Help choosing a Heatsink/Cooler

Ulti-Resis

Ulti-Resis

Ulti-Resis

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Joined
23 Jun 2014
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298
Location
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Hello all, I'm a forum newbie so this is my first post :D

Firstly all the detailed specs of my PC:

Acer Aspire T180 case

Thermaltake toughpower 650W PSU with a replacement Noctua NF-P14s Redux 1500 PWM fan (modified to 2 pin connector)

ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI R3.0 MOBO
4 x 1GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2800 PC6400 running at 2V 4-4-4-12
Nvidia GeForce 9400GT 512MB
Thermaltake ISGC 100 Heatsink/Cooler

1 x 256GB Crucial MX550 SSD
1 x 500GB Western Digital Green
1 x 500GB Seagate Pipeline HD2
1 x 160GB Western Digital WD1600JS

LG Super Multi DVD GSA4082B
Smart Media Multi Card reader
Belkin F5D5005 V2000 Gigabit PCI Card

I've just picked up a Phenom II X6 1090T CPU with a stock cooler and am thinking about a BD/CD/DVD RW/ROM drive for it too. I was also considering taking the RAM up to the max 16GB DDR2 1066 the MOBO supports. I'm also going over from XP Home to Win 7 Pro 64. A new GPU will no doubt follow too. I'm not looking to overclock it but I am intending to add some music recording gear to it by way of interface, DAW etc in the very near future.

Oh and I also have a Targa Visionary LCD 17-3 monitor which I will be looking to replace with a 1080P widescreen of a decent size.

So, a few questions I need some help with...

The RAM, when I go to crucial and look up the board or do a system scan it reports back that my board only accepts 8GB of 6400 yet ASRock clearly states otherwise. Why is this? Where can I get the DDR2 1066 and what should I go for brand and model wise?

The heatsink/cooler, the TT ISGC 100 does OK for the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ in there at the minute but I don't think it will handle the Phenom X6 and I don't want to use the stock cooler as I am sure it won't be any better than the TT would be. I've been looking at replacements and have came up with Noctua NH-D14 Dual and the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo. However, I believe my case is too small for either to fit. The Noctua website says my MOBO and RAM setup will take the NH-D14 and it will clear the Ballistix RAM no problem. The Coolermaster I can't find any compatibility info. There isn't much room in my case and it only has one rear mount exhaust fan and no option to fit more inlet or exhaust fans so I'd have to start hacking the case to fit more and would need a fan controller as it only has one fan header on the mobo. The PSU doesn't help as it is not modular so there's a shedload of cable bundle in there.

What would be the advice here? New case (obviously one which can fit my MOBO). A different replacement heatsink/cooler? If so which?

I really like the NZXT Phantom cases but will my MOBO go in one?

I also considered whether to go for a new MOBO and CPU as well but budget may not allow it as I would likely want to go all out on and Intel i7 which look rather expensive so I figure going this route will get me running the best I can for some time until I get the money together to make the jump.

Thanks for any and all advice and I look forward to reading your suggestions and options!

Cheers,
Mick
 
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Thanks wellibob, that's a very good price and it has excellent reviews. Only thing is, I still think this won't go in my case or it is going to be really close to the side panel. Maybe I'm wrong on this.

I'm still tempted to load everything into a new NZXT Phantom case which would allow me to upgrade the MOBO, CPU and GPU later on.
 
If you can upgrade your case then it will definitely fit, your only option is to try measure the dimensions of the heatsink against your current case to see if it will fit.
Until you know what case/config you want it's pretty hard to suggest a cooler for you without going for something like a AIO watercooler that will eliminate concerns about space all together.

such as the H55
YOUR BASKET
1 x Corsair Hydro H55 Quiet Liquid CPU Cooler £52.99
Total : £52.99 (includes shipping : ).

 
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Thanks, water cooling may be an option but I know nothing about it so I'd have to spend time educating myself further.

Looking at the Phantom cases, somewhere I just read that to get the Noctua D14 in you have to remove one of the fans from the side? Is this so with all the phantoms as this could be a problem right off the bat?

OK I'm thinking a Phantom, noise dampened with side window, in red. I would have liked red LED's but can live with blue if that's what they come with (I'm assuming they come with LED's). Only certain models seem to offer noise dampened from OCUK.

So, either the 410 midi enthusiast or the Phantom Enthusiast Full Tower are the likely options but there doesn't seem to be any noise dampened option on these (also seems as though OCUK use different model names to NZXT for some of them :confused: or am I just confusing myself here? e.g. "Big Tower" used by OCUK, is this the same as "Full Tower" or is it "Ultra Tower" or "Ultra + Tower" used by NZXT). The red window side panel bought separate and Enthusiast Full Tower is out of stock too.

To sum up this is where I am in my mind right now:

My current MOBO with Phenom x6 1090t and Nvidia 9400GT
4GB Ballistix DDR2 800 (may up this to 16GB 1066 but need help with this)


Phantom Case (410 Midi Enth or Enth Full Tower, sound dampened) £145 or £110+
Fan controller either a Sentry 3 or Aerocool Strike? £36 or £41
Heatsink Cooler (I'm still leaning first on Noctua D14 or Coolermaster Evo or even one of the Raijintek) £66 (or £27 ish)
PSU Corsair RM1000 (or maybe NZXT Hale Power 90+ or keep my toughpower 650w) £140
Pioneer BDR-209EBK £60
27" Monitor £180 (AOC, Asus, Iiyama or similar)

Total £632 Plus shipping

Still have to add my music gear to this too and is likely to be £300 plus.

Any compatibility issues or better suggestions, anything I might have missed or not thought of?

Does this seem like a crazy amount to spend on this or would it be more cost effective to sell off all this older kit for as much as I can and invest in a new i7, MOBO, GPU etc?

Cheers
 
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Really?? It's showing at £88 on OCUK.

I've been talking to my OH and I've been given the "Do what you want within reason" so I can now go ahead and build a full system but I'm still struggling with the options, soooooooo many choices and it's difficult to know what is better or worse.

Any advice on the best options here will be much appreciated as all this kit is totally new to me and a bit overwhelming!! I simply want the best I can get within the price range of the component listed below. If you can suggest better for the same cost give or take then do let me know.

After lots of deliberating I'm now toying with:

I like the Phantom 410 and Enthusiast but seems they are not available with sound dampening and I wonder if I should go with pre installed water cooling? Alternatively sound dampening and a Corsair Hydro H105 Extreme. Also I think red LED's instead of blue.

MSI Z97 Gaming 7 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard. I like the red/black colour scheme of this board too and think it will look great in the red phantom case. Any alternative if possible to keep the colour scheme.

Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail

RAM obviously depends on the MOBO but seems that the MSI Z97 will take 32GB of DDR3 3200(OC). This is something I definitely need to look into more or take advice once I'm set on a board.

GPU maybe around £100-£150 (could possibly bend a bit on this depending on how the rest of it stacks up) and I'm thinking Nvidia GeForce but what brand and model I have no clue (could be wrong and better with AMD but I don't know how they stack up against eachother).

PSU Corsair RM1000 (or maybe NZXT Hale Power 90+ or keep my toughpower 650w)

Fan controller either a Sentry 3 or Aerocool Strike. Not sure about this as the case comes with built in controller but they aren't expensive and look the biz?

Pioneer BDR-209EBK (Though I have read that the software is pretty crappy)

27" Monitor £180 (AOC, Asus, Iiyama or similar)

Then lastly there are the case mods, nice cable kits, cable screening, LED's etc and I guess all going with the black/red colour scheme.

Please fire away with any and all help here as I really need it! :D

Maybe I should move this over to another part of the forum now that I'm going for a full new build?
 
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just a quick one but going by your build and a £150 gpu you wont need anything more than a 600 watt psu. even a 290/780 build wont need above the 650 I have below.

SuperFlower Leadex GOLD 650W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply

i7 not needed for general gaming buy a i5 unless your doing a lot of maya/raytracing/rendering/photoshop work etc.

32 gig of ram is also pointless unless your doing the above and 3200 oc is insanely expensive (over £600 on its own) and ultimately pointless unless your benchmarking.


Kingston HyperX 16GB (2x8GB) PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black/Red

If your primary focus is gaming then spend more money on a better graphics card like a

r8 280

r8 280X

r9 290

gtx 770

gtx 780
 
Thanks for all that great info!

My primary focus is on music production, photoshop and high res fine art and then general business use and internet.

Power supply I figured that having much more power than needed would be better as there would be no stress put on the PSU.

For the music end of things I'm likely going to be running pro tools 11 and lots of VST's, multitracking, sampling, plug-ins, effects etc. I'm going to need lots of processing power, RAM and large/fast HDD. There have to be no bottlenecks in the system and it has to be super quiet for recording.

I may do a bit of gaming from time to time but I mostly play games on my PS3 and PS4, however there are a ton of games on PC that I can't get for console and PC games tend to be cheaper as a bonus.

Still haven't made any solid decision on anything yet and also trying to decide whether to go for PCIe, firewire or USB interface as well as what monitors, other mics, midi controller/keyboard and bass guitar to get. Lots to think about and I have to keep a reasonable reign on the budget.
 
The problem with having an overspecced psu is that it will be running inefficiently at the power draw you would be using. You wouldnt stress a 650 with the i7 4790 and a r7 270/760.

You will also need a ssd or 2 then and a large backup drive as well as a proper cooler for your cpu as the stock one is anything but quiet under load.
 
Okay maybe I should go for a smaller PSU in that case.

I've got a Crucial M550 256GB and will likely get another with M2 for the OS and programs and maybe another 7200 RPM 2TB or larger. I also have:

1 x 250GB Western Digital (can't recall what model)
1 x 500GB Western Digital Green
1 x 500GB Seagate Pipeline HD2
1 x 160GB Western Digital WD1600JS

Cheers
 
From reviews I've read the efficiency at low load is as good and often better than at full load.
Leadex 650 is 89.99% efficient at 300w and 88.53% at 600w, a difference of 1.46%. 1.46% is only 4.38w. At 220v that is 0.02 amp.

At 100w the difference is 4.6% or 4.6w more power being consumed. 4.6w is not much.
At 50w the difference is 7.8% or 3.9w more power being used.


TV left on so we can turn it on from remote uses that or more.
 
Well I put the Phenom2 x6 1090t into my old machine and it's running fine overclocking on auto/turbo to 3.6Ghz. Temps are fine under normal use with the Thermaltake ISGC 100 but running OCCT tests along with a full system scan with virus scanner and superantispyware and also playing a HD video file in VLC, Core Temp showed max temp of 54C. From my understanding the temp for AMD is 10 higher than Core Temp displays so that would make the max 64C. The Phenom max is 62C going by what I've read so pushing it to that degree (which won't happen very often if ever) could be risky. I ran the tests for an hour and there were no stability issues at all. I guess if I get the voltages down it may run cooler even if I OC it further. I have read of these running at 1.30-1.35v and OC to 4-4.4Ghz?? Is this possible with my setup (see first post).

I'll likely get a better cooler for this machine when I finally settle on my new build components list and get to ordering everything. For now, I'm sure it's going to be fine. Windows 7 pro 64 to go on this one too so it should run great.
 
I've now got as far as adding multiple items to my basket and just trying to decide between them all now and how much to spend.

First thing to decide is whether to restrain myself and go for one of the Z97 1150 boards and i7 4790K (Devils Canyon) or to go all out on the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme X79 or the black edition and the
i7 4960X 2011?

A couple of things I'm not 100% on the best choices are:

RAM-I like the idea of the Avexir Red but they don't do 1866Mhz in 32GB or 64GB kits in Red and whichever mobo I choose I want to max out the RAM.

GPU- The Inno 780 6144MB seems like amazing value for the spec but is it going to be better than the other 2 models:

Inno3D GeForce GTX 780 iChill HerculeZ X3 Ultra 6144MB GDDR5
Inno3D GeForce GTX 780Ti iChill DHS 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
MSI GeForce GTX 780Ti Gaming Edition 3072MB

NZXT Phantom USB3.0 Big-Tower Case - Red - Noise Dampened. Will this case take the 280mm Corsair Hydro H110 or only the 240mm H105?

Probably a daft question but the Pioneer BDR-209EBK 16x BDRW Multilayer 128GB retail- spec says it burns 25GB and 128GB multilayer media but will it also burn the 50GB Blu's?

Decisions, decisions??

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel 4960X 3.60GHz Extreme (Ivybridge-E) Socket LGA2011 Processor - Retail (BX80633I74960x) £749.99
1 x Inno3D GeForce GTX 780Ti iChill DHS 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (GCI3-039) (C78TX-1SDN-L5HSX) £559.99
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 780Ti Gaming Edition 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £509.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Beast 64GB (8x8GB) PC3-14900C10 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX18C10AT3K8/64) £479.99
1 x Inno3D GeForce GTX 780 iChill HerculeZ X3 Ultra 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (C78V-1SDN-N5HSX) £399.95
1 x Asus Rampage IV Extreme Black Edition Intel X79 (Socket 2011) DDR3 Motherboard £359.99
1 x Asus SonicMaster MX279H 27" Widescreen Ultra Slim Bezel LED Monitor - Black with Bang & Olufsen ICEpower Speakers £275.99
1 x Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £259.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming G1 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £250.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Beast 32GB (4x8GB) PC3-14900C10 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX18C10AT3K4/32X) £249.95
1 x Asus Maximus VII Hero Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £164.99
1 x SuperFlower Leadex Platinum 1000W Fully Modular "80 Plus Platinum" Power Supply - Black £149.99
1 x OcUK Tech Labs - NZXT Phantom USB3.0 Big-Tower Case - Red - Noise Dampened £144.98
1 x MSI Z97 Gaming 7 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £139.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-Bit - OEM (FQC-08289) £109.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD2003FZEX) HDD £108.98
1 x Corsair Hydro H110 280mm High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060014-WW) £91.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H105 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060016-WW ) £89.99
1 x LG BH16NS40 16x SATA Internal BDRW - Retail £68.99
1 x Pioneer BDR-209EBK 16x BDRW Multilayer 128GB retail £59.99
2 x Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD1003FZEX) HDD £57.98 (£115.96)
1 x Pioneer BDR-209DBK 16x SATA Internal BD/DVD/CD Burner - No Software £54.95
1 x NZXT Sentry LX LCD Fan Controller £47.99
1 x OcUK Value Blu-ray / DVDRW combi SATA - OEM £39.95
1 x NZXT Sentry 3 Touch Screen Fan Control £35.99
2 x Asus USB-N10 Micro USB Network Adapter Wireless-N 150Mbps £4.99 (£9.98)
Total : £5,558.16 (includes shipping : £22.20).



Any and all advice and input welcome to help me make the right/best choices.

Bear in mind that the system is for music production first and foremost and has to be as silent as possible for recording as well as having as much grunt as possible. Fine art/photoshop rendering secondly. Gaming and general tasks/internet third in the priorities.
 
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