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Chicken or the egg?

D

Dr.House

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 24, 2006
Messages
107
To get into watercooling I will have to spend about $400.00 or more to get the best components available. At that time I am purchasing a new system consisting of an AMD 64 X2 3800 and a DFI Lanparty Ultra-D MB, 2 gig of mushkin pc4000 ram, and a 7900gt..maybe a gtx, and TT Armor case. Counting misc. expenses like fans,HDD and other accesories. This will put me to around 1500.00 - 1800.00.

Reasons for watercooling.
1) definately not to be cool and show off
2) lower noise, thats nice but I've lived with 92mm vantec tornado blasting for years so also don't really care.
3) overclocking ability.. this is probably the most important thing for me to get out of watercooling.

Now given the above, and I don't know how the SLK-120XP performs. let me ask this question.

Would I be better off going with the above and overclocking the CPU, or should I spend $2000.00 to get a 4400+ toledo, a DFI SLI expert, same ram, same case, and 2 7900gts in sli or maybe 2 7900gtx..2,000-2,400

when I add it all up the $200.00 difference is a small one between $1,800 & $2,000 but will the performance match. I guess I am trying to gain the $2,000 performance or better by choosing the watercooling route instead of going stock clocks with the rated hardware or the best it can do on air.

I'm not in the habit of upgrading everytime something new comes out unless it's been a few cycles and/or is very revolutionary.

Would really like to hear some thoughts, surely others have had a similar dilema before.

Thanks in advance.
 
Swifttech Apex Ultra $260 excellent reviews and comes with everything you need for cooling the CPU.

The only place I can find it in stock is :

http://www.svc.com/h20-220-apex-ul.html

I ordered one yesterday, I'm also getting the vga and chipset coolers.
 
Thanks for the reply, but I am quite aware of that. I am not asking for a cheaper watercooling solution. I am asking if the watercooling is worth it lieu of better hardware from the get go in attempts to get by with overclocking less rated hardware. The money to be spent is very close to purchase a storm rev2/ liang pump,etc and lesser rated cpu/video card , that could be used to purchase a higher rated cpu and 1 or even 2 higher rated graphic cards. If in the end the overclockability from watercooling doesn't even out to the performance of a higher rated cpu/graphic card in the end, why spend the money on the watercooling... Sure it's nice and I want to get into it. But in the end performance is really what matters, I'm not building a PC to have sweaty night fantasies about..well maybe.. but if It can't handle something like Oblivion after spending $2,000.00 that would be failure. and thusly I am asking for advice. I really can't afford to buy parts every other month.
 
Skimp on anything you want, but my advice is to get the best memory you can afford. Water cools the CPU and GPU. And chipset, if you so desire. Which leaves the memory. DDR2 is supposed is be relatively cool (?), but without adequate ventilation, or just plain cheap memory, I think your limiting factor with be this.

Just my opinion.

Anyone, I am right, or I am all wet?

Jim
 
If you're lucky you should be able to get that processor to 2.5-2.6ghz on water. That's fast. A 7900gt is also fast. Really, I'm sure you could skip the WCing and run 2 7900's in SLI, but you're still looking at something a lot more expensive than a WCing solution. Running in SLI will probably get you higher performance in games no doubt, but that's really not the point. Water Cooling isn't all about performance. If you want performance, skip Water and buy a phase change unit. That'll let you get that CPU well over 2.8 if you're lucky. Realistically, dual GPUs in SLI will be better in oblivion than Watercooling everything. It'll be loud, not very cool to look at, but it'll be faster.
 
I'm kind alike you too.. I wanna save money yet have something a fast as anything (normal) you can buy pre-built. A water cooling system can be moved to a new computer when it's time to upgrade again (and get a slower rated chip to o/c it again). You just may have to get a new water block of you change the type of procesor you are using. So it's an investment that can outlive your current computer. That's not something you can say about a new CPU - in two years it's sadly outdated but the water cooling sytem won't be.
I see the watercooling system to be the best investment in your computer you can make as it won't ever be obsolete.

Not to mention it's SO much quieter.
 
Arcygenical said:
If you're lucky you should be able to get that processor to 2.5-2.6ghz on water. That's fast. A 7900gt is also fast. Really, I'm sure you could skip the WCing and run 2 7900's in SLI, but you're still looking at something a lot more expensive than a WCing solution. Running in SLI will probably get you higher performance in games no doubt, but that's really not the point. Water Cooling isn't all about performance. If you want performance, skip Water and buy a phase change unit. That'll let you get that CPU well over 2.8 if you're lucky. Realistically, dual GPUs in SLI will be better in oblivion than Watercooling everything. It'll be loud, not very cool to look at, but it'll be faster.
Click to expand...

I'm just wondering where you're getting these numbers for a watercooled Dual-core, and a phase cooled dual-core. Because they seem pretty low. I'd say that 2.8-2.9 would be a good goal to shoot for with water, maybe a little higher. As for phase, if you get an X2 with an LDBHE stepping, these seem to handle cold temps the best. With one of these, you might be able to get 3.1-3.2 on a good single stage.
 
Just priced the following.

PNY Geforce 7900 GTX 512mb 499.69
DFI LAN Party UT Nforce4 Ultra-D 119.99
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 1mb cache 458.00
2x1gb DDR500 Mushkin XP 203.62
WD SE 250 SATA3G 16MB cache 7200rpm 96.90
TT Armor case 160.00
total: 1,537.20

So add 400 on to that for watercooling, or get a DFI expert and another 7900gtx for SLI for $200.00 more.

I'm not planning on buying this today or tommorow, probably summer june/jully/august. I could buy it now but I'm hopeing prices will come down some more.

Do you think the 7900 GTXs will come down a bit in price? they are going to kill 7800 in price, all the r-stores are just banking on people not knowing the 7900s are out and still paying full for the 7800s. Processor might come down in price but not much I don't think maybe $20.00 at best? Memory will probably stay the same price, unless DDR2 drives the prices down, hard drives might get a larger size for the same money but otherwise price will remain the same.Watercooling gear will for the most part remain the same price.

So I can hope the M2 processors make the X2's & memory cheaper.

Gaaaaaaaah head is going to explode... at this rate I'll spend another year on an AGP MB. I've started saving up for this, but now that I have the money I don't want to spend it.
 
Well if you can afford the latest processor then you can probably afford a good watercooling system. If your like the rest of us you want something a little extra for your money and I love buying $2-300 CPU's and making them run like high end processors. :D
 
I'd say the watercooling before the parts. Seeing how AMD is coming out with all new stuff in less than 3 months, prices will drop. A lot. New socket, ram, etc.

I know how wonderful it is getting cheap parts and making them run like high-end parts. I overclocked my Opteron to 2.8 ghz, and it runs like a dream.
 
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