Evga 680i SE and G.Skill Low latency memory reviews

[Äߧý∩†H♠H䎀]

Okay so my review today is for these 2 components. And let me say I could not be happier. I'm am really impressed with this board. Everything has a nice solid feel to it. I really like the clips on the PCI-E slots much better than my previous Asus board. Bios settings galour! One interesting feature on this board is the ability to intergrate your over clocking etc direct to Nvidia's Ntune. I have not tried this myself yet I just went in through the bios.

The biggest thing with this board I found out is the North and South bridge memory controller unit. I found this out on EVGA's forums that this is a major problem. People are burning these up left and right but its not a board problem its a problem with how they put the thermal paste on the chips. I highly recommend you take the chips off clean and apply Artic Silver5 on them. People that had issues with the boards memory controller that have done this fix now have no problems at all with the board!

There pretty easy to take off after you figure out how to get the tabs out. You need a pair of needle nose pliers. Just pinch them from the bottom side of the board while pulling towards you and just kind of let go after they pull out. Watch there spring loaded and will go flying! Just take a look at how much thermal paste was applied to my chips. No wonder people were burning them up the covered in it.

Here's the northbridge


Here's the Southbridge


This is the thermal paste ball I got off the chips. Enough to do 20 chips!


Well I guess if your buying this board your most likely overclocking. Like I said I went in the bios to do mine. I left everything on auto to start. First of I just set the memory to unlinked and ran the FSB to 1333MHz. Save and exit. Post i'm up and running. Double check my temps wow i'm barely breaking 30C! Run a few tests and benchs go back to the bios. I'm think wow that was easy so I decided to bump the FSB to 1422MHz. A few more tests go fine i'm sitting he like wow this thing just went to 3.2Ghz with 2 jumps without missing a beat. So I decided to just go up the FSB to 1600Mhz. I know I shouldn't be doing it like this but I was confident. My temps at 3200mhz were around 33C so I wasn't to worried about temps. Well it posted but froze at the splash screen. Okay i'm high enough now I need to switch the volts myself. I'm guessing if I went in smaller incremeants the voltage would have went up slowly as well and I probally wouldn't have had that problem. Set the CPU to 1.5volts and the FSB at 1.5volts and bumped up the memory contoller .05 volts and saved. Loaded windows just fine ran a few benchs running great at 3.6Ghz. And it took me maybe 45 mins to get there. Temps are idol around 40C at 3.6Ghz around 51-53C loaded. I've got head room and voltage to go but I havn't tried to go any higher yet. I would highly recommend this board. I have no doubt with some more tuning I should be able to at least get 3800Mhz out of this board. Coupled with my 8800GTs I ran 3Dmark06 and my best score so far is 11,325 3Dmarks. Heres the link for full settings.

http://service.futuremark.com/orb/re...=0&UID=9955210

Next up we have the G.Skill Low Latency memory @ 4,4,3,5 timings. I purchased 4 X 1 Gig sticks and let me say this ram flys. In the bios it auto defaults to 5,5,5,15 on the Evga board. No doubt do to the low timings and the MB auto defaulting to 1.8Volts. I went ahead and changed it to 2.1Volts and changed the timings to expert typed in 4,4,3,5 saved and bam. Windows up checked CPU-Z no issues whatsoever! And when I say this ram flies here are some test results. This is using everest. Keep in mind this is with my CPU clocked at 3.6Ghz.

Memory Read 10,228 MB/s
Memory Write 7,300 MB/s
Memory Copy 6,907 MB/s
Memory Latency 51.8ns
CPU Queen 7,310
CPU PhotoWorxx 19,540
CPU ZLib 47,936 KB/s
FPU Julia 13,731
FPU Mandel 6,662
FPU SinJulia 10,028

[Rudster816]

good reviews. i would rep you but i already did . you have been busy lately i see .

you put AS5 on those chips right.

[Äߧý∩†H♠H䎀]

O ya a nice thin coat of AS5 on the chips. I may buy some new cooling units for them. There running right around 60-63C which is within the norm I guess these chips can get upwards of 100C!

[sek3o1]

wow i can't believe the amount of thermal paste they put on the thing!! i never even considered taking them off and doing that i always assumed it would f up if i took it off...i thought the only way to cool it was with a water block!! good job!

[freestyler105]

You'd be better off raising the timings and raising the FSB more. You'll be able to push the FSB farther that way, and RAM timings don't really affect performance all that much compared to clock speeds.

[Äߧý∩†H♠H䎀]

There's no need to raise the timings yet. I didn't hit a wall I just stopped over clocking for the day. I'll be going higher just when I get the time to fool around with it some more and really tweak the board.

[celegorm]

Good review. You really put some light onto my baby

Careful with that Ntune though. Just ask around the Evga forum, It's caused a lot of problems (messing up BIOS, with out you changing a setting).

[esa193]

i am deff putting as5 on my chips
i never even though about doing that....
rnt these bored made in a factory?
y don't people make the machines put on the proper amount....

[Äߧý∩†H♠H䎀]

Originally Posted by celegorm

Good review. You really put some light onto my baby

Careful with that Ntune though. Just ask around the Evga forum, It's caused a lot of problems (messing up BIOS, with out you changing a setting).

Did your board have much on it celegorm? Ya I won't even try Ntune there's no point. I think they built that for OC newbies.

Hey esa is your 680i a Evga board? If not you may not need to do it its only on Evga's boards that its caked on there. Although putting AC5 on any of them couldn't hurt

If you end up pulling them post back with how much you find on your board.

[ownage]

you need to watch it with the AS5. Northbridges have SMDs on them and knowing that AS5 is capacitive, it would not be good if shorted two of them out. I always use Ceramique on RAM, and chipsets. AS5 on the cpu and gpu dies.