I know, I know... another "hat do I buy thread"..... there's about three per day it seems, but I really am stumped here. I do primarily two things on my PC... Games... and edit photos. Those ore the primary uses I have for it. I also do other stuff... I encode MP3, burn and rip CDs, and burn DVDs. I occasionally edit video and wav files, but 90% of the time, it's fragging and Photoshop. So... I've been tearing my hair out for a few weeks now, and the things holding me back was what ATi were gonna do with the new GPU and crossfire, and dates on releasing M2. Well.. it appears the new ATi GPU is hopeless and expensive, and Crossfire is just as rubbish... Socket M2 is gonne be at least second quarter 2006, which I can't be bothered waiting for, so it's all systems go as soon as I can. So far, i've decided on the DFI Lan Party NF4 SLi 7800GTX x 2 in SLi already got the new RAM (Ballistix Z503s) Vapochill Light Speed The question CPU.... FX57 or X2 4800+??? I want great gaming performance, but I want the best future-proofness... Given the above usage, what would you do? Cheers
I do the same sorta things as you, and if I had the choice; X2 4800+ And also, I wouldnt bother with the vapochill, I'd save the money and buy a nice new case for watercooling, triple 120mm rad anyone
X2 all the way, the smoothness of everything is really unbelievable. Plus, if you got a good WC system, you could probably overclock it by a large margin because they run incredibly cool - mine (4400, exactly the same but 200MHz slower than 4800) is 40 idle and ~45 load with the stock HSF.
Thing is... the overall cost of a top notch watercooling system is probably more than buying the vapochill.. hence I thought Id go for phase change... plus... are you saying I can get the sort of low temps I can get from phase change from a water-cooled set up? Then there's the issue of space.. a triple rad system would not fit in my PC65, whereas the light speed is self contained, and in a case that matches the PC65 already... seems so simple. Also... I plan on clocking the hell out of my CPU... I want it running well past 3GHz... so can a decent watercooled setup keep it as cool as the Vapochil? Keep comments coming... more advice is welcome... I plan on spending a lot of money, and want to get this right. I spent a great deal last time, and whie it's still a decent performer after 2 years, in retrospect, I made some mistakes... I bought the wrong Ram... I refused to wait for 939.. blah blah... I want to get this one right.
Id say go for WC. Theres no real preformance gain from running 0 deg than 30 degrees. And with WC, you could cool all your components, not just cpu. And although WC cant go below ambient, it wont get that much hotter as you overclock more and more. For the proc, id say x2. The second physical core wont benefit you much if youre just running one app, but running additional apps wont kill the speed of the main app.
Even with decent air you should be able to hit the 3.0 Ghz mark with a good Athlon 64 X2. Water will maintain your temperature just a bit above ambient, provided you do it correctly. You're shelling out a lot for this rig already; a new case is pretty much a drop in the bucket. Modded PC-75 with 3x 120mm fan radiator, anybody?
You never see record breaking overclocks using water tho... is there a reason for that? I'll fully price up a top-spec triple rad system... and see how it stacks up against the Vapochill.
It also comes down to the waterblock you use, case ventilation, and room temperature; record breaking overclocks arent done with vapochills either; its done with liquid nitrogen in big copper pipes.
You'll have issues getting an X2 over 3ghz IMHO. Even with vapour phase the chips run hot, especially when you start increasing the volts. N4NOID had issues keeping his 4400 cool over ~ 1.45-1.5 (iirc) vcore and he's one high end/decent water cooling. Ok you're looking at much lower temps, but for 3ghz + running at say 1.5vcore, some hefty cooling's gonna be needed. Secondly, your reliant on the weakest of the 2 cores not being crappy... Of the 2, get the FX. Your pretty much gaurenteed to get 3ghz from it. Should do that on air tbh, water is ~ 3-3.2 and ~ 3.3-3.4 is do able on phase, maybe a little higher. You'll miss out on the multi tasking performance, but in single threaded apps you should have the legs. If your heavily into multi tasking though, get the X2 just remember 3+ghz is gonna be much more of a struggle. Now, onto the cooling. Are you wanting to put out record breaking overclocks? Or just have a system thats fast, quiet and stable? You're gonna supercool your cpu but leave the GFX cards stock? Seems kinda silly IMO. A decent water loop might see you, but running a CPU @ 3+ghz and overclocked GTX's is going to test any loop. Just cooling the cpu alone again seems a little pointless, since for not much more effort/cost you can water the lot. Theres so much more to running phase on a 24/7 rig than you might first think. Condensation is going to be the key issue, ask yourself this, can you afford another FX57/4800 if one dies? If the answer is no then don't even think about phase, especially if you've not done research/used it before. On another note, what supply are you going to use to power this machine?
Remember early Venices? They were hitting 3.4 on air, and 3.8 on phase... Are they really that much worse at overclocking?
Where were you reading.... 2.6-2.8 on air was average, with some going to 3ghz. then 3.3-3.4+ on phase. Problem with the X2's is that you need 2 good clocking cores, and theres extra heatload...
I'm leaning more and more towards the FX57 to be honest. I would like the multi-tasking ability, but it's not a priority. It's not that often I do more than one thing at once, and one the occasions I do, although it wont be quite as good, I'm sure a overclocked FX57 will not exactly be slow. I was actually thinking originally of phase change for the CPU and a water loop for the GPUs... I wasn't going to leave them stock. I'm looking more into water at the moment, and still trying to decide. Well.. I can, but a SERIOUSLY don;t want to have to buy another one if I can help it, so point taken. One of the main things holding me back from water is the new case... having said that however, the size of the PC65 and a Light SPeed, or even a re-housed Mach2 would be as tall as a full tower case anyway, so I I suppose a larger case with a beefy triple rad system would not be any larger... I was just being lazy... didn;t want to start cutting etc.. I;m not exactly a modder, despite being a long term resident in here. All I want is a quiet, yet astoundingly fast machine. I want the best 3d performance possible, and great all round performance for everyday tasks. Sounds like the FX is best then, as I can't recall the last time I sat here doing three things at once... I'm either playing games, listening to music, or working in photoshop. The closest I ever get to true multi-tasking is listening to music, or possibly encoding it, while im working in photoshop, and even this machine I'm on now can handle that with aplomb. SOmething major... I was looking at Enermax again, as I've been impressed with this one. It will be 500 Watts plus... or as big as I need... I'll do some research before buying that. I need a new one anyway, as this one isn't ATX 2.2. Triple 120mm rad water cooling... sounds scary.... I can't wait.
Well.... everyone's scared me off phase cooling... so I'm looking into watercooling more, yeah. SOmething beefy.. Triple 120s in a larger case I think. Doing research now..
Highly recommend 1/2 bore tubing, both Danger Den and PolarFlo bits are made so well too. (i've had my hands on both)
Water would be the best way IMO, you should still see the far side of 3ghz with a decent setup tbh. You'll need some hefty rad's etc to keep the temps down ish, esp if you plan on running things overclocked 24/7, should be do able with a tripple rad though tbh. PSU wise, just make sure its got beefy rails. Tim runs the bit test rig (57/7800GTX (sli??)) on a 520w ocz without a problem supposdly, so anything of that power (rail wise) should do you. Wouldnt recommend the OCZ for silence though tbh. The Seasonic 600w SLI jobbies were highly recommended to me, and are meant to be very quiet
Truth be told, you cant go wrong with PC Power and Cooling; not only do they brag about high power output levels, the hard data backs it up. 34 Amps on the 12 volt line, 40 amps on the 5 volt line-and this is on the 510 Watt Turbo Cool
