August 2007 - Posts

HARDWARE: Overclocking E6600 on a P5WDH Deluxe

A close friend recently bought an Intel E6600 from ebay to replace his 478 Prescott, I told him a couple of CPU generations ago that the E6600 was the sweet spot for DC processing, primarily because of the price and the overclockability. So here's a rough guide onto overclocking an E6600 to a stable 3.2Ghz (~35% increase) using the following parts:
Some recommended tools we should use for Core OC'ing:
  • CoreTemp - Monitors temperatures on CPU via DTS which is a more realistic reading of the temps (How it Works).
  • SpeedFan this will give us an indication of the entire system and allow us to control the fans speed setting.
  • MemTest - Testing that your memory is stable
  • Orthos - Stress Testing tool
  • OCCT - Quick and heavy stress testing tool.
Right now lets get down and dirty with this. First thing we'll do is get into the BIOS and start tweaking some settings.
(NOTE: The ones with the Asterisk is optional, usually you'd disable these first time you overclock)

Advanced Tab -> Jumper Free Configuration

  • Change the AI Overclocking to 'Manual'
  • Change the CPU Frequency to 360
  • Change the DRAM Frequency to DDR2-800Mhz
  • Leave performance Mode as 'AUTO'
  • PCI-Express Frequency to 'AUTO'
  • PCI-Clock Synch to 33.3Mhz
  • Memory Voltage = 2.2v [ Or v2.4 if its the Dominators ]
  • CPU vCore Voltage = 1.400v
  • FSB Termination Voltage = 1.50v
  • MCH Chipset Voltage = 1.65v
  • ICH Chipset Voltage = 1.20v

Advanced Tab -> CPU Configuration

  • Modify Ratio Support 'Disabled'
  • MicroCode Updation 'Enabled'
    MaxCPUID 'Disabled'
  • * Execute Disable Function 'Enabled'
  • Enhanced C1 Control 'Auto'
  • CPU Internal Thermal Control ‘Auto’
  • * Virtualisation 'Enabled'
  • * SpeedStep 'Disabled'

Advanced Tab -> Chipset Configuration

  • Modify Ratio Support 'Disabled'
  • * Configure DRAM by SPD ‘Disabled’
    • Set the correct timings for Memory Modules
  • DRAM ECC 'Disabled'
  • Hyperpath 3 'Disabled' @@@ MOST IMPORTANT @@@
  • DRAM throttling threshold 'Auto'
  • Memory Remap feature 'Disabled'

Advanced Tab -> Hardware Monitor

  • AI Quiet 'Disabled'
  • CPU QFan Control 'Enabled'
  • CPU-Fan Profile ‘Performance’
  • Chasis QFan Control 'Enabled'
  • Profile ‘Performance’
  • PWR-QFan Control 'Enabled'
  • PWR-Profile ‘Performance’
Its as easy as that. You can try and drop the vCore down bit by bit until you find the "sweet spot" where the system is stable, and the temperatures are the lowest you can yield.

Just to make sure you have a stable system, run atleast an overnighter of MemTest to make sure your memory can cope, then once your booted into Windows run SpeedFan+CoreTemp to monitor the temperatures whilst OCCT is running (Try the 30minute test first). If all passes and you still want to make sure, run Orthos over night or atleast a few hours.

CPU-Z Validated

Here are the CPU-Z Validated results on my box with the different memory modules. Lurvely! The upcoming Penryn's are even nicer to overclock coupled with a solid board like the ASUS P5K Premium or the ASUS P5K3-Premium.

posted Friday, August 31, 2007 3:01 AM by Thushan Fernando with 72 Comments

LIFE: Shani's trip to the hospital and finally gets a couple of iPods...

The last few weeks have been quite stressful, Shani (my sister) was admitted to the Children's Hospital with a collapsed lung (aka Pneumo Thorax) which is where one of her lungs fails to function properly. So after a few operations and very nervous weeks she's on the road to recovery. As she's only 14 and not a smoker (but quite tall for her age) they havent been able to workout why it happend.

I finally gave in to my inner-devil and bought her an iPod Nano (4Gb) - yes, I know. What *IS* the world coming to when someone like me who clearly despises anything that comes out of Apple goes and buys one aye? If its any consellation, its for her and a pink one at that.

Though I also figured I'd buy one for the car as well (2Gb black iPod Nano). I hate having to copy music to CDs to listen in the car, unfortunately the Eclipse AVN6000 can only interface with an iPod, so thats two Apple products in the house now. If only we had an open standard where anyone who adopts the standard can interface with any device.

I wont however be using iTunes - which seems a bucket load of bloat, rather the iPod version of the Notmad Explorer (which I bought for the Creative Zen's a while ago) called Anapod. Small lightweight and direct integration with the Windows Explorer shell. I'm one of those old-school WinAMP users using the "old optimized" version of the WinAMP skin in v5.x so installing iTunes just for transferring music seems pointless.
posted Thursday, August 30, 2007 8:12 AM by Thushan Fernando with 1 Comments

LINUX: gpg WARNING: unsafe permissions on configuration file

Whats the best way to learn a new operating system? Dive into the deepend and mess around. Long story short I changed the permissions for my home folder (i chmod'd the entire /home/thushan/* to 777), long story short x2 I messed  a few things and openned up the entire home folder to be accessible to everyone. Not good, trying to "fix it" I created another mess. So when  I tried to enter a new key I got:
gpg: WARNING: unsafe ownership on configuration file `.gnupg/gpg.conf'
gpg: WARNING: unsafe ownership on configuration file `.gnupg/gpg.conf'
gpg: external program calls are disabled due to unsafe options file permissions
gpg: keyserver communications error: general error
gpg: keyserver receive failed: general error
Hmmm. What to do here? Easy reset the permissions.
  1. First make sure you have ownership of the file still, goto the home folder (cd ~): 
     # ls -lah
    This will give you a list of your folder's contents including permissions. Make sure it states something like this with your username: 
    drwx------  2 thushan thushan 4.0K 2007-08-15 00:01 .gnupg
    If it has root (where it says thushan) you can fix this by changing the owner with chown: 
    # sudo chown USERNAME:USERNAME~/.gnupg
    Then do another ls to make sure its working properly.

  2. Next up lets set the right permissions: 
    # chmod 700 ~/.gnupg
# chmod 600 ~/.gnupg/*
Thats it! now you can import keys again.
posted Tuesday, August 14, 2007 3:02 PM by Thushan Fernando with 0 Comments