Might be building a new SFF rig finally...

mrmylanman

[H]ard|Gawd
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I've been thinking about it for a while, but it looks like I may finally have the financial means to do so. I have a PC-A05 with i7 hardware inside that I am trying to get rid of. It uses a ton of power, and heats my room up bigtime especially in the summer, so I am looking to build a more power efficient rig that should generate a substantially lower heat output :)

Here are the specs that I have so far:

Black Lian Li PC-Q08 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112265
Gigabyte H55N-USB3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128448
Intel Core i5 665K http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115219
Corsair H50 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181010
Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 4GB DDR3-1600 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226103
XFX Radeon HD5770 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150462
Seasonic X650 Gold http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088

Total comes out to $944.93

I have a Western Digital 640GB Caviar Black that I'll reuse as my system drive, as well as a 2TB and 1TB HD that I will use for storage.

My questions are first is the H50 worth it or would I be better served with something like an AXP-140? I would like to overclock but probably not very far. Knowing that I am debating whether I should get a lower model i5 because I know these Gigabyte boards probably can't sustain a huge overclock anyway... Or should I splurge for an i7? I only ask because I know more apps are becoming multithreaded, but I don't think I'll need the power. My PC rarely gets taxed so I figure I should be good with an i5.

Thanks for any insight and advice!
 
I had an axp-140, wasn't satisfied with its results. Replaced it with a Gemin II S and got temps a few degrees lower. But most likely H50 is even better than that.
 
Kazei, I saw that but I have my doubts as to how long that board will last without any cooling on the MOSFETs (unless he figured out a way to do so).
 
I say stick with an i5 but not a dual-core i5. I recommend Core i5 750 instead of the dual core Core i5 661 since more and more games are becoming more quad-core aware.

I would also recommend getting a lower voltage RAM as that Mushkin's being rated at 1.65V will limit overclocking a bit.
 
I say stick with an i5 but not a dual-core i5. I recommend Core i5 750 instead of the dual core Core i5 661 since more and more games are becoming more quad-core aware.

I would also recommend getting a lower voltage RAM as that Mushkin's being rated at 1.65V will limit overclocking a bit.

Actually that is not entirely true. Bit Tech did a test and 2 cores is still pretty much what you need for gaming
 
They're pretty much the same price so why not just go quadcore from the start. It's true that a lot of games only benefit from dual core right now, but as time goes by we're just going to see more games utilizing more cores.
 
Using a dual-core might be a more sensible choice here due power circuitry limitations.

Even you're gonna leave them at stock speed the Dual Core i5 650 is faster for most (but not all) games
 
i would go with 750 if price difference isn't much.
wut power limitation? 650w is a limitation?
then my 580w with oced 750+gtx260 would be not enough lol.
and most ppl with 600w psu with sli/cf would be dying.lol
 
Power limitation on the motherboard, that if you are overclocking, you can't overclock much.
 
Yeah the quad cores won't overclock as much according to most reviews I have seen on most boards. And from what I read at today's tech so far threads are not the limitation in most cases, clock speed is. But I'm not 100% on that, I haven't been keeping up the past month or so lol.
 
The number of phases is the real limitation, there is no space for 10 phase power circuitry or anything fancy like that so overcurrent protection has to kick in early to prevent damage (in the gigabyte H55N, the DFI board is too permissive in this aspect and many users had dead boards)
 
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