The (new) Official PC building thread!

Ahh I see, so where did you get it from and how much did you pay for it?

 

rob,

as sam said, with the antec tricools, you can use both the three speed controller that comes with the fan and the bios fan speed controller in unison. I now have qfan set on silent mode for my chassis and power fans and the three speed controller on my tricool fans set on high. both my tricools are turning about 1450 rpm.

this significantly lowered the fan noise on my pc as my chipset fans (20mm x 20mm x 20mm) were turning nearly 7500 rpm and were by far the noisest fans in my pc. they are now turning about 5000 rpm and are a whole bunch quieter.

back when I had only one tricool, I had qfan turned off and the tricool set on medium. it was turning about the same speed it is now (1450 rpm).

 

Interesting, what speed do you guys' tricools make at max?
The blue tricools in my Antec 900 make about 2200rpm at high and around 1600rpm at medium, about 1050 at low. This seems higher than anyone else's...

 

is there a tool that will tell me the speeds of the fans i have pluged into the PSU and not the mobo?
as i have 2 like that. the antec tricool and the thermaltake 120mm the thermaltake is at full speed as it only has the 4 pin molex plug and i cant plug it into the mobo.

as you know mort with my version of mobo v2.1 i cant adjust my speeds of the fans pluged into it unless im missing something somewhere.

speedfan dont work with this mobo. it shows the speeds of 3 fans that are on the board but i cant change them. unless there is something n the bios that will let me.

 

Unfortunately not, unless you use a hardware 5 1/4" bay controller with its own display, you'll have to plug the fans into the mobo to tell their speed. Of course, if you're good enough, you can just do it by ear like I do...

 

rob,

you have a gigabyte mobo and I have an asus mobo. asus has a feature called qfan to adjust the fan speeds of those plugged into the headers on the mobo. I thought gigabyte had something similiar.

like sam said, there is no way to monitor the fan speed of a fan plugged into the gpu unless you go through a fan controller/monitor.

edit: sam I believe you are right. my tricool was turning closer to 1600 rpm on medium with qfan disabled. my bad. regardless it's much quieter now and still getting ample airflow (although my mobo temp is a little higher but not an issue by any means). the slight mobo temp increase is a result of the drastic decrease in chipset fan speeds. there is still adequate airflow from the tricools at 1450 rpm.

 

What's the write speed on those things anways? Like 4x or something? I'd wait it out a year.

 

Haha, I wasn't trying to prove you wrong or anything, I was just curious if I had faster than usual fans, most people seem to report around the 1400 mark for the tricools on medium. Interesting that the SFF21F at 1600rpm (12V) seems to push almost as much as the tricools on high... At medium there's no comparison, the S-Flex wins hands down. of course at 1600rpm the FM121 wins the competition, but since it's as noisy as the tricool on high, it loses some points there!

Out of interest I did a little comparison to see scientifically, how much different PC component prices are in the UK to the US. As it turns out it's not great, but nowhere near as bad as most people say it is:
I compared a typical high end PC spec from Newegg and Scan:

Initial prices include VAT at 17.5% for both (if the americans got taxed like we do)

E6750: Scan £120.91 Newegg £112.33 FS
GA-P35C-DS3R: Scan £73.43 Newegg £88.68 £3.91 shipping
4GB-PC6400C4: Scan £93.59 Newegg £79.23 FS £20.13 rebate
WD5000AAKS: Scan £62.56 Newegg £52.83 FS
OEM-HD3870: Scan £123.34 Newegg £112.33 £3.45 shipping
520W HX PSU: Scan £63.20 Newegg £82.77 FS £5.03 rebate
CM RC-690: Scan £52.28 Newegg £47.29 £11.02 shipping
Optiarc 20x: Scan £15.97 Newegg £14.18 FS
SM-226BW: Scan £210.31 Newegg £183.28 FS £20.13 rebate

Scan total
£815.59 + c. £15 shipping = c. £830

Newegg total
£791.30 inc. shipping, £45.29 rebates = total of c. £746

Now if we take the sales tax for newegg at 5%, which seems to be about average in the US, price total after rebates is £662.

 

tricools (blue led) have served me well. I've always been pleased with their performance and noise on medium speed. yes they are too noisy on high without qfan enabled. the main reason I like them is their built in three speed switch. no aditional speed controller required.

I hadn't messed with qfan until rescently (the noise from my chipset fans was getting to me) but I'm glad they have the high speed setting as well as they are now turning about 1450 on high with qfan in silent mode.

I had to replace the oem cm 120mm case fan with a tricool because it was turning too slow in silent mode (under 800 rpm). everything is good now. adequate airflow and although not silent, comfortably quiet.

 

Well Ive had Orthos and Prime 95 running most of the day and the highest temp I got on the CPU was 41celcius. Within 30 seconds of stopping both progs the temps were back to about 27 celcius and 10 mins after the CPU is at 22celcius.

All in all I am very happy with how this has turned out - thanks for all the advise guys.

 

sam,

average sales tax in the states is closer to 7%. maybe a little higher. nice thing about newegg though, sales tax only applies to those that live in CA (and possibly those that live in a state where newegg has a warehouse). I don't pay any sales tax when I buy at newegg.

 

Mort: Heh, too slow you say, so if I told you most of my fans run at around 700rpm? lol
I was looking at this list: http://www.taxadmin.org/FTA/rate/sales.html

 

wish i got those kinda temps mine right now with orthos running the high is 66c

 

Just done a small overclock from the stock 2.66 to a simple 2.8 (FSB from 333 to 350).

Temps are currently

CPU 42 degrees (Heatsink fan is turning at 540RPMS lol) - at rest the temp was 24 degrees.
Motherboard 46 degrees
Core 1 61 degrees
Core 2 61 degrees

This is after an hour of Orthos.

 

sam,

by too slow, anything under 800 for the fans hooked to a header on my mobo turns red in my bios and signals an error in PC Probe II. I suppose it would be fine for a fan powered directly from the psu.

that sales tax rate chart is over a year old. taxes have gone crazy just over the last year. and besides those are state sales tax. they are higher in the cities. eg. for KS it said 5.3%. in Garden City, KS where I live we pay 7.45%. little less in the county.

 

Someone asked about my video card and I forgot to post the make and model. lol. PowerColor X1650XT, nothing special but it plays movies and "older" games just fine.

cincyrob looks like your system is running nicely now. You're gonna have to go in LITTLE increments from now on. You're close to the limit on air now if your temps are running in the low to mid 60's. You might try turning down the vcore a smidgen and see what happens.

......gm

 

@greensman
i was thinking that about the vcore.the 1.35 its at to be honest i dont think i need it that highto get the OC im at. i might be wrong but i dont think if i put it at say 1.25v which is still more than normal settings it will be fine. so tonight after i get home and orthos had been running for over 11+ hours i might drop it to 1.25v and see how it reacts. and once there if its running fine i do beleive i am done with the OC'ing of it cause i dont plan on going water cooling...lol

im just wondering if i got the AR5 on the CPU good enough? or if i got it on there in a thin enough amount? or even to thin. i know there is that topic about to much or not enough dont matter. i dont want to be the one to bring it back up....lmao

@pepp
take the guys advice take it slow on the OC. you will get it going good in small steps.dont jump it up to fast like i did. but it sounds like you got it going nicely. it is addicting to say the least.

 

cincyrob,

A word to the wise!

Leave it alone! 1.35v is fine! Screwing around with the voltages with your machine running as good as it does at the moment is just asinine! Like I said before, you should be using it, getting a feel for the computer and checking how your apps work for the next couple of weeks! Resist the urge! ROFLMAO! I did the same damn thing and messed up my E4300 that way, and while it was good, I could never find the combination of settings that gave me 32,000 mips I was getting no matter how hard I tried and I didn't document the settings! Even someone with my experience can accidentally mess up a good thing!

Enough said!
Russ

 

Durn Yankees don't know what a pig in a poke is, and they claim to be able to build computers, what next, rooting for the Reds?
Check outt his program for Temps, fan speeds, and the ability to control your cooling fans speed,
It's called SPEEDFAN, available here.
I use it to monitor the temps and of the CPU and the HDD and the RPMs of the fan in the computer I built the kids, it measures some of the temps in my Dell, not all of them.

 

@BlivetNC
thats just it. i have speedfan. and with my mobo it dont work.
im gonna have 6 fans (not counting the cpu fan)when all said and done. i will leave 3 on the mobo and then get me a contoller and run the other 3 with that..

REDS 4 ever SOX NEVER!!!!!!!!!


lol