WTF Cooling: R7 260X + Gelid Slim Hero + zipties

Here's a few photos of what I did to my R7 260X after I accidentally used CLU on it's aluminum heatsink.

I will be posting performance results soon if school allows.

I hate digging up crap to write about but oh well here we go SuperPi tweak guide.

The title says it all so lets get going.
SuperPi 32M is a completely single threaded benchmark and is currently one of the most popular benchmarks on HWbot so getting a good score in it can get you a ton of points.


Software
First the OS, you've got to use Windows XP. SuperPi is just weird like that. Windows 7 also works but you get slightly higher times and can't do copy wazza.

Once you have XP installed go into the services and disable everything except for WMI, log event, futuremark sys, windows installer, intel management, drivers, plugnplay and themes.

When benching SuperPi you keep themes enabled because for some reason it runs faster with the olive green theme.

Use task-manager to shutdown as many unnecessary tasks as possible also set SuperPi's affinity to core 1. Set all other tasks to core 0 and put their priority to low. Set SuperPi's priority to high

A really important tweak for getting a good SuperPi time is copy wazza. Here's a video of Splave doing copy wazza.

Hardware
On intel CPUs disable hyperthreading because it adds extra load onto the IMC and only run with 2 cores to increase OC range and lower heat output.

For Haswell CPUs try to get the Uncore/Cache ratio as high as possible.

For AMD CPUs clock the north bridge as high as possible.

For ram you will want to use PSC or Samsung HCH9 as they are capable of high clocks with very low timings. PSCs come in 2GB sticks from a variety of manufacturers but Samsung HCH9s are found on 4GB 2600 10-12-12-34 G.skill sticks.
Another good series of ram to use are 4GB stick Crucial Ballistix Elite that come stock at 1600 8-8-8-24 or 1866 9-9-9-27. These are capable of 2000 8-9-8-25 @ 1.65V the only down side is that they don't scale past that regardless of the voltage I used. But they are still very good sticks that can also serve as daily drivers.


Sorry for not posting for so long. School happened.

X99 VRM Analysis

X99 has arrived and what most reviewers seem to have missed is that Intel's FIVR is on every Haswell-e chip. The FIVR stands for Fully Integrated Voltage Controller. It's job is to generate the different voltages an Intel CPU needs more efficiently and more precisely. It does both of these but also has the innate side effect of making motherboard VRM designs much cheaper since they are required to supply a voltage of 1.8+V instead of 1-2V.  Now you may think that this makes no sense. However it is very simple what does 100% of all damage and heat generation in electrical circuits is current. By raising the output voltage of the motherboard VRM the VRM needs to supply a lower current and therefore can be cheaper or more efficient. For example if you need to deliver 250W(an OCed X79 or X99 CPU) of power to the CPU from the motherboard. With X79 the board would need to supply 185A at 1.35V with X99 it only needs to supply 138A at 1.8V. That is a 25% reduction in current requirements. The other thing that X99's FIVR achieves is that you no longer need and X+Y VRM phase setup so 100% of the VRM space available on the motherboard can be used to supply those 138A at 1.8V further reducing the strain put on each VRM phases by allowing for more powerful or more numerous phases.
Now lets go to absurd land. Lets say you want to run your new Haswell-e at 1.35V all day everyday until the CPU or motherboard dies. Well at 1.35V Haswell-e will easily be pulling 300-400W and because were in absurd land lets go with the higher of the 2 so 400W since you can probably still cool that with H2O. Now then 400W at 1.8V gives a current draw of just 222A or less if you push the VCCIN voltage higher. So now lets see how a 6 phase VRM like what you find on the eVGA X99 micro would do with this. Well 222A/6phases means we would have just over 37A of current per phase which should be no problem at all because even the 100$ GA-F2A88X-D3H that I reviewed has 40A phases. Now on a 6 phase you are pushing it rather close so I would recommend an 8 or more phase board for these kinds of OC endeavors especially if the manufacturer is a little too cheap to be true. However any quality motherboard with 8 phases will be fine.
Now I just need to buy an X99 board some DDR4 and a Haswell-e CPU so I can test what raising the VCCIN does to the Vcore and I can do a fuller writeup on minizing VRM load with Haswell-e.

This is the source for Haswell-e having a FIVR