I suspect you are right...I just recently picked these two up. Was watching it a moment ago at default settings with only Realtemp and cpu-z windows open on desktop...at idle it was drawing nearly 26% load lol.

EDIT: I was letting it run and walked in to check on it...it's now drawing up to 60% load at idle haha. :taunt:

Q9550 is muy better... :good:


http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q...9550-38GHz.jpg

heck yea, is that on the TEC ?

Yeah, still fiddling with it. Going to swap ram and see what it will do. :good:

Runs very smoothly, but doubt I will be able to run it further on air. This Boreas doesnt get as cold as it once did.


http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q...Q9550-4GHz.jpg

http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q...9550-42GHz.jpg

70C ......... there prolly is another 1 or 2 hundred Mhz on the table if it does not take obsene voltage to get there .............. :thumbsup:

Same here, I was thinking X48 and 45nm CPU would be good. Throw the Q6600 on the nvidia chipset ;)


IIRC the 680 and the 780 were just rebadges...


EDIT: Holy Crap, its only been 5 years since the 780i came out???

EDIT EDIT: Missed the WHOLE thread. Going to read it all now :)



Very nice. 4GHz runnable?

(I just spent the last 15 minutes researching nForce chipsets, what a stroll down memory lane :) )

The q6600 is pretty much toast....nothing wrong with the 790I tho. Scaled the Q9550 back to 3200MHz and installing a Steam game atm. :good:

Nice, keep us posted.

Was the high idle CPU usage from the bum chip or is it just that the chips are so out of date?

(I assume you had indexing and all that kind of stuff turned off?)

While not as originally intended, this project turned out rather nice. It is stellar at most games and latest crop are doable. Just wish I had some other cards available...these GTX 295's just run too dang hot. I would trade them for a couple of GTX 460's or the like if the opportunity arose. ;)

I guess I would rate this one as a decent mid-level gamer and a all around general workhorse. Need to find a good home for this one.

NZXT Phantom 410 case
Evga 790i Ultra SLI mb
Q9550 cpu
Evga GTX 295 (x2)
Thermaltake Frio
8GB ram
WD 1TB hdd
LiteOn dvd burner
Corsair 850w psu
Win 7 64 Ultimate


http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q.../NZXTspecs.jpg

http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q...erformance.jpg

http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q...775/System.jpg

http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q...1-04-59-69.jpg

http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q...build001-1.jpg

http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q...build002-1.jpg

http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q...build003-1.jpg

http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q...build004-1.jpg

http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q...build005-1.jpg

http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q...build006-1.jpg