The most superest, uberest, 13373St PC I ever built

[sammorris]

According to their specs they did. The first thing I learned about fans was maufacturers lie through their teeth about the specifications. In any case, they'll do the job, but 1200rpm fans in a P182 places your cooling at 'average' at best, for an i7.

[arthurleung]

According to their specs they did. The first thing I learned about fans was maufacturers lie through their teeth about the specifications. In any case, they'll do the job, but 1200rpm fans in a P182 places your cooling at 'average' at best, for an i7.

Not sure about 1200rpm. I've 3 intakes, 1 memory fan, 1 cpu fan, 1 exhaust 120mm fan, all at 1200rpm and my system is adequately cooled. All the fans are Yate Loon however.

i7 doesn't magically generate more heat than a Core2Duo so P18x's cooling is not necessary bad.

[sammorris]

Actually it does. A Core 2 Duo uses 65W (only 50 in some cases) A core 2 Quad uses 95W (for the old ones, closer to 80 for the new ones) Whereas the i7 generates 125W. That's a lot of extra heat to dissipate.

[Bhavv]

According to their specs they did. The first thing I learned about fans was maufacturers lie through their teeth about the specifications. In any case, they'll do the job, but 1200rpm fans in a P182 places your cooling at 'average' at best, for an i7.

Even with 5 of them directly on the CPU with an Asus Triton 88? Have you even seen that HSF?

Well, probably not, but I cant upload pictures untill I get a new harddrive tomorrow.

The Triton 88 has 12 heatpipes, built in 12 cm fan, 2 optional 12 cm fans attached to both ends (I have attached them both), and then the two exhausts from the case fans. I also added in a single old 3000 rpm fan for the intake as one on its own is tollerable, but I dont think that any sane person is going to want 5x 3000 rpm fans.

Just having the Triton 88 without any extra fans already places my cooling far beyond average, since average would be stock fan.

[Bhavv]

Actually it does. A Core 2 Duo uses 65W (only 50 in some cases) A core 2 Quad uses 95W (for the old ones, closer to 80 for the new ones) Whereas the i7 generates 125W. That's a lot of extra heat to dissipate.

Hence the 12 heatpipe + 3 x 12 cm fan HSF .

[sammorris]

I've seen enough tower coolers in my time to know that no matter how much bigger, heavier and more expensive they get, none of them cool any better. a TRUE is all you need, not a Black or Copper one, not a huge Pelter-boosted V10 or whatever its called, even the Prolimatech Megahalems, a cooler designed with i7s in mind is splitting hairs against the TRUE1366.
The £50+ CPU coolers out there are just preying on people thinking they need more cooler than they actually do, like 1500W power supplies.

Also, push/pull does not improve temps when you have a back case fan. It just causes turbulence and extra noise for no gain.

There is a lot more to cooling than a big heatsink, I assure you. Using a stock cooler puts you 'minimal'. With your setup, I still maintain Average. Maybe above average considering all systems, but specifically on i7, just average, and I stand by that.


Also, some good contradiction going on here

I dont want high CFM fans that sound like aeroplanes anymore.

I also added in a single old 3000 rpm fan for the intake as one on its own is tollerable

A 3000rpm fan? Please tell me it's no bigger than 80mm or I'm going to laugh...

[Fraz]

Actually it does. A Core 2 Duo uses 65W (only 50 in some cases) A core 2 Quad uses 95W (for the old ones, closer to 80 for the new ones) Whereas the i7 generates 125W. That's a lot of extra heat to dissipate.

Not really - my Q6600 G0 produces 120 Watts of heat at its current overclock. I have a moderately fancy heatsink + fan (~£25), but even under load the CPU is pretty cool with the fan at only 1000 rpm.

I really think people worry way to much about this stuff, and I also thing sammorris is very wrong saying this setup has merely "average" cooling. Clearly the stock heatsink is adequate, and a giant HSF with a P182 and 5 case fans is verging on the ludicrously over-the-top.

It's the graphics card(s) you need to worry about overheating - not the CPU!. The graphics card(s) is/are in the worst position to get decent airflow, and quite often have heavily restricted intake if you're running SLI/Xfire. I think Corsair's new case has got the right idea on this - they have a nice big fan pushing air towards the GPU intakes for just this reason.

[sammorris]

An overclocked Q6600 =/= an i7 stock, let alone an overclocked i7. In a wind-tunnel style case with two 250mm side fans (Granted, these aren't particularly good either), with a Noctua NH-U12 and Arctic Silver V paste, my friend's overclocked i7 ran up to 70ºC load.

Conversely, Graphics cards will withstand ridiculous temperatures with no incident. It amazes me how much fuss people make about Graphics cards that run at 90ºC. Every Graphics card I've owned bar one has run at 90ºC, and the only one that broke was one I broke myself trying to fit an aftermarket cooler (for quietness, not for temps).

The graphics card position is not ideal, but a side intake, or better yet a bottom intake, and all is well. Even a lowly 700rpm 80mm bottom fan cut 7-8ºC off one of my HD4870X2's temperatures.

[Fraz]

The £50+ CPU coolers out there are just preying on people thinking they need more cooler than they actually do

Well, a TRUE is pretty over-the-top as it is, and since a TRUE with a decent fan comes in at ~£50...

Frankly, I think any more than ~£30 is probably a waste of money.

[moogle]

a Noctua NH-U12 and Arctic Silver V paste, my friend's overclocked i7 ran up to 70ºC load.

Update your paste, AS5 is old and not worth it for what you get performance and weight etc. Some of the newer and better pastes don't need a curing time either

[sammorris]

You can get the Ultra-120A from Scan with a reasonable 120mm fan for £32-£33. That's not bad.

Moogle: AS5 is a pain with the curing time, but I haven't seen much improvement going to other pastes like OCZ Freeze.

[Bhavv]

I think its 2500 - 3000 RPM the ones I had before, they push a lot of air, but one alone in any decent case is barely audible.

When you do what I did and go and buy three of them, oops. I needed a fan controller for them, but one on its own is only slightly audible in my old case, plus the Antec has its 'sound deadening layer' as they say, any Im partially deaf in both ears so maybe thats why I cant hear the single loud fan on its own =D.

But all three of them with no fan controller was terribad.

Im putting in a Zalman fan bracket and one of the coolermaster fans below the graphics cards, mainly for mod reasons to add some light there, and a bit of bottom to top airflow helps.

But my previous case had 2x 12 cm side fans and they made virtually no difference to GPU temps regardless of being on full or minimum speed.

I always find that my bottom graphics card is hotter than the top one because it doesnt catch a lot of airflow, so the fan bracket should help.

I just tried removing one of the stock GPU coolers, but it is adhered on very very strongly, so Im not going to be able to change them to the thermaltakes . But they are decent and silent zalman ones, named VF830, but I wanted to use the thermaltakes.

[moogle]

You can get the Ultra-120A from Scan with a reasonable 120mm fan for £32-£33. That's not bad.

Moogle: AS5 is a pain with the curing time, but I haven't seen much improvement going to other pastes like OCZ Freeze.

Give the MX-2 paste a go

That gave me 1-2 degrees lower temps than the AS5. I've got AS5, MX-2, OCZ Freeze and a few others. I'm gonna give them a test of my own, I also hate how there are reviews on the pastes but there are never consistent results on the winner.

[sammorris]

If they're anything over 70mm and 3000rpm, they won't be barely audible no matter what case you have. I can clearly hear a 120mm fan above 1000-1100rpm. I tried fast fans in the past, and like you, bought three, and got a headache, so that was that. They were PWM ones as well, so running them through my Sunbeam Rheobus caused one of them to start smoking (the fan, not the controller, haha)

With side airflow, it's coverage that helps, not raw speed, and they also only work intake if the cards use double slot exhaust coolers (HD4870/9800GTX style), and exhaust, if the cards blow air into the case (single-slot 8800GT style)

Realistically, naff Thermaltake stuff won't see big improvements over Zalman coolers, Thermaltake's GPU coolers are pretty poor for heat in my experience. Thermalright HR-03s or T-Rads are the best, and many like AC's Accelero series, but be careful, it was the latter that killed off one of my HD3870s.

Moogle: heh, 1-2 Celsius, WOW.

[Bhavv]

Update your paste, AS5 is old and not worth it for what you get performance and weight etc. Some of the newer and better pastes don't need a curing time either

I didnt use my AS5 this time, I decided to just use the Asus paste. It was a thicker silver one that needed spreading with a plastic card, but Im sure it will be good enough.

This build is taking too long, having to wait for new parts!

But it should definately work with a clean new harddrive tomorrow, then I just need to back up my previous Win xp drive, RMA the faulty one, and instead of keeping them for raid, I'll sell and get another 1 TB F1 .

So now everything will be new except the PSU and CD drive, I like new shiny .

I already managed to sell my E8400 which I used to buy the new hard drive and two more fans, I need to be able to get back onto Ebay ASAP and get my hard drive RMA done.

Yea, I keep the Zalman VF830s, and get rid of the Sorbs, but the thermaltake ones do have two more heatpipes and larger fins so they would have been better, but Gigabyte have permanantly stuck on the Zalmans so NVM.

[sammorris]

I hope they fixed the reliability issues of the 1TB F1s... I'm sure they have by now, but I know someone who had every single one of his five 1TB F1s fail within a few weeks... ouch.

Lol @ selling a top end CPU just for a hard drive. I've been there too!