After playing around with c2d chips and watercooling and various other components, i am going to be taking the plunge into the realm of watercooling and C2D combined.
My current spec:
Asus P5N32-SLi SE Deluxe
Pentium D 805
rolleyes: ) w/ zalman cnps9500
1gig (2x512) corsair twinx pc6400c5
2x XFX 7600gt xxx edition
Hiper type r 580 modular
I am exceedingly poor, and my main reason for the upgrade is the up-coming release of supreme commander, and quietness...
I am currently quite happy with the gfx, i dont play games on ridiculous resolutions, and the game most graphically power hungry played by me is Quake 4... In the future i shall hopefully upgrade to 1, or 2 8600gt's, but thats a way off yet seeing as they are not released.
Here's the plan i have come up with:
CPU upgrade first. Reason being is that my mobo can take C2D, and this is probably going to give me the biggest performance increase in supreme commander i was thinking of an e6600 rather than the 200fsb versions, because i should be able to clock it higher when i replace my mombo (if i wasn't going to replace my mobo, then i would choose the e4300 as i should be abel to get better clocks with it in this board..)
Next thing to go would be the mobo... its not a bad board, but it's basically pants for clocking a 266fsb version C2D, and thats what i want to do.. So it's going to have to be an nforce 680i or 650i board with SLi... I have no idea of which of these 2 chipsets to go for, or which offers the best performance, bearing in mind that i will be looking to buy as cheaply as possible (more than likely 2nd hand) Which one?
In theory that should conclude my upgrade, but i also want super quietness... the kind of quitness that can be had through WATER! Ignoring the water briefly, the 2 noisyest things in my PC at the moment are the hiper, and my 2 ide hdd's. Going to replace the 2 hdd's with 1 250gig sata, this i have already purchased. This hiper is really pants noisy wise though.. I'm not impressed with it on the 805... at 4ghz and over, any load at all and you can hear the hiper fans spin up and up, and it gets VERY hot, and eventually my computer reboots itself when the fans sound like they are going to 'spin off' not impressed, has to go.. what should i be replacing it with?
Now i will also get rid of the ram and upgrade to a 2 gig kit, but thats not of huge importance to me at the moment, but i am still interested to know what 2 gig kits are recommended?
Now, the fun part... watercooling!
I have a wc kit on an xp-m, this includes: eheim 1250 pump, 120.1 rad, res.. unknown, about 10 inches tall, cylindrical, 2 inches diameter, inavotec socket a, northbridge and gpu blocks.. and plenty of tubing.. not sure of the actual size, looks about 10mm diameter inc the tube thickness. How much of this is re-usable? and what should i be cooling on the new rig? CPU most definately, but would i need it on the gfx/nb/sb? (also bear in mind that the passively cooled 680/650i boards have all these funny heatpipe things going on, wouldn't these be hard/impossible to remove?) ?I am more than happy with the performance/volume of the zalman vf900's on the 7600gt's so i doubt i'll need to bother.
To summerise:
1) Is this a good upgrade path
2) Which parts would you recommend?
3) How much is this likely to cost me 2nd hand, after selling off any/every unwanted part/s (this includes the xp-m2500+ IQYHA, 9800pro, nf7-s, 2x256 g-skill 2-3-3-6)
Cheers for taking time to read this essay!
Phil
My current spec:
Asus P5N32-SLi SE Deluxe
Pentium D 805
rolleyes: ) w/ zalman cnps95001gig (2x512) corsair twinx pc6400c5
2x XFX 7600gt xxx edition
Hiper type r 580 modular
I am exceedingly poor, and my main reason for the upgrade is the up-coming release of supreme commander, and quietness...
I am currently quite happy with the gfx, i dont play games on ridiculous resolutions, and the game most graphically power hungry played by me is Quake 4... In the future i shall hopefully upgrade to 1, or 2 8600gt's, but thats a way off yet seeing as they are not released.
Here's the plan i have come up with:
CPU upgrade first. Reason being is that my mobo can take C2D, and this is probably going to give me the biggest performance increase in supreme commander
i was thinking of an e6600 rather than the 200fsb versions, because i should be able to clock it higher when i replace my mombo (if i wasn't going to replace my mobo, then i would choose the e4300 as i should be abel to get better clocks with it in this board..)Next thing to go would be the mobo... its not a bad board, but it's basically pants for clocking a 266fsb version C2D, and thats what i want to do.. So it's going to have to be an nforce 680i or 650i board with SLi... I have no idea of which of these 2 chipsets to go for, or which offers the best performance, bearing in mind that i will be looking to buy as cheaply as possible (more than likely 2nd hand) Which one?
In theory that should conclude my upgrade, but i also want super quietness... the kind of quitness that can be had through WATER! Ignoring the water briefly, the 2 noisyest things in my PC at the moment are the hiper, and my 2 ide hdd's. Going to replace the 2 hdd's with 1 250gig sata, this i have already purchased. This hiper is really pants noisy wise though.. I'm not impressed with it on the 805... at 4ghz and over, any load at all and you can hear the hiper fans spin up and up, and it gets VERY hot, and eventually my computer reboots itself when the fans sound like they are going to 'spin off' not impressed, has to go.. what should i be replacing it with?
Now i will also get rid of the ram and upgrade to a 2 gig kit, but thats not of huge importance to me at the moment, but i am still interested to know what 2 gig kits are recommended?
Now, the fun part... watercooling!
I have a wc kit on an xp-m, this includes: eheim 1250 pump, 120.1 rad, res.. unknown, about 10 inches tall, cylindrical, 2 inches diameter, inavotec socket a, northbridge and gpu blocks.. and plenty of tubing.. not sure of the actual size, looks about 10mm diameter inc the tube thickness. How much of this is re-usable? and what should i be cooling on the new rig? CPU most definately, but would i need it on the gfx/nb/sb? (also bear in mind that the passively cooled 680/650i boards have all these funny heatpipe things going on, wouldn't these be hard/impossible to remove?) ?I am more than happy with the performance/volume of the zalman vf900's on the 7600gt's so i doubt i'll need to bother.
To summerise:
1) Is this a good upgrade path
2) Which parts would you recommend?
3) How much is this likely to cost me 2nd hand, after selling off any/every unwanted part/s (this includes the xp-m2500+ IQYHA, 9800pro, nf7-s, 2x256 g-skill 2-3-3-6)
Cheers for taking time to read this essay!
Phil
(done now