A couple questions for those of you on-the-ball

[KalGor]

I'm currently looking at setting up a new system.

I wont be able to buy it all out-right, and some of the current system will be getting canabalised. And because of this waiting a little longer before doing the upgrade doesnt bother me too much, I could struggle on with what I'm using for another few months.

What I'm wondering, is if there is anything just around the corner that would be really worth waiting for compared to what's on the market right now.

If not I was thinkin about going with one of the prebuilt/ overclocked bundles here from overclockers, the one with the Rampage II Extreme MB, which leads onto my second question. Will that MB fit in an Akasa Ecplipse alright?

And then what about it fitting into either the Lian-Li PC-P50 or one of the Lancool Dragonlords since I'd quite like to purchase one of those at a later date (love my eclipse, but it's really seen better days - suppose I need to show my cases a lil more TLC!).

From what I've found out those two cases are basically the same, other than one is aluminium and the other is steel, so why is it people tend to lean toward the Lian-Li for aircooling (wouldnt they both be, almost identical)?

 

[JonJ678]

I'd rather have an eclipse than either of those cases, and yes the rampage will fit in an eclipse. I'd personally rather have a UD5 than a rampage too, as Gigabyte have a rather stronger rma reputation than Asus and either board clocks roughly the same. So I suppose we have different tastes.

The graphics card market might be in flux, but I don't believe anything terribly exiciting is due soon for processors/motherboards/ram/psu/cases. SSDs might do something interesting when sata6 is widespread, which should be pretty soon.

edit: steel tends to be better acoustically than aluminium, but aluminium is more popular.

 

[KalGor]

Thanks for your feedback Jon, I didn't think there was anything on the way but always pays to check (GFX cards I'm not too concerned about as I'll be keeping my GTX 275's in SLi for now at least).

Only reason I'm leaning more toward the Asus MB is that there's quite a few posts on here about the Gigabytes having some problem with taking a long time to cold-post when overclocked. I suppose I will have to look into that a little more.

I really have loved the eclipse case, infact I own four in total for our home and office PCs. Mine is just a little worse for wear due to surviving two new houses and all the decorating that came with it! And I don't know, just feeling like something new after all this time.

As for my choice on cases, originally it was out of the Corsair 800D or the Cooler Master ATCS840, both of which apparently do rather poorly on just air (at least that's how it seems after some forum trawling). Which doesn't really suit me, I'd considered trying out water cooling on the new rig but as said in the first post there's just no way I could drop the cash for it off the bat. So the case would have to be capable of decent air cooling in the mean time.

Had seen the Lian-li and Dragonlord mentioned quite a few times on these forums, and after looking into them a little myself was pretty impressed with the features. Of course always open to other peoples opinion, else I would never of posted this in the first place!

 

[Biz.Kid09]

The Coolermaster ATCS 840 is amazing for air cooling...As it is the older better looking brother of the HAF 932 which is amazing for air cooling....
Why do you need the Rampage? Wont a Gigabyte EX58-UDR3 do? Im sure it will reach 4ghz.......
The DragonLord cases look quality and im considering one for my next build......

 

[JonJ678]

The UD3R should hit 4ghz, but you're more likely to make this with the UD5/rampage. Don't have the link at hand, I believe rjkoneill said UD3R tends to make it to 3.8ish. Four ram slots on a triple channel board would do my head in.

The 800D is excellent for air cooling. Some confusion arose over people saying it's excellent for water coling, and people deducing from this that it's crap on air. This is rubbish though, three 120mm fans on the top can't really get air cooling wrong. The only case I'd change my omega for is one I'd made myself or a mini P180. The latter is a bitch to build in (imo) but is beautifully put together. If it's battered (mine is), so be it

My UD5 takes a good 20 seconds to do anything before it posts. I don't care, as so far it has never failed to post. I've set some pretty stupid things in the bios and it just posts with a message that I set silly settings so it's booted using defaults but left my settings untouched in the bios in case I'd like to edit and retry.

Watercooling is excellent. I have no regrets whatsoever moving to it. I bought most things second hand to reduce the cost, and have fitted about as much radiator surface area into my Akasa Omega as possible. If you fancy this in the future, the coolermaster HAF 932, corsair 800d or silverstone tj07 are the favourites. Alternatively get an omega top panel (and maybe front panel) for your eclipse and it'll now hold a 240 in the top for an effective cpu only loop.

However a member here, Hotwired, has set up a build in the antec mini P180 which I think is fantastic and would love to plagerise. It would be using the Asus Gene, which is capable of 220bsck (same if not more than the rampage), has the same friendly bios Asus is famous for and as many pci slots as I can think of a use for. This is using the H50 "water cooler" mounted at the front. Were I building a system now, and didn't want to use water cooling, this is exactly what I would do.

by Hotwired

 

[J.B]

I've gotta get one of those Corsari H50 loops. They are such a good idea!

 

[KalGor]

The Coolermaster ATCS 840 is amazing for air cooling...As it is the older better looking brother of the HAF 932 which is amazing for air cooling....
Why do you need the Rampage? Wont a Gigabyte EX58-UDR3 do? Im sure it will reach 4ghz.......
The DragonLord cases look quality and im considering one for my next build......

Well it's not really a matter of "need" a Rampage, I would just prefer one. I've had a lot of Asus gear over the years and never had any problem (nor with RMAing when I had to on occasion). Yet only two Gigabyte MB which both went faulty. Yes it was bad luck, just in my experience and I'm sure Gigabyte is good stuff but its just personal preference now I suppose.

As I understood it the 840 on air has a problem because one of the top exhausts (the front one) actually pulls out cool air before it's had a chance to do it's business... I could be wrong here, its just what I've read.

The UD3R should hit 4ghz, but you're more likely to make this with the UD5/rampage. Don't have the link at hand, I believe rjkoneill said UD3R tends to make it to 3.8ish. Four ram slots on a triple channel board would do my head in.

The number of ram slots was a bit confusing to me as well!

The 800D is excellent for air cooling. Some confusion arose over people saying it's excellent for water coling, and people deducing from this that it's crap on air. This is rubbish though, three 120mm fans on the top can't really get air cooling wrong. The only case I'd change my omega for is one I'd made myself or a mini P180. The latter is a bitch to build in (imo) but is beautifully put together. If it's battered (mine is), so be it

I thought the 800D was lacking intake to make its air cooling really effective. With that said it IS a cracking case! So many nice features, but then all the big names in cases seem to be throwing in a lot of their own. Looking forward to seeing the nxt gen of cases that have been designed by people paying attention to what people liked on all these comming our way at the moment.

Watercooling is excellent. I have no regrets whatsoever moving to it. I bought most things second hand to reduce the cost, and have fitted about as much radiator surface area into my Akasa Omega as possible. If you fancy this in the future, the coolermaster HAF 932, corsair 800d or silverstone tj07 are the favourites. Alternatively get an omega top panel (and maybe front panel) for your eclipse and it'll now hold a 240 in the top for an effective cpu only loop.

I would like to try out water cooling at some point, though there's nothing to stop me picking up a new case specifically for that reason when I can actually afford to buy the watercooling gear. I'm leaning toward the Dragonlord more and more, simply because for what you get it does seem fairly priced. And at just over £80 if I only use it for the year before switching to something suited to watercooling I wouldn't feel robbed. I'm definately not keeping the Eclipse though, battered isn't the word for the condition it's in. And as I said earlier after having stuck with the same case for so long just fancying a change!

EDIT: Is there anyway of getting in touch with Overclockers to find out when they're expecting an item back in stock? I could have sworn that there was a webnote specifically for that but not seeing it right now (thought could be due to lack of sleep).

Wanting to find out when the Lancool Dragon-Lord PC-K62 might be available again.