The (new) Official PC building thread!

good to see you LP and best of luck.

I need some recommendations on my case fans configuration. I have a cooler master stacker 830 evo. both side panels are vented. front fan blowing in and rear fan blowing out. this I know but should I have the top fan blowing in or out? I never had a case with a top fan before. I might add another front fan and 1 or two side fans later. for those of you that have experience with case with a top fan, what have you found to be most efficient, top fan blowing in or top fan blowing out? TIA and BTW, I'm using antec 120mm tricools.

 

In my experience, if you're using side intake have the top fan blowing out. If you're using side exhaust or no side fans at all, have the top fan blowing in - this is because intake fans usually push less air than exhaust ones due to the different way they are mounted and the fact that they have dust filters etc. on them. This is of course assuming all the fans are the same size. I think they are with the Stacker.

 

@Mort81
i have the CM RC-690. and thanks to GM i got a nice air flow useing the top fans.

i have 2 of them set as exhaust along with my rear fan..
i also have the front fan as intake and the 2 side panels as intake also..

1 of the top fans is connected to the mobo and the other to PSU.. same goes for my side fans. then my rear is connected to the mobo and the front fan is connected to the PSU. so i have 6 fans total 3 on the mobo with the CPU fan and 3 to the PSU. and it dropped my temps about 8c once i put the top fans in...

ok ill say it before someone else does. i dont have anything connected to my mobo right now...lol

 

i have 4 120mm fans 2 side and 1 rear and front. the top fans are the 140mm sucking out some bigtime air..lol cant wait to get this thing back together so i can play with this stuff more..lol

 

it prolly won't make that big of a difference. I'll try the top blowing in 1st. front in, back out and top in.

LP,

I need you. I know you have a stacker

 

the asus maximus formula I was considering is at newegg again. it was deactivated. I've already decided to go with the asus rampage formula so oh well.

 

@Mort81,
I don't have the Stacker 830 but it made perfect sense to me on using the top fan as exhaust because HOT air rises and getting the hot air out from the source was the best idea I could come up with.

Your case is a little different than the CM-690 so a little playing around might be in order. Your power supply is on top too so another thing to look at.

....gm

 

I finally took that big leap. ordered the asus rampage formula mobo and an intel E3110. against my own advice, I ordered the oem/tray E3110. one year warranty as oppossed to three with the retail version. I've got enough oem hsf's on the shelf already and if a cpu is going to die there's a very good chance it will do it within the 1st year.

I'll most likely upgrade to a 45nm quad core in a year or so anyway. this E3110 will give me something to play with in the meantime. cost me $501.91 for both delivered. $193.24 for the cpu and $308.67 for the mobo. here it is in a nutshell:

COOLER MASTER STACKER 830 EVO CASE $109.99

ASUS RAMPAGE FORMULA $308.67

INTEL E3110 XEON CPU $193.24

CORSAIR 620HX P/S $114.99

CORSAIR 2 X 1GB DDR2 1066 DOMINATOR RAM $65.99

THERMALRIGHT ULTRA 120 EXTREME CPU HS W/ SYTHE SFF21F FAN $73.11

SEAGATE SATA2 32MB 250GB HDD $86.87

HIS HD3850 512MB ICEQ TURBO VIDEO CARD $152.25

3) ANTEC TRICOOL120-RED CASE FAN $49.72
_______
$1154.83

 

Mort81,
Nice setup buddy!!! I think you'll be fine with that OEM cpu. It's a Xeon Intel beauty!!!

NOW the other stuff you need to send to me and let me check it out to make sure it's of good quality and worthy of you having it. hehehe. j/k...

So when can we expect some "snap shots" of that new Morty machine plus some benchmarks???

...gm

 

gm,

I'll take some pics of before, during and after the build. it'll most likely be early next week before I get the mobo and cpu. I read a good review on the rampage formula in case anyone is interested.

I'm going to have about the same money in this build as I do my current rig only this one should be a fairly big step up on everything (except the p/s). hopeing to achieve 4.0ghz fairly easily. time will tell.

my mother or as sam and creaky say my "mum" wants to buy my current pc but I'll prolly just let her use it. I don't really want to sell it. I'll set it back stock to 2.4ghz and it'll still blow the doors off her old gateway PIII 1.4ghz pc.

I'm going to put my litey and benq dvdrw's in my new build and buy another dvdrw or dvd cdr combo drive (whatever's the cheapest) to put back in this one. I'm also going to put my samsung 400gb and maxtor 300gb hdd's in my new rig. I'll replace the maxtor one of these days with a seagate 500gb hdd or larger. my maxtor is only SATA1.5 and runs hotter and is louder than my others.

sure is quiet here tonight........................

 

i was thinking the samething mort...lol
id say you will be able to hit 4.0ghz pretty easy with everything you have for that setup. i hope that E3110 works well for ya. from what iveread about it. it OC's pretty good.

EDIT:
UPS blows.
Package Progress
Location Date Local Time Description
BALDWIN PARK,
CA, US 04/02/2008 7:01 A.M. OUT FOR DELIVERY
BALDWIN PARK,
CA, US 04/01/2008 11:24 P.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
HODGKINS,
IL, US 03/28/2008 2:21 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
SHARONVILLE,
OH, US 03/27/2008 7:29 P.M. ORIGIN SCAN
US 03/28/2008 11:38 A.M. BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED
either they havent delivered it yet or they havent updated there entry's????

 

Mort I'm getting the same mobo, cpu(maybe the E8400 instead of the E3110) memory/ram (getting 4 gigs though) and HDD as you. already have a good videocard (NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2,1 GB of GDDR3 Memory) and 3 optical drives plus the Zalman CNPS-9500 with the Antec 900 case

think we will need a cooler for the mobo?

keep us posted on how it turns out,I'm a few weeks out from getting everything together

 

ZoSoIV,

I don't think so. lot of copper heatsink there already. I'm gonna pull the hs's off 1st thing and reseat them with AS5. I'll keep ya posted on the performance, OCability and mobo temps .

 

will be in touch though PMs Mort as you get up and running. As i said I'm about 2 or 3 weeks behind you doing the same build pretty much

 

what psu are you going with? I'll be curious to see how much better the TR ultra 120 extreme cools compared to the zalman cnps 9500. I don't mean that in a bad way. I have a 9500 on this pc.

 

I have the Thermaltake 750-Watt PS, I may good with the Zalman 9700 instead if it will help.

do you thing the TR ultra 120 is better than the Zalman ?

 

I believe the TR Ultra 120 Extreme is the best air cooler you can buy.

 

cincyrob,

I missed this the other day. It's not so much the size of the movie but how many frames it contains that determines how long DVDRB takes. Transformers is a DVD with a lot of frames and even with it being just the movie, it's about 7.3+GB. Takes about 50 minutes on mine. Anything with a lot of special video effects will take longer as there's more frames. Compression is about 52%!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

ZoSoIV,

here are some graphs and charts from anandtech comparing different cpu hsf's. http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2943&p=1 according to them the ultra 120 extreme is much better than either of the zalmans. it's supposedly one of the best if not the best single heat exchanger cpu heatsinks. judge for yourself.

 

looks like I'm getting a new CPU cooler to then lol

newegg is out of stock at the moment

and will it fit in my Antec 900 ok?