So I said I'd post a few pictures. I'm a little later than expected due to Christmas but better late than never.
Fist a few pics of the case I like so much then we'll get to overclocking:
Here's what the internal cable management ended up looking like:
But I can't show you the good stuff without acknowledging the mess behind the motherboard (I tried to keep it reasonably neat) Note that all the drives connect back here:
As to cooling here's the dual 120mm front intake fans (lights are on... they can be and normally are turned off by a switch on the front panel):
200mm side intake:
120mm rear exhaust (there's another intake fan on the PSU taking air in from under the case):
And finally the 120mm top exhaust (top panel popped off with room for another fan):
So everything built I set about overclocking the CPU. At stock settings my 3.5 GHz 6600K was rated at 3.5 GHz running at 3.9 GHz in turbo mode. I spent several days on this trying different things from raising the Bus speed (bclck as it's currently known) to simply increasing the multipliers and, in both cases, raising voltages as needed. I found that raising the BUS speed gave me higher temperatures for (roughly) the same outcomes in terms of overclock so eventually decided to stay with the 100 MHz base clock.
I tested in even increments getting stable overclocks at 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4 GHz running Prime95 for at least thirty minutes at each clock speed. I hit 4.5 GHz but never finalized for stability as temperatures got uncomfortable.
At stock settings I was running 59-60 degrees C under full load. I didn't have to increase Vcore until I hit 4.2 GHz and then by only 0.025V producing temps of 60-61C under load. At 4.3 GHz temps had risen into the mid 60's, at 4.4 GHz into the low 70's and at 4.5 GHz exceeded 80C. Maybe a better cooler would get me there but this little Noctua was doing OK. Liquid cooling would surely take you past 4.5 GHz.
I had a hell of a time figuring out how to retain Intel's power management features while getting the OC I wanted but I finally got there using offset voltage.
The MSI BIOS is certainly different than my old Nvidia BIOS but offers all the flexibility you need and has EZ (Game Boost), normal and advanced overclocking settings to fit whatever level you're comfortable with. I played with each and noticed the EZ mode settings really cranked up the voltages/heat for the same outcomes so this method might be best avoided.
Also, I started and ended by setting up fan profiles. The three intake fans are all controlled by a three position front panel switch. I found that even under full load my temperatures actually increased by turning up the intake speeds so I left them at the lowest settings. The CPU and exhaust fans are all set to smart fan and set to max out at 60C as I normally shot for that as my high temp and 30-40C at idle. My monitors won't show 100% use as I've calibrated them to the highest fan speeds recorded which are rarely hit. Even cranked up the fans are mostly quiet.
Here's where I ended up (screenshot of my monitors under full load about 20-25 minutes into a test in Prime95):
That screenshot shows 60C but it spends equal time between 60 and 61C. All in all a 0.3 GHz increase over stock turbo (8%) and 0.7 GHz over rated speed (20%) for a 1 degree increase in temperatures (2%). Pretty comfortable for a daily overclock and right at Intel's historic 20% "easy overclock" mark and I was able to boost the Ring Ratio (CPU cache ratio) to synch with the CPU at 1:1 without adding any additional voltage. You'll also notice I'm still under Intel's recommended stock voltage of 1.2V. Recommended max is somewhere between 1.40-1.45V so I have a lot of headroom.
By retaining Intel's throttle management I'm able to idle at under 30C at ~0.800 GHz:
The CPU only uses as much power as it needs. In normal use (browsing the Internet, working in Office, listening to music, etc.) I never exceed 30C with the CPU running between about 0.8-2.5 GHz.
By the way, I made a few tweaks and changes to the monitors I built using Rainmeter (more in this thread:
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,376452.0.html). I really like how they turned out and they were very useful in overclocking my CPU.
So finally I decided to jump into the game and see what I had. Here's the settings I ended up with:
Oddly, I thought I'd get better performance with shadow texture size at 1028 but was instead getting stutters until I turned it up to 2048 at which point everything was smooth as butter. Playing for an hour or so I never saw fame rates drop below 59 and they spent approximately equal time at 59 and 60 which is my monitor's refresh rate.
Exiting the game my CPU temps were under 45C although by the time I hit my desktop I'm sure they'd already had a chance to come down.
All in all I'm extremely happy with this build for only $1250. I haven't OC'd the GPU yet and likely won't as I currently don't see the need. Maybe that will change with the graphics update but until then I'll just leave it alone.
