New build

Orison · 16 Dec 2006 at 20:36

thefishdude said:
if you after silence you will prob need a diff cooler on yoru gfx card

Yeah I've heard reports of the XT's noisy fan, but I thought I'd see how it goes first and mod it later if I can't put up with it

I'm not into hardcore silence or anything, I mentioned that I wanted the system to be reasonably quiet because I'm not into hardcore air cooling. Basically I just don't want my system sounding like a turbine. Otherwise I wouldn't have chosen 7200.10s for my RAID0 array either: some are quiet, and have a small sticker on the spindle, while others don't and are among the noisiest SATA hard disks out there. Performance for price is the bottom line for me

And besides, if I have bad luck and do get the noisy Barracudas, I can always sell them on Ebay if I can't live with the noise, and try, try again!

Nutbusta · 16 Dec 2006 at 20:43

It looks like the same cooler that came with my old X850XTPE.

Which was very loud even idle at the desktop. Straight away ordered an Arctic cooler which helped an awful lot with both noise and temp.

Shame it didn't help with the overclocked though but I'm not suprise 'cos it had most of it's power wrung out of it at the factory.

tomanders91 · 16 Dec 2006 at 21:00

very nice system, just wondering do u need to buy the thermal compound/paste stuff? i got told it came pre-applied.

Orison · 16 Dec 2006 at 21:08

tomanders91 said:
very nice system, just wondering do u need to buy the thermal compound/paste stuff? i got told it came pre-applied.

Most coolers tend to come with some sort of thermal compound, but not all thermal compounds are created equal

Arctic Silver is an old stalwart among OCers, offering excellent thermal conductivity, though these days a few people are experimenting with ceramique or easier-to-apply liquid compounds.

I just stuck with the arctic silver because it's good stuff and will do just fine. I goes with what I knows

The difference between 1 good-quality compound and another only ever amounts to maybe 1 or 2oC anyway.

Orison · 16 Dec 2006 at 21:14

Nutbusta said:
Which was very loud even idle at the desktop. Straight away ordered an Arctic cooler which helped an awful lot with both noise and temp.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind

I do think it's a good card for the money, the reviews I've seen give it a good 25-30FPS over the X1950 Pro in Half Life 2 and the other typical gaming benchies, which is a big return (talking about a 50% difference) on performance for £20 more. Gamers pay far more for far less performance gain in other aspects of their system (such as buying £400 DDR800 3-4-3-9 RAM instead of £200 on DDR800 4-4-4-12) so it seems to me like £20 well spent.

So you'd recommend the Arctic cooler as a good quiet replacement? Appreciate the recommendation

Nutbusta · 16 Dec 2006 at 22:45

Orison said:
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind I do think it's a good card for the money, the reviews I've seen give it a good 25-30FPS over the X1950 Pro in Half Life 2 and the other typical gaming benchies, which is a big return (talking about a 50% difference) on performance for £20 more. Gamers pay far more for far less performance gain in other aspects of their system (such as buying £400 DDR800 3-4-3-9 RAM instead of £200 on DDR800 4-4-4-12) so it seems to me like £20 well spent.

So you'd recommend the Arctic cooler as a good quiet replacement? Appreciate the recommendation

When you start to go higher than mid range you start getting a really bad case of diminishing return. That said, if I could afford it, I'd still get high spec stuff: (Slightly dissapointed with my GEIL stuff, won't go much over 933@5,5,5,15

The thing I liked about the arctic coolers of that they exhaust hot air outside the case and because they connect to the cards fan header, the fan will still throttle back when Idle. Not like the Zalmans which you have to set and forget.

I'm not really up on graphics card coolers now though as this GTO has a pretty good cooler

Orison · 16 Dec 2006 at 23:27

Yeah, hence my decision to go with the Corsair Dominator over the GeIL myself. I could have gone with the GeIL and got an E6600, and with a x9 multiplier I'd never have needed to ask the FSB/RAM to go over 400 to have a shot at 3.6GHz. The GeIL is perfectly good stuff and will do what it says on the tin, and a bit beyond. But I trust the Corsair's quality and, since it's Micron D9 based, its overclockability. It was a bit of a judgement call but I know that the Corsair will last me a long while, and give good service if I ever go for water cooling and whatnot. Still not sure whether my judgement was in error though: just have to cross my fingers that my E6400's a clocker.

Still, there's no real rule of thumb on high vs midrange components. I mean, I contradict the above principle by going for the X1950XT over the 8800GTS. The extra £130 will give you astronomically high framerates, but the performance difference isn't actually perceptible from a card doing 90FPS (i.e. the XT) to the human eye in current-generation games. While it would be nice to fit a DX10 card and forget about it, I think it's worth waiting until DX10 games start coming out to get one, when they'll surely be cheaper. And the difference in cost gave me enough space in the budget to run a 640GB RAID array, and upgrade my PSU from the 520W Corsair to the 620W. It just fits my intentions for the system better. Those that do buy 8800 cards now will enjoy the benefits of knowing they won't need another GFX card for 2 years at least, and that it will improve the visuals of current-generation games with its anti-aliasing and anisotropy overrides.

You pays your money, you takes your choice. If only I wasn't indecisive by nature, I'm already worried if I made the right choice! *nervous* Guess we'll find out on Tuesday

Nutbusta · 17 Dec 2006 at 00:20

Orison said:
You pays your money, you takes your choice. If only I wasn't indecisive by nature, I'm already worried if I made the right choice! *nervous* Guess we'll find out on Tuesday

I always get "twitchy" when spending more than £500. Seems to be better as I'm getting older. I suppose I've bought a few cars and a house in the last 2 years.

Sounds like you thought it all through though. I'm sure you'll be well chuffed :cool:

Orison · 17 Dec 2006 at 00:37

Nutbusta said:
I always get "twitchy" when spending more than £500. Seems to be better as I'm getting older. I suppose I've bought a few cars and a house in the last 2 years.

Sounds like you thought it all through though. I'm sure you'll be well chuffed

Cheers mate :cool:

If you want twitchy, me and the missus are considering buying a house in the near future, whenever it comes up I look like I've stepped on a railway powerline :eek: