Upgrade advice, or do I not need too?

MouthBoy

MouthBoy

MouthBoy

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Hey Guys and Girls, first post here so excuse any mistakes.

My current system is as follows:
Q6600 G0 Stepping @ Stock
TPower i45 Mobo
2 x 2Gb Corsair XMS2
Radeon 4870HD 512Mb

Reason the CPU is at stock is that for some reason im always in a hot room regardless of if its at home or uni. Current idle temp is about 39'c and under video encoding or rendering it rises to about 72'c. I did a prime95 the other night and I reached 84'c on a torture test for about 4runs. Hence why its too hot to overclock which is a shame because my system was built for it 2 christmas's ago, anyways sorry i digress.

Basically I have been looking at the new i7 930, some sort of motherboard thats good for that CPU, 6gb of triple channel RAM (if the CPU and mobo support it, havent really been looking at the market last year or so, so not upto date), and maybe a new GFX.

My daily tasks are 3D Modelling in Maya, I spend about 30hours a week doing that, I render a little in After Effects and Maya, a lot of engine work, usually Unity3D and gaming obviously.

So after all that said, I know that the upgrade will be faster but would I see a noticable difference that would help my workflow in the said applications above or should I hang on a few more months and watch the market? Its not like I can complain too much with how long things take, but I have nothing to compare too so I might think that waiting X amount of time to render something is ok but with an upgrade I could half that time. Does that make sense?

Erm..yea, I think I had a question in all that? So opinions anyone?
 
well firstly are you running on a stock cooler? cause adding an aftermarket will have dramatic effects in cooling the cpu under stress.

going from an q6600 to an i7 930 noticeable gains will definately be found, but if your current set up is doing the job and your just worried about temps then other solutions can be found.
 
Get a decent cooler mate.. Prob titan ext. The q6000 wont really run much hotter with a small bumb say 3.2ghz. You will be amazed at just how much better a aftermarket cooler is over the stock, You have to think that the air passing over the cooler is a medium to take away heat fom a heat sorce, And not the coolness of the air, cooling the cpu. So even with your pc being in a warm room you should still be able to get a good increase on that chip. + the q6600 is as tough as they come..
 
whats funny is that I used to know quite a bit about heat and stuff. I started overclocking with a 1800+ barton, then I went to a 2500+ Barton which i kept cool with watercooling at a good 3GHz, now im crap at it all hehe!

Yea im using the stock cooler. Whats a good cooler to look into then? I dont even mind going to watercooling but I only have a Li Lian PC65 case so not a lot of room internally really. I wouldnt mind getting into overclocking again but I am constantly worried about stability and because my machine right now keeps me in Uni I dont want anything to go wrong. So are you guys suggesting looking at better cooling for now rather then an upgrade? See if I can squeeze the juice out of a Q6600?
 
If you looking at water cooling you could Try this

CoolIT Eco A.L.C. High-Performance CPU Watercooler (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1156/LGA1366) £55.99

Its quite good all in 1 kit.
 
I like the look of that fan cooler, but also I notice that the water cooling solution is also cheap. I was actually looking at the Corsair H5 Watercooling System for £67. Any thoughts on this? Or would it be better to get that heatsink that is on offer with 2 x 120mm fans? I will be looking into OCing my Q6600 by the looks of it, but I want the cooling to support myself. That said though, if anyone can give me a good reason to upgrade hardware instead of overclocking I would love to hear their opinions?
 
smeaney said:
I like the look of that fan cooler, but also I notice that the water cooling solution is also cheap. I was actually looking at the Corsair H5 Watercooling System for £67. Any thoughts on this? Or would it be better to get that heatsink that is on offer with 2 x 120mm fans? I will be looking into OCing my Q6600 by the looks of it, but I want the cooling to support myself. That said though, if anyone can give me a good reason to upgrade hardware instead of overclocking I would love to hear their opinions?
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I can give you a reason against.

If gaming is the primary use for your rig you are better waiting until the next generation of cpu / socket before you upgrade. To be honest you won't notice much difference with regards to performance in games.

I'm playing the waiting game myself, I love my Q6600 :).

For a nice speed boost for general usage spend the cash on an SSD, mine makes my Windows 7 fly. For a nice increase in games get a 5850 perhaps... then overclock that alongside your Q6600.

If you spend the outlay on a nice cooler like the Megahalems you will also most likely be able to throw that in your next system as well. At least that is the gamble I'm making with mine!

This may however be awful advice, so be warned!
 
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I do game on my PC as much as the next person. However all the games I enjoy right now are either older games or new games that I still can put most graphical settings to high and play well.

The main use for my PC at the moment is Maya 3D work and engine work in Unity3D. I also do like to make Maya tutorials and helpful guides using After Effects so I render in that too.

Its like I said, I cant complain about my PC at the moment, but I was wondering if thats just because I havent compared.

Would the following "Upgrade" be more suitable:

Better cooling for my CPU with a bit of an overclock applied
Maybe get another 4gb of RAM (for purposes of work rather then play)
SSD drive for my OS and games

That sound better? (Saying yes will lead to more questions I warn you, hehe!)
 
1)yes better cooler for cpu
2)wouldnt waste money on more ram
3)wouldnt bother with SSD either

ive based it on cost.. just buy a cooler for time being for an extra boost in performance, and start to save for your next build, personally i think its pointless throwing bits here and there :)
 
I can honestly say I don't have a clue what is involved using Maya but I am thinking you will definately see improvements with rendering if you move to an i7. It depends if you are interested in that I suppose, after all faster rendering = more time to tinker.

Hopefully someone with more knowledge of Maya and Unity3D might make their opinion known though.

With regards to an SSD and gaming, one would only make any given game load quicker. Once in the game and everything is loaded it will be just the same framerate and performance as you have now. It makes using Windows much nippier though and, for me at least, a much nicer experiance.
 
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RIght then, so it looks like I go for the better cooling option. So do I go for watercooling or the heatsink that was mentioned before. Both seem to come out around the £70 mark when you add decent fans to the heatsink. (Any suggestions of fans would be great.)

Parsley, working within Maya is CPU and GFX dependant really. When I am working on a high poly scene it can get slightly chuggish if I am working with animation with textured models. Rendering though seems to be all on the CPU, so a faster CPU, from either a new CPU or an overclock would help, how much so, I dont know.

SSD seems to be a high pricetag for faster loading times to me right now, I dont think my workflow would benefit from it.

The reason I asked about RAM was because as far as I am aware, After Effects is very very memory dependant, even down to how much you can pre-render depends on your RAM.

So yea, some ideas to throw around there I think.

Any more thoughts or comments?
 
I thought I read, and I might be mistaken, that AC Freezer 7 is a good HSF but not for overclocking. I thought it was more like a "better stock cooler" but as I said, I might be wrong.

I have every case fan possible where I can in my case, 2 sucking in the front, 1 out the top and 1 out the back. I regularly air blast (compressed air) the dust out when I see it building up and this drops temps about 2'c for a while but never for long.
 
smeaney said:
I thought I read, and I might be mistaken, that AC Freezer 7 is a good HSF but not for overclocking. I thought it was more like a "better stock cooler" but as I said, I might be wrong.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's how I'd approach this problem. You want to get your CPU temps down, this is the easiest way to do it.
You could spend more on a better cooler with the intention of overclocking, then find that it gets too hot with the overclock - in which case you've just wasted some money.
 
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Soooo basically, depending on if I want to take the risk with overclocking, I should either get the ACF7 HSF for stock speeds or the other HSF and 2 x 120mm fans for overclocking? I might actually replace all my case fans soon too because they are just over a year old and I think some of the bearings are going.

Does anyone have an opinion on the watercooling solution front?
 
Personally I wouldn't throw a lot of money on cooling. Just try overclocking and see where you get on stock cooling with stock voltage (or lower), you might be surprised.
 
HangTime said:
Personally I wouldn't throw a lot of money on cooling. Just try overclocking and see where you get on stock cooling with stock voltage (or lower), you might be surprised.
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I second that.. There's quite a lot of Q6600 owners recently running on stock settings who are prepared to take an unnecessary leap before they've even attempted an overclock. In my opinion, try the overclock and if it proves fruitless then you've not really lost anything.
 
Regardless of if I am going to overclock I need better cooling anyways because after 4 runs of prime95 it got to 84'c on stock cooling, with normal idle at 39'c. That seems too hot for me for a stock cooler.
 
humm....been looking at stuff to buy and I really like the look of:

THIS and THIS

Regardless of the money of these 2 items, if I had that new case, full of 120mm fans and the watercooling, would I be onto something good? Either that or the case without the watercooling?
 
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