[jclark]

OK here is the system I am putting together (* denotes already in hand)

*Case: Lian Li PC76; Man, this is one NICE case, very well built looks great, PLEANTY of room. I installed Melamine 13/32 foam tiles to cut the HF fan noise. Yes it adds to heat build up BUT..

*Cooling: 6- 92mm Enermax adjustables, 2- 120mm Enermax adjustables. Should be plenty of air flow

*Power Supply: Antec True control 550

*Digital Doc 5+ for monitoring temps and fans

*Lite CDRW 52x

*Monitor: Diamond Pro 2070SB-BK

Hard Drives: 2-WD Raptors 10k SATA configured as bootable RAID 0 off the ICH5R
1- Seagate Barracuda 120G IDE. For mass storage and back up using True Image

Planning on disabling the Promise chip and running the Seagate off the ATA100 IDE from the ICH5R. I have been told the promise is SLOW & despite its 150 SATA /133IDE the I will still get better performance off the ATA100. True? Don’t know
====

Now here is where I still have some decisions:

Processor Cooling: Zalman CNPS7000 CU- Seem to be the coolest out there (in more ways than one)

North Bridge: Thermaltake Tiger 1

Mother board: ASUS P4C800-E or ABIT IC7-G. Both very good boards but I lean towards ASUS

Memory: OCZ PC3700 512MB (2 sticks). Would rather have Corsair but their PC3700 latencies are big. Planning on some serious over clocking & don’t want the memory to be the limit!

Processor: P4 3.0- No multiplier is just too high & ditto on the 2.8. So that leaves me the 2.6 or 2.4. Leaning towards the 2.6

Video: ATI 9800 128 pro

Well that’s about it, Any thoughts & feedback would be welcome

[Skiing Squirrel]

A few notes for the cooling:
Make sure you have plenty of cooling for the harddrives, because I hear those raptors get pretty warm. I also say go and look and see which chip is the best overclocker. Just because it is a high chip doesnt mean it will overclock high. Other than that, I think you will have one hell of a system. Good luck.

[jclark]

Thanks for the reply

Yes, I was expecting the Raptors to get hot. A nice feature on the P76 case if that it has 4 intake fans that blow directly acrocc the 3.5 drive bays. In addition to that, I am planning on 2- 3.5 HDD coolers to be installed (one under each Raptor)

[Icarus]

If you have that much money to burn, why not get a 2.8C (big price diff, negligible performance diff. ) and get water cooling setup instead? In that case, you probably won't need to worry about noise in the first place.

[jclark]

I have a problem with water and my PC. Would have continious bad dreams of springing a leak.

From what I have seen on others OC P4's (I know a lot of is luck of the draw) it looks the 2.8's max out CPU clock before they hit the limit on FSB. It seemed many 2.6's could get the CPU up the sme point as 2.8 but with a higher FSB due to the lower multiplier

[fiji]

ok my suggestions

go with the corsair, they are quality stuff

go with the p4 2.4 its the best OCER


dont go with the zalman HS

go with a sk-7, slk-800, slk-900

those would be my choice


9800 looks pretty sweet

i cant really comment on the motherboards, because i mainly keep up to date on only the AMD stuff

[jclark]

Was totally unaware of Thermalright.

The slk-900 looks like a good performer & its lighter than the Zalman. Need to do some more reading.

What don't you like about the Zalman 7000?

[ady]

This is what I'd get although I'm just going on what I've read and not from experience:

IC7-G seems to be the board to go for.

2.4C is the preferred choice for OC'ing although that could be down to cost. 2.6C doesn't seem to get mentioned a great deal. It has also been suggested that all the chips are the same just with different multipliers hence you see the same OC results from all, around 3.25 - 3.5gig.

Corsair PC3700

SLK900 although stock cooling seems to be sufficient for most.

[Icarus]

Originally posted by jclark
Was totally unaware of Thermalright.

The slk-900 looks like a good performer & its lighter than the Zalman. Need to do some more reading.

What don't you like about the Zalman 7000?

The SLK-800 is slightly more efficient than the Zalman, although the catch is that you need a relatively powerful fan for that (power fan = noise). If you don't intend to overclock much, I would recommend the Zalman simply because it generates virtually no noise, and is de facto one of the best coolers out there. I have a Zalman and I love it.

[Skiing Squirrel]

I have an old ax-7 from thermalright. I can personally vouche and say that this thing cools my chip very well. The heatsink I am using is several generations behind, and I hear the slk-900 is amazing.

[stan03]

if you decide to get the zalman make sure it fits on your motherboard (check thier website)

[BaldHeadedDork]

Not a bad setup. I would also recommend Corsair XMS (or Mushkin Level 2 Black) over OCZ. Their claims are not as good as OCZ but they consistently outperform everything else.

Proc to proc I like the 2.6 better than the 2.4 for overclocking. But you're paying $50 more for another 100MHz. Your call.

I have a Mitsu 2060u and love it. But I've heard some bad owner reports on the 2070u. I personally would go with the Viewsonic P225FB (black) right now.

Your fan list is overkill. You could probably use three or four 92's and one 120 and run only one or two degrees hotter than six and two.

You will get better performance running your RAID array off the ICH5R. But your stand-alone drive will perform equally well on either the Promise S-ATA or Intel ATA100 IDE0 or 1 channels. And if you are only going to be using that drive for media storage and file backup, it will be understressed in the first place.

And finally, I'd choose a Sparkle/FPS 450 (more than enough power for your rig) and a Plextor CD-RW over a True Power 550 and Lite-On every day of the week.



BHD