an Intel SSD, and thier latest driver thingy lists some services you want to shut off, but SSDTweak tool also does that for you.

I realize that an SSD drive has a large number of writes available before it is "finished", and that number is pretty large. However, I like to keep my things I buy as long as I can, as I don't have unlimited funds. Therefore I have gone the route of making my browsers store thier cache on a standard hdd rather than the hdd. Anything I can do that is going to constantly write to the SSD I offload. And that includes the page file.

That is just me, based on what I have read. It is worth looking into though considering the $$ per GB an SSD gives you.

Sul.

 

My point of view: Do not disable pagefile. This still leads to weird errors as Windows is designed to use pagefile even when there is more than enough RAM. Windows 7 is designed with SSDs in mind, so there should be no excessive and unneeded I/O operations.

You have a drive that will last years, there is no need for that kind of tweaking. I would say different if it were OCZ one, though...

One thing about the Noctua NF-P14: it isn't very quiet. Really. If you are looking for a quiet setup, you can for example modify Thermalright TY-140 to fit a Noctua NH-D14 cooler. The modification requires a drill and about 10 minutes per fan. There is more information on this page:

http://www.overclock.net/air-cooling/944527-adapting-gentle-typhoons-other-fans-d14.html

Of course, if you are satisfied with P14 noise, then you are good to go. If your setup doesn't produce lot of heat, you can undervoltage those fans and then they are what they promise; dead silent. But with 12V, they are pretty loud.

 

What is your point of view if the page file is not disabled, but offloaded to a mechanical drive?

Sul.

 

I've got at least a pennys worth of thoughts on this too re the M4SSD.

I've been overclocking for many years and invalidating warranties along the way. Despite loads of things written by manufacturers about an o/c shorterning the lifespan of hardware I've never encountered problems. All of the hardware still outlasts the (invalidated) warranty periods. I end up putting old overclocked stuff on ebay or keeping for spays and test rigs when I build a new rig after 4 years or so.

So, back to your M4. It is has a 3 year warranty I think, so in the unlikely event of a failure within that period it would be replaced. I used the reference to overclocking as an example of what could be possible. You will likely have no further use for the M4 before it fails after many happy years of high performance.

Ms optimised Win7 for use with SSDs (Win8 will most likely be further optimised)

One of the main points of an SSD is carry out the regular i/o functions that would normally get bottlenecked in a regular HDD. One of the primary bottlenecks after boot that slows productivity in most systems is when page file is being accessed via a regular HDD

According to MS " typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD".

In conclusion, imho page file should be on SSD. To be on an HDD misses the point of an SSD I reckon. Like driving a Ferrari at low revs to increase engine longetivity.

 

That is of course a good way to go if one wants to avoid writes on his/her SSD. I'm sorry if my reply seemed like a counter-argument, as it wasn't; I replied directly to philby and didn't have time to read your message thoroughly.

But as cozumel said, this maybe isn't necessary at all.