Is it worth getting a Lian Li PC7 Plus?

[dodgybob]

personally, i think the mobo is the hardest choice. and the fatality is very loud because of its 40mm fans its got everywhere.

Yes you're right, I was being naive with my assumption. It seemed so easy in the beginning with the excellent reviews of the Dfi boards. *sigh*

[dodgybob]

Been looking at the anandtech forums and there's a nice fat thread on the asus a8nsli deluxe about changing the chipset cooler. They have a link to this which shows that a zalman heatsink can fit on the chipset.

Don't think that would allow an iceq setup though so how about that setup with one of the Zalman VF700-CUs on a X800XL?

[Lu-tze]

i would guess, looking at the pics of the zalman installed on the gpu, that it would interfere with the zalman chipset heatsink.

have you looked at the forums on the silent pc websites? they might have more helpful info for you.

[nvening]

The x800xl you were looking at is not the best, the MSI is, or poss the powercolour. the his does not have dual dvi or VIVO and it is the same price as the MSI. The MSI also has a good bundle.

[Hans Voralberg]

Yes, the MSI has Dual DVI and massive bundle, i using one, just a shame it use 2.0ns ram, can't push it far

[dodgybob]

Not sure if it's worth me going dual dvi or VIVO. Cost is an issue, particularly as it looks like I'll be paying a lot more for the case and psu than I had initially planned. I looked at the HIS in the 1st place as it has a very quiet and effective cooler for about £225, only about £15 more than the cheapest X800XL I could find.

Taking up Lu-tze's suggestions i looked at the SPCR forums and found a really impressive thread with some pictures by a guy there called ragnar where he managed to fit the zalman NB47 northbridge heatsink on an Asus Sli board and still was able to fit a VF700 on his sapphire X800XL. So this might be the way to go instead of the HIS card. I think a Zalman fan bracket and a 120mm fan over the NB47 might be essential to maintain the stability of such a system. The growing cost implications of a quiet nforce 4 system are starting to worry me now though.

I doubt I would use any video in component. Dual Dvi would be nice as I have a Sharp LL-172GB currently attached to my Radeon 9500pro via Dvi. The image quality seems very good with the analogue connector too though. If I have to buy a VF700 cooler for the graphics card I think I would find myself trying to find the cheapest X800XL board I can find unless dual Dvi was a very small price premium.

On another note there appears to be a way to get the NB47 on the Dfi board with the HIS card. You have to mangle the NB47 and rip out 2 rows of the pins. The picture is right at the bottom of the page that I just gave the link to. I wonder if that would allow me to go with my original component choices if yet again I stuck a 120mm fan on a bracket above it.

Thanks for all your replies, you've been very helpful

[nvening]

The MSIs fan is supposed to be very good and it is the same price, you only need dual dvi if you are running two monitors.

[dodgybob]

Yeah, sorry I wasn't clear in my post that I'm uncertain if I would be getting a 2nd monitor later (much later). I'm looking into the Msi now, the copper cooler looks promising. If I did replace that though the vivo and dual dvi are nice to have.