I still want to build a new system

Bill Anderson wrote:
On 9/13/2012 7:26 AM, Paul wrote:
Bill Anderson wrote:


Wow, Paul, what fantastic knowledgeable advice! I am grateful as
always.

You asked why I am set on a socket 2011 board. Well, maybe I'm blinded
by latest and greatest syndrome, but the Asus P9X79 seems to be a
board that won't go obsolete anytime soon. Now I did look at Z77
boards as you suggested, and I found some that would work, but
something else you suggested brought me back to the P9X79. You
mentioned that if you were going that route you'd get a hex core
processor. Well, of course! Why not?

As for memory, thanks for the link. The Corsair you suggested is
comparable to what I was looking at with Crucial. Still, the memory
at your link seems not to be ECC either. So I dunno. The price is
certainly better than Crucial, that's for sure.

I've also found a less expensive nVidia card that's on the list of
Adobe Premiere CS6 recommended cards.

So, taking your advice to heart -- or at least a lot of it -- see if
you think these components will give me an even better setup than I'd
planned, and even for a little less money:

Motherboard: Asus P9X79 $319.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131800

Processor: Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E: $569.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116492

Memory: Corsair: $199.99 (Better timings but still not ECC)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820233303

Video Card: EVGA 012-P3-1570-AR GeForce GTX 570 $259.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130593

Cooling Fan: Dynatron R17 $32.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...natron%20r 17



Faxmodem: U.S. Robotics USR5638 V.92 Faxmodem 56Kbps PCI Express
$26.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16825104013

Total: $1,410 plus shipping. (The previous total was $1,464.)

So...what do you think? I don't mind spending that much money, but I
do mind spending it foolishly. I want a great system, and if this
isn't one please be frank. Thanks.


The LGA2011 part, implies the user wants to build a high end system.
A system where you wouldn't have regrets later like "if I'd only
spent this much more, my system wouldn't suck so bad". A hex core
is overkill for writing emails, and that's not why you're buying it.
A machine like the one you've constructed above, is because
"time is money" to you. You want the things you do with the
computer, to finish in a reasonable time. For example, for
Photoshop, working with relatively ordinary photo input, such
a system is probably "too much iron", and couldn't justify the
money spent. I've seen photographers spend $5000 on a system,
because someone told them to, and precious little of that money
is actually helping them.

If you're going to regularly work on video, then I would think
the system would be a better match. If you're a casual video editor
(only work on one wedding recording per year), perhaps you could
afford to wait 24 hours for some step in the edit to finish. But
if you're regularly editing video, like every day, then the hex
core thing might make more sense.

And if you use a mix of different softwares, and some of them
aren't GPU accelerated, the hex core is your baseline source
of performance. So the hex core is also planning for some
other, unknown software purchase.

The GTX 570 draws 20.9 watts in the desktop. And draws around 234.5 watts
when gaming. I would expect it would switch to 3D clocks, when the
Mercury Playback Engine is working. You'll need both power
and cooling sufficient for that, if and when it switches
to the 234 watt condition. The card has two PCI Express power
connectors on it (for that class of card), so you'll have to
do the math with respect to the power supply (make sure it
has enough 12V amps, for both the video card and processor load).

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/gra...0_4.html#sect0



I can't say whether the GTX 570 is the perfect choice with respect
to the Mercury Playback Engine. Or whether Adobe has placed any
limits on what it can help with. If you have other software
that uses CUDA, you might get some benefit from it (like say,
some other transcoding or rendering software). It might be
overkill today, for what MPE can do, for all I know.


Actually there's more to my video editing problems than just lengthy
rendering times. Premiere CS6 Pro just barely operates on my current
system. (Asus P5Q Pro Turbo with Core2 Quad 2400 MHz and four gigs of
DDR2 RAM.) I can edit with it, but only barely. When I move the slider
through a one-hour HD video it will hang and I'll wait and wait and wait
while the hard drive runs until finally I gain control again. Very
annoying and a big part of the reason I want to upgrade.

I came awfully close to hitting the purchase button on Newegg late last
night, using the shopping list above, but decided to sleep on it. I'm
sure glad I did.

In the light of morning I saw I'd made a really stupid mistake: I wasn't
buying the motherboard I thought I was buying. I wanted a plain Asus
P9X79, but I'd been looking at a P9X79 Pro without ever noticing that
little Pro word. Argh. The plain board has a couple of things I wanted
which the Pro doesn't have: A PS2 port for my favorite old PS2 keyboard
with which I can boot by pressing the spacebar, and one plain old PCI
slot where I really want to put my old faxmodem. And it costs less, at
$259.

Now from the first computer I ever built, like 20 years ago or so, I've
always used Asus motherboards. Asus is just a name I trust; right or
wrong, I think they're the best. But now that I was doing even more
reading on the internet about the P9X79, I decided to see if anybody had
ever done a comparison with other boards. And I found this at Tom's
Hardware, where an Intel board performed well – not best in all areas,
but well -- and it won best performance per dollar in a comparison
review with the P9X79 and others:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...mark,3138.html


So then I did some reading about the Intel DX79TO motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121552

Not only is the Intel board cheaper at $209.99, but more important, the
layout of PCIe slots works better for me. The GTX570 video card is
“double-wide” and will have to cover a slot. I must have access to two
small PCIe x1 slots, so using the GTX570 with the P9X79 would require me
to hide the board’s only plain old PCI slot, which I really would like
to use. The Intel board has three little PCIe slots, so I can cover one
with no problem. The only thing I want that it doesn't have is a PS2
port. Guess I'll have to dig my USB keyboard out of the closet.

I did go back and look at nVidia Quadro cards again, because some of the
lower-end ones are only single-wide, which means I wouldn't have to
cover a PCIe slot. But they cost more than the GTX line and every
review I read said they're not as fast and not worth the money. So
GTX570 it is. Bye PCIe slot.

I have begun to wonder whether my current power supply will be able to
handle all the new components. This review seems to indicate that an
entire “power hungry” i7 system using a GTX 570 pulls 369W under
heaviest load. My power supply is PC Power and Cooling 610W. It does
have the two required six-pin connectors for the video card.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-570-review/8

So is 610W enough? Looks like it is to me, but I'm no electrical
engineer. Guess I'll find out. And I also sure hope my Lian Li case can
keep all this cool. Guess I'll find about about that too.

So now, here's what my shopping list looks like on Newegg, just waiting
for me to screw up enough courage to hit "Purchase":

Motherboard: Intel BOXDX79TO $209.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121552

Processor: Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E: $569.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116492

Memory: Corsair: $199.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820233303

Video Card: EVGA 012-P3-1570-AR GeForce GTX 570 $259.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130593

Cooling Fan: Dynatron R17 $32.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...natron%20r 17


Total: $1,279.93 INCLUDING shipping.

Thoughts? Too tired of this to think about it anymore? I almost am.


For an Intel motherboard, I recommend looking at the BIOS side of things.
Intel has some slight differences, in terms of BIOS operating modes.
And that's always put me off a bit, because it isn't explained
very well, why it's done that way. (Like, a switch to select a
"maintenance" mode or something.)

In terms of the name "Intel", Intel doesn't actually do the manufacturing.
The motherboards are contract manufactured to Intel specifications. I think
one year, Asus made them, and another year, perhaps Foxconn. So Intel
shops around, looks at dropout rate or whatever, and picks a company to
make them. Any of the companies involved, is capable of designing them,
whether it's Intel Folsom, or engineers in Taiwan.

Like any motherboard brand, you check the reviews to see what other
users think of them. Any company can have a bad day, and even Asus
has had boards they'd rather not be reminded about. (Boards that
were definitely broken, and they didn't treat their users right,
and made the users "eat it".)

On the Intel, you'd be checking for storage options, to see if you
get a nice mix there. The Southbridge would give you six SATA standard.
But some companies will throw in a floppy port, IDE port, and even
some extra SATA or ESATA ports.

At that price point, I'd also be checking for a GbE Ethernet port, just
in case someone gets the idea to put a 10/100BT port there instead.

Since LGA2011 Southbridge doesn't have USB3, you know you're vetting
third party USB3 brands as well. There are perhaps five brands of USB3 now.
You may find Etron has a few driver problems. You'd check the history of
the USB3 brand used, and whether anyone has noticed problems or not.

*******

Your processor is 130W, and (130W/0.9eff)/12V = 12 amps. The
video card is about 19.4 amps. A disk drive is 0.6A. An optical
drive says 1.5A on the label (1.0A measured). Fans might be 0.5A
for the system (depending on how "fan crazy" you are). So we're
up to about 34A so far. The supply is rated at around 12V @ 49A.
So you have some margin there.

Total power would be 12V * 34A + 50W (motherboard) + 5W (hard drive logic)
+ 7.5W (optical drive logic) + 10W (USB power from 5VSB) or a total of
around 480.5 watts. That's out of 610W max. Still looks do-able. The
thing is, even though the two subsystems have "peak" values, you
don't necessarily hit peak on both at the same time. The 50W for
motherboard, is to handle chipset, and in the LGA2011 case, the
chipset is puny (perhaps 10W max). RAM is probably less than 2W per
stick, so even with four sticks, while I award 50W for motherboard+RAM,
this system is probably using 18W. So my 486.5W figure will be
on the high side a bit.

As long as the power supply appears "healthy", and hasn't shown signs
it's getting tired, I'd give it a shot. And chances are, it has
decent protection as well. You might go back and read customer
reviews on your 610W model, just to see whether there was any component
damage on a failure. It's rated to give 610W at 40C, so it should be
a conservative rating anyway. There are reviews around, on sites like
JonnyGuru, where they use a proper load box to test these things, and you
can check that out to get a feeling for how close to 610W it actually is.

*******

Looking at the ports on the Intel board, the audio is only a "three stack".
I hope that thing you're plugging in the PCI slot, is an old sound card.
For an LGA2011 board, you'd think they'd throw in a "six stack" (7.1 with
separate input jacks), since there is room for it.

You should also be reading the Newegg reviews for that DX79TO.

Paul

On 9/15/2012 8:42 PM, Paul wrote:


You should also be reading the Newegg reviews for that DX79TO.


OK, I looked and I thought and I figured I'll be better off with good
old Asus, even though the reviews of the P9X79 don't look a lot better
than the reviews of the Intel. Anyway, it's done. But not without a
hitch. Would you believe that in all my delaying, Newegg sold out of
the video card? Amazon had it though, for basically the same price, so
I've ordered it from Amazon and the rest from Newegg. Hope I'll be up
and running by the end of next week. Thanks, Paul, for all your help.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

I had the same issue with Adobe Premiere using an AMD quad-core black
edition CPU. Premiere made my computer look like an 8080 cpu.

My theory is Premiere is optimized for Intel because youtube has videos of
neat tricks done with Adobe, and this guy's computer is fast but his CPU is
from several years ago.

Some folks, with fast hardware are unable to run Premiere because of
hardware conflicts with Adobe. Given all the issues Premiere has, I decided
to drop it.

geoff wrote:
I had the same issue with Adobe Premiere using an AMD quad-core black
edition CPU. Premiere made my computer look like an 8080 cpu.

My theory is Premiere is optimized for Intel because youtube has videos
of neat tricks done with Adobe, and this guy's computer is fast but his
CPU is from several years ago.

Some folks, with fast hardware are unable to run Premiere because of
hardware conflicts with Adobe. Given all the issues Premiere has, I
decided to drop it.



You'd try to track down whether the program has any special requirements.
The installer should warn you, if there is a mismatch.

http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/...struction.html

"The SSE2 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 2) instruction set is included with
Intel Pentium 4 and later processors, and with AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron
and later processors."

At least in that case, it sounds like they were supporting both.

While in the past, companies used the "Intel compiler" and ended up with
code which ran faster on Intel platforms, a "total stall out" could have
something to do with process scheduling. I've witnessed something weird
on Windows 8 recently, that I haven't gotten to the bottom of, where a process
running at "Normal" priority seems to stall, until I go into Task Manager
and raise it to "Above Normal" and then it works normally. *Something*
is installed on that C:, which is fouling up how processes get scheduled.
(It's not like another process is actually using the CPU. It's idle.)
And the software runs abnormally slow (compared to running the same
software on WinXP or Win2K).

There are certainly other video editor programs, and probably cheaper
as well.

Paul

On 9/16/2012 12:31 AM, Bill Anderson wrote:
On 9/15/2012 8:42 PM, Paul wrote:


You should also be reading the Newegg reviews for that DX79TO.


OK, I looked and I thought and I figured I'll be better off with good
old Asus, even though the reviews of the P9X79 don't look a lot better
than the reviews of the Intel. Anyway, it's done. But not without a
hitch. Would you believe that in all my delaying, Newegg sold out of
the video card? Amazon had it though, for basically the same price, so
I've ordered it from Amazon and the rest from Newegg. Hope I'll be up
and running by the end of next week. Thanks, Paul, for all your help.


All the parts arrived today around 1:00 pm. It's now around 8:00 pm and
I'm up and running, installing apps, apps and more apps. Just installed
Thunderbird, so I'm checking my ability to post to newsgroups.

Usually on a build I go easy, install just the minimum hardware and
check things out before I plug everything in. This time I just jumped
right in and installed everything before powering up -- and everything
is working perfectly! At least I think so. If something's wrong, I
haven't found it yet.

Thanks to Paul for locating a short socket 2011 cooling fan. It seems
to be working great. And I'm pleased with the Asus P9X79 board. The
BIOS screen leaves me speechless...I've never seen anything like it.

I did discover that Win7 cares where I plug in my mouse. I had it
plugged into a USB 3 port and everything was working fine -- my fancy
new BIOS screen was happy with the mouse -- but when Win7 began to load
I had no mouse support. Switched to a USB 2 port and all was well.

I'm still wondering why I always get the Asus boot screen twice at
startup. It gives me the usual instruction about hitting Delete to
enter BIOS and then it checks the optical drive for a disk, and then I
get the boot screen again with the DELETE/BIOS instruction again, and
then it checks the optical drive again -- with a different font! These
are two different operations. When I tried to load Win7 using the first
optical drive check it didn't work -- just appeared to load a few
drivers and then failed. But when I waited for the second opportunity,
Win7 loaded lots of drivers and it did work.

My P5Q Pro Turbo board with Core 2 Quad was fast, but I am really not
imagining things when I perceive this new setup is faster. Later
tonight I'll get around to Adobe Premiere and the rest, and then I'll
know whether all this effort (and cash) have been worth it.

But golly things seem to be going great so far.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

Bill Anderson wrote:


I'm still wondering why I always get the Asus boot screen twice at
startup. It gives me the usual instruction about hitting Delete to
enter BIOS and then it checks the optical drive for a disk, and then I
get the boot screen again with the DELETE/BIOS instruction again, and
then it checks the optical drive again -- with a different font! These
are two different operations. When I tried to load Win7 using the first
optical drive check it didn't work -- just appeared to load a few
drivers and then failed. But when I waited for the second opportunity,
Win7 loaded lots of drivers and it did work.


I took a look around, but didn't see it mentioned anywhere.

About the only thing I could see, is the "Full Screen Logo" setting,
something I disable as my first BIOS change. That is so I can see as much
of the POST sequence as possible.

I also don't see any startup options like Splashtop on that board,
so I don't think it's some alternate environment attempting to start.

From power up, my current system starts twice. The power comes on for
one second, power goes off again, power comes on and POST starts. I could
probably fix that with a BIOS update, but I just can't be bothered.
It's not really hurting anything. And that doesn't happen on a restart.
Only on a "cold" start, just after power is applied via the rear
switch on the computer. As long as +5VSB is maintained, it doesn't happen.

Paul

On 9/19/2012 9:15 PM, Paul wrote:
Bill Anderson wrote:


I'm still wondering why I always get the Asus boot screen twice at
startup. It gives me the usual instruction about hitting Delete to
enter BIOS and then it checks the optical drive for a disk, and then I
get the boot screen again with the DELETE/BIOS instruction again, and
then it checks the optical drive again -- with a different font!
These are two different operations. When I tried to load Win7 using
the first optical drive check it didn't work -- just appeared to load
a few drivers and then failed. But when I waited for the second
opportunity, Win7 loaded lots of drivers and it did work.


I took a look around, but didn't see it mentioned anywhere.

About the only thing I could see, is the "Full Screen Logo" setting,
something I disable as my first BIOS change. That is so I can see as much
of the POST sequence as possible.

I also don't see any startup options like Splashtop on that board,
so I don't think it's some alternate environment attempting to start.

From power up, my current system starts twice. The power comes on for
one second, power goes off again, power comes on and POST starts. I could
probably fix that with a BIOS update, but I just can't be bothered.
It's not really hurting anything. And that doesn't happen on a restart.
Only on a "cold" start, just after power is applied via the rear
switch on the computer. As long as +5VSB is maintained, it doesn't happen.

Paul

I've decided not to worry about the double appearance of the boot
screen. The first one comes before the post beep, then the screen goes
black for the beep, and then the boot screen comes back. Big deal.

This system seems solid as a rock. Still, I am a bit concerned about
the new graphic card's temperature. The case above the card is hot to
the touch. But above the CPU the case is barely lukewarm -- perfectly
normal. But back in that left corner...hmmmmm.

Right now, with nothing going on but typing in Usenet, Aida64 says the
MBO is 41 degrees C, the CPU is 44, the "CPU Package," whatever that is,
is 49, and the six cores are fluctuating between 43 and 49. When I'm
processing video the CPU may go up into the 60s, but the individual
cores go up into the 80s sometimes. And the Nvidia control panel says
the GPU is 71. I guess that's OK. I'm getting no red flag in the
control panel.

Whatever, the computer is performing great, with a noticeable new
general peppiness over the P5Q Pro Turbo. And...Premiere is performing
much much better. Maybe not perfectly during editing, but so much
better than before. I can use it now, and I am pleased. Thanks, Paul,
for all your advice.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

On 9/21/2012 9:16 PM, Bill Anderson wrote:
On 9/19/2012 9:15 PM, Paul wrote:
Bill Anderson wrote:


I'm still wondering why I always get the Asus boot screen twice at
startup. It gives me the usual instruction about hitting Delete to
enter BIOS and then it checks the optical drive for a disk, and then I
get the boot screen again with the DELETE/BIOS instruction again, and
then it checks the optical drive again -- with a different font!
These are two different operations. When I tried to load Win7 using
the first optical drive check it didn't work -- just appeared to load
a few drivers and then failed. But when I waited for the second
opportunity, Win7 loaded lots of drivers and it did work.


I took a look around, but didn't see it mentioned anywhere.

About the only thing I could see, is the "Full Screen Logo" setting,
something I disable as my first BIOS change. That is so I can see as much
of the POST sequence as possible.

I also don't see any startup options like Splashtop on that board,
so I don't think it's some alternate environment attempting to start.

From power up, my current system starts twice. The power comes on for
one second, power goes off again, power comes on and POST starts. I could
probably fix that with a BIOS update, but I just can't be bothered.
It's not really hurting anything. And that doesn't happen on a restart.
Only on a "cold" start, just after power is applied via the rear
switch on the computer. As long as +5VSB is maintained, it doesn't
happen.

Paul

I've decided not to worry about the double appearance of the boot
screen. The first one comes before the post beep, then the screen goes
black for the beep, and then the boot screen comes back. Big deal.

This system seems solid as a rock. Still, I am a bit concerned about
the new graphic card's temperature. The case above the card is hot to
the touch. But above the CPU the case is barely lukewarm -- perfectly
normal. But back in that left corner...hmmmmm.

Right now, with nothing going on but typing in Usenet, Aida64 says the
MBO is 41 degrees C, the CPU is 44, the "CPU Package," whatever that is,
is 49, and the six cores are fluctuating between 43 and 49. When I'm
processing video the CPU may go up into the 60s, but the individual
cores go up into the 80s sometimes. And the Nvidia control panel says
the GPU is 71. I guess that's OK. I'm getting no red flag in the
control panel.

Whatever, the computer is performing great, with a noticeable new
general peppiness over the P5Q Pro Turbo. And...Premiere is performing
much much better. Maybe not perfectly during editing, but so much
better than before. I can use it now, and I am pleased. Thanks, Paul,
for all your advice.


Actually, I am becoming concerned about the CPU temps in my new build.
Apparently the CPU shouldn't go above the mid 60s C, but look at what
AIDA64's sensor is showing while I'm rendering video. This is with the
cover on the case. With the cover off, the temps drop by just a few
degrees.

http://users.rcn.com/weanderson/images/CPUtemps.jpg

Am I going to have to get a bigger case to accommodate a bigger CPU fan?

By the way, I flashed BIOS last night and now the double boot screen
issue has gone away. Not only that, but boot time has been cut at least
in half. The new BIOS has a feature that lets me skip USB port boot
activation for everything but mouse and keyboard devices. Now the boot
screen just flies by. I have three seconds to press Delete if I want to
go into BIOS.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

Bill Anderson wrote:



Actually, I am becoming concerned about the CPU temps in my new build.
Apparently the CPU shouldn't go above the mid 60s C, but look at what
AIDA64's sensor is showing while I'm rendering video. This is with the
cover on the case. With the cover off, the temps drop by just a few
degrees.

http://users.rcn.com/weanderson/images/CPUtemps.jpg

Am I going to have to get a bigger case to accommodate a bigger CPU fan?

By the way, I flashed BIOS last night and now the double boot screen
issue has gone away. Not only that, but boot time has been cut at least
in half. The new BIOS has a feature that lets me skip USB port boot
activation for everything but mouse and keyboard devices. Now the boot
screen just flies by. I have three seconds to press Delete if I want to
go into BIOS.


Your values (90C,89C,87C,83C,84C,85C) suggest you're running
thermally limited. The posters here feel it limits (throttles)
around 90C or so.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1178485/3...e-stock-speeds

http://www.overclock.net/t/1233805/t...s-for-i7-3930k

Cooling is a two stage process for an air cooler. Move CPU
heat from CPU to case air. Move case air out into the room.

If the computer case is too hot, then the CPU cooler
can't transfer as much heat. All the temps in the case
end up offset.

Your case is 38C (motherboard temperature). If we assume the
room temperature is 25C, that's delta of 13C. If you were to
use more case fans, or improve the air temperatures around
the CPU cooler, the temperature might come down a bit.

Other than that, the CPU cooler may not be enough for
the thermal load, and that's why you're near throttle
temperature.

The CPU has at least two levels of response to heat.
The internal thermal diodes measure temperature with
respect to a fixed temperature point. Let's pretend it's 90C
(until I go look it up). If the silicon die was 89C, the
digital readout reads "delta of 1C". The sensor isn't set
up to give absolute temperature. It gives a relative
temperature to Tjmax. When the delta measured drops to zero,
now the silicon die is too hot. Throttling cuts in, and
the percentage of CPU cycles allowed to be used drops.
You lose performance (at least, compared to the
clock speed at the moment). For example, if you overclocked
to 4.4GHz, and throttling resulted in only 75% of the
cycles being used, it would instead be like the CPU was
at 3GHz or so.

If the heatsink falls off completely, the throttling method
cannot throttle enough to control thermals. The CPU temperature
may shoot up by another 20C or so, before THERMTRIP cuts in,
and the power is turned off on the PC.

So there are two temperature points. The throttle temperature
is the first point, and THERMTRIP is an additional offset
above that point.

Throttling can also be applied in software, if for example
you wanted to control temperature more severely than the
hardware does it.

Those are the basic ideas, but I haven't been reading up
on all the improvements LGA2011 has. I understand now,
the VCore regulator may give some data about operation,
like perhaps current flow, so there may be more monitoring
data available than in older designs. But some of the
same protection methods should still be in usage.

The "throttle bit" is a status bit that indicates the
CPU is being throttled. While temperature monitoring is one
way to conclude you got to that point, observing the throttle
bit is a way to see that the hardware has actually responded
as well. In effect, it "calibrates" your thermal application.
If you saw throttle asserted, just when one core hit 90C, then
in future if you saw 90C from the same temperature monitoring
facility, you'd know you were back at the throttle point again.
The "RMClock" utility monitors the throttle bit, but I don't
know if RMClock has been updated for things like LGA2011 or not.

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/cpu/in...res-core2.html

I tried looking through these.

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc...heet-vol-1.pdf
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc...heet-vol-2.pdf
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc...ion-update.pdf
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc...2011-guide.pdf

Apparently the Tjmax is stored in a register on the processor,
so to get the "90C" limit for die temperature, it can be
read out. I don't know if that was true on earlier Core2
processors.

A good way to judge coolers, before you buy them, is to
get an estimate of their theta_R or thermal resistance. Only
a few companies do that, and even the ones that did, haven't
continued to do so. Without theta_R, all we're left with is
some jokey "can handle a 150W processor" type description.

It reminds me of the labeling on light bulbs. I bought a
bulb at the store the other day, where instead of a
color temperature (like 6500K), they used a text description
of "crisp white light". Which, as you'd expect, was utter bull****.
The light was sad and yellow, but I don't expect to see "sad and yellow"
on the tin :-( At least now, I have a new definition of "crisp".

Paul