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Shit, I’ve done it before (years ago) and did it again somewhat recently. It’s nerve-wracking as hell. Closing the swingarm to hold the CPU in place feels like
by stouset 9y ago
Shit, I’ve done it before (years ago) and did it again somewhat recently.
It’s nerve-wracking as hell. Closing the swingarm to hold the CPU in place feels like—as the article’s author points out—you’re 100% about to destroy a really expensive piece of hardware. Installing the CPU cooler was surprisingly difficult, and I only noticed that the pins holding it attached weren’t fully seated because I checked and rechecked the mounting. Every time you plug a cable in there’s a moment of doubt if it’s the right cable or if you’re about to overvolt something and melt it. Even when you’re done plugging everything in there’s anxiety around whether or not you’ve missed something like a fan cable, that will eventually result in an expensive piece of hardware overheating and taking out the entire machine.
The act of pressing the power button when you’re all done isn’t an exciting and satisfying one. It’s a massive surge of anxiety followed by a wave of relief, followed by more nagging anxiety that gradually fades.
Even then you’re not done. After fiddling around in the BIOS for an hour to set things up, I ran a benchmark and discovered that I hadn’t used the right profile for my RAM, and it was only using half of its performance potential. Apparently many other people did this too, because the benchmark showed a graph of others’ performance in comparison and it had two equal-sized peaks: one where it was misconfigured to a slower (but presumably safe for all configurations) speed, and one where it was operating at its published speed. It took a few hours of research to discover something called XMP—which I still have no idea what it is—that apparently allows my motherboard to detect RAM timings in a way that unlocks this performance. I never would have noticed this without the benchmark.
I also noticed that my new NVMe SSD wasn’t performing well. Turns out the heat spreader my motherboard uses actually worsens performance for whatever reason. Simple fix: open the box back up, disconnect cables until I can get to the m.2 slot, and remove the heat spreader. More anxiety follows: am I just killing this expensive SSD?
Every step of the way is like this. I am not a naturally anxious person. I am financially well-off, and easily able to eat the cost of any mistakes. I am extremely technically inclined. Expecting nontechnical people to do this with limited budgets and expensive components is nuts.
- sundvor 9y agoI hear you. On my latest Asus motherboard, an Asus Strix Gaming, choosing XMP timings with an otherwise mild overclock overvolted the 6850k in a voltage setting I wasn't even aware of (not vcore) in such a way that the CPU died over time - my last build was a 2600k, which is now son's computer (OCed, and working fine). This happened twice. Computer shop couldn't figure it out and replaced the CPU on warranty. Not Intel's fault, yet they copped it. I should have insisted on a new motherboard as well, very frustrating. Fortunately I somehow discovered the hyper aggressive setting not too far into my third. I know it is at least a bit degraded, but oh well... In 3 years I'll try an AMD. ;)
- makomk 9y agoThe whole point of XMP is that it overvolts the RAM, which in turn increases the voltage the on-CPU memory controller runs at. That's why the XMP timings are faster than the stock timings. So it's probably kind of Intel's fault, since XMP is their invention.
- sundvor 9y agoOk - order is restored then, as it is pretty much advertised as "these are settings that will run your ram optimally".
- wtallis 9y agoAlmost all of those fears you enumerate are unfounded. You won't kill a processor through overheating if you forget to plug in a fan. Not properly securing your CPU heatsink only really poses a risk to the GPU that it could fall onto. Likewise for your concerns about the SSD's temperature: it'll throttle itself and shutdown if necessary, but the latter won't happen even if you're blowing 85°C air from a GPU directly onto the SSD—I've tested that with most of the M.2 NVMe SSDs on the market. There are essentially zero connectors inside the PC that allow for the mechanical possibility of connecting dangerous voltages to the expensive components.
- slededit 9y agoBut back in the P4 days man was it easy to melt your expensive processor. They didn't have fancy things like thermal shutdown then either.
- wtallis 9y agoThermal shutdown was added fairly early in the P4 days. I recall a Tom's Hardware video showing removing the heatsink from a P4 while it was running Quake 3 and the framerate tanking but no crash, while the Athlon (XP?) next to it went up in smoke when the heatsink was removed.
- jotm 9y agoThat was for AMDs, and I believe by the time of Pentium 4, even Athlons had thermal safeties. I remember quick testing (see if it powers on) Pentium 3s, Celerons and P4s without the heatsink - they even managed to boot Windows before shutting down lol. Same for GPUs.
- slededit 9y agoI managed to melt one by incorrectly applying a heatsink. Years later we did some "experiments" on an old P4 to test the cooling capabilities of scotch. It's not effective FYI.
- stouset 9y ago
- khedoros1 9y agoHmm. I've always thought it was exciting and fun, even when I didn't have the money to replace parts in a potentially-botched installation. I can see where you could get a feeling of anxiety from, but that was never my experience.
- urda 9y agoI just wanted to say you did a great job of bundling up all those nerves, anxiety, and feelings about getting your own rig up and running. Great comment.