[alex]

Haven't quite decided yet (and unlike social I don't win components ...colour me jealous ) just wanted to get some input.

Mobo: Asus P5E3 Deluxe - chatting on a couple of forums i've spoke to a few guys that have achieved, stable, 520mhz fsb's. One even got 540. mmmm......



New X38 chipset apparantly the mutts nadds. But reading up it only appears to offer the benefit of more pci-e lanes over the P35 chipset. Opinions?

CPU: Q6600. Yes I know, i've gone on long and hard about quad core not having a support base of software. But, I've said 'yet' a lot as well. I also reckon 3.6ghz is do-able with the cpu, with that board, especially if it's the new 'GO' revision. But I wouldn't fancy cooling a quad with air cooling at that speed. Opinions?

Case: Thermaltake Mozart.

I'm a sucker for tall cases, too lazy to bend down to the optical drives I guess. Plus I can also get a 7" pop-out screen for the top bay, download some freeware to show various system information on it. Bling, in an understated kinda way.

CPU HSF: Has to be the Tuniq Tower, considering it's a quad. But I'm tempted to go liquid cooling seeing as I'll be oc'ing. Dunno, have to have a think, and check it'll fit on the board with all those heatsinks surrounding the cpu mount (its huge).



Undecided on ram as yet. Opinions?

Got everything else except a Hdd, well, I've got one but it's now in an enclosure. I fancy the Hitachi 1TB but I hear of a new version with slightly faster read times. Plus, the cost . It'd be cheaper just to get two 500's. On that point, what would you do?

[Dave Hybrid]

Can't offer any technical advice but sounds like a beast mate.

Good luck with the build.

[cyberspacegenie]

I dont know what prices are like in the UK but if they are anything like here in Japan, two 500GB drives will work out much better value than one 1TB drive.

I have Q6600 (G0) and a P5K-E board, using the Thermalright ultra 120 extreme and s-flex 1600 rpm fan. Overclocked to 3Ghz no probs at all, even despite super high ambient temps. Ambients have dropped now to about 23c and it idles at about 36c. under orthos load about early 50's now. I reckon I could probably push it to about 3.4Ghz before the temps became prob but only in autumn/winter/spring. In summer ambients were much higher (got up to about 38c in the end). In these ambients it idled in the early-mid 40`s. Running othos with 34c ambient it maxed at 65c. My vcore seems to be higher than most tho, it would only run stable at 1.3volts. Most seem to get it stable at 3Ghz at a lower vcore. I may give it a whirl at 3.4Ghz at the w/e. I'll let you know how it goes if I do.

Overall I'm pretty happy with it, although cant compare performance to a dual (though i dare say not much with current software) since I skipped straight from single to quad, but I can say it eats everything I throw at it for breakfast!

I have read about people getting to 3.6Ghz on air but I think you gotta have pretty cool ambients to do it. 3.4Ghz seems to be an average high overclock on air. Not sure you`ll notice that much of a difference between 3.4Ghz and 3.6Ghz but nice to be able to say you were able to push it that far.

[alex]

Thanks for the input there Cyber (and cheers Dave ).

1.3v on a quad at 3.0 sounds good in my book, I was reckoning about 1.5-1.55v at 3.6 hence thinking about liquid cooling.

Yeah, let me know how you get on if you oc to 3.4, I'd be interested.

Cheers guys.

[cyberspacegenie]

Hi Alex,

I actually ended up giving it a whirl last night. I went to 3.2Ghz Ghz first, but I had to increase the the Vcore to 1.4volts in the bios to get it stable. With fans on full and running orthos temps maxed at about 58c. Ambient 24c.

Then I went for 3.4Ghz (378x9). I had to up the voltage to 1.46volts in bios to get it anywhere near stable. Orthos gave an error after an hour. temps maxed at 65c. I think if I'd I dropped the FSB slightly or increased the voltage then I would have got it stable. I didn't fancy increasing the voltage any further though because of the temps.

Ran Coretemp and TAT to check the temps. For some reason though they read higher in Coretemp than TAT. no idea why. temps I've given are the Coretemp readings.

I think 3.4ish is around the limit for my cpu on air, but I think I got a particularly power hungry chip. Lots of other reports of people getting to 3.4Ghz and even 3.6Ghz on lower voltages. You may wanna take a look at this link to get an idea of what others are getting on both air and water:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=157690

One interesting thing that I noticed while doing the oc was that the Antec spot fan I have blowing on the memory voltage controller and the top of the memory also has a cooling effect on the cpu. I have a fan controller and initially only turned up the cpu fan and the rear case fan (Antec P150) but later turned up the spot fan to see what happened, as well the mobo temp dropping the cpu temp dropped a little too.


I'm running back at 3Ghz now though as I can turn all the fans down to minimum so the computer is almost silent. nice to be able to do that with a quad.

[Thunderer]

From what I could see you are building a powerfull rig.

About the RAM, I would suggest the Corsair, I always had those and never ever had any kind of trouble. You should buy the 2GB dominator which is optimal now-a-days.

About the hard-disk, I myself am building a very high-end rig and am putting 1TB. When asked they told me to buy 2*500GB. This is due to the fact that you would connect them on sata mode (or whatever it is called) and you would get higher speeds. Also when having 2 separte HDD if one goes wrong you would have the other one to use as backup so you would loose nothing.

So, all in all the case a good choice and even the CPU. The mobo seems ok with me.

Hope it helped.

[alex]

Thanks for the input there Cyber, very much appreciated. Gives me an idea on temps/voltages.

I'm leaning toward liquid cooling the cpu. I'm a hater of temps in my pc, rather anal about it actually.

Cheers Thunderer, they're referring to Raid in your case, Upon reading what you've put, raid 0 and 1.

I'm not going to go raid, well, maybe mirror (raid 1) for data-security. Not going Raid 0 (stripe) as the benefits are limited to loading times for games really and even then they're negligable. The downside is if one drive goes you've lost the data on both.

[Krlll]

Opinions?
Only one.
That rig is gonna be so sweet!

[cyberspacegenie]

Let us know how the oc goes when you do it, I'd be interested. I'm now running at 3.2GHz now with fans down and all is well.

I gotta say I do like the look of that case!

[alex]

Originally Posted by Krlll Opinions? Only one. That rig is gonna be so sweet!

Cheer's Krill.

I like understated builds but with the windows I'm getting more and more tempted to 'bling' it up.