Soldato
- Joined
- 25 Mar 2004
- Posts
- 16,045
- Location
- Fareham
Hi all,
I have been using my current rig for quite a while now and as such have not really been keeping track of the computer market.
current rigs spec is as follows:
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
AMD x2 3800+ @ 2.6ghz under watercooling
ATI x1900xtx
2gb OCZ PC3200 DDR memory
600w Seasonic S12 PSU
1x WD Raptor 74GB Drive
2x WD Caviar 320GB Drives
NEC 16x DVD Writer
Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card
Lian Li V1000+ Black case
Not a bad spec and it's pretty powerful really, but at the moment the noise of my computer is driving me crazy.
I put watercooling in hoping to reduce noise (and because I wanted to try it out) but instead of having 1 fan on my CPU I have gained 2 fans on the radiator AND a pump too so it's generally louder than before.
I also need to put a zalman/arctic cooler on my graphics card really to reduce noise further but would rather get all of this out of the way at the same time.
So basically I guess my question is should I fork out some cash and make the leap to conroe (getting rid of water cooling in the process) or just switch my watercooling back to a quiet/silent air cooler and chuck a new cooler on my GPU?
If I were to go to conroe and overclock it a bit while keeping the whole thing quiet and temps down a bit what sort of performance increase are we talking?
p.s I love my case but am looking for something a bit smaller perhaps so I can move it around a bit easier, are there any decent small form factor cases that support conroe well? perhaps something in mini atx format or so?
Budget : £500-£600 tops to spend on this upgrade really but can stretch this higher if needed by quite a lot.
Apologies for long question
I have been using my current rig for quite a while now and as such have not really been keeping track of the computer market.
current rigs spec is as follows:
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
AMD x2 3800+ @ 2.6ghz under watercooling
ATI x1900xtx
2gb OCZ PC3200 DDR memory
600w Seasonic S12 PSU
1x WD Raptor 74GB Drive
2x WD Caviar 320GB Drives
NEC 16x DVD Writer
Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card
Lian Li V1000+ Black case
Not a bad spec and it's pretty powerful really, but at the moment the noise of my computer is driving me crazy.
I put watercooling in hoping to reduce noise (and because I wanted to try it out) but instead of having 1 fan on my CPU I have gained 2 fans on the radiator AND a pump too so it's generally louder than before.
I also need to put a zalman/arctic cooler on my graphics card really to reduce noise further but would rather get all of this out of the way at the same time.
So basically I guess my question is should I fork out some cash and make the leap to conroe (getting rid of water cooling in the process) or just switch my watercooling back to a quiet/silent air cooler and chuck a new cooler on my GPU?
If I were to go to conroe and overclock it a bit while keeping the whole thing quiet and temps down a bit what sort of performance increase are we talking?
p.s I love my case but am looking for something a bit smaller perhaps so I can move it around a bit easier, are there any decent small form factor cases that support conroe well? perhaps something in mini atx format or so?
Budget : £500-£600 tops to spend on this upgrade really but can stretch this higher if needed by quite a lot.
Apologies for long question
Last edited:
