fatcat's new machine

fatcat

After months of planning, researching, talking with people, I'm finally going to build the machine. I will be getting back on the overtime list at work 1st of October to finance this endeavor. Know that I don't plan to build a new PC for a good 3 years, so while some components might seem like overkill now, there is a reason. Here is what I plan to buy so far.

Case: SILVERSTONE Fortress Series FT02B-W 90 degree rotated motherboard mount, and is not fugly like the Raven2.

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD5 I like the improved southbridge cooling over the UD3R.

CPU: Intel i7-965 3.2GHz 4C/8T 1366 Engineering Sample (already own)

Heatsink: I haven't decided if I want to go with air or water cooling. The Corsair H50 looks nice, and I hear they have a H70 coming out soon.

RAM: OCZ 3x4GB DDR3. This allows me to go full 24GB down the road if I see fit. I haven't decided what speed DDR3 yet, but I think Ryder said I only need 1600?

Video: No clue yet, but something along the lines of GTX460/HD5850. This will be the last component I buy since prices will be lower in a couple months, and then maybe the 5870 will be decent price. Also if I decide to go triple display or not.

HDD: 1: 60|64-120|128GB SSD for Windows/Programs/Games.
2: Western Digital VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX 600GB for saved files/swap file/projects/caches. (600GB is $10 more than 450GB, both of which are the new SATA 6.0Gb/s)
3: 1TB HDD for dump/downloads/etc (already own)
4: 2x1.5TB externals for backups (already own)

PSU: haven't decided. Will wait to see what all components I get and determine if my PCP&C 750w will handle it.

DVD: One of those SATA ones heh, since all I have now are 3 IDE ones.

OS: Windows 2000 mofo! (j/k, no really)

I think that covers it for now. Like I said this will be built over several months when budget allows, but hopefully I'll get it all done by Xmas

comments are welcomed and encouraged, at your own risk

muddocktor

Hey Fatcat, here's my take on some of the components for ya.

Case - Nice case, but I think not ideal if you want to go with a loop in it. Looks to me like you would have problems mounting a 120.3 radiator inside without losing the hard drive cages at the bottom. And an i7 965 heat monster really needs a 120.3 for quiet cooling. You could cool it with a 120.2 rad, but would need something optimized for higher airflow, noisier fans such as a Hardware Labs Black Ice GTX. It's very easy to get over 200 watts of heat out of an i7 overclocked to around 4 GHz. Other than that, Silverstone makes some damn fine cases and if you air cool it you should be good to go.

Motherboard - Good choice, heard good things about that board and the UD3R.

Cooling - I have been testing the H50 and I've found that out of the box it isn't up with the high end air solutions on the market. You can get it to perform like high end air, but you are going to have a nosier setup because you will need higher cfm fans to get the performance of high end air. I will be testing the H70 in the near future, as soon as Corsair gets one to me for testing. From what I've read, the radiator on it is a bit thicker and also they have it set up with a dual fan push-pull setup from the factory. I found that with the H50, a push-pull setup helped quite a bit, especially with lower cfm, quieter fans. For high end air, I would highly recommend any on the 6 heatsinks in my recent review, but the NH-D14 closely followed by the good old TRUE Rev. C were at the head of the pack. The only thing about the Noctua is the fact that you can have interference with tall ram heatspreaders, but that can be worked around also.

Ram - No experience with OCZ DDR3 but they generally make some decent ram products.

Video card - Sounds like you have a very good plan, by holding off for a couple of months. AMD will be coming out with their next gen "6000" series very soon, which should drop prices on the 5850 and 5870 vid cards and I also imagine that Nvidia will be forced to drop pricing on the GTX460 cards too.

PSU - Is that a Silencer 750 you have? If so, you should be good to go unless you with multiple high end vid cards like SLI GTX480 or Crossfire 5970 card, a 750 watt psu should be plenty.

fatcat

thanks for the input mudd

honestly, I don't want to spend more than the $80 for cooling (what the H50 costs), so if the best I can do for that amount is a thermalright cooler than I am perfectly happy with that. I use the True 120 on my Q6600 now and it does just fine. if the H70 shows to be "OMG Awesome" and costs slightly more than the H50, we'll see about the options then

this is the PSU I currently have, Silencer 750 Quad (Black) gives me 60A on the +12v

Thrax

The cheap, self-contained water coolers are no better or worse than the good air coolers. The only merit to the former is noise.

fatcat

Thrax wrote:

The cheap, self-contained water coolers are no better or worse than the good air coolers. The only merit to the former is noise.

agreed. I run the 120mm Scythe fan on my Thermalright 120U at ~1500rpm. I can hear my GPU fan over it.

muddocktor

If you already have a TRUE, just buy yourself the LGA1366 (rev. B) mount for it. You might get a degree or 2 better with the TRUE Rev. C or the NH-D14, but it won't let you overclock any more. And that S-Flex fan is a great choice for it too. That will save yourself some money right there, recycling your old heatsink. As for the H50, as it comes from Corsair, it isn't as good as your TRUE setup. You have to spend more money and replace the stock fan with 2 better fans for push pull. I can't say how the H70 will perform yet, but it's selling for over $100, so that's out of your budget range.

And that Silencer is a good psu; you should be good to go with it.

fatcat

I would recycle the True 120U if it wasn't gonna sit happy on the Q6600 in another PC

SVC has a nice selection of heatsinks. Any preference over the Thermalright MUX-120 Black VS. Thermalright True Black Rev. C VS. Thermalright U120E-BP Rev. C VS. Thermalright Venomous X ? I like Noctua, I've used their heatsinks before, but I want to avoid covering any RAM slots

Did find this on the H70 http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/corsair_h70/4.htm looks like the H70 beat the Thermalrights by 1 degree overclocked load, but still lost to the Noctua NH-D14

muddocktor

The MUX 120 is for LGA1156 and you would have to buy the LGA1366 mounting hardware to use it. Otherwise it's just like the Cogage True Spirit (Cogage is a subsidiary of Thermalright, BTW) and should be an effective heatsink. And Sidewinder is beating SVC on the TRUE black pricing by around $8 too. Honestly, all the TR products based on the Ultra 120 basic design are a very good choice. And I include the Venomous X in that group as it's IMO just a modification of the TRUE design with a different heatsink shape (not bowed in like the TRUE). And I actually found just slightly worse performance compared to my TRUE Rev. C with the same fans installed. As for the NH-D14, it's expensive, but it also includes 2 fans too, so if you figure that in it's not much more than the TR products. As for the tall heatspreader issue; that's not a big problem. With the way Noctua designed the fan clips, it's easy to offset the fan a little to clear the ram. On my P6T test system the front fan on the D14 overhung the first ram slot. And that's not a big problem; just remove the fan if you need to remove that stick of ram. I really like the quiet performance of the NH-D14, but it's a big honkin mofo.

fatcat

What's a good thermal compound to get? I'm about out of AS5.

mertesn

OCZ Freeze

muddocktor

I really like the Arctic Cooling MX2 myself. It works very good (better than AS5 IMO), doesn't dry or pump out and is very easy to apply and remove. Since I started reviewing heatsinks I have switched to using it all the time. Plus you can get a bigg ass tube of it for around $30 shipped from Sidewinder.

fatcat

I'm bad at this game.

Sorry for any updates, but I'm finally starting to get parts next Friday. I'll post here what I get, as some things have changed

fatcat

$239 Silverstone Fortress FT02B-W



$79.99 Noctua NH-D14

fatcat

as of right now motherboard is on hold due to possible bad batch of UD3R's|UD5's. AMD 6870's KEEP RISING in price (they had to pay Thrax and Lynx's paychecks) and a 12GB kit of OCZ Ram seems to be non-existent (at price I want)

also I'm waiting for the OCZ Revodrive to drop in price....

Thrax

Great HSF choice. That's my next buy.

fatcat

Thrax wrote:

Great HSF choice. That's my next buy.

yea I was gonna get another Thermalright, but I already have a U120E. if for some reason the Noctua doesn't work out, I can just get a bracket and use it. Mertesn sold me on the NH-D14

ardichoke

pssh... needs moar copper, less aluminium

Ryder

You want the fins copper? Aluminum dissipates the heat better. Base and pipes are plated copper.

ardichoke

No... no it doesn't. Copper is a more efficient thermal conductor (and dissipator) by far. Solid copper especially so as any time you transfer between materials or between non-solid blocks of the same material, you lose thermal efficiency.

fatcat

ardi, read this http://www.overclockers.com/premium-heatsink-shootout/

muddocktor did comparisons, the Noctua even beat the Thermalright Copper heatsink (not by much, but still)

MAGIC

Thermalright silver arrow is better.

fatcat

MAGIC wrote:

Thermalright silver arrow is better.

The review I looked over had this:

Noctua Idle: 23C Load: 75C
Thermalright Idle: 24C Load: 74C
Using 1750rpm Scythe fan

so, yea I guess it is better

Thrax

1. HardOCP placed the Noctua ahead of the Silver Arrow by a degree or two celsius.

2. More copper? Sure, if you want thicker, less efficient fins; less fins per cubic centimeter; a radically heavier heatsink; and astronomical prices. Copper is just a bad choice for today's CPUs.

ardichoke

That's funny... because my all-copper heatsink keeps my Phenom II X4 at under 60c under full load even when ambients are creeping up during the heat of summer.

Snarkasm

And my Megahalem keeps my overclocked i7 920 under 55C under full load even when ambients are creeping up during the heat of summer.

What was your point again?

ardichoke

I'm sorry, the numbers I posted were off. I'm currently running at 43c, full load. I rarely break 50 even in the heat of summer.

Of course this is all secondary to the fact that I was trollin in the first place and let myself get caught up in the trollback.

fatcat

System so far...

$239 Silverstone Fortress FT02B-W
Owned Intel i7-965 Engineering Sample
$79.99 Noctua NH-D14
$299 G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 24GB (6x4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1600 (PC3 12800)
$149 OCZ Vertex 2 2.5" 90GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

so, I'm getting there.

Couple things: was only going with 12GB RAM orginally, which was $269. As you can see I got 12 more GB's for $30.
I know most people say 60|64GB SSD for Boot|OS, but this was on sale and gives me some padding

fatcat

CORSAIR HX 850 Watt Modular power supply
Lite-On 24X DVD+R SATA Burner
ARCTIC COOLING MX-2 Thermal Compound

added to sytem. I decided I wanted a modular PSU to make my case look all cable management hotness, and the Corsair HX850 has $40.00 off on the egg right now.

I promise build pics when I have all the parts

muddocktor

Looks like you are getting together a damn nice system, fatcat.

ardichoke, I think the TRUE series doesn't benefit from an all copper implementation because it just runs into design limits in the heatpipe arrangement. They got better results with the mild redesign of the fins on the Rev. C model than going with all copper build of the original design. I think that if TR had spread the heatpipes around more in the fin structure on the TRUE Copper they would have made it more efficient or if they had done the cutout in the middle of the fin structure and increased the distance between the fins like they did the Rev. C it would have made more of a difference. I like the way they have spread the heatpipes out on the new Archon heatsink they came out with. I haven't tested it yet, but I plan to test it in the future, even if I have to buy it. I just finished testing the HR-02 and I am amazed at the performance of it in passive only mode as well with low cfm fan config. I was even able to cool a 930 @ 4.0 with it totally passive and just using the case fans for airflow. And that's over a 200 watt heatload running passive on the heatsink. I'm presently writing the review up on the HR-02 and hope to have it finished in a week or 2.

fatcat

thanks mudd.

just have the motherboard and video card left to get. might have the system running by the end of the year. (this system started back in March when I got the Intel i7 off Ryder)

muddocktor

Which way are you leaning on those? I have the vanilla P6T and the P6X58D Dlx and both are decent, but aren't sterling bclock overclockers from what I've seen so far. At least the P6T isn't; haven't really pushed the bclocks on the P6X58 yet.

As for the vid cards, are you holding out to see what Cayman brings to the table? Personally I am hoping it is a rude surprise to nVidia, so prices drop on their offerings. I rather nVidia because I have had less driver problems in the past, but that might not hold true in today's market. I haven't bought an ATI/AMD card since the X1950 Pro cards. I'm also looking to get a new vid card in the coming months too. I recently got the benchmarking bug after going to a benching party in Tyler Tx and that sure was fun, playing with LN2. Nothing like seeing your proc running well over 5 GHz and temps in the -150 C region. And getting some absurdly low wprime and other 2d scores.