Skylake --- we have lift off................

[Abarbarian]

An I have Bioshock Infinite running too. It took just over 24 hours to download on my super fast broadband.
Played for about an hour, room temp 30C, top cpu temp 52C and both GTX 460's had a top temp of 54C.
The room was a touch hot and I usually have a slightly cooler room so I recon temps will be ok once I get things slightly more organised.
Game play was pretty darn smooth and fast even with all the settings at Ultra.

 

[Abarbarian]

Just another benchmark shot for information and comparison purposes

 

[Abarbarian]

I thought I had posted a screenshot of the Windows Experience Index when I first built the rig and was using the on-board gfx. The Index showed a massive ONE which gave me a laugh.
So here is a shot with the rig running 2 x GTX 460's.

Whew that is better. Mind you I am surprised that the hard disk only shows a s a 7.9. What do you have to install to get an 8.0 ??

Still having problems getting the rig to see four sticks of ram and getting it to run at top speed. There is something strange going on. I can get the thing to run with two sticks at 2133 but not all four. An those two sticks are not in the slots as instructed in the manual. So definitely something strange is happening.
Hey ho just typical for this odd year I am having.



Mind you at the moment I could not care less as Crysis played with all the gfx glory you could want. Got through the first missions and realised I had probably played it through to the end. Checked on a walkthrough site and yep I have made it to the end.
So I loaded up Crysis Warhead and guess what, yup I had to jump through hoops to get the game running. There is a problem with SecuRom activation. I found a fix here,

https://support.securom.com/removaltool.html

Fix applied and the game looks pretty good on Enthusiast settings. As I keep getting killed a lot I used to get real frustrated with waiting to start again. Now I get killed , blink and I am back up ready to die again. Fabulous.

 

[Abarbarian]

Seems like the "B" channel for the ram is furbar so the mobo has gone back for replacement. I must say Lambda-Tek service support have been very good.

Hope I get a replacement soon.

 

[Abarbarian]

Whooopeee e-mail from Lambda-Tek saying new mobo on the way. Will they deliver by canoe or hovercraft ??

 

[Reefsmoka]

Ahh man. That sucks! Hope it all goes smooth. Having to send stuff back can be a nightmare sometimes!

 

[Abarbarian]

Ahh man. That sucks! Hope it all goes smooth. Having to send stuff back can be a nightmare sometimes!

Thanks reefsmoka. Hopefully the mobo will be delivered today. Seems that UPS have had the mobo for a week and are claiming that they could not find the cabin. As they delivered the mobo when it was new their claim leaves me a tad puzzled. The lady I spoke to at UPS said the cock up was due to a new inexperienced driver. When I asked why he could not find the cabin on his gps she told me that their drivers are not issued with gps devices, at that point I just put the phone down in sheer disbelief.

 

[Abarbarian]

Well I finally got the mobo back, going to try and build tomorrow. Life and the fates gave me another kicking this week which caused some delay.

 

[Abarbarian]

Whooopeee I have a working Skylake with 32 GB of ram all runing smooth as silk. Phew it has been a long haul but I finally cracked it on Boxing Day..
I might celebrate with a Steam Controller and a new game. Did some one here get a Controller ? Got any real life feedback to share ?

 

[muckshifter]

Whooopeee I have a working Skylake

congrats

 

[Abarbarian]

I have a Wattmeter thing that I plug the pc into before the wall socket so it tells me how much power things use.

Using me new rig for downloading games, which take a long time here, and playing mainly Dishonored, reckon I have spent 100 hours out of the total gaming, I have had the rig running for 575 hours which is about 24 days.
I used 28 KW which means I used 1.16 KW a day.
Which works out to 48.3 watts an hour averaged out over the 24 days.
The above does not include me 42 " Panasonic which uses 55 watts an hour.
Pretty cheap pc'ing I reckon. Obviously playing other games will bump up the wattage and the temps which were pretty much 19 to 22 C with a few periods higher with peaks of no more than 50C.

 

[Abarbarian]

Well I have not fired up me Skylake for several months due to life.

Finaly got around to plugging it back into the mains and pressed the start button the other day.
Seemed to take a while to fire up properly, started and stopped and started and stopped and then settled down and seemed to run ok. One small hickup there was no output on the monitor.
Now I have a desktop sat on two small filling cabinets with a shelf where yer knees go and on this sits the Skylake. Its pretty dark under there and with me busted bones a tad awkward to get into or even see properly what is going on.
So I checked out the monitor cables and tried to start the pc again. Same stop start then settled into running as before and no screen output.
Hmm sumat is not quite right I thought an I was right.
Cos after I had switched all power of and dewired the pc and lifted it of the shelf and into the light I noticed that there was a small pool of water on the shelf.
At this point I was ready to blame Mr Spooky as he had been climbing around under the desk and I thought , hey up he's done a pee on me pc. It would have been a first as he has never peed in the house ever, a well behaved puss he is.
Realising I was judging him harshly with no proof I decided to investigate. An the culprit turned out to be me water cooler. Poxy thing had several cracks in the plastic housing and water was seeping very slowly from them.
Now this would possibly have been not too bad as I could have dried out the mobo and seen if any permanent damage had been done to it.
If only I had not been so stoned and tired when I found the fault. In my haste to sort things out I mopped up excess water. Dismantled the cooler. Cleaned up thermal paste from the cpu and then took it out of its socket. An this is where things went bums up. I dabbed away at the socket to soak up any water to speed up drying out. Not realising that the socket was full of pins, until it was too late an I had more than several bent or awry pins.
You see this is my first Intel, on an AMD a mobo socket is a socket and the pins are on the cpu not in the socket.
So I am out one mobo and cooler and possibly one cpu aswel.
I have ordered a new mobo and a Noctua NH-D15 and I'll report back when I have built the Skylake again.
An I thought life had finished kicking me.

 

[V_R]

An the culprit turned out to be me water cooler. Poxy thing had several cracks in the plastic housing and water was seeping very slowly from them.

The Triton? I told ya they did that!

Watch that, been a lot of reports of them cracking and leaking recently....

That sucks dude, there's a big thread up on OcUK about them leaking, some have gotten compensation from Raijintek for any damages (I think).

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18625923&highlight=Raijintek

Its a long thread, just scanning it you want to be looking around the post #1000 mark. Might be of use?

 

[floppybootstomp]

Sorry to hear that, sucks real bad

I've never been keen on water cooling, the only one I ever used (can't remember the make but it may have been for a review for this very site) sprung a leak. Fortunately for me the leak didn't cause any damage.

To my mind water and electronics don't mix.

The Noctua cooler is, imo, a good choice. I've been using Noctuas for at least 10 years now and they've all maintained respectable temperatures and run silently. Their support is good as well.

Good luck with your renovation and my commiserations to you.

 

[muckshifter]

ouch!


AMD FTW ... just kidding.

 

[Abarbarian]

@V_R yer right you did tell me and I investigated and at the time it seems there had been a product change. I was assured that my cooler was v2 and all cracks were limited to v1's so I went ahead with the purchase.

The cooler worked really well. Kept the cpu cool and was almost silent even under load. Shame about the cracks.

Seems I have been a total dick wad panicking about the liquid. The liquid is non conductive, duh so would not have caused any real damage. If only I had not mopped up. Oh well you live and learn.

Luckily there is a silver lining in that the cooler had a two year warranty so at least I should get my money back. Some small consolation but it will pay for the NH-D15 cooler.

 

[V_R]

Don't be too hard on yourself Ab. **** happens as they say.

 

[Becky]

Ah that sucks, sorry to hear about that @Abarbarian

 

[Abarbarian]

Hmmmm............ looks like I will have to fight for me refund.

A Returns email has already been sent to you.


As the unit is over 12 months old it will be a repair or replacement via the manufacturer which takes around 28 days.


Regards


Andy


AWD-IT Tech Support

They did send me a returns e-mail. However it did not contain a " FREE POSTAGE LABEL" so I asked and got one in the next e-mail.

 

[Abarbarian]

Skylake is still tickety boo. I may have one dodgy usb 2 port though

I'm posting as I ran across this advert for a £199 Nvidia card that posts test results just short of my expensive when I bought it GTX 1070

The GTX 1660 may be the budget Full HD card of your dreams.

This is neat,

The final special power that the TU116 architecture has bestowed upon the GTX 1660 is the capability to stream video games in 4K regardless of what CPU you’re using. The GTX 1660 can even stream and broadcast simultaneously from one system, which will be a big boon for those Twitch obsessives.

Don't tech move at an astonishing speed these days.