Early Upgrades

[CoreGamer]

Alright im overclocking my new rig and its been doing good for about 2 weeks now, but I want to go a bit further. Im getting around 200 Bucks and I want to upgrade some. Here are my thoughts

Plan A) Go Water Cooling

Plan B) Buy 2 Gigs of Ram

Plan C) Upgrade CPU

Ive been havign some temp issues lately which has kept my OC to 3.4 Ghz when I know the chip can do 4 with water. A ram upgrade would also make a big difference in overall speed. Or I could sell my CPU and get one of the new 6xx's.Thoughts?

[Ssetre]

Get a gig-o-ram and a better cooler.

The ram will make a huge difference(compared to the 256mb you have now) and the better cooler will let you get back up to around 4ghz.

[CoreGamer]

What kind of cooler do you reccomend?

[Ssetre]

I bought a Big Typhoon myself... It seems to be the best out there taking turns with the Zalman 9500/Scythe Ninja. But 1c higher on the core isn't going to make any difference to your overclock, but the fact that it mixes the air up over top of those really hot fets and caps. That will help your overclocking, power circuitry at 40c is much happier than powercircuitry at 60c.

I recomend a blow down type though as alot of motherboards are built around the fact that Intel coolers blow down and around the cpu.

For example my AW8-MAX and its silent otes, unless I have a fan sitting there it completely relies on the cpu cooler to push air over all the sinks on the fets, and through the heat pipe assembly cooling the northbridge.

[CoreGamer]

Well, I was getting 45 Idle and 65 Load with thermal throttling that started at 65C, so I had to back down on the OC, thats why I was thinking a simple watercooling setup would be nice ;)

[Ssetre]

If you go water make sure you have a fan moving air around the socket area. Or else you will be getting into a nasty surprise when the power ciruitry starts to overheat and won't let you go any further.

Anywhoo, I think you should upgrade your ram atleast it will give you the biggest kick in the pants.

[CoreGamer]

Ram is pretty cheap so I could probably upgrade that also, im looking at this kit:

http://www.xoxide.com/koolance-aquian-icm-505-silver.html

[Ssetre]

http://www.xoxide.com/vantec-stingray.html

I like the look of this one... Or the TT Big Water I think it is. A guy I know has it and it works pretty good apparently. Its also half the price the rest of the kits.

[3DFlyer]

Avoid kits for watercooling. Most are total junk, but even the decent kits will skimp on stuff like pumps, fans, and rads.

A poor WC setup will only gain you hotter temps than you had on Air. Watercooling is best done by picking each component carefully. Each component must be high quality, and be matched to the rest of thr system (just like the hardware in a computer) or it doesn't work effectively.

Some of the things to watch out for are blocks with clear plastic housings. They will break, craze and crack over time, and when the water gets out, the smoke gets let out of the computer.

Good names are "Storm water blocks", Black Ice Rads, Delta Fans of at least 80CFM, Swiftech MC655 pumps, Tygon tubing.

Go into the Water Cooling section, and do some studying, and read the stickies. Ask questions.

Watercooling is great if you do it right, but if you get poor quality stuff it will actually be worse than air. Some kits are so poor, that your CPU would probably be throttling at idle, and that's no joke. There is some really shi^^y stuff out there. There is also some very high quality stuff. Choose it carefully.

[BigDan3131]

I love my CoolerMaster Hyper 48 Its all copper weighs less than some in its class and is lower profiled too. If you have a side panel fan or dont you could get the 48 which comes with a 92mm fan and put one in the side panel right over the other and just duct that air right to it. That way it gets cold outside air and not recycled hot air.