*****THE OFFICIAL "SPEC ME" THREAD*****

i see

 

The difference between mine and your is that mine can do lower voltages and get higher clocks stably. I bet the temps would still be similar. It's basically the same chip anyway. But 3.4 doesn't pass the burn test for you? Check your RAM first off. IBT seems to catch RAM before you have a CPU problem. That's why I upped my timings from 4-4-3-10 to 4-4-4-12. It failed after about 10 minutes. After I upped my timings and voltages a bit, I could repeat the 30 minute max test over and over.

Though I doubt 3.2GHz is really much different from 3.4...

 

hey people, i just wanted to know your guys opinions about some PSUs...
Which brand do most of you prefer?

PC Power & Cooling
Corsair
Zalman
Antec

And i'm talking about high wattage PSUs like 750w and up! And please have future proofing and CF/Sli confirguration in mind.

Thanks

 

Zalman, Corsair, and PC Power and cooling.

 

which PSU for the brands you've mentioned? (And please have future proofing and CF/Sli confirguration in mind.)

 

I believe Zalman makes good 850W and up units. The Corsair 1000HX units are also good. Oh and I forgot to mention Gigabyte. Their highend stuff is good.

 

yeah, i don't think i'll ever need power supply higher than 750w.

Ok Now the Final Match!

Corsair TX750W
or
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W QUAD
or
Gigabyte Odin GT 800W

Zalmen will be the most expensive one so i'm not going to mention it

 

Honestly, they will all do fine. I would read up on reviews to see which one is the quietest and then see if any offers modular cabling(which is a plus) and then see which one suits your price point.

Hope it helps. I would tell you which one is the BEST one but I dont frequent PSU reviews too much

 

IMO PC P&C make the best of the best PSUs

the Antec Quatro PSUs are also extremly well built, and my personal favourite are the Be Quiet! PSUs, but i doubt they are in SA.


wellcome back dude, you have been away for a while no?

 

Found the Q6600 for 10$ cheaper at another location. About to go pick it up but I will have to wait a couple days for the rest of my parts to arrive. I'm starting to feel more comfortable with lapping after doing a lot of reading/watching. The only downside is that in order to make sure my CPU is functioning properly i'm going to have to build everything, get it running, and then after I know it works take it apart to lap it. :S

The store was out of the original MB I was looking at, so I went with Asus P5QL PRO w/ DualDDR2 1066, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, PCI-E 2.0 x16 instead.

 

Taking a CPU back out is no big deal. Just make sure you use the proper procedures and be very careful. Mine was fairly flat to begin with so it was easy to lap. The cooler might be a different story though. The reason the base on the Tuniq is somewhat curved is because the metal warps when they solder in the heat pipes. The cooler is going to take a while.

 

The PCP&C silencer units are good, but exceptionally noisy at high loads, despite their name. Then again to be fair, that is a pretty exceptional case. It only gets to earsplitting level maxed out, and is loud but not horrendous at around 60% load. 50% or less and it's pretty quiet, though still not up to Corsair and Zalman's standards.

200W (typical gaming PC, e.g. Core 2 Duo, HD4850): Corsair HX 22dB, PCP&C 24dB, Zalman 850 20dB.

300W (high powered gaming PC, e.g. Core 2 Quad, HD4870): Corsair HX 22dB, PCP&C 25dB, Zalman 850 20dB

400W (Top end gaming PC, e.g. Core 2 Quad OC, HD4870X2): Corsair HX 29dB, PCP&C 32dB, Zalman 850 20dB

For the lulz:

600W (Goodness knows what): Corsair HX 43dB, PCP&C 50dB, Zalman 850 26dB.

The Zalmans can power three gaming PCs at once and barely be audible, incredible stuff. hardly surprising with the monstrous 88% efficiency.

 

I know the Gigabyte Odin is a solid unit. An 850W is available I think. They are excellent quality like the Antec Quattros.

Also, see what I said about the Corsairs taking a lot to up the fan noise? Mine only started to get noticeable at 500W and was only truly "noisy" over 700W. I must remember to take the 550VX in and see what it will do before shutdown...

Far Cry 2 is looking really promising right now. If I can handle it 40FPS+ at 1920 res, they've officially beat Crysis in the nose. Same goes for Warhead. My feeling is that Warhead is just Crysis with fixed graphics and better config file settings. Messing with my config in the original got me around 5FPS with almost no loss in IQ. But I settled with the CCC configs because they're better than mine. Here's high hopes for using hacked very high again

 

thanks for the help, so it seems like noise level is the main problem here...but i doubt i'll go over 400w like what Sam mentioned "400W (Top end gaming PC, e.g. Core 2 Quad OC, HD4870X2): Corsair HX 29dB, PCP&C 32dB, Zalman 850 20dB "

So now which one hen? TX750 or ZM850-HP?

 

Depends on how much you care about the noise. How much more expensive is the Zalman? You might have to take that into consideration.

 

it's quite expensive...
In South Africa TX750 is about R1600 and ZM850-HP is about R2200

I want my computer to be as silent as possible...BUT i'm getting CM-690 which have lots of fans and i don't think it can be quite unless i get a fan controller to control Zalmans ZM120mm F3 fan

 

Your PC will never be silent with either of those fan choices, Zalmans just don't have very good acoustics, and coolermaster's fans are mostly LED ones, which is a big nono for silence as well. The Zalman 850W PSU, for almost any loads, is SILENT. The TX750 is not, but it shouldn't make an excessive amount of noise unless you have a 4870X2 in there, and if you have one of those, say goodbye to having a quiet PC when you game. At idle, the 4870X2 is remarkably quiet, and can still, surprisingly enough be in a silent PC, but once you open up a 3D application, while it's not LOUD per se, it isn't exactly what you'd call quiet, especially if both GPUs are working.

 

i understand what you mean. I'm not excatly looking for Silent silent computer, at least it must be quieter than my current computer. I have a steel case, it does not have a rubber thing to stop the vibration of the hdd and my gpu fan is damn loud! Plus i'm not planning to ger a X2...I don't need it just yet

 

Either way, if you're getting a 750W PSU, you are planning on using that much power at some point, and lots of power = lots of heat -> lots of cooling = lots of noise, so if your PC ever requires a 750W PSU, when that time comes, it will never be silent. However, I like to think I've made a reasonable job of having a high-powered system with a tolerable noise level.

 

yeah but aren't you pushing your HX520 a little? 70%!!