Information overload, just have to ask some questions...

...or fishing for suggestions!

I have been researching hardware for the past two months to build my new PC. It has to be watercooled, as this computer will be a digital audio workstation, and a silent computer is going to be key.

<about two days ago>
I was reading on a few audio production forums that dual processors are very nice to have when working with software, such as Cubase, as many versions of such software are optimized for dual processors. Crap...back to the drawing board, as I now look for dual proc mobo's...
</about two days ago>

I discovered this forum yesterday (been roaming around and reading many of the forums for about two weeks now), and it seems like the MSI K7D Master is the top choice as far as best motherboard. But my burning question now is, will watercoolers be difficult to fit on this motherboard? What other motherboards would everyone recommended for my purposes?

What about the power supply? What should I be looking at as options? Again, my primary concern is quiet and stable operation.

(Gee, this is kinda' split between SMP and watercooling...) Thanks in advance for any helpful words!

Watercoolers will fit fine depending on what you get. Personally, I'd go with something that won't break your bank as the K7D won't overclock enough to have to get really aggressive cooling for it. Nice pump, couple of lower line Swifty blocks and the rest is all you'd really need for it.

As far as PSU goes, I have to recommend something fairly high powered with good amperage on the lines. Many do fine with less and would probably be fine for you, but I always recommend at least 500W...and a good one at that, not something terribly cheap. I've got a 500W Enermax, 520W TTGI ala Directron and a generic Achieve 500W. The TTGI is excellent for the price and is almost identical to the Enermax in almost every respect. It would be my #1 recommendation on 500W+ under $100US.

Yeah, you can watercool a dually. The MSI is a good choice, since it has motherboard mounting holes, which many dual boards do not have.

I was watercooling my dual K7D system for about 12 months. No problems whatsoever. The last time I took apart my system for some upgrades, though, I just switched over to air-cooling. It's a little louder, and doesn't run as cool as before, but I'm a hardware junkie that is taking apart my system constantly. Watercooling makes it a little difficult to take apart the system often.

If you're in the market, I'm selling all my dually watercooling gear (even the modified full-tower Antec case.) PM me if you're interested.

Welcome to the forums.

1) Many folks here like the MSI because it is one of the few duals that has nice features to overclock. If you aren't ocing, its still a good board, but not as much to recomend it over other dual boards. I got the MSI, I like it, I overclock, its stable, ROCK ON.

2) If you haven't seen it, 2cpu.com has some good dual info, I like here better.

3) Go check out some of the posts by dual xp jedi, he's new too and folks have given some good parts suggestions, specific powersuplies, etc.

Good luck.

Thanks for the info, everyone (and for the welcome none1). After posting, I headed over to 2cpu.com and soaked up a bit more information and got squared away on a few things. The reason I posted here is because, after perusing the forums for a while, it seems like I always came back here for the competant threads and useful information. I dunno...just like the information I can pull out of this forum, although 2cpu.com still has quite a bit of information, it seems like the rabid overclockers are the ones who have the most skill and experience with the hardware.

I'm not going to be too into crazy overclocking, so stability is the highest concern on my list. I also plan to run a hardware RAID card (Promise FastTrak SX4000) with four HD's (unknown size at this time) in RAID 5. Think I'll have enough room? The Enermax FS-981 appears to be the only thing that will do for me...but I got a question about that case (pushing my luck considering what forum I'm posting in ) Is the front face all aluminum as well?

Final question...it appears that setting up the coolers in series is the way to go. If I go the "mid-grade" cooling route, how many devices could I cool? Would it be OK to cool the two CPU's, GPU and even the chipset, or would this be too much? I'm guessing it all depends on the pump...I woud like to use a D-TEK heatercore, maybe a Pro Core

It's like I'm a kid in a candy store or a toy store...now that I'm in the market again (the last time I researched hardware this intensely and built a computer was back in the Celeron 300A heydays...my what a fun time...) there's so many new toys out there! And mad-crazy powerful technology is still available at dirt-cheap prices. Just gotta' know what to spend your money on!

I got dual celerons OCed to 550 on an abit bp6 board, those were the days. First one on the block to 1 ghz of power.

For the "how many devices" you really should go over to the water cooling forum.

I got ...... conflicting opinons on if a single heatercore could cool down 10 of my procs or not. General consensus was YES, so two procs, a video card, few HDs should all be good. But you should start your own debate anyways.

i'm curious why you want to connect the h2O in series.. with parallel you get cooler water on your parts.

but you also get weakened flow, more tubing and more pain in the butt.

himura-dono said:

but you also get weakened flow, more tubing and more pain in the butt.

Click to expand...

Exactly.

AND .... with good water flow, the water does not heat up much, less than a degree or two from the first proc, so while ya, || may give you cooler water, it won't be much cooler, and || is more of a hassel.

NOT for the SMP board BUT .... if you're using two rads, water going in to them may be real neat to go in ||, the water would go through both rads slower, thus getting even more cooling, so rads in || should be better than rads in serial. But I digress.

I had a dual (@1800 MHz) with two CPU blocks and a GPU block, all hooked up in parallel. The performance was incredible! In my opinion, parallel is the way to go. More tubing and mess is required, though. Overall system flow rate is higher, though, since you don't have each block restricting flow a little more than the last one did. Flow rate through the individual waterblocks is lower, but a lot of studies have showed that higher flow rate through the waterblock isn't always beneficial.

There is no good reason to use two radiators. Overall cooling could only be improved by a degree or two, at the cost of space, money, and complexity.

cmc, you will always be the msi dually god to me, lol. but for all that extra fuss and hassle, i can see why you'd quit watercooling. that'd be a pain in the butt to me, much more than the rad, 2 cpu blocks, chipset and gpu block i have ready to run in serial.

I appreciate the people backing up running stuff in parallel, but I think series is the way to go. I'm not using watercooling for the insane cooling power, I'm using it for the quiet operation. Serial follows the K.I.S.S. philosophy, too.

What if I wanted to cool those four drives via watercooling? Could I split the flow; half to the two CPU's, GPU (and possibly chipset), and the other half to watercoolers on the four drives? OK, this question is getting way out of the context of this forum...just thinking out loud!

Thanks again!

I completely agree that serial watercooling is the easiest. I just believe that parallel is better, though more complicated.