Hello, This is one of my first posts on here! anyhoo, i was just wondering if someone experienced could help out! I have a massive chieftec case - the fulltower version, which i brought with the idea of someday fitting watercooling in it. I have an old system (xp mobile 2500+ - does 2400 on air/slk900a-no mounting holes on gigabyte 7nnxp/1gb ram/raid0seagate 160gbX2/radeon9800pro/sbaudigy2zs) and was wondering on the following: 1) is it worth my while to go water cooled? 2) how would i go about cutting the case - buy a jigsaw, or buy holesaw? 3) i thought a complete upgrade (ath64 3200/dfi nf4/1gb tccd/7800gtx pcie) isnt worth doing really unless i go the whole hog (like ive mentioned) - or would it be worth moving 'up' (if thats the right word) to p4 2.8c/875p mobo/1gbtccd - keep gfx? 4) i know of coolercases.co.uk being the only place to get stuff from - anyone else worth looking at before plumping? i get my student loan soon and need to decide between these options: 1) water cooled - keep this system 2) go the whole hog ath64-route 3) water cooled - p4 route 4) keep my money and save it for my elective travel later in the year? any advice would me much appreciated, but ive never done water cooling before, but assume i need the SHD dd kits - but rbx or tdx, and is there more than one type of SHD - ie one for rbx one for tdx?) well, i look forward to any reply! thanks!
Welcome to Bit-Tech! I wouldn't think you'd get much more of an OC if you go water, but the beauty is that you can take most of the sytem with you upgrade after upgrade. If you're getting into modding you need a dremel. I use a regular dremel but I also have a larger one. It's not an actual dremel (Canadian Tire special) but it's got a lot more power and uses 3" cutoff disks. Great for long straight cuts much faster and cleaner than a regular dremel. You can do WC fairly cheap with a little DIYing. A very popular rad is a heater core from an '86 chevette (I use 2 myself). Infact you can get a fan shroud specifically designed for these and it make mounting them much easier. For the plumbing I use regular hardware store variety barbs and vinyl tubing with worm drive clamps, actually I dont even use barbs. The plumbing systems that are designed for WC computers are definitely more attracive and professional looking, but I doubt they help performance any. Hope this helps you a little with your decision making.
If you want to mod your computer just buy a dremel. If you want a better Overclocking with your computer, choose water cooling.
I already have a dremel, and I HATE IT! the silly discs keep breaking, ive read up on it some, but it really is taking the biscuit! i think screwfixdirect are doing a good jigsaw for about 20-ish UK£, which seems ok, and another £5 for some extra blades. Dad does have a metalworks factory, so all the equipment is actually very much at hand, but id like my own jigsaw if itll be useful. thing is ive got this great hunk of a case, and theres not much in it. im thinking currently of cutting off the bottom two drive supports (something to do with 'rivets' that you apparently drill out). i realise that i could always go ahead and go the whole hog, but i live in the loft in my house, and i hate the temp changes that i get - currently im lucky if i get less than 3-4 reboots daily. i hate the position im in - sorta in the middle - its either upgrade everything, or do something different (watercooled), and neither is what id call cheap (though of course watercooling would be the cheaper option, but would require work from me) im sure theres gonna be someone out there that has modded the chieftec fulltower case, and if theres any pics or advice as to where to mount stuff, id love to hear it. thanks!
I agree. The three primary metal cutting tools I use are (in order of preference)... -jigsaw -hole saw(s) -nibbler IMO, this combination is far more accurate, controllable, and needs less hand finishing to complete. Then again, I've seen Dremeled projects that are very nicely done, so "to each his own", I guess. I think you should do the PC upgrade first. Moving up to the 939 platform is expensive, but very worthwhile. Plus, it makes no sense to buy watercooling for the old platform and then try to move it onto a new one...the fittings will be different and so will the needs. For an excellent comparison of air to water , see Coolmiester's entries here.
welcome to bit-tech in answer to you first 4 questions : 1) Decide why you would want water cooling? ---- you want a very quiet system ---- you want to overclock ---- its COOL 2) Depends on size of hole small ones are a real pain with a jigsaw 80mm is about the smallest i would go with one. holesaws are fairly quick and easy to use and give a nice round hole. But a dremel type tool is exceptionally usefull. 3) Thats purely personal choice. I would go the athlon 64 route myself. 4) have a look at the top of thise forum for some VERY useful links. hope this helps
thanks everyone for all the help. i have been positively hating the noise that comes from my pc - currently temps are sitting at 41Csystem/50Ccpu - and thats with a slk900a and a 92mm antec fan with a spacer in between. i do have a crappy vantec iceberq4 on the northbridge, but currently cannot find a good reliable cheap supplier of zalman nb47j's. the water cooling idea is purely for the fact that i expect, per amount of noise, to get a better OC and have it stable. I intend on installing whatever will fit into the front of the case or at the top (if people say this is better) - ie 120.2 or 120.3 will perhaps fit on top. pump ive thought eheim 1560, blocks rbx shd/maze4gpu, and thats as far as ive thought really. however, if i can get a good ath64 setup that is also quiet (at least when not doing anything, when playing a game with sound at max, it really wont bother me, i dont think, that much if the fans go up a gear or two). if i go ath64, currently this is what is on the cards, though i really hope gfx price drops a little: 3200+ venice / 3500+ 1gb corsair 4400c25 (apparently guaranteed tccd) dfi nf4 ultra dr sli any (prefer bfg with lifetime warranty though) 7800gtx xp90c cooler i dunno how these things will stack up together, but this comes to around 135+135+135+380= 785, but surely i can get a full system for around that much, with a good tft, hard drive, sound, dvd etc thrown into the mix? mesh/evesham/etc? well i dunno - just waiting on that student loan payment to come through, will have to worry about paying fees once im done with pc - only reason im upgrading really is because this silly thing keeps crashing on me, and i dont know why. I dont play games that often as uni is quite tough for me (medstudent, 4th year, nearing end, no time for life besides medicine really) and i dont see why this wouldnt last. thats why the p4 option came into the equation - seems a cheaper way of more performance, but then again cant seem to find a good mobo athlon with mcp raid else id stick with what ive got. clearly im somewhat confused!
Are you guys using those red/brown gritty disks or the black fiber ones? I'll agree with you on those redy brown piece of crap disks but the only time ive broken a fiber disk is when i dropped my dremel.
A jigsaw should be your tool of choice for cutting any reasonably sized hole in a case. Aside from Coolercases, http://www.over-clock.com/ is somewhere I'd recommend. They offer LOTS of postal options including standard 1st class letter post (28p) incase you forget a barb or two
Um, no. You haven't even added the PSU and who is giving away free HDDs, DVDs and displays (your motherboard has onboard sound)? Clearly, I am missing something...what is "mesh, evesham, etc."?
i have a tagan 480w 24pin native psu i have 2 seagate 160gb sata's i have nec 3500 i have iiyama vmpro 454a i have audigy2zs evesham/mesh/etc is a referral to computer manufacturers in the UK - meshplc.co.uk or evesham.com will tell you what i mean, but they are by no means an exhaustive list of people i am willing to buy off.
Then I would reevaluate your decision cause I don't believe this is true (in general*). The new 90nm AMD chips run so cool right out of the box and modern air sinks have progressed so rapidly in terms of technology and execution that the difference between air and water when overclocking is minimal. My 3500 Winchester benefitted not at all from water...the clocks didn't improve and the temps were within a degree or two of previous aircooled results. In other words, heat itself is not the biggest barrier to successfully overclocking anymore until you are striving for the absolute/suicidal bleeding edge of your system. "in general" defines a typical watercooled loop...Pelts, dual-loops, extreme pump/radiator combinations would be some obvious exceptions.
You could look around for someone selling a lower end A64 system with AGP, ie, you'd only have to change the mobo and processor, and possibly ram if you don't have DDR (Can't remember when this was introduced). You should be able to pick up a mobo and cpu, say a 3200+ for just over £100, ok, it's not so handy from an upgrade point of view, but it should make quite a difference, and it's less than many grphics cards... oh, and one word... yuk
my ram will do currently 230 at 2.5-2-3-6 and its el cheapo buffalo 400mhz ram, so i suppose i could use that again. the thing is there never really is a 'right' time to buy these things is there - i spose the only 'right' time to buy would be 'when needed', as something new is always round the corner, but surely socket 939 has some scope for 18 months yet, doesnt it? if this is the case then spending more now, rather than just going for a stopgap measure, would be better long-term?
I would think at least 18 months, probably more. Since AMD is just starting to release the dual core CPU on the 939 chip. Which can, as I've read anyway, be used on any 939 mobe with just a bios flash.
almost the same setup as me mate i use a 1220 .3 rad my cpus at 2.8ghz fromm 2.1 and runs at 33 degrees dangerden stuff is great watercooling is the way forwards watercooling could always be transfered over to a 64 bit my xp can just about keep up with a 3500 a64
so, looks like ive concluded this by doing the following: 1) Forget water cooling - but i think i ought to remove the front two drive bays anyway, and use 3.5-->5.25 adaptors 9(ive got 3 free 5.25 + one space behind the fan controller), and then stick some nice 120mm's on the front? 2) wait for the student loan to come through, and then get the following: 3500+/3200+/dualcore 4400+/3800+ 1gb corsair 4400c25pt (apparently guaranteed tccd!) dfi nf4 ultra dr sli single 7800gtx/single 6800gt (need to find good shop that sells BFG brand ideally) then i believe i might just be able to have a nice quiet, cool, but powerful system, with new sata's to follow (thinking RAPTORs! apparently theyre meant to be the best thing since scsi320raid setups - old news i know, but exciting nonetheless!) any ideas on my choice of component?
