Download here: http://www.benchtec.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=6782

Find out how Crucials latest does

HERE

Full review to come!

Teaser pics :http://www.benchtec.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=6695

Make sure to watch the video for all the clues.

Please make sure to submit all answers to the YouTube page no later than the 30th June 2010, the winner will be announced on the 1st July 2010, and prizes sent out that day to the lucky winner.

Check out BenchTec’s YouTube channel while you’re there as well! BenchTec UK

Good luck to all!

Note: Intel supplied me with the parts used in this video but is not running this competition.

Fermi / GF100 finally hits!

It’s safe to say that nVidia has had a hard time lately. Announced last year, we were meant to see these cards in 2009, but instead the delays kept coming and it’s slipped to the end of Q1 for the “launch” and Q2 before people can stump up their hard-earned cash for one. That being said, just what’s it like? Is it worth the wait, or as I like to put it, is the juice worth the squeeze?

nVidia website for GTX 400-series

Reviews

Pre-Orders

Dabs GTX 470 @ £300-330
Dabs GTX 480 @ £440-450
Scan 470 & 480 470 @ £300-330, 480 @ £430-500
Overclockers 470 & 480 470 @ £310-350, 480 @ £450-480
Novatech 470 & 480 470 @ £320-360, 480 @ £480-500

Manufacturer Pages

EVGA | EVGA HydroCopper

Well done Paul, another incredibly in-depth review. You’ve seen a lot of P55 boards so you know when you’ve got a good one.

http://www.benchtec.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=5425

Paul Watkinson and Barrie Wynd have done about the coolest thing you can do with a computer.

The pair are among the elite of the UK’s overclocking community. These folks are not satisfied to use a PC as it is delivered from the factory. Instead, they look for ways to supercharge it.

Typically these tweaks are applied to the core processor because the faster that runs then, usually, the faster the computer can complete all the tasks it is being asked to do.

It is known as “overclocking” because every chip has a clock speed, measured in gigahertz (Ghz) or megahertz (Mhz), which describes how fast it completes a basic operation.

Check it out here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8284435.stm

By r1ch.

Here’s hoping this is as big a deal as it promises to be. First, the boring but oh-so-required legal bit.

NEITHER I, NOR BENCHTEC ACCEPT ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS. I, WE, NOR FOXCONN WILL WARRANTY THIS MODIFICATION. IF YOU KILL YOUR BOARD YOU ONLY HAVE YOURSELF TO BLAME.

You’ll need to remove the heatsink assembly, and just to the right of the X58 chipset  you’ll find the following resistors.

Remove resistor from R128 and solder onto R125.

Before:

After:

The Foxconn BloodRAGE has taken some stick from early reviews, some justifiable, some just outright insulting. These reviews were based on immature BIOS’s and an apparent hard limit of 220 bclk, which at the time put the board toward the back of the pack in terms of overall satisfaction.

What this mod promises is something that is new to the BloodRAGE and that’s an open PCI-E clock range. Testing so far has taken the PCI-E from a fixed 100Mhz on early BIOS’s to 103Mhz using the G25 BIOS and now with this mod, I’ve just booted at 119Mhz and SetFSB to 120Mhz. As you’ll see from the desktop, this is my daily rig install so I’ve not gone past 120Mhz for the sole risk of SATA HDD corruption – it may well go further.

Ignore the CPU Mhz, I run 220×12 daily (need a better heatsink that isn’t a SS Phase) and dropped back to 133 Bclk for PCI-E testing.

Just 103Mhz opened up the bclk from a 220 hard limit to 229 with my i7 920 C0 stepping, this is looking good to finally take it over 230 – more testing to follow.

So, feel free to try it and report back in this forum thread. I’d be interested to hear how this mod helps you.

It was a wet and windy Monday morning, marginally warmer than the liquid nitrogen contained within the BOC Cryospeed truck sat outside HEXUS’s studios in north London. Paul “sacha35″ Watkinson and I have just arrived to show HEXUS just what it is that gets us out of bed so early on a Monday morning.   

So we start emptying the car and within 5 minutes, there’s 3-4 grand’s worth of kit sat on a table, ready to be stressed at less than -100C in the hope that we can break some world records. What’s first we think? A cup of tea. So after running things past Nick from HEXUS, we start by setting up the system to show just what it can do under ‘normal’ conditions.

• Intel Core i7 “Nehalem” 965 Extreme CPU 
• Asus Rampage II Extreme motherboard 
• Kingston HyperX DDR3-2000 1.65v  
• 2x Asus 4870X2 1GB 
• Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W 

Stock Intel heatsink, 4Ghz, 1.35v. How’d you like them apples?!  

The ease at which this system flew to 4Ghz and happily benched all the tests we wanted was encouraging for what was to follow. After briefly flirting with 4.2Ghz and seeing if it would achieve a 1Ghz overclock on the Intel cooler, we decided that it was time to get down to business. We stripped the system down, and started to set up for some extreme overclocking. 

Firstly, this would require some attention to detail with the motherboard. Despite being one of two Rampage II Extreme’s in the country, and possibly one of the best motherboard’s you’ll see for a Core i7 system, it still won’t run very well covered in water. To stop the condensation we’re going to get from a -100C lump of copper, we needed to insulate the area around the motherboard socket in order to keep it working.  

To do this, Paul used some kneaded eraser, or what’s sometimes called artist’s putty. Combined with some electrical tape to contain the putty, it was pushed in and around the CPU socket in order to fill the void and create an airtight seal so no moisture would develop in the important areas. Patience is the key at this point, rush this bit and you’re likely to need to break down the system and do this again in the middle of your benchmarks or you’ll end up with some rather expensive silicon-based paperweights.  

With the motherboard insulated, Paul started to set up the Kingpin F1 copper CPU pot, designed purely for maximum LN2 overclocking potential. Meanwhile I set about swapping the Kingston DDR3 because we had a special Corsair set up to evaluate. The Kingston set had done very well without any additional cooling, but with Corsair having provided a Nautilus 500 watercooling unit, ready to be hooked up to their new prototype thermo-electric cooling unit, we were excited to see what it could do. The results were pretty spectacular, and the DDR3 modules were overclocked from DDR3-1866 to DDR3-2200 at only 1.75v.

The watercooling enabled the TEC cooler to register 5C on the heatspreaders, causing some potential problems with condensation so this wont be for everyone, but it allowed Paul to push that little bit further.  

This RAM, combined with Paul working his magic to achieve a 5.1Ghz overclock from the Core i7 965 CPU, resulted in what was at the time, the SuperPi 1M World Record and is still the wPrime 32M and 1024M Core i7 World Records. 

HEXUS have got some video coverage of the day, check them out:

The Hardware

On Air

On LN2

Record Breakers!

All in all, this wrapped up a fun day benching in HEXUS’ labs showing them just how we do what we do.