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UPDATE: Turns out I've misunderstood the VCCSA / System Agent voltage number in my BIOS. It's actually set to an automatic adaptive mode, where I can only change the offset. Previously I said it was at 1.176V when I was in BIOS, but this time it was at around 1.032V, so it's hovering below and above the 1.1V theshold. Flipping the XMP switch on the mobo on/off made no difference. I'll run a stresstest and see how this voltage reacts, then figure out wether it needs to be adjusted or not.

Well I guess that settles it then Anyway, any ideas what I should do with the System Agent voltage, as it's higher than 1.1V already (this is with stock BLCK frequency and XMP disabled)? Also, which one of the two VCCIO options should I change, or do you change them both? There's the VCCIO CPU, and the VCCIO PCH.

But doesn't an XMP profile of 1.45V mean that the specific RAM stick has been designed and manufactured to handle that voltage without degradation, meaning this doesn't indicate all RAM sticks will like that voltage in the long run, at least not the ones with an XMP profile at 1.2V? EDIT: Browsing Newegg, I find DDR4 RAM with XMP profile at 1.4V max at 4200 MHz (=no need to overclock/overvolt them even further), the voltage setting many people suggest is okay. EDIT #2: There are people elsewhere saying the 1.4V sticks uses the same chip as the 1.2V equivalent, even from many other brands, so I guess 1.4V is safe. So I'll stick with that limit for now, but I might try 1.45V again sometime in the future if I need it and if I feel secure using it.

So by now I've received a lot of input on this topic on multiple forums, and overall people say that 1.45V is in the greyzone and wouldn't be recommended for 24/7 usage, so I guess I'll avoid that amount of voltage. So for now I've bumped it back to 1.35V until I've done some more research. I've realized too that my frequency boost shouldn't normally require such high voltage boost, and it turns out this is because I've adjusted the settings poorly, such as having a too short true latency along with other timings, as well as overlooked other voltage settings of different parts that communicate with the RAM, which if configured right contribute to the overclock stability (=less DRAM voltage is needed). So by sacrificing some latency, and adjusting different other voltages more than DRAM voltage, I should be able to reach a good overclock with 1.35V. However, is 1.4V also in the greyzone, or is it okay to use in the long run? I have at least one person who said that 1.4V is no problem but that I shouldn't go past that, but I want to hear from more people (some people have even said that 1.45V is okay for heavier overclocks as long as they don't get too hot, obviously as heat degrades hardware, but they scratched their heads over that I used such heavy voltage for so little overclock). The different voltage settings people have told me about are: - System Agent Voltage (aka VCCSA): Which most people recommend setting to 1.1V, however I'm a little bit confused here as this voltage is by default actually higher than 1.1V already (currently at 1.176V = the same voltage as the CPU core stock voltage). What should I do here? - VCCIO Voltage: Should also be set to 1.1V according to most people, currenly set to 1.05V by default. The odd thing here is that there is both a VCCIO for the CPU and another one for the PCH - which one should I change (not sure why increasing one of the chipset voltages would matter)? - VTTDDR Voltage: Should be half the current DRAM voltage, so I need to bump it up from 0.6V to 0.68-0.7V

You see my build in my sig if that helps So I have a pair of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 2400 MHz CL14 8 GB (=16 GB) at 1.2V stock, which I may have succesfully reached 2666 MHz CL13 at 1.45V on. Touching the RAM sticks right after a gaming session on a RAM heavy game, they surely feel hot, but not burning hot and there's no problem touching them without it feeling to hot to touch them. Before doing this last overclocking step on the RAM, I did some reading and found an older Q&A with Corsair on the new DDR4 sticks, and they suggested going no further than 1.4-1.45V, or there is a risk of harming the RAM sticks, and even the CPU IMC if you're unlucky (combine this with some other instances saying that 1.35V is totally fine, and 1.4V is still good). However that thread is a bit old probably, and I still want some second opinions... is this voltage setting on the RAM sticks safe? Are there any examples of massive failures caused by RAM overvolting? If you'd google failures caused by CPU or GPU overvolting you'd get plenty of scary results, but I don't find anything similar with DDR4 RAM. Also, is CAS latency also affected by the voltage, meaning cutting the latency requires extra voltage to maintain stability, just like increasing the frequency eventually requires more voltage?

Not at the moment of course unless you do photo/video editing, but I'm thinking perhaps in just a year or two you will be able to notice the difference, in case other hardware would boom in performance.

So the Samsung 850 Evo has been around for quite some time now. And at the moment we're at the dawn of a new SSD era - NVMe to the masses. Because of this, M.2 NVMe cards are slowly getting more and more affordable, but it's especially noticable that the SATA SSD market is slowing down with very few new products coming out here. Recently we had the new Samsung 960 Evo & Pro being released, but by doing some research you quickly come to the conclusion that there will probably not be any Samsung 860-series for a while (there are some speculations though that there may be an 850 v2). This is understandable - why bother releasing new SATA SSD's at the dawn of the new SSD era, the manufacturers are probably more interested in people getting an NVMe SSD instead of a SATA SSD when it's time for an upgrade by various reasons (such as little lifetime left on the device). This causes a dilemma in my case. On the one hand I have the very affordable yet maximized (for being a SATA SSD) 850 Evo - but I have the feeling that this device will become obsolete in just a year or two. However it does its job for gaming and basic media editing with no bottlenecks at the moment... but is it futureproof? How long will it take before it actually becomes a bottleneck, perhaps to a sudden performance jump in newer CPU models and such? On the other hand we have the 960 Evo - this one will do its job for a long, long time with no bottlenecks for the previously mentioned usage as it's actually slightly overkill for the masses at the moment... but it's kinda expensive for a regular dude like me. Which one should I get in your opinion? Should I get the affordable 850 Evo, or the futureproof 960 Evo? Does the 960 have an as good or better lifetime as the 850 (I mean if the NVMe SSD's currently have lower lifetime than SATA SSD's then there isn't much futureproofing there is it)? Samsung 850 Evo 1 TB - $350-$380 in my country Samsung 960 Evo 1 TB - $510-$550 in my country There's still a lot of demand on the 850 Evo, to such degree that it's actually hard to get at the moment as it's constantly sold out - this means there's no way it will drop in price. Also, it need to be 1 TB of SSD storage for me. You see my build in my sig if it's helpful.

So I've done some investigation on RAM speeds and RAM latency, and I've realized they in cooperation affect the real world latency in nanoseconds. I've also done some investigation on Newegg to find the various best speeds in addition to latency cycles and compared the real world latency in nanoseconds. For instance, my Corsair Vengeance memory with 2133 MHz and CL13 gives a real world latency of 6 nanoseconds. Comparing with a Corsair Vengeance LED memory with 3466 MHz and CL16, it would give a real world latency 4.6 nanoseconds. So there is a difference by 1.4 nanoseconds. [OBS! Considering I've done all the math correctly] But how much performance difference would I notice in different tasks with a computer if I would in theory upgrade to the latter memory? Tasks such as CPU heavy games, RAM heavy games, medium heavy games for CPU/RAM, video editing software, video rendering, audio rendering, audio software/DAW, photo editing, etc. Does it really matter how much latency the RAM has? By googling you find lots of discussions and tests on wether it has an effect, but it feels like the tests are poorly done, only focusing on either speed or CAS latency, and not comparing different real world latencies in nanoseconds. So there's not much to go on there.

So basically the 600P has overall better read speed and better IOPS, while the 850 Evo has a better architecture to it? Which one will have the greatest impact in regular usage? (don't really care about synthetic benchmark results as they seem to be quite unrealistic when it comes to SSD's) Regular usage involving games, hosting game servers, and last but not least - audio editing.

You see my build in my sig I'm currently looking to upgrade to a 1 TB SSD as my current SSD is pretty much full, so I've had to start installing programs on the harddrive. At first I was thinking that I might just grab a 1 TB Evo and call it the day, but then I discovered that I can get an NVME M.2 SSD for the same price, which is actually faster. While I understand that I won't notice that much difference performance wise in many cases as I'm not dealing with tremenously large files (such as video/photo editing), I might as well just grab the M.2 and get better specs for the same price. But then it's not only about the speeds of course - which one of those will last the longest / can be written or read the most times before failure? Also, will my Asus X99-A mobo bottleneck the M.2 card?

UPDATE: I've made sure the Intel SpeedStep and the C-stages are all active in BIOS, which they were.

You see my build in my sig So I've made a decent overclock/overvolt profile that runs stable, which I first made in AI Suite 3 just to save some time from rebooting back forth from BIOS. For this overclock I decided to go with an adaptive voltage curve to save some heat when I'm just browsing the internet and such, and AI Suite 3 responded as it should to this, giving me a good range of lower voltages when the highest one wasn't necessary. However once I moved the overclock settings into BIOS to get the best stability possible, things didn't go that well anymore. Now my voltage suddenly is fixed at a constant maximum value, and only drops down 16 mV every now and then - which isn't what I want. What did I do wrong? I did select the adaptive mode in the AI Tweaker in BIOS and manually set both the overvolt values as well as the overvolt offset.

What?

All necessary info in my sigSo I've managed getting a decent overclock/overvolt profile for my CPU. However I made my overclock tests using AI Suite 3, and not BIOS, just to save some time by avoiding rebooting all the time between the various stages.But now I wish to move these settings over to BIOS to get the best stability possible.However I'm still not one of those overclock in BIOS -gurus, so I feel a little unsure what settings to touch in the overclock section in my BIOS.I use the BIOS for the X99-A board, with BIOS manufacturer American Megatrends, so I'll tweak the clock settings in the AI Tweaker-tab.I'll go with an adaptive voltage setting.The reason why I'm unsure is because I've already tweaked clock settings in BIOS on this computer once in the past, just to try moving my old clock settings from AI Suite 3 to BIOS, which didn't even involve any overvolting - and suddenly BIOS decided to go with a higher voltage than stockvoltage even though I set the voltage curve to manual and left it at standard. Any setting I might have missed?

I'm currently looking for a suitable powerbank / portable battery, and I've found one that I want, though it has 2 different types of ampere outputs; a 1.0A, and 2x 2.1A - however my mobilephone is built for 2.0A Normally a unit will try consuming the current it needs/wants even if the cable providing the power isn't capable of outputting that current if the electricity goes straight into the unit. But according to a contact of mine who used to be an industrial researcher for batteries and fuel cells things doesn't work that way when we're dealing with batteries, that it's the power supplier that more pushes in whatever current is on the supplier's output, and that the mobilephone battery receives that ampere - unless it has a system adjusting it such as BMS (found in car batteries and UPS'es). So if I were to charge a 1.0A mobilephone with a 2.0A charger the I will push 2.0A current into the 1.0A battery - which means it will charge faster (which it really does in the real world to my experience), but it may perhaps decrease its lifetime and increase wear and tear - at least according to this person that I know, however numerous other people I've talked to suggests there is no harm in this... so I get a bit confused. There is a lot of value in a lot of people suggesting I shouldn't be worried about it, but on the other hand I have a person I know that is more or less an expert who suggests that it may put the battery under extra stress. In my particular case I have a mobilephone at 2.0A, and a powerbank of 2.1A - is there any risk that the extra 100 mA can decrease the lifetime and increase the wear and tear of my phone battery?

Turns out one of the connectors for the Power Switch on the Standby-button had broke off, reattaching it made it work again and adding some tape to it should keep it in place, though if you have any more permanent solutions on how to prevent this even more, then let me know. Thanks for your inputs!

You see the parts in my sig Just now I opened up my homebuilt PC to upgrade the case fans - everything goes smooth and nice during the work. But when I'm done and click on the power button, then nothing happens... The PC isn't damaged because I can turn it on through the mobo's power buttom, but the PC case's own power button doesn't work. I've made sure all cables are properly inserted and tried pushing in the wires towards the backside of the power button in case they were loose, but nothing helped. More than this, the USB ports on the same device as the power button, as well as the power button's LED lights - all work, it's just the Power On function itself that doesn't work. The power button doesn't either work when I'm in Windows (if that helps). I've checked the BIOS, but I can't find any setting for the power button, and I've also tried doing Load Optimized Defaults, but that didn't help, so it can't be any wierd BIOS setting. The whole computer is only a few months old... Is my power button dead?

The fans on your picture are the Pure Wings - the stock fans for the PC case which are no problem to mount as they have standard screwing holes. The Silent Wings however have a bit more special mounting type which confuses me, as the screws that comes for those mountings doesn't seem to fit in the holes in the case in the front part.

Long story short, I'll upgrade my case cooling and I'm going with the Silent Wings 120mm from Be-Quiet. And right now I have my hands on 1x of them - and I actually have no idea how to properly mount it in the front of my PC case... The screws coming with the fan doesn't seem to fit in the case in the front where I want them as intake. You have the small screws as well as the rubber sticks coming in the box, but I can't use them as far as I understand it. Right now I've just taken the stock fan screws for the front of the PC case and let the SW fan hang on them and then tighten the screws together with the rubber pads. It may sound like an odd solution, but works very well audio wise as there isn't any noise or resonance added because of it - however the screws gets in the way of my HDD cages, which I need. So I need to figure out how to mount them well and still be able to have my HDD in my computer. Anyone with any ideas? It seems like a common thing that people with the Silent Base 800 mounts the Silent Wings fans on, so there must be a solution... I mean it would be odd if their most famous fan isn't fully compatible with their most famous PC case...

Isn't there far more factors to consider than size regarding airflow? That there are 120mm fans running better than 140mm fans. To my impression so far, SP fans seems to be more aimed towards 120mm as they may be a more common size for PC intake and radiators (may be wrong though). Anyway, so far Silent Wings and Noctua have been covered very well. Any thoughts on the other fans? Anyone to avoid?

In short the F140XP pretty much sounded like a hurricane and the air noise was very sensitive and the PWM didn't work very well as the lowest possible RPM was around 500-600 RPM - I didn't have to use that high RPM for it to sound too loud. And comparing them with my stock fans, the airflow when they were at the same noise level was pretty much identical, so there were no improvement = no point in keeping them. However I believe this is partly related to the Silent Base 800 case. Fans seem to respond differently to different chassis. I'm actually considering your idea, however there seems to be other fans very near the Silent Wings spec wise, those that I've linked, and I want to go with a few of those in the list and test them out

This is something I've already done for months, and it's the case fans only that are my biggest concern right now +1 for Silent Wings then Can you have them at full speed all time? I'm considering going with just the 120mm's as they have better static pressure which do good as intake

You see my build in my sig. Some important background info: I have a Be-Quiet Silent Base 800 -case, that comes with 2x Be-Quiet Pure Wings 140mm in the front as intake (only one active though as the other one makes a ringing noise in the case), and 1x Be-Quiet Pure Wings 120mm in the rear as exhaust. This PC is used in different tasks, but the major one being audio editing and such. Because of this I need things nice and quiet, and previously that has not been an issue as I've adjusted fan curves so the PC only gives a slight background sound that I don't think about most of the times. However, now I'd like to attempt overvolting my CPU, and by that I need to improve my cooling, including getting better PC case fans. What I'm aiming for is to improve the airflow/airpressure as much as possible at the same noise level at low/medium work. I'm not allowing my PC to get any noisier than already it is (except during really heavy usage where I've adjusted the fan curves). Witch my current fans, roughly calculated, my current noise level that I'm happy with gives me around 0,30 - 0,35 static pressure on my intake fans in the front, and around 26 CFM on the exhaust fan in the rear. With stock speeds or medium overclocking that's not a much of an issue, but once again I need to improve these figures if I want to overvolt. The first fans I ordered were 2x Phanteks PH-F140XP for intake and 1x Phanteks PH-F120XP for exhaust - the Phanteks PH-F140XP's we're horrible for my case so I returned them, and the Phanteks PH-F120XP didn't work in the rear but actually does a good job in the front as intake. So this is an improvement, and calculation wise it gives me around 0,76 - 0,80 static pressure at the same noise level as the stock intake fans. However I still have no better exhaust fan than the stock one, and I'm still interested in improving the static pressure even more if possible, and that's why I've done some research and found a few fans. To make things more simple, tell me which ones of these fans to avoid rather than only which one I should get - and please motivate. The reason why is that I'll order the 3-4 remaining fans and compare which one I want (as I understand I don't know the performance to noise ratio until I've mounted them in my particular PC case), and then return the others and order a full set of the one I chose. If you feel strongly positive for one fan though, feel free to share that thought! NOTE: I can mount both 140mm and 120mm in the front, but only 120mm in the rear. My build can do both DC and PWM control. So here are the contestants for intake: - Be-Quiet Silent Wings 2 120mm - Aerocool Dead Silence 120mm - Aerocool Dead Silence 140mm - Cooler Master Silencio FP 120mm - Corsair SP120 High Performance 120mm (would have been run at lower speeds to match the current noise level) - Noctua NF-P12 120mm And for exhaust: - Be-Quiet Silent Wings 2 120mm - Aerocool Dead Silence 120mm - Cooler Master Silencio FP - Noctua NF-P12 What's important for me is not how well they perform at maximum speed, but once again how they perform at a given quiet noise level (I would guess around 900-1000 RPM / 0,8+ static pressure / 40-50 CFM - that's at least what my Phanteks gives me right now at that noise level). I don't know the current dB of my system though.

I've honestly been looking everywhere (done further searchings since I posted), but I can't find any fans that can deliver such good airflow and airpressure at that low audio level as the Phanteks XP ones. I can imagine Silent Wings 2 being even quieter as they're the most praised ones all over the internet in terms of loudness, but they don't have as good airflow and airpressure. If I was only to buy the quietest fans possible I'd prbably go with the SW2, but I have to improve the airflow and pressure a lot in my case so they wouldn't work for me, also I need 140mm as intake and 120mm as exhaust and the SW2 pretty much have better airflow than pressure in the 140mm and vice versa for the 120mm so it wouldn't work that well. Not to mention that I probably wouldn't hear the difference between the Phanteks XP's and the SW2's as the ambient noise level would cover up the difference. I'd surely recommend SW2's to people seeking the quietest solution possible, though they simply won't work in my case There are people elsewhere saying that the PH-F140MP and PH-F120MP are better than the XP ones, but it just seems louder and have not as good numbers. Any thoughts on this?

I've been looking at new case fans for a while, finding one great fan only to be beaten by a new one. But I feel I've finally found the ultimate ones for my case - 2x Phanteks PH-F140XP in the front as intake, and 1x Phanteks PH-F120XP in the back as exhaust. The numbers on the marketing side may not look the greatest, but in tests that I've watched they're simply dead silent, yet still have good airflow and static pressure. (the test videos are below) However, these figures, as well as the test results doesn't tell much if these fans really are that good being attached to cases in particular, or if they're not as good on cases but better on radiators and such? Do you have any thoughts or experiences on these fans? It would be lovely if they performed as good attached on cases as they seem to do, I even have the feeling they beat the Silent Wings on the audio level in addition to the airflow/pressure and pricing. Do you have any other suggestions on fans that may beat these?