My "How good a rig can you build for £350" Project

[Stan_Lite]

Cheap and cheerful CPU cooling would be an arctic 7 cooler - very quiet and very cheap.

 

[Anox]

Cheap and cheerful CPU cooling would be an arctic 7 cooler - very quiet and very cheap.

Or that, I agree there.

 

[armincerf]

I would recommend a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo.

I was thinking about that one, but in the end I went for the thermalright silver arrow. A bit expensive, but it should allow me to get the same sort of overclock as a H100, plus they seem to hold there value quite well so I shouldn't loose much when I upgrade to proper watercooling

 

[Anox]

I was thinking about that one, but in the end I went for the thermalright silver arrow. A bit expensive, but it should allow me to get the same sort of overclock as a H100, plus they seem to hold there value quite well so I shouldn't loose much when I upgrade to proper watercooling

Not bad, not bad!

 

[armincerf]

Update!

Ok, so the case finally arrived! 3 hours later and I have a far bigger, far tidier PC

Firstly, pictures (apologies for iphone pics):

Spoiler

Probably part of the reason my CPU was getting so hot.. The old heatsink didn't even cover the whole CPU and the thermal paste was pretty much solid and was really hard to clean off.

Better

New heatsink only just fits...

All in the case. Not sure how I'm going to get rid of the coloured cables? :/

Oh dear, this was my boot drive

It's ok in the day, but I'd like some more light in there...

After installing the cooler I was able to get up to 3.42Ghz (380mhz*9) at 1.4v. Max temps after 4 hours of prime95 was 62 celsius, compared with 90 something degrees at 2.4Ghz with the old heatsink!!

I probably could get higher, but I don't really want to put the voltage up anymore than 1.4 so I don't think I'll bother.

The difference its made in games has been huge though! At least an extra 15-20fps on borderlands 2, I think I may keep my graphics card after all!

I'm not finished with it yet though, I'm after a decent fan controller as my motherboard doesn't have one built in and I also think my case could do with some cathode/LEDs to brighten it up inside a bit

 

[Anox]

Wow you did quite well and tidy there! Far more pleasant than that loose jumble of wires spewing out of a case! Unlucky turn with that drive, did the connector just snap off?

Also in getting rid of the cables colours you could either sleeve the cables or even do some ghetto job and just colour them in with a black marker if your're not prepared to cable sleeve.

Oh and that is some NASTY thermal grease residue right there, I'm not surprised things were getting a little bit hot under the hood!

 

[Epburpee]

cool project, nice to read about recycling into somehting better on a humble budget

 

[Something Else]

done a nice neat job there. hope it works as you want it to.

remember performance first

 

[armincerf]

Thank you all

Unlucky turn with that drive, did the connector just snap off?

I really don't know what happened :/ I think the power connecter must have been forced downwards by the bundle of cables at the back of the case. Nothing a bit of glue can't fix though

remember performance first

I'm actually very happy performance wise I think to add any sort of noticeable performance now would cost at least £200-300 for a better graphics card and £500+ for a new CPU/Motherboard.

Now I have to decide whether to go for LED lights or CCDs, anyone know the pros/cons of both? Never used them before :/

 

[wildman_33]

Go for the Bitfenix LED strips that are sold on here, they provide a nice even spread of light. I have the orange ones and they are suprisingly bright and just a short strip gave my case a nice amount of light and htey can be daisy chained together if you want even more light (im not in to too many lights)

 

[Sayso]

Just a simple thing...rotate your cpu fans 90 degrees to hide the fan cables.

But looks like a massive improvement, nicely done.