Possible new Rig. Heavy OC and Gaming

[Junglebizz]

As the title states, the main use for this computer will be gaming, but also the pursuit of a great overclock on air cooling. As for a budget, I am trying to find something in the mid range. I don't need to upgrade everything as you will see below, but I'm trying to keep it around $900 or less. Parts will be coming from NCIX.


Here is a list of parts I am using as a baseline for my upgrade:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (E0 stepping hopefully)
Gigabyte EP45-UD3P (rev 1.1 hopefully)
OCZ Blade PC2-8500 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-1066 CL5-5-5-15
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W
2x Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB running in Raid 0
OCZ Vendetta 2 Heatsink
Xigmatek ACK-I7361 Crossbow Mounting Kit

To round out the build, I plan to keep the current case, two 120mm fans, one 320gb sata drive, 1 dvd-rw drive and the 8800 gts card. I assume I could get rid of the Audigy 2 ZS as it's getting pretty dated and just use the built in Realtek for now.

The total cost after some price matching was about $919 cdn shipped, before $50 worth of oh so fun mail-in rebates, so technically $869 (note that my current system build cost about $940 at the time).

A few of the choices are certainly overkill, like the power supply, but that will help future-proof my system a little better than I did last time when I bought a 450W PS.

The ram I am uncertain about. It sounds like fast ram that will overclock very well, but it turns out there is a low voltage edition available that is even better, but I can't find anywhere that sells it in Canada (anyone know of a place?)

I was going to go with two Seagate 7200.12 1TB hard drives but decided to go with the cheaper, yet smaller, WD caviar blacks. This is one choice I am not sold on as I have read that the WD drives are much noisier and only marginally faster than the Seagates. I have been a long-time user of Seagate drives and currently use four of them, never having any issues, so I tend to stand by that reliability.

That heatsink looks like a monster and from what I have read it is wise to have the mounting bracket to prevent potential damage.

Any opinions on this build or options I should consider looking into? I want a system that I can seriously overclock that will be relatively quiet at the same time. My current rig is close, but it could be better.

[crazyhorsejohnny]

Take a look at G.Skill for memory. Usually cheaper than others and better.

[Junglebizz]

I have used G.Skill in a couple recent builds but I had heard good things about this OCZ Blade.

The G.Skill F2-8500CL5D-4GBPI costs $80 while the F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK costs $69. I was mainly looking for PC8500 ram so that I can have as much overhead as possible for overclocking. My ram has been the limiting factor in my last two setups and this time I want to make sure there's plenty of speed available to be sucked out of these sticks.

[Junglebizz]

After some revisions, I have come up with:

AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition - $167.71
Gigabyte MA790X-UD4P - $131.82
OCZ Blade PC2-8500 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-1066 CL5-5-5-15 - $78.22
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W Black - $141.49
2x Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB - $159.96
OCZ Vendetta 2 Heatsink - $37.08
Xigmatek ACK-I7361 Crossbow Mounting Kit - $14.04

The price has now come down to $850 shipped with an additional $40 of MIRs.

I am trying to find the low voltage edition (1.8v) of the OCZ Blade ram, but I can't find it for sale anywhere in Canada. Anyone know where you can get some?

[rapmaster]

the Xigmatek mounting kit is for Intel 775

get the NCIX.com - Buy Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer 4 Heatpipe Heatsink AM2 LGA775 S754 S939 S940 W/120MM Fan - CR-CCTF In Canada., come with great TIM

and you won't need that PSU for your graphic card, it's way overkill

[Junglebizz]

oops, forgot to remove that one after the change.

The PSU is to help future proof my computer a bit better than I did last time around. I don't intend to stick with my 8800gts indefinitely.

From what I have read, the sunbeam is too big for an EP45-UD3P as it interferes with the stock mosfet heatsink. Is the vendetta 2 much smaller?

[rapmaster]

no, the sunbeam is for the 790x-ud4p

[rapmaster]

if you want low voltage ram

get those Newegg.ca - G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1100 (PC2 8800) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

[Junglebizz]

It seems that NCIX does not have that ram in stock (where I intended to order from) and since newegg doesn't price match, I will probably have to go with the more typical 2.0-2.1v ddr2.


From a few reviews I have read, it seems that both heatsinks has a relatively loud fan and that the sunbeam does edge out the vendetta 2. I can find the sunbeam for about $37 as well, but would it be worth installing a quieter fan on it? Perhaps a Noctua NF-P12-1300 120MM fan? It looks like there would be a significant CFM loss (approx 36 CFM) by switching fans, how much impact would that have on the performance of this unit? I want something that works well but won't sound like a vacuum.

[rapmaster]

the sunbeam have a fan controller if it help