Performance vs speed

Darkmatters · 5 Nov 2009 at 16:52

Hi folks,
I am new to the board tho I have been reading it for several months.

I have been trying to weigh up the balance between wanting high performance (oc) and a quiet machine. Can you have both or is it a compromise?

I plan to build a new machine as a project with my daughter - she will want to do games and I will want a quiet machine for boring stuff and a nice sound system. I have three pcs which have AMD duos with stock cooling and I think of them as annoyingly noisy but I don't have the experience to know how quiet you can expect.

My thoughts so far are for i7 system with liquid cooling but I kind of got stuck on case selection. Dgtr wants transparent side, dyed coolant and lighting. Cost is not a problem but I don't want to waste money on components that don't help with 'silent running'.

Your thoughts on this would be most appreciated.

Darkmatters · 5 Nov 2009 at 18:46

I would imagine she will play anything good that her (boy) cousins have if the machine is capable. I will do video editing, CAD, graphics, photos, music, net, email and maybe try out some games too. Most of which I can do on current machines. A big part of this is to show dgtr what can be done and give her the experience of diy building. As for how quiet... it would be nice to play music without fan noise.. but as I said before i am not sure how quiet it is possible to get.

I was trawling through this site hoping to find a thread where somone put together a system with the same objectives that I have, but not found it yet!

Darkmatters · 5 Nov 2009 at 18:54

I just realised that the title of this thread is not as intended. It should have been: 'Performance vs Noise' !!!

Darkmatters · 9 Nov 2009 at 09:44

Steep learning curve!!

Thanks for the input guys.
What system have you got Bradley - I hope you sorted out whatever the problem was?
John - is there some performance drawback with using non-conductive coolant in your h2o system?
Ta.

Darkmatters · 9 Nov 2009 at 11:55

Decisions, decisions.

Darkmatters · 9 Nov 2009 at 14:35

Oldphart (me too),
Tempted by H50 but daughter wants coloured coolant in clear tubes - I guess H50 a lot less hassle to install - does it perform as well as other water systems?

Darkmatters · 9 Nov 2009 at 14:47

Psychas - that's just the sort of info I'm after, cheers.

Darkmatters · 9 Nov 2009 at 14:55

Greebo - like the idea of the fan controller. Is speedstep a feature in the bios?

Darkmatters · 9 Nov 2009 at 17:09

That's a cool bit of kit Greebo, thanks for the link.

Darkmatters · 9 Nov 2009 at 22:04

Greebo,
can't see that make of fan controller on Oc. Can you recommend a good supplier or should I just google?

Also, looking at your system spec and comparing the various intel cpus I am getting confused. I assume that the most expensive processors are the latest and yet most seem to have lower clock than your Q9650 (3.0GHz). What gives here? Do you know of a good article that explains the ins and outs?

Regards.