My system needs help!!!

S

Spirit289

Guest
I am building a new system and I would like some input. I still have not decided on a PSU or a cooler for my processor. Any help is appriciated.

My Goal: Silence, temperture controll and great gaming capability

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester
2x Crucial PC3200
Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT
Maxtor MaXLine III 250GB 16mb cache
Antec P180 Case
PSU ???
CPU Cooler ???

Am I missinig anything?
 
On the Atari boards, they keep on recommending Antec and Enermax for PSUs.
I've seen reviews on anandtech or tom's hardware where they said those PSUs were within the specified voltages. So, that's important to me.

I did read that Antec has gone to crap lately on the Anandtech forums. I also read the same thing on the Atari forums. I know some Enermax noisetaker PSUs (blue models) have dual rails while the silver Enermax models have a single 12V rail. Don't quote me on that because it's just what I've seen. I haven't checked all the models. Anyway, I can tell you my Enermax noisetaker is very silent.
 
A nice XP90 heat sink from thermalright, some artic silver 5 thermal compound, and a antec stealth 92mm silent fan and you should be in business. Very quite with a case on, and the temps will keep very cool.

You did'nt mention anything about price, so ill just throw out a suggestion.

Have you looked into PC Power & Cooling PSU's? They are made really nice. on their website, pcpowerandcooling.com they have a PSU selector. Go through it, and it should select what you need. I think something like this would be what you want.

its a 100$us 470watt (520watt comparible) silencer PSU.
http://www.pcpowercooling.com/products/viewproduct.php?show=S47ATX

Might be worth a look. Other then that, I'm sure you know to have silent fans on your case (which might require you to replace any pre attached fans) to make it as quite as possible.

~Hope this helps, and keep us posted.
 
If you're not concerned about price, drop a PC Power and Cooling Turbo Cool series PSU into it. Some of the best PSU's out there. As for silent cooling, pick up a nice water cooler. :) They make some pretty quiet pumps.
 
For the PSU I would go with a Seasonic and I would get the Zalman 7700Cu heatsink, if you don't need swappable fans, if you do the XP90 &XP120 are an excellent choice.

I have the Seasonic S12-600 PSU and the 7700Cu in my system (listed in sig) and it is cool and silent. Looking at my system stats, my room temp is 22C and my processor is at 28. Here is the thing that makes it so silent, the fan on my 7700Cu is spinning at around 880rpm and the Seasonic fan is spinning at around 1000rpm. I have the temp for having my CPU fan spin up set to 52C (the lowest setting for the motherboard) I have let Prime 95 run overnight on the maximum heat setting and my processor only got up to 40C. I can't get this processor hot enough to get the CPU fan to spin up to full speed.

I love my setup, this is the first time ever that I had a cool and quiet PC that stayed cool and quiet even under 100% load.

Links for the lazy

7700Cu

Seasonic S12 Series
 
Thanks for the help on teh system. I will let you know how it goes
 
brom42 said:
For the PSU I would go with a Seasonic and I would get the Zalman 7700Cu heatsink, if you don't need swappable fans, if you do the XP90 &XP120 are an excellent choice.

I have the Seasonic S12-600 PSU and the 7700Cu in my system (listed in sig) and it is cool and silent. Looking at my system stats, my room temp is 22C and my processor is at 28. Here is the thing that makes it so silent, the fan on my 7700Cu is spinning at around 880rpm and the Seasonic fan is spinning at around 1000rpm. I have the temp for having my CPU fan spin up set to 52C (the lowest setting for the motherboard) I have let Prime 95 run overnight on the maximum heat setting and my processor only got up to 40C. I can't get this processor hot enough to get the CPU fan to spin up to full speed.

I love my setup, this is the first time ever that I had a cool and quiet PC that stayed cool and quiet even under 100% load.

Links for the lazy

7700Cu

Seasonic S12 Series
Click to expand...


Damn, you keep your cpu at 28C with fans? Those must be some damn magic fans. :) I need to get a damn water cooler, cuz my shit is running too hot for my prefs (48c OC'd under full load).
 
Sieravor said:
Damn, you keep your cpu at 28C with fans? Those must be some damn magic fans. :) I need to get a damn water cooler, cuz my shit is running too hot for my prefs (48c OC'd under full load).
Click to expand...


Huge copper heatsink with 120mm fan + Venice core 3500 + Cool & Quiet + running at stock speeds = cold cpu.

When I'm not under load, cool & quiet reduces my cpu's speed to 1ghz and drops the voltage to 1.075v. This makes about a 3-4C different in temp.

I stopped overclocking in favor of a quiet air cooled machine after I got my 2.4ghz P4 a while back. I guess computers got fast enough to the point where overclocking just doesn't make enough of a difference to me any more.

Here is a screenshot of my stats. The room has warmed up to 25C so it is a little warmer that this mornings post.(I'm always around 6C above room temp) And that fan speed is not a fluke, that is how slow it is going.

Temp.gif
 
brom42 said:
Looking at my system stats, my room temp is 22C and my processor is at 28. Here is the thing that makes it so silent, the fan on my 7700Cu is spinning at around 880rpm.I have let Prime 95 run overnight on the maximum heat setting and my processor only got up to 40C.
Click to expand...

Hm, from the sounds of it, that is another good setup.
Im running my AMD opteron 252 @ 2.6GHz at 100% all the time with an XP90, artic silver 5, and a panasonic panaflo 92mm silent fan.
At a room temp of 28ºC with the case on under 100% load, im at 41ºC. Idle is around 32ºC with same room temps.

I'm sure eaither of these setups would be great for a quite PC.
 
Well I think I just ruined my cool running computer. I just ordered a Athlon X2 4400+. I am going from a 67W processor to a 110W one. :D
 
brom42 said:
Well I think I just ruined my cool running computer. I just ordered a Athlon X2 4400+. I am going from a 67W processor to a 110W one. :D
Click to expand...
What's your temp. now that you upgraded your processor from whatever it was to that 4400+? I recently ordered the same PSU you have (Seasonic S12-600) and look forward to using that in my new computer project. :)
 
Spirit289 said:
I am building a new system and I would like some input. I still have not decided on a PSU or a cooler for my processor. Any help is appriciated.

My Goal: Silence, temperture controll and great gaming capability

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester
2x Crucial PC3200
Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT
Maxtor MaXLine III 250GB 16mb cache
Antec P180 Case
PSU ???
CPU Cooler ???

Am I missinig anything?
Click to expand...

Don't get a winchester. There is no reason to and in some cases the Venice is cheaper!
If you are gonna overclock (only reason that I would get an aftermarket cooling system), you might want to look into the 3000+ Venice for $119 shipped:
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=A64-3000BP
If not OCing, find a good price on the 3200+.

O yeah, and if you are OCing, get a DFI. The DFI nf4-DAGF is $92 on Newegg, and has all the OCing features that DFI has come to be known for.

I would get the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 version of that HDD. It will be about $20 cheaper, and who really cares about a 3 year old hdd? The only difference is a 5 year warentee. I think we'll all be running terabyte HDDs in 5 years, maybe even in 3. So, get the DM10 7200.16 from www.ZipZoomFly.com, definitely NOT Newegg. Newegg has horrible HDD shipping policies.

I would spring for a 6800GT, or even a 7800GTX.
On www.MonarchComputer.com, there is a X800XL for $250 (The next step I'd take above the 6600GT, but mind it's a big one)
On www.Newegg.com, there's a 6800GT for $296 (XFX).
And finally check the [H]otdeals section here for a cheap 7800GTX (like $530-540 I think).

For PSU I'll have to agree with the Seasonic. You can get the Seasonic S12-500 for $105 at www.Case-mods.com and the S12-600 (which you don't need imho) for $130.

CPU cooler. Can I persuade you to go watercooling? For a very good CPU and GPU cooling system it will run you about $270, including RAMsinks and fans for the rad. Just check out the thread in my sig and follow the links. I wouldn't buy anything else in my budget range than what's listed in that thread. If you only want to cool CPU (now why would you do that?), take off $55.

Nice case.

For all of your fans (except maybe the ones that come with your case), I would get Panaflo M1A and L1A (medium and low) sizes. If you do a froogle you should be able to find them all for $10-14.

And don't forget some AS5 or AS Ceramique. They are pretty much the same, but Ceramicue is a little more expensive but won't short out your circuits if you get it where you aren't supposed to.

Did I miss anything?
 
^ That's great info., Russ! :cool:

Do you think the $50 premium is warranted for the 6800GT (PCI-e) over the X800 XL (PCI-e)?
 
yes.

And if you don't want to go watercooling, search newegg for a Thermalright XP-90 ($27-37, I can't remember which). And buy a fan for it. Panaflos are good. (The thread in my sig has a link to cheap panaflos under the "radiator" part of the watercooling section.) This will give you very good cooling. The only way you'd see a very noticable difference over an XP-90 would be to go watercooling.
 
I am still trying to round up all the parts, (low on money right now). But, thanx again for the help. :)
 
Russ said:
yes.

And if you don't want to go watercooling, search newegg for a Thermalright XP-90 ($27-37, I can't remember which). And buy a fan for it. Panaflos are good. (The thread in my sig has a link to cheap panaflos under the "radiator" part of the watercooling section.) This will give you very good cooling. The only way you'd see a very noticable difference over an XP-90 would be to go watercooling.
Click to expand...
Oops, I never saw your reply. I got my system up and running back in Aug. and I decided to use stock cooling ... for now.
 
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