Maximum PC Magazine: Kick-Ass Award - Holiday 2011

Edited by Alex - 11 Nov 2011 at 5:53pm

Hi Alex,

You have obviously had the x79 for a little while. What kind of heat and Vcore is that 3960 running and have you tested the 3930K yet. What is the correct nomenclature for the 3960? Is it 3960X or 3960K for the unlocked verson.

Frank

We usually have all of the latest upcoming stuff for about a month before launch. We can't comment on it obviously. It ensures we're ready to integrate the items into our systems when they launch.

I read a recent review on the i7-3960X in PC Mag. Some interesting observations came to light in that article. Video was not included on the chip as it was on others and no cooler is bundled with the CPU.

Temps for the 3960X, this article yielded the following:
They used the X79 chip mated with 8GB of 1.6GHz memory on an Intel mobo
DX79SI with (believe it or not) an Intel cooler RTS2011LC. It was mentioned that this was the only cooler they tested so far that used the LGA Socket 2011.(Anyone for a new mobo?)-That's me questioning, not the article.

Idle (Stock) 3.3GHz = 93F or 34C, OC'd @ 4.6GHz =98F or 37C
Full Load using all 6 cores@3.3Ghz = 139.6F or 60C
OC'd @4.6GHz using all cores full load =166.3F or 75C

The article mentioned that these temps were "well within acceptable ranges".

I did the Centigrade calcs and rounded. Hope my math was ok on the C side.

Power use was 99.2 Watts Idle, Full Load was 216.7 Watts

Native Support is 1.6GHz memory over 4 Channels. You also get 40 full lanes of PCIe and allows for 2 discrete PCI-e x16 cards. You will need either 4 DIMMS of DDR3 or 8 DIMMS of DDR3 if you use two PCI-e x 16 cards.

They ran a few more tests that appear to be over my head but here they go:

Phys X =36.5fps, a "True Crypt" @ 302 Mb/s, single thread performance = 1.57 and multithread performance = 10.56 from a CineBench R11.5 tests.

Thought fps would be higher here but since a video was not included in the CPU and they didn't mention a GPU, really don't know what they used. With true crypt, what are they measuring? Looks like some data speed going through a bus or channel, line channel? With the thread perf., what do these measurements mean and represent?

Hope this helps shed further light on the new Core i7 3960X.

Dovetails perfectly for me as I'm in the market for a new complete build and may go the full monte on this one. Tis a bit expensive though. However, one of the reasons I will probably order from Digital Storm is you have a really cool LCS and seemed to be the only quality builder that made cooling a top priority and explained in detail about how their system generally worked. With the above temps, that seem a bit warm to me, the Digital Storm Cryo-Tec seems like it can significantly cool those temps down even further. Also, DS, imo, has many more choices available and a good tech advisory team and builders to quality build and an excellent quality customer support team.

Before ending this long winded excerpt, have a question. Since I live on the East Coast, what kind of packaging do you use to protect the computer when shipped. One of your respected competitors uses a wooden crate. Do you use something like this as it is over a 3,000 mile journey? Thanks

Don't go by just one bench, and even at that it does not mean too much, also synthetic benches dont' really mean anything at all.

temps below 85c are perfectly fine, with 80c or lower temps your cpu out live the pc itself, so you can lower those temps if you like but it won't make no real difference to things.

As Alex said, the 6 core cpu is great for work stuff, but for gaming and dual sli all you need is a good quad core and the p67/68 are perfect for that.

now if you need a 6 core for work stuff or you need tri sli cause you have a very high res or multi monitor gaming, then you need the x79.

Edited by DST4ME - 16 Nov 2011 at 3:29pm

My pleasure and good luck                                    

three GTX 580's in triple-SLI are faster than two GTX 590's in quad-SLI.

my name and dionison pleasure, I enjoyed the store want to buy one but I live in Brazil
I could spend every possible imformacoes I grat