Cooler fan upgrades for I7 Processor

Gauron

Gauron

Gauron

Associate
Joined
8 Feb 2010
Posts
38
Hi there,

I'm running the following:

Asus PT6 SE Board
I7 920 Processor - Basic Fan on it
12 GB DDR3 Corsair ram
ATI 4890 Graphics card
Therma Saprano Case (3 Fans)

My question is, I want to upgrade to get a better performance. So I need help with the following id anyone can throw some Ideas.

1) Should I get a GPU Cooolant fAN - IF SO WHICH?
2) What CPU Fan is worth getting for my rig
3) What Case fans are worth getting?
4) Should I buy a new case?
5) Should I get a better board?
6) finally, is it worth overclocking my system?

Hope some of you can help. I need the system to be as cool as can be really but I want the best performance I can get.;)
 
I'd recommend the Megahalems with a couple of fans in push/pull. Keeps mine @ 4.4GHz at sub 70c LOAD.
 
Hi there,

I'll try and address you questions as best as I can:

1) You don't need to, but if you have the stock 4890 cooler - many people feel it is rather poor at cooling and too loud. As a replacement, I would suggest this as a cheap option, or this if you afford something a bit more fancy.

2)I have to agree with kup, the Prolimatech Megahalems is a beast of a cooler and does very well with the i7. You will also need 1 or 2 fans for it, I suggest using these. Also, the Corsair H50 is worth a look, it performs about as well as a Megahalems, and even better if you add a second fan.

3) I would suggest either these or these, also a fan controller panel like this allows you to tune the speed of the fans very nicely.

4) That really is a personal decision. The Soprano seems to be a decent case. Do you find it fulfils your computing needs, is big enough and looks nice? If so, then i'd say stick with it.

5) TBH, I don't see why. The P6T SE may be one of the cheapest X58 boards, but it does its job well. It overclocks well and has loads of features. The only reason It would be worth replacing it is if you really wanted to run SLI Nvidia cards, or planned to do some heavy overclocking using water cooling.

6) If you do anything remotely CPU intensive, then yes - definitely. You will need a new CPU cooler (see point 2), but with a good cooler 4GHz is perfectly achievable (507% overclock).
 
I agree with cmndr_andi on most points - sound advice. Below are some of my opinions as well.

1) For 4890, you may also need something like this to cool the VRM area of the card, which gets rather hot. I am not sure either one of Akasa's products cover that, but I may be wrong, as they were revised over the years.

2/3) Note also that you can get the Akasa Apache in its ugly original paint for about a fiver less, if you are not bothered about the looks! In my experience it can run as quietly as Noctua's fans and pushes a good deal of air through.

4) Soprano is a good general purpose case. Remember that it is not just the number of fans and their size that counts (which is a common marketing tool for expensive cases); it is also important how much air they move and where they are mounted. I would say have your most powerful fan at the front, pulling the air in, and lower rpm, quieter fans at the back/top moving the hot air out. Then have your CPU cooler fans positioned to push hot air into one of the exhausts.

6) I am biased on the matter of overclocking, really, but consider this: why should you not get more out of your kit when it can do it? If you look at Intel's i7 lineup right now, you will quickly notice that what they sell for double the price is essentially an identical CPU clocked up.

Even if you are not going for the 4GHz limit, you can easily bump up the frequency to 3.5-3.8 Ghz, which is still plenty.

I hope this helps you decide.
 
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