OK, OK, so it never happened

[Daniel~]

Radiator positioning:
From my point of view It would be the same as putting a car radiator in the back seat.
it takes heat away but by no means far enough away.

The koolance setup requires that the Rad. and pump be located ABOVE the chip heat-sink. Making the top of your box a rather ideal location.

Have you a means to open a discussion with the manufacturer?
The sensor you're concerned about losing, What does it feed into... i.e. does it turn on and off your pumps and cooling fans as needed? Or does it just report temps to a read out?

I hear you on the age vs experimentation front i think age naturally gavottes to the tried and true.Not a bad approach to maintenance, but progress tends to slow.

 

[ThunderRd]

I think I'm ok with it on top of the box. I have to do a little work with the Dremel to cut the top cover, but other than that I'm happy enough.

The sensors report temps to the brain of the system and yes, they do regulate the pump speed and fan speeds depending on the radiator temperature as well as the CPU temp [by some secret sauce equation]. There's also a temp sensor for the coolant in the tubing as well, on the side going into the rad as well as the outflow side, to see how efficiently the rad is performing.

 

[Daniel~]

Sounds like they are pushing the envelope on water cooling.

A joke from "The Last of us" game:
"No matter how far you push the envelope it's still stationary.

Have no idea how much they may have changed the BIOS setup. But if they still use DIGI + power, that's where most of the fun can be had.":O}

 

[Kaitain]

Some thoughts of no particular use:
- the radiator is unlikely to be pressurized
- the tubing will be a standard size - probably 1/4" nominal bore, so inserts and push-fit fittings from a plumbing store will likely work.
- the sensor wiring is annoying. Any idea whether it's the fan running signal or a thermocouple, or both?

If opening the tubing is a no-no, I'd be tempted to try to make some ducting and pipe air into and out of the case.

 

[ThunderRd]

Nah, I'm done with obsessing over it.

I've made a drawing of a modified top panel which will allow the radiator to sit upon it and draw cool air through the rad and into the case from the top. My machinist can make it, and it will work fine. The airflow in that case is quite good; there's a 200mm side panel fan that you haven't seen in the photos that I've turned around to draw the air out, and all the other case fans as well.

Looking at it, it's kind of cool to see the rad on the top, although I'd rather it were away from the case for cooling reasons. I'm happy enough with the appearance after living with it for a couple of weeks now.

Interestingly enough, the fan wiring does not run through the tubing, but the unit can monitor the radiator temp as well as the coolant temp before and after the rad, from what I've read. It uses that information to regulate the rad's fan speeds and the pump speed with some secret calculations.

 

[Daniel~]

As you have a big boy fan in the side of the case,pulling air out of your case wouldn't you need some fans
Pulling air into the case?
I try to work my inputs from the bottom and exhaust from the upper fans in the case.
But my feeling is that there isn't a whole lot to be gained by doing so. It just looks good in my
imagination.

Water is just such an advantage that I think one can safely let a degree or two just go by and still have the overclocking advantage we are seeking.

When are you going to let go of the reins and see if she can run.
Have you checked out what others are doing with this chip?

betcha it's going to be a bit more than fast! ":O}

When you find the time I'd appreciate a series of pictures of your BIOS.
Just curious as to how much has change in the last few years.

While playing with your settings...I was wondering if you have something you hum to yourself? I hum "Row row row you Boat gently down the stream"

I have tried to change my tune, but alas, I screw he pooch every time I do!! ":O}

 

[ThunderRd]

Some thoughts of no particular use:

Your thoughts are NEVER of no use, lolz.

Hey K, I need to dual-boot this thing with Windows and Linux. But it's been so long since I did a Windows install, and this is the first time I'm working with UEFI instead of BIOS.

I've created the bootable USB stick with the current W10 install image 1809 on it; how do I make sure that the machine boots with UEFI and installs with GPT rather than MBR? Thing is, right now the Windows installation is a bit wonky because it was imaged to the M.2 drive from the old mainboard installation, so I'd like to re-do the install from scratch on the M.2 drive with UEFI, and I'm feeling my way through the information on how to do that.

You can probably make it clear in your usual inimitable fashion, with a lot less verbiage than what's on the net

 

[cloasters]

Edit Post by cloasters

Agree wholeheartedly, Kaitain is the man!

What Earthly reason have you for wishing to use Micro**it anything? Nevermind, I'm certain you have a legitimate need. Even though the imagination boggles at the thought. Sorry to be somewhat obstructional here, I simply shuddered at the concept of The Bill.
Shudder.

 

[ThunderRd]

Look, I paid for Win 7 years ago [for better or worse - incidentally, that is when you, George, were in love with W7 - or rather, you wouldn't try Linux ]. Then, they GAVE me W10 free. I do have some things that will only run on Windows [for example, an online English teaching app]. I'm not about to give up a free license when it's in my hand, so, basically, that's it

When I'm not using one of those specific apps, I'll boot it to Linux, just like my other box which only runs Linux.

 

[Daniel~]

I don't judge you! millions would, but I do not!! LOL

But be warned MS always costs you one way or another; they really do have that baked in But; as your only doing this for the good of all mankind (Your Over clocking it) and as I have absolute confidence that you will in time recoil in absolute disgust from MS BS, as you have done before; I will of course continue to aid you in you exciting undertaking!!

Have you considered the advantages to using two separate disks?
Probably just my limitations but I find that it removes a layer of complication.
Setting up partitions was never my strong point. Two smaller drives tend to be faster, for cheaper":O}

And it will inevitably save you time when once again decide to pull MS drive hit it with a hammer and pour high octane fuel upon it and carelessly drop match.

You know, just thinking of an MS system sitting on the same drive as Mint kinda unnerves me. This being so I may not be my usual fount of unbiased information.

I still want you to have fun, I just don't want to see anyone get hurt! LOL

When do we get to the part where you post speed and temps?

I like that part a lot!

If you use two drives there would be no reason for mint to ever know that... Never mind.":O}

See were already having fun with your new pocket rocket!

 

[ThunderRd]

For now I still have some dependence on Windows for the teaching app I mentioned, and I have not had time to fart around with trying to run it in WINE, so that is primarily why I will dual-boot. Yes, the two OSes will be in separate drives, but they will both be in the boot menu, so I don't have to physically switch them out when I want the other OS.

I haven't spent much time as yet trying to get to the limit of the CPU, but I can say that with my [so far very cursory] attempts at pushing it I find it runs very happily at 4700MHz from 3600 with a small amount of voltage applied, around .0375V. That is on all 8 physical cores. That extra voltage added around 1-2C to the normal running temps, as far as I could see, so it is a nominal difference. Under full load with something like F@H temperatures peaked at 88C, which sounds high but is absolutely normal according to all sources for a 9900K. These things run hot, and that is why excellent cooling is needed for high overclocks.

The goal would be to hit 5G+. Many people seem to have been able to get their 9900ks to 5.1-5.2 or so with good cooling, which I clearly have, but my ambients will hurt my chances at this time of the year with the temps being in the high 30s and low 40s nearly every day. My best overclocks will probably have to wait until the end of the year when the weather settles down. I did see one report of a guy getting his to 5.4G on water, but that is a golden ticket in the silicon lottery. Most everyone agrees that with some effort 5G is a realistic goal, and if you can't hit it, be happy with high 4s.

Actually though, having all the cores overclocked to 5G is something of a show-off thing, and almost never needed in typical use cases. Remember that all this new CPU tech allows the chip to run slower and at a lower Vcore when not in use; and under my normal use it would be rare if ever to be using all 8 cores - unless I'm running something like F@H or similar. Sometimes the separate cores are all running at different speeds, and with different discrete Vcore values as well. These i9 CPUs are smart. They constantly assign tasks to different cores, and know when the tasks are finished, thereby turning off the high speeds and voltages.You can turn off the limiting features, but why should I when it saves power? Sometimes I look at the monitoring app and it shows most of the cores just idling, Vcore at .675V from normal Vcore of 1.0V, and the chip frequency at 800MHz, instead of the stock 3600MHz. That must be saving on the power bill.

Click for a bigger view:

 

[cloasters]

Look, I paid for Win 7 years ago [for better or worse - incidentally, that is when you, George, were in love with W7 - or rather, you wouldn't try Linux ]. Then, they GAVE me W10 free. I do have some things that will only run on Windows [for example, an online English teaching app]. I'm not about to give up a free license when it's in my hand, so, basically, that's it

When I'm not using one of those specific apps, I'll boot it to Linux, just like my other box which only runs Linux.

Yes, you have no choice in the matter--Win10 it is. Believe me, I noticed that you had to use it. And said so after I hassled you in what I hoped was in a joshing manner. Apologies, I fell short there. Bad cloasters.

>Ten or more years ago I installed Linux, I was the only AOA Member that did afaik. I installed Linux when no book about installing and using Linux was available online. I bought a Unix book because that's all there was.

I tried about five distros (which seems to be a word never seen on GOL) and settled on SuSE for about eighteen months.Then SuSE was sold and turned strictly commercial.

After its teething problems I really did like Win7. Guilty as charged. I refused 8, 8.1 and 10. Specially 10.

 

[ThunderRd]

I liked 7 as well, never had a problem with it. Used it only for what I had to, after jumping on the Linux bus. I tried several distros as well, now I run Debian and Gentoo. Unfortunately, I have to keep W10 now, only because of the essential things I need it for, but at least at this point it's free

...and I knew you were kidding, m'man

 

[Daniel~]

At first I took exception to variable speed chips. I wanted them going 100% all the time.
Looking back I'm not at all sure why that was. nothing really requires it. In fact I now remember why.

I couldn't Measure speed or temps! I finally realized that to do so meant running a distributed computing progy like FAH. You have to create a need for speed in order to kick these chips in the pants. But when you do the transformation is instantaneous.

I'm a bit surprised your top end isn't higher as I can run 5.0 when the weather is with me. I push the temps a bit to do so. Dropping back to 4.8 seem a move on the side of sanity. I speculate the they put their time into getting to 8 cores. And as you say 5.4 is a bit of a jump over 5.0 when the weather is with us.":O}

Games surprised me. Even with a decent GTX 670 card My CPU goes straight to 100%.
or 4,8.
Like your self I have come to appreciate the drop to 1600's when I'm only starring the monitor and thinking this has got to extend the life of my everything in my box.

I may have gotten this from you, I'm ingrate enough to have forgotten.

But In case I didn't this is the best Linux monitoring I could find.

 

[ThunderRd]

Well, from 3.6G nominal frequency to 5.0 is still a huge leap. It seems from my research that 5.2-5.4 is the absolute ceiling running on water for this CPU, but as you said, the real trick is to get the thing doing that speed on ALL the 8 cores - which isn't easy, by all accounts. That is the overclocking challenge on these i9s. Remember that it is a hyper-threaded chip as well - and that means 16 threads, so it is more complex than an 8-core, 8-threaded system.

[BTW, 8C + 16T is an absolute MONSTER on F@H]

Apparently, people will get a chip that will do 5G+ on say, 6 cores, but core3 and core7 simply won't go there - and that is the bad luck of the silicon lottery. Likewise, the guy I spoke of who was able to get 5.4 on all 8, and was able to keep the thing cool enough to run it there.

These i9s are much, much hotter than previous generations, so good cooling is a must. On air, even with top-end air coolers, 5.0G seems to be the best overclock.

That said, for me as an everyday use case, 4.7 on 8 cores with the minimal effort I've put in seems quite nice - although I will revisit that number when the weather cools down It's just too damned hot here right now to push things too far.

Oh, and yes, you're right: when you overclock you have to turn off all that power-saving stuff in the UEFI, otherwise you won't know where you are with a monitoring program. After I pushed it to 4.7G and ran the benchmarks, I turned all that stuff back on, so I can relax and watch it idle at 800MHz

 

[Daniel~]

8 cores diffidently seems to have added a bit of complication. Never had any problem getting all 4 core hot and bothered, 8 threads. I'd really like a peek at your BIOS. I have a few painfully acquired tips but need to be sure I'm not out of date and misleading you.

In my BIOS I can get significant temp reductions at speed by playing with the Digi+ settings,

There 4 or 5 of them that can be very sweetly blended to give me 4.8 at 100% utilization at only slightly/more than slightly, increased temps. depending on the weather":O}

My Bios allows me to to save 8 or ten Bios set ups, so once I figures stuff out I can save my settings.
I follow the example of the I-Ching and keep 4 of them Spring summer fall and winter.

No way can I set up winter and run it in summer.At the extremums in the summer one degree of ambient increase can and for me does mean 1 degree in CPU temp.increase.

I won't even try to say you should e ale to hit 48 when in summer 40 to 45 is max for me.
Face it dude you picked a bad spot to set up overclocking in .":O}

The good to best news is that once you have your parameters down ...it's rock solid steady.

I've probably got a 1000 hours spent playing in my Bios
Some of the best fun I ever had.... DON'T PITY ME!! LOL

I think my chip may have been more easily maxed. A lot folks hit 5.0 with it but water seemed to be a requirement and very few ran them at 100% like you and I do! :O}

 

[Kaitain]

Your thoughts are NEVER of no use, lolz.

Hey K, I need to dual-boot this thing with Windows and Linux. But it's been so long since I did a Windows install, and this is the first time I'm working with UEFI instead of BIOS.

I've created the bootable USB stick with the current W10 install image 1809 on it; how do I make sure that the machine boots with UEFI and installs with GPT rather than MBR? Thing is, right now the Windows installation is a bit wonky because it was imaged to the M.2 drive from the old mainboard installation, so I'd like to re-do the install from scratch on the M.2 drive with UEFI, and I'm feeling my way through the information on how to do that.

You can probably make it clear in your usual inimitable fashion, with a lot less verbiage than what's on the net

The Gentoo Handbook may be of some use here:

If you're using something like Mint with graphical installers, then there'll be buttons to click, but if you're doing it the sensible way then:

# parted -a optimal /dev/sda (I'm assuming you're partitioning the primary drive)
// see what's already on there
(parted) print
// remove all existing partitions - you need to do this when changing from MBR to GPT
(parted) rm <n> (where <n> is the partition number - do until no partitions left)
// set the gpt label
(parted) mklabel gpt
// set the unit to megabytes
(parted) unit mib
// create the bootloader partition - grub needs to store its stuff here
(parted) mkpart primary 1 3
(parted) name 1 grub
(parted) set 1 bios_grub on
// check it worked
(parted) print
// for UEFI your boot partition MUST be some form of FAT, recommend FAT32. This obviously limits it to 2GB. I use 1GB as then I can store all of HP's self-diagnostics and firmware update crud on there, as well as a couple of kernels.
(parted) mkpart primary 3 1027
(parted) name 2 boot
// then partition the rest as you see fit.

Don't forget your boot partition must be formatted with mkfs.vfat and not one of Linux's filesystems.

Later, for GRUB, I think Gentoo's setup does this automatically, but if you're using other systems, put into your /etc/grub.d/40_custom file the following:

menuentry 'Windows 10' {
    search --fs-uuid --no-floppy --set=root A123-B456
    chainloader (${root})/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
}

where "A123-B456" is the UUID of your windows drive or partition.

Note, I haven't tried looking at secure boot and all the pain that brings. It's the first thing I turn off before starting with Linux.

 

[cloasters]

The Gentoo Handbook may be of some use here:

If you're using something like Mint with graphical installers, then there'll be buttons to click, but if you're doing it the sensible way then:

# parted -a optimal /dev/sda (I'm assuming you're partitioning the primary drive)
// see what's already on there
(parted) print
// remove all existing partitions - you need to do this when changing from MBR to GPT
(parted) rm <n> (where <n> is the partition number - do until no partitions left)
// set the gpt label
(parted) mklabel gpt
// set the unit to megabytes
(parted) unit mib
// create the bootloader partition - grub needs to store its stuff here
(parted) mkpart primary 1 3
(parted) name 1 grub
(parted) set 1 bios_grub on
// check it worked
(parted) print
// for UEFI your boot partition MUST be some form of FAT, recommend FAT32. This obviously limits it to 2GB. I use 1GB as then I can store all of HP's self-diagnostics and firmware update crud on there, as well as a couple of kernels.
(parted) mkpart primary 3 1027
(parted) name 2 boot
// then partition the rest as you see fit.

Don't forget your boot partition must be formatted with mkfs.vfat and not one of Linux's filesystems.

Later, for GRUB, I think Gentoo's setup does this automatically, but if you're using other systems, put into your /etc/grub.d/40_custom file the following:

menuentry 'Windows 10' {
    search --fs-uuid --no-floppy --set=root A123-B456
    chainloader (${root})/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
}

where "A123-B456" is the UUID of your windows drive or partition.

Note, I haven't tried looking at secure boot and all the pain that brings. It's the first thing I turn off before starting with Linux.

I leave all boot options in regard to secure boot alone. In Mint 17.3 the UEFI finally scuttled me. Thanks Intel, you made all our lives SO much better with your screwing up the UEFI security! On purpose? Of course!

 

[ThunderRd]

Oh, I'm OK with creating the dual-boot thing. My question is more about how to make sure that I install W10 the right way, before I add the Linux disk to the boot menu. There is no intent to install both OSes on the same disk, so it's just boot menu mojo.

How I understand it is I have to make sure that the boot medium to install windows [DVD or USB] must be booted UEFI-style, and then the installer should give me the options for GPT partitions and etc.

What is the secret to making sure that this [the correct boot mode] actually happens? Is it that Compatability Mode toggle in the UEFI?

 

[Kaitain]

Ah OK, misunderstood.

Easy - set the motherboard to UEFI boot and turn off compatibility mode. Also, to really ram the issue home, clear the existing partition on your intended boot disc, and create the GPT partition table first.

When Windows detects a GPT partition table, it automatically chooses UEFI mode, when it sees an MBR, it chooses BIOS, but it's actually not very well handled. EDIT: I think this means using something like Rufus to create your boot image (it can also make windows boot discs if memory serves) with the necessary options set to force it to be uefi-based and not hybrid.