New System build

[john10001]

I'm going to be building a new system this year to replace my ageing one - a AMD Barton 2500 (1.8ghz) cpu.

The cpu I am thinking of building my new system around would be something like the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0 or 3.16Ghz chip.

I have read quite a few posts and the reviews of the 3.0Ghz Wolfdale chip which seems quite popular and some people have reported getting over 4Ghz just overclocking it on air.

Can anyone tell me how much more you'd be able to get out of a chip like this by using water cooling instead and how much you'd need to spend to get that extra?

I have built a couple of my own systems in the past but I have never overclocked them so am new to overclocking as well as water cooling.

I guess I am trying to find out how much extra I could get from the cpu from spending a couple hundred on water cooling instead of just a hundred or so on an air cooler?

The cooling I was just thinking of for the cpu nothing else at the moment.

I don't know what dual loop, single loop, short loop etc mean? If you have any useful links on overclocking especially water cooling and how you would put a water cooled system together I'd appreciate it.

If anyone has this Wolfdale chip and can give me their advice what to expect from air and water cooling I'd appreciate it. Also if you can tell me what other components you'd recommend I match up with this for best overclocking e.g. mobo, memory etc I'd like to hear your opinion of what to consider.

Thanks,
John

 

[siumatfung]

get the E8600 should be able to get to 5ghz on water

 

[95thrifles]

Hi
You can pick up a top of the range air cooler, TRUE + couple of noctua p12 fans for about £55-60, and you can expect a minimum of 4 GHz, prob more, depending on the board you go for and the time and patience you put in
Re watercooling: have a read of the guide stickied to the front of this forum, should help with basics. single loop/dual loop is as the name sounds, if you chose to cool both your CPU and GPU then you have a choice between doing it all in one continous loop (easier and cheaper but no quite as good performance) or doing it in 2 loops (basically 2 separate WC set ups) one for the CPU(and possibly NB/SB/mosfets) and one for the GPU(s). A decent CPU loop is gonna set you back £200-250, and will cool your temps better than air, though not by much compared with top AC (imo), imo the main advantage is the lower noise, nowadays AC is that good that with a decent case and cooler you can get close to WC for performance, but it'll make a racket, WC can be done near to silent
To pair up, for good OCing you want a top end board, however it depends on your budget (doesnt seem to be an issue) and you choice of gfx card, if youre going ATI, then an X48 board would support full crossfire, and one of the best for clocking is the asus rampage (either the formula like I have which is DDR2 or the extreme which is DDR3), alternatively if you want an NVidia set up and want to consider SLI, then look at the nforce790 chipsets, do NOT look at any of the earlier/cheaper ones as they were very buggy and problematic. Your other option, if youre not going to have a multiple gfx card set u is just to go for a decent P45 board - gigabyte and asus are 2 of best known makes and solid, but also the Biostar and DFI, though the DFI's have more complex BIOSes and if you havent clocked before Id recomend you avoid them.
Memory wise just get the fastest available, which for DDR2 is PC8500 and DDR3 dual channel 16000, this gives you the most headroom for your OCing
Further to all that, if money isnt a hurdle, why dont you look at the new i7, the 920D0 stepping clocks very well and an i7 build will be more future proof