Upgrade plans for my desktop PC

The Small Form Factor PC that I built last year is quite fast for almost all the things I do with it. But I love upgrading my PC just to experience what the latest and the greatest hardware has to offer. Sadly, things do not usually live up to my expectations, but that is a different story.

This story is about the potential upgrade path this particular PC offers.

Sadly, my options aren't vivid. The PC is built in such a way that a tangible increase in performance requires a substantial amount of spending, which sometimes defies the reasoning behind "building" a desktop PC.

Let me explain.

Video card

Let's look at the video card first, because as you probably know, I am a gamer. The video card is the most important component in a gaming PC. But, I am not the typical gamer you would find elsewhere, but that is for another discussion.

Right now, I have an overclocked MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G in my PC. To see a tangible increase in performance, I have to at least get a GTX 1070 and overclock it, which would give me 50% performance gains over my current card. But it would cost me close to $700 if I want to buy locally. $100 or so cheaper if I buy it from outside Australia, but it will make claiming for warranty painful. The GTX 1080 would give me twice the performance but it would cost me a whopping $1000 if bought locally! I am not going to spend that sort of money on a single piece of computer hardware, probably ever! But the GTX 1080 can be bought for less than $900 if I look to import it from outside.

Silverstone SG13 vs the Core i7 4790K

Last Thursday before going to bed, I played a game of Crysis 3. Without any particular reason, I ran Realtemp on the background. When I exited the game, I took a look at the maximum temps that were recorded by it.

It was worrying. This was at an ambient below 25C. And this is just gaming.

I was running the Scythe Gentle Typhoon 3000RPM fan which is cooling the radiator of the Antec Kuhler 620 (first edition) at around 1800RPM. The fan speed was lowered from the fan controlling software built into the UEFI of the Asus Z97i Plus motherboard.

I let the fan run at its rated speed and that made the temps drop by 10C while playing Crysis 3. It was OK, but still too high for gaming.

However, the next morning, I wanted to transcode a video in Handbrake and this sent the CPU temps to a whopping 98C. This was with the fan at full speed!!!

Poor contact between the Core i7 4790K and Enermax Liqtech 120x

Last Friday I bought a new cooler for my Devil's Canyon CPU: the Enermax Liqtech 120x. I thought it would perform better than my Antec Kuhler 620 because of its extra thick radiator. I was wrong. It doesn't perform better than the Kuhler 620, at least In my case.

First of all, I used only one fan because both fans wouldn't fit in the case. I knew this beforehand. I used the Gentle Typhoon AP29 initially, the exact same thing I had used with the Kuhler. It shouldn't have any difficulty cooling the radiator at least when running at full blast. The grills in the radiator didn't seem as  dense as the Kuhler's so I doubt so I don't think having the two stock fans would have made much of a difference, except pushing all that warm air that's trapped inside the case out easily. Later on, I switched to one of the stock fans because I started hearing a weird noise from the AP29 when it was installed after the radiator as pull. I was using it as a push fan on the Kuhler 620's radiator.

Anyways, I have a feeling it had nothing to do with the fans because as I found out, there is a very simple reason for the cooler not performing well. There isn't a very good contact between the water block and the heat spreader (IHS) of the CPU. It is concave in one direction. The water block is perfectly flat. The heatsink doesn't touch the IHS at the middle of the CPU and that's where we should get proper contact.

When I applied thermal paste using the spread method, the cold plate had no contact with the IHS like in the following photo.

Had to stress test the 4790K after a long time

The last time I stress test day CPU was when I had the Maximus VII Gene board and the Noctua NH-U12S cooler. And it was with a low ambient temperature as well.

Fast forward to July of 2015 and we have a lot of changes. New case, meaning new motherboard and a new cooler. And Jul means, it's the summer. Sure, we have the A/C on, but the temps are around 26-27C, which is a couple of degrees higher than the previous months.

Wouldn't I have stress tested after all those hardware changes? I should have, but I didn't think it was necessary. For one, the stability of the overclock of Intel CPUs these days don't seem to be affected by the temperature. So the cooler or the lack of airflow inside the case shouldn't have made a difference. Then, Asus says that all of their Z97 Motherboards overclock exactly the same; only the feature set is different. More importantly, I didn't have the time to go through it again.

But yesterday, while I was transcoding a HD video in Handbrake, I got a BSODs. The dreaded "WHEA UNCORRECTABLE ERROR" error.

So the overclock wasn't stable after all. It was time for me to stability test the CPU. At least this time I had a starting point.

“4.5GHz @ 1.21V Vcore with everything else set to default”

That was where the CPU was at up until now.

But first, I wanted to make sure a stress testing tool would find the current overclock settings as unstable. I am not a fan of synthetic stress testing tools such as Prime 95 or AIDA64. Instead, I turned to Asus Realbench, which can be downloaded from here.

Devil’s Canyon overclocking? Yay or nay?

Devil’s Canyon is the code name for the two CPUs from Intel aimed at enthusiast overclocking. They are still based on the same Haswell micro architecture though. What’s different is that they have better TIM – something Intel calls next generation polymer based TIM – and few more capacitors underneath the CPU to smooth out the power delivery to the CPU. Would just these two changes be enough to win back the hearts of the enthusiasts.

However, in a previous post I mentioned that the Devil’s Canyon CPUs – especially the 4790K - weren’t performing up to my expectations. That was completely based on a review posted on Hexus, which didn’t even explore the overclocking capabilities of the CPU. It seemed like a rushed up job and they just wanted the initial swarm of people looking for the reviews to come to their website.

But today, two more reviews went online; one from PCPerspective and the other one from Digital Storm. Just like one would expect, they do explore the overclocking capabilities of the CPU. But neither sample was able to make me feel enthusiastic about the CPU. The one PCPerspective got only managed to do 4.7GHz at 1.365V. The one Digital Storm got only managed to do 4.8GHz at 1.370V. Those are pretty high voltages for CPUs built on the 22nm fabrication process. And neither managed to hit the magic 5GHz. In fact, there are people who own 4770K’s that can do 5GHz at as little as 1,3V but that is the cream of the crop CPUs. However, despite the high voltages, the coolers they used – AIO water cooler by PCPerspective and a custom water loop by Digital Storm – seem to have managed to tame the temps down to reasonable levels. At least that’s something. The new TIM seems to do it’s job just fine. Still, you would probably get much better temps with a delid and Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra TIM.

Since these CPUs come with a guaranteed 4.4GHz clock speed – at least in the case of the 4790K, every 4790K will be able to overclock past my current CPU – which can do a measly 4.3GHz – while keeping the temps lower. That means lower fan noise as well. If you look from that perspective, it seems upgrading to the 4790K still has some merits, even if I get a dud chip that can merely do 4.6GHz at 1.3V. The only way to tame the temperature with my current CPU is to delid, which I am hesitant to do as it would make reselling harder – especially with the clumsy clock scaling of my chip.

Even though the initial impressions are not that positive, I would still be waiting to see how the retail chips would overclock and the pricing of the chips in Japan. One would probably argue that Haswell-E is the way to go, but that could require a substantial amount of money.

[Rant] Kind of disappointed about Devil's Canyon

 

Yesterday at Computex 2014, Intel revealed the Devil's Canyon chips to the public. Sadly, they won't be available for purchase this instant. We'll have to wait for another 3 months for that. At least, there were few positive things about the unveiling.

First of all, the clocks are identical to what the leaks were saying. 4GHz base/4.4GHz boost for the 4790K and 3.5GHz base/3.9GHz boost for the 4690K. It's interesting to see how confident Intel are to release the 4790K at such high clock speeds. And the TDP is 88W for both of them.

Secondly, the pricing. Both chips aren't that much expensive than what the 4770K/4670K are priced at. I thought Intel would ask for a huge premium for them. But not the case. They are asking $250 for the 4690K and $350 for the 4790K. Quite reasonable, given the pricing of the entire lineup. But that makes one wonder if it is possible that these CPUs aren't as good as what we were made to believe.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling that this is indeed the case. There aren't many reviews out there and there definitely aren't any reviews that have explored the overclocking potential of these CPUs. But something that Hexus posted on their initial review is concerning. They had the following words to say about the temperature of the CPU.

A word or two about temperatures: Intel says it is to use the same processor-in-box (PIB) cooler for this chip as for the 4770K. We used just such a heatsink during regular testing and found that, due to the extra power consumption generated by higher voltages, the Core i7-4790K ran hotter, at an average of 88C, compared to 78C for the older Haswell processor.

[Rant] Z87 boards are going to support Intel Devil's Canyon? Oh yeah!

Despite what Intel made us believe, Z87 chipset seems to support Devil's Canyon. At least on some boards. Couple of days ago, I checked the support page of my motherboard - the Asus ROG Maximus VI Hero - to see if there were any new driver updates available. I went into BIOS page, but didn't really expect to see any new versions out. But to my amazement, there was a new version - 1504 - which had a very interesting description under it.

But there was a little bit of confusion caused by the wording. It said "Devil's Canyon CPU" and not "CPUs". But we know there are at least two CPUs - the Core i5 4690K and the Core i7 4790K. So what is it? Does this bios only support the unlocked Pentium model? But as far as I know, it does not carry the code name "Devil's Canyon". This had been debated on OCN forums, until someone posted the actual CPU support list for the motherboard.

It clearly states that the Core i7 4790K is supported. But I didn't check whether the Core i5 model is supported as well, because I simply have no interest in it.

[Rant] Devil’s Canyon?

If you are a PC enthusiast, you must have definitely heard about Devil’s Canyon. What is it? It is a CPU made by Intel, based on the same Haswell architecture that is aimed at PC enthusiasts.

What’s so special about it, for Intel to give it a special name? Intel says, it is a CPU made for overclocking. They say that the thermal interface material (or TIM) inside Devil’s Canyon is better than the “junk” that is in the current line of Haswell CPUs. So, it should run cooler because the heat will be transferred efficiently from the CPU to CPU cooler. So it should give more overclocking headroom. If you didn’t know, the current Haswell CPUs run so hot when they are overclocked – about 20C hotter than Sandybridge.

Is that all?

I sure hope not. I mean, you could do even better by delidding the CPU. One clue as to that there could be more changes in the CPU is that it requires a whole new chipset. The upcoming Z97 chipset. (The new boards will come out on 14th of May). If Intel only replaced the TIM, then there is no need for a new chipset, right?

It seems the new CPUs have a slightly different power circuitry. Look at the following two images. The one on the left is the Core i7 4770K and the one on the right is the Devil’s Canyon chip.

So, something is different. There are some components missing in the current Haswell chips. That’s good.  I hope that would result in higher overclocks. The improved TIM would give – hopefully – Sandybridge like thermals. I’m not sure if the die and the IHS will be soldered as Sandybridge though. That would be perfect. But that would also add cost.

Today, some more news surfaced the internet saying that these Devil’s Canyon chips would come out as Core i5 4690K and Core i7 4790K. Apart from the above mentioned info, the 4790K seems to be further a speed binned chip. It’s not a measly 100MHz speed bump as the other Haswell Refresh parts, but a whole 500MHz speed bump for base clocks. The first consumer chip from Intel to hit 4GHz base clocks. Woohoo! (clock on the following image to view a larger image)

Well, that’s great news, BUT, no enthusiast cares about stock clocks. For example, my 4.3GHz 4770K still is faster than this chip. This chip needs to be able to hit at least 5GHz to call this is a proper overclocking chip. Man, if you can hit 5GHz without causing a meltdown and wouldn’t cost more than $350, we have a pretty sweet CPU at our hands. Though I’m sure Broadwell will best this CPU eventually.

So what do you guys think? Would Intel be able to win back the enthusiasts’ trust? I sure am going to keep a keen eye on these Devil’s Canyon chips (a.k.a Core i5 4690K and 4790K) and would definitely replace my 4770K (which overclocks like crap and runs so hot) if it is a worthy upgrade.