Ive been pricing up a new system, nothing too expensive... just the essentials. Abit IC7 P4c 2.4 Geil pc3500 chieftec dragon 9700pro Thing is im a bit of an overclocker, in fact I cant help myself When Ive overclcoked before Ive never used anything more than the stock hsf. Now Im looking at a water cooling kit. I dont wanna spend too much but from what I can tell the 2.4 P4c is a nice overclocker especially with a cooling kit. What is a good cooling kit to buy, and is it worth getting the chipset cooler too for the extra £30 or so? If my P4a 2ghz is anything to go by an overclock of 3ghz shouldnt be too hard from a 2.4, thing is a cooling kit and chipset cooler is about £180, a 3ghz is about the same as a 2.4 + the cooling kit. What would you do, baring in mind its not supposed to be an expensive doo! I dont think £180 either way is a good deal for an extra 600mhz, esspecially on a comp which will run like a dream anyway. and WOW, look at the 3.2 P4c.... what a bloody rip off! £510! thats summit like $1000! What kind of overclock could you get from a top of the range hsf? Could it equal the cooling kit overclock, relying on the P4c maxing out. Overclocks of 3.6ghz are known from the IC7,2.4 P4c and a cooling kit. Id love to see the 3.2ghz overclock Then theres Vapochill... omg this is turning expensive!
Can someone briefly explain the SATA thing to me. I think I get it but just in case. At the moment ive got one of the 8mb cache western digital ata 100 drives, will this still work in the IC7? And does anyone know of a better overclocking 865/875 board. The board ive got know has strange limitations.... ie you cant change fsbci ratio unless you use the jumpers, but if you use the jumpers you cant up the Vcore. Its not gonna be the same sorta scenario with the Ic7 is it? I was gutted when I couldnt up the Vcore, im sure my P4 2ghz will go further you see (stable as stock at 2.4)
Well, imo, the best air cooling you can get is the Vantec tornado w/SLK-900U, it probably won't beat the best water cooling setup but it's certainly a lot easier to set up, and certainly a lot cheaper. Sure, the noise will be an issue, but you could always get some fan-controlling device and you'll be good to go. Personnaly, I'd be scared to use water in my system I know there's no real risk when you're careful. Maybe I'm like that because I only have one pc and no money: if it goes down, I'm left with nothing. To me, the only reason why you should go to water-cooling is noise. Because you can get extreme cooling from air. Or go with a less efficient fan and put a couple of case fans. I'm sure your hardware will be maxed out before the temps go to high. I'm not really experienced in oc but that's my opinion. Or put 4 Vantec Tornados as case fans
SATA is no more than a bandwidth of 150mb/s .... in theory. ATA 100, as you may know, is 100mb/s. That limit is never reached. I don't think it's worth the money. I don't even think it's worth getting a Maxtor ATA133 over a Western Digital ATA100 !
I dont really care about the noise, Ive already got 3 fans in my comp now, plus I did have a Voodoo 5500 which had another 2 on for each processor. I leave the side off as well. It already sound like a tornado Any ideas on decent heat sinks? I like the sound of the Thermalright slk900 but is it the best?
Actually, the stock P4 heatsink is pretty good. There are some that are a little better, but not likely to be worth the extra money. The SLK-900 is probably the best cooler you can buy before going out on something more radical, but unless you don't have a heatsink already, I'd stick with the stock cooler. Unlike the AMD stock cooler, these are very good, and barely audible. IMO, if you're gonna go for better cooling over the stock P4 cooler, go all the way and get into watercooling or refridgeration. SATA150 holds no advantage over ATA100/133 hard drives performance wise. Due to the limitations of the PCI bus, it wouldn't be able to attain 150MB/s anyway. Future versions of SATA are supposed to have their own "bus" (like what Intel has with the 875/865 and the CSA Gigabit NIC setup), which bypasses the slow PCI bus altogether. Unless you have to have the thinnest cabling you can have without dicing up the IDE ribbons, SATA is not worth it right now. Unfortunately, alot of companies are tossing on alot of SATA ports without a thought for the majority that still use PATA drives. You can use converters, but they run about $20USD a pop, and that can get unnecessarily expensive real quick. If you're looking for a fast SATA drive, Western Digital has 36GB 10,000 RPM SATA drives with an 8MB cache. This drive's speeds are in SCSI territory by doing that. Of course, it's prices start to get in to SCSI-territory as well. If you're looking at a new hard drive, Western Digital or Maxtor are my pics. They both have 8MB cache IDE drives, and that's a good thing.
