Well I just hit 4.8ghz with thermal Right Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme.

Granted the Ambient temp in the system environment is 6C

But 4.8ghz on air is possible in a normal ambient temp environment:

http://www.simforums.com/forums/haswell-48ghz-on-air-building-a-haswell-system_topic46180.html

Well I just hit 4.8ghz with thermal Right Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme.

Granted the Ambient temp in the system environment is 6C

But 4.8ghz on air is possible in a normal ambient temp environment:

http://www.simforums.com/forums/haswell-48ghz-on-air-building-a-haswell-system_topic46180.html

 

 

I've been following your "garage cooling" experiment with great interest. Trying new things, pushing the envelope, challenging conventional wisdom is valuable, how we learn.

 

I notice Bob had concerns about condensation. This was something I mentioned to someone else a while back, who was contemplating the same experiment. He dismissed the notion of condensation out of hand. So I'm glad this is something you are considering.

 

The only question I would have though is why? Given that a few extra megahertz above what we could achieve at normal room temperature will only give you 2 or three frames per second, as gains from overclocking are very much linear.

 

I'm not dismissing your experiment though, it sounds like great fun, and as enthusiasts pursuing small gains in performance is what we often thrive on. 

Yes you are correct that the gains are small but the other benefit is a completely silent Sim environment and of course it is great fun. The other side of it is that 4.8ghz was easy. I entered the Bios values provided by NickN for 4.8ghz rebooted and voila it booted first attempt. Ran 3DMark06 and nit just under 40,000 3DMarks. Now that is not a stability test and I know it is not 24/7 stable yet. Also the setting are just the initial 4.8Ghz setting which will be tweaked further for more performance improvement and perhaps I will get 5ghz. From what I have read that is unlikely but my temps are super low and it is only going to get colder from here on until the end of February at least!

I have found a sensor and circuit that can be wired into the motherboard power header and will soft shutdown the system at the first sign of condensation. Also I have to move the HDD's and SDD's to the warm side of the wall but there is a plan mature plan for that too. If you have seen my benchmarking approach my goal is to get that FSRecorder playback to no less than 24 fps for the entire playback. It is hard to see how any FSX scenery could place a greater strain on the system than NYCX. But more about all that in my Haswell Build Chronical thread

Would be interesting to see how far you could take it if you delid.

 

Good luck with the rest of your experiments.