7 replies to this topic

[eRoC]

a most excellent IBM-compatible...

well my moldy rig is going on 2 years now, and may well have to last another 2! Once I build a rig I tend to keep it forever, hence the beloved socket 939 media center PC hooked to my TV. But now, after overclocking my pedestrian Q6600 from 2.4 to 3.6 on air, for years, my crucial ballistix started farting out BSOD's, and my network performance was crap- ola. Whats a brother to do? Why purchase 4 gigs of shiny blue G Skill Ram, thats what mother f*ckers. G Skill is legendary RAM, I dont need to tell you what you already know. My woes instantly vanished, while I was hoping to wrangle just a few more Mhz out of my battered CPU, the b*tch just wont put out past 3.6 no matter what. (1.7 volts!)

having long abandoned the miserable on board lan for a Linksys PCI card, I upgraded this part to a PCI-express x1 intel based card. The drivers are awesome. They integrate into the windows shell giving you more options than I personally need (jumbo frames!) You can even "SLI" these things by joining them together in a "Team" , although I doubt it would actually help. If anyone has advanced networking skills please talk to me on vent, I need to pick your brain. In any event while my ping didnt go down, my choke/ loss definately improved (especially on full servers) Overall gameplay seems smoother, even if its all in my head im running with it.

So since im going to run this b*tch into the ground until it blows up, and show it no mercy, the only logical thing to do is liquid cooling. I have a box of parts from a previous socket A adventure and am planning something two stage, one separate loop for the CPU and another for the video card.


check out my junk:

Q6600 @3.6 1.55v cooled by Zalman
Gskill 4GB 5-5-5-15 1.8v
Biostar p35 motherboard (meh)
9800 GX2 @ 750/1100 (shaders linked)
M-Audio soundcard (VIA envy chip-awesome)
Sennheiser HD 485 Headset (made in Germany vs. made in China... yeah...)
Intel NIC
PC Power + Cooling 610w
Various Seagate hard drives (lots of haterz.. Ive been using seagate for 12 years with no problems of any kind)

hanns-G 22" @ 1680x1050
Logitech peripherals

various lighters, smoking devices, fire arms and such.

[Chilly]

Nice set-up, I haven't heard of G.Skill RAM till about a couple months ago lol. Keep us posted on your liquid cooling =)

[eRoC]

Eroc, i know you know your sh*t for the most part, but you're giving the worst advice ever right there

best quote ever


G Skill is good stuff, they started out as a sort of bargain brand but they really put out a good product for next to nothing. Corsair has this pretty cool new water cooling rig for CPU's:

http://www.newegg.co.......amp;x=0&y=0

its an enclosed loop system, kind of bland but supposedly decent performance.. the GPU needs a custom water block from Danger Den, and those are super expensive. But it does cool the gpu, video ram, mosfets and voltage regulators just in case you were wondering.

[Chilly]

In some reviews, the Corsair H50 outperforms the Thermalright TRUE 120 in some cases, such as a Push & Pull fans on the radiator of the H50's :)

[DarkShadow]

I never said anything bad about G.Skill, it's alright valueram, but what I was saying was that most waterblocks that are under the $100+ pricepoint don't cover the VRM's and it leads to terrible temps.

seems like you could do some good with the setup though.

[wondergod]

if you do water cool I have a Dtek Fusion v2 with the Quad Core insert just collecting dust. These things were beastly on Q6600's. Let me know and you can have it for just shipping cost as I have no use for it. I'll have to clean it up though.

Ya G.Skill is the Best value ram out there, second I'd have to say is A-Data. However G-Skill is slowly venturing out of value ram into the high end market, just look at G.Skill Perfect Storm kits and you'll see.

Chilly the reason you just heard about G.Skill is both G.Skill and A-Data started off with only one North American retailer(newegg) so they never got much fan fare...now that they are a staple amongst enthusiast for their price/performance they are getting out there.

The H50 is good for anything but an i7. A single 120 rad, even in push pull, is not enough to take on a OC'd i7, shoot 2x120 rads struggle. Although for a Q66 or a PhII I'm sure it'd be fine, however I wouldn't push a heavy OC with it.

[eRoC]

Hey wondergod thanks for the input.. I will be more than happy to take that sweet waterblock off your hands, just email me a paypal request .

One more b*tch about crucial ram: I bought the ballsitix 4 gig set 2 years ago and had stability problems from the beginning, which were largely of my own making. 2 of the sticks failed memtest so I RMA'd them back to crucial. (after having to personally email upper management to get them to respond to my RMA request) The bastards sent me back my SAME EXACT ram with stickers that said "4-4-4-12 2.2v". No sh*t sherlock! So basically I had to run them at 2.3v (the bios setting delivered 2.24 actual volts to the MB- If I set it at 2.2 it only delivered 2.16) at stock speeds and timings for it to work at all, and even then I would get the random non-boots, BSOD's, and other tragedies. The Gskill only needs 1.8 volts and runs without issues So Far. Needless to say I will be avoiding crucial products from now on.

You can judge a company by how well they respond to RMA requests. One reason I will be an AMD fanboy for life goes back to ancient times when Socket A ruled the land. I scored an Athlon 2600+, the fastest 266 FSB chip that worked with my board. I was certain I could overclock it to 2.4 and was going to stop at nothing to get there. A puff of smoke followed by the dreaded burnt electrical smell confirmed my worst fears- I had fried my beloved chip BEFORE I EVEN RAN A SINGLE BENCHMARK. To make a long story short, after humbling myself by re-inserting a crummy Athlon 1700+, AMD sent me a new 2600+ with a better heatsink than the one I had, even though the incident was entirely my fault. AMD FTW!

moral of the story- always buy a CPU in the retail package, OEM chips have a 30 day warranty thats it.

As for the water cooling, do you think if i got a better 120mm fan and hooked it to my fanbus it would help? My understanding is that the fan/radiator does most of the work, so in theory more air going through the radiator fins should equal better performance, with more noise of course..

Edited by eRoC, 26 August 2009 - 10:02 AM.

[wondergod]

Well it depends on the Radiator, sometimes Higher CFM's benefit the radiator other times adding more CFM really isn't worth the small increase in performance to noise ratio. As in half a degree better performance for 20db more noise. Have you already got your WC stuff or you still speccing it out? If so what radiator do you have or what are you looking at?

Yes the Fan/Rad is important as it is the part that actually cools the water down. However Water blocks are important in the fact that they are the part actually making contact with the CPU and bringing the heat off the CPU's IHS.

PM me your address and I can do a shipping quote with USPS, I doubt its more than 5-7 bucks...