cooling on a budget.....and a tight one at that!

simi_uk · 13 Mar 2006 at 10:20

With Flight Sim X on the horizon, and my £1700 budget for a new system being pulled from underneath me (dont ask!), I'm being forced to upgrade components (would prefer not to) or squeeze what little i've got left to squeeze out of my PowerColor 9600Pro (with Samsung memory) in an attempt to make my current machine last till November/December of this year. Overclocking my GPU with its factory HSF, i've so far managed the following:
core/clock: 395MHz
memory: 245Mhz

Also, i've OC'd my CPU (a shi*ty Athlon XP 2400+

) to 2.16GHz and get reasonably good performance from it. Temps arent any higher than 47C at load, and rearely more than 37C when in use for menial tasks....but thats not my issue here...so please dont go on about it.

Short of replacing the card (which is a non-option), has anybody used, or have first hand reviews of the following?? :

Artic Cooling ATI Silencer 2
Vantec ICEBERQ4
Vantec ICEBERQ5

I'm also looking at dropping a North-bridge cooler, and RAM heat spreaders onto the DDR chips in there, as well as GPU RAM-sinks, does anybody have any idea if these are worth the cash, or should i save it for the new system?...........bearing in mind of course im not looking to buy a new system until Q4 of this year.

all input is welcomed and very much appreciated :-)

Thanks in advance for all the help.

james.miller · 13 Mar 2006 at 10:30

get the artic cooler 2

dont bother with a northbridge cooler unless the fan on the one youve got is playing up (dunno what board you have, you didnt say)

Ram sinks are a joke. dont bother for the gpu, dont bother for the system ram. If you want performance buy a decent cpu and and overclock it!

simi_uk · 13 Mar 2006 at 10:56

If you want performance buy a decent cpu and and overclock it!

i will do, but it'll be a complete system when i do, hence the overclock on the GPU and this question being posted in the first place.

I DONT play massively complex 3d games like UT2004, Chronicles of riddick, Doom 3 or whatever, all i use it for is Flight Simulation with a dual monitor set-up, so its high quality what i want....not raw performance/FPS!

For all my other games i'll pull out the XBox 360 and have a bash on there, not my PC.

james.miller · 13 Mar 2006 at 10:57

well in that case dont bother doing anything. the weakest link in that system is the gpu and cpu afterall. If you dont actually want to overclock them dont touch it and save for a new system. though i have to ask if you dont want this any faster then why on earth do you want a new system in the first place, especially with a £1700 budget you originally had :confused:

simi_uk · 13 Mar 2006 at 11:37

james.miller said:
......if you dont want this any faster then why on earth do you want a new system in the first place, especially with a £1700 budget you originally had

nobody said i didnt want to overclock, its the whole reason i'm buying the cooler in the first place! As FS9 (Flight Sim 2004) is CPU dependant, i've already OC'd that to as far as it'll remain stable - a full 300MHz faster

I dont want to shell out any extra money on components that'll be useless to me in a good few months...atleast with the cooler i can use it again in another machine with an intel board i've got here.

The budget for my new system is set, and it'll be built to last, just like this system im running now. My general turn-over is 36 months per machine, and i'm nearly reaching that now....so, in Q3/Q4 of '06, i'll be looking at a new system, with Windows Vista and dual core 64bit, and whatever gfx card rulz the roost, but untill then all components stay the same.

Zefan · 13 Mar 2006 at 11:40

simi_uk said:
a full 300MHz faster

Eh? I got a full 650mhz out of mine when I had it (Which is nothing impressive for those chips).

simi_uk · 13 Mar 2006 at 11:41

Zefan said:
Eh? I got a full 650mhz out of mine when I had it (Which is nothing impressive for those chips).

650MHz?? What HSF are you using??

Smurfy · 13 Mar 2006 at 11:42

simi_uk said:
i will do, but it'll be a complete system when i do, hence the overclock on the GPU and this question being posted in the first place.

I DONT play massively complex 3d games like UT2004, Chronicles of riddick, Doom 3 or whatever, all i use it for is Flight Simulation with a dual monitor set-up, so its high quality what i want....not raw performance/FPS!

For all my other games i'll pull out the XBox 360 and have a bash on there, not my PC.

A New heatsink isnt going to allow a big boost in Clock speeds on a Gfx card, not enough to make any real difference, you may want to consider volt modding the card and buying a new cooler, but then again if you cant afford to replace the card probably a bad idea, if i where you id overclock it as much as possible on default cooler and save for your next system. New coolers generally only help tempreatures, and while they can allow more overclocking headroom its generally not enough to make it worthwhile, 5-10Mhz maximum of 20 on the core if your lucky, thats really not enough to make a huge difference, its either going to perform well enough without the better cooler or it isnt going to perform well enough period.

james.miller · 13 Mar 2006 at 11:43

I DONT play massively complex 3d games like UT2004, Chronicles of riddick, Doom 3 or whatever, all i use it for is Flight Simulation with a dual monitor set-up, so its high quality what i want....not raw performance/FPS!

whats the difference between quality and raw performance anyway. I have bags of raw performance, but this pc is flawless (opteron @ 3ghz, ati x800gto2). For all those games you dont play, i just dont see the point in doing anything :confused:

Zefan · 13 Mar 2006 at 11:45

I was using a pretty decent Deep Impact one that was so heavy I had to use copper wire to tie it to the PSU support rail otherwise my PC wouldn't start :\(Can't remember the make :/ it was that long ago). Yeah all you need to do is drop the multiplier to 10 and up the FSB to about 230. That'll get you the best performance for a mild OC (If your RAM can keep up with it that is). If you want pure MHZ (Which there's no reason for) you can stick the multiplier up to 12 and whack the fsb to 205. 12 * 204 = 2448.

:Edit: If this doesn't make sense(probably due to my poor explanation and fading memory), read a Athlon Xp overclocking guide. Should be plenty on google.

Zefan · 13 Mar 2006 at 11:47

james.miller said:
whats the difference between quality and raw performance anyway. I have bags of raw performance, but this pc is flawless (opteron @ 3ghz, ati x800gto2). For all those games you dont play, i just dont see the point in doing anything

I agree, the idea of getting more FPS is so you can use more quality in games. Hence there really is no point trying to OC anything for games you're getting over 60fps in with maxxed out settings.