Completed AMD Dragon

[JD]

I think it is the AMD 7 series chipset + Phenom II CPU

And 4-series graphics as well I believe.

Looks like the X6 should show up tomorrow as Purolator puts it in Toronto Sort Center.

 

[Shadowmeph]

so my setup is almost a Dragon setup
Gigabyte MA790X-UD4P
I need an ATI card or two 4 series instead of my Nvid 285 gtx?

 

[JD]

Well Purolator came about half an hour ago!

Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H



Really solid looking board with amazing quality. Everything is finished perfectly IMO. I may be picky, but I've found some boards to have the heatsinks scratched up, which just looks bad. Looks pretty well laid out as well. Has all the latest and greatest SATA3 and USB3 which should hopefully prove useful in the future.

G.SKILL F3-10666CL7D-4GBECO



Nothing too special here. Low-voltage (1.35V) so the heatsinks aren't too big. Seems to have some ventilation holes on the top though which was interesting.

AMD Phenom II X6 1055T



Fairly typical looking AMD CPU. I see they haven't changed much since the s939 days when I used AMD. Even the heatsink is pretty similar, though it has a couple extra heatpipes. Hopefully it's not too noisy and can keep the X6 adequately cool.

No closeups of the HDD or DVD-RW since they're pretty boring to look at.

And here's a couple shots of the beginning of installation:


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Should have it up and running by the evening if all goes well
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[JD]

Well it's all built now! :clap:
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Cable management was a breeze with all the space in this case. Got everything tucked away pretty neatly, compared to my PC. Sleeved all the fans and front panel stuff of course. Though as FiXT said in the review, I wish it was painted black internally as it would of looked far better. Maybe later down the road I'll paint it.

The tool-less 5.25" bays and expansion slots kind of suck. The 5.25" ones only hold snug on one side, so pressing eject on the DVD-RW results in the drive getting pushed inwards. Had to put a screw in on the other side. Similar issue with the expansion slots, they don't hold very tight so the cards still have a bit of play. Also I had to look up the instructions on how to use them...

Have yet to fire it up though, so hopefully it all works :blarg: Also need to look into some ideas on how to light up the dragon sufficiently to make it more visible.
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[Shadowmeph]

oh my god that just looks Terrible in fact I think that you should just pack it all into a large box and send it to me ..
all kidding aside looks good makes me want to upgrade from my 790board, DDR2 ram and my 955 black cpu he he . I love that case .

 

[JD]

oh my god that just looks Terrible in fact I think that you should just pack it all into a large box and send it to me ..

:haha: You wish!

Got it all up and running, had a little issue though to begin with. Apparently "AMD C1E" should not be enabled or at least not with this CPU. Enabling it resulted in Windows 7 locking up instantly. Otherwise, the rest of the power management features seem to work fine. Turbo also is working nicely. I've seen up to 3.6GHz with single-thread (SuperPi) and 3.3GHz on all 6 cores while running Prime95.

Memory had to be manually set (it defaulted to 1.5V, 9-9-9-24), but it seems to be running stably at 1.35V 7-7-7-21. I know RAM is typically an issue with AMD builds, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Stock cooling seems to do a superb job as well, I see about 24C idle and under Prime95, close to 50C. Stays nice and quiet until it's under 100% load. Then it gets audible, but not annoyingly loud.

Idle Temperatures


Load Temperatures (15min Prime95, Large FFTs)


And here's a couple benchmarks thus far:

SuperPi 1M


SuperPi 32M


PCMark Vantage x64 Professional

 

[CroSsFiRe2009]

Holy god, that runs cool. 47C load? Nice build, bit bothered by the lack of paint inside such a nice case though. Any modding planned for it in the future?

 

[AmuseMe]

Looks good JD To bad the inside is grey

 

[JD]

Yeah...I know. Maybe in a few months I'll give it a coat of black inside.

 

[JD]

Few more benchmarks:

CrystalDiskMark (WD Black 640GB + SB850)


3DMark Vantage Performance


3DMark06


Of course, it doesn't keep up to my 4.2GHz i7 though But still pretty decent for a fully stock machine IMO.

And I also hooked up my power meter and found the following:
1-2W when powered off. There's this EuP option in the BIOS too which sounds like Gigabyte's own technology for reducing standby power. Seems to be working I guess.
170W while Windows is loading up
150W once it settles down and becomes fully idle
265W while running Prime95 Large FFTs
400W while running Prime95 Large FFTs + OCCT GPU