The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

caucano,

Some cases do it this way to increase space for some longer video cards that wouldn't fit otherwise. It just gives another 1 3/4" of space between the card and the drive. When mounted sideways it allows removal of the drive without having to remove the video card The traditional way they are mounted is lengthwise, front to rear! I personally don't see any difference in cooling them this way as the surface area remains the same no matter which way you turn it! I never mount 2 hard drives directly next to one another in the next available bay. I usually leave one empty drive bay between each hard drive to allow better air flow between them!

Happy Computering,
theone

 

this case has them mounted the normal way

this is has them mounted sideways


now although it has holes to allow air through it will be less than if only the hard drive is there like in the first pic.

 

thanks for the clarifications! I will look at the PSUs suggested, good thing I asked about the Antecs, I always had an impression they were top of the line when it came to PSUs. I think 450-500W should be sufficient for:

Gigabyte DS3
Intel 4300 (hopefully OCed to 2.5-3GHz)
DDR2-800C4 Corsair 1x2G
Nvidia 7600GT (manufacturer yet to be determined)
1 IDE drive
1 SATA drive
1 DVDRW drive
Creative Soundcard (not sure which one as of yet)

Thanks a bunch.

edit: you guys think the WD raptor drives are worth the investment? at least for the OS drive.

 

I use 4 raptors in raid 0.
My advise would be no, they are not worth the investment.
You'd be better off buying some good 16mb cache drives and setting up a raid instead.

 

caucano,

Why the IDE hdd? Do you already have it?

If you get a good mobo (like asus), you probably don't need a sound card as they usually already have good 5.1 or 6.1 onboard audio.

 

cool thanks. One final question regarding the Motherboard (I will order most parts tonight since the ram is on sale @ newegg). Ok, I am again debating between Gigabyte's DS3 (here) and Asus' P5B Deluxe (here). I would definetly use the firewire ports and this is the only reason I am leaning towards the Asus since the DS3 is apparently a better overclocker. What do you guys think? I guess I can always buy a firewire pci card separately...but would this result in a slower or worse quality connection in any way?

thanks a bunch.

edit: @mort81 the old hard drive is from my old P3 system, I would most likely be transfering the data to a SATA drive and using it as temp storage, its still a good drive. Also, the Asus board I'm considering above, does have on board audio...maybe its worth the investment. I just want to be able to OC the 4300 a bit and don't want the FSB to limit me.

 

I can't speak for the gigabyte board but I have the P5W DH Deluxe and it is an excellent OC'ing mobo. I've got the cpu frequency/fsb set at 355 (266 is stock) easy on air. I'll probably take it up to 3.4ghz later but it's blazing fast now at 3.2ghz. The onboard audio is very good to. I could see no reason for a sound card.

 

What I'm going to do regarding an OS drive is use a WD Caviar SE16 500GB. Huge capacity and high speed, not to mention very quiet and far better value for money. I'll probably partition it off so I don't have to worry about reformats.

 

I personally don't like the big drives even partitioned off for my OS. I'd rather have a good 16mb (I like WD's) smaller hdd like 160gb or so for my OS and software and another larger hdd for data.

Regarding cases, my old pc had an antec case but since getting this cooler master case, I'm sold on them.

 

It's not the ideal scenario for me, but the big SE16 caviars are about the best hard disks I've seen. I'm after a quiet PC now, and my 36GB raptor definitely does not help with that!

 

I don't know if it's because it's a maxtor or because it's a big hdd (at least used to be) but my maxtor 300gb hdd is noisy. I can't even hear my WD 160gb hdd.

 

A little bit of both there I think, but i haven't heard any quiet Maxtor drives.

 

good stuff! Has any one heard anything specific to Asus' P5B Deluxe in terms of max FBS? Tom's hardware benched the P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP at 461MHz FBS, I don't know if the P5B Deluxe is the same as the WiFi internally....will check the Asus website.

 

461mhz, that's some major OC'ing.

 

sammorris,

I've been using Maxtor Diamond Plus IDE drives for a couple of years (80GB, 120GB & 160GB) and you have to listen hard to hear anything at all. The new Seagate Barracuda 160 S-ata drive is about as quiet as drives get! Even if you listen hard with the side cover off, you can't hear anything!

Happy Computering,
theone

 

Not even the idle noise? To you my raptor must seem deafening!

 

I am trying to boost my RAM since my computer seems to be slowing down. I have 512 RAM, though it does not seem to be at optimal since playing PS 1 type games are running slowly on my computer. I have a Inspiron 9100 Notebook, so how do I OC it. Thanks.

 

Laptops are often locked down so you'll have to see what's in your BIOS. Don't forget you can't change their cooling either, so I don't know what degree of success you'll have. PS games always emulated slowly for me, that requires a pretty large amount of processing power.

 

For future reference then, will I be able to upgrade my grafics card without buying a whole new computer?

 

gfunk01,

I recently took an Inspiron 9100 apart (broken screen) and the computer is expandable to a Radeon Mobility 9800 and 1 GB of RAM. Check with Dell and they can tell by your serial #

Happy Computering,
theone