Since heat pipes came out there is no reason to mess with liquid cooling. Just too many risks involved. Electro is also correct that the only thing liquid cooling cools is what you have a cooler on. I run a Thermaright Si128 with a 140mm quiet fan(19db). Not only does it keeps my cpu cool but also blows a lot of airflow across the majority of the motherboad. Just switching from a stock cooler to the Thermalright cooled my northbridge by 5 degrees C and the Thermalright is much quieter. Be aware that the si128 is very large. He is also correct that in the event of a failure (say a fan) the heat pipe coolers will prevent things from getting toasted. Compare that to having a pump fail on a water cooled system.

I agree that air cooling is still the most reliable and efficient way of cooling. I'd like one day to try to come up with a better way.

Hehe, it is far too expensive, me thinks. There was a time when I really wanted to get a water cooling solution, but after looking at the price tag in combination with the danger of leakage I was forced to say no.

Some one also brought up that it is quite. Well, yes, may be it is. I am not too concerned with that, to be honest though. As long as I can hear movies/music over the noise and as long as my earplugs can filter away the noise at night, I'm happy


Uhm.... Isn't that a pretty huge disadvantage? Since I'm planning on buying a SATA and a SATA2 hard disks?


Ouch... That's one expensive heatsink :S

But even if I buy a processor with an included fan, is it a good idea to buy another heatsink anyway? I mean, are the included heatsinks good enough?

The heatsink that comes with core2 procs is considered good enough for slight overclocking.

You can get a Thermalright ultima 90 for about 50 bucks or a Arctic cooling alpine 7 pro for around 15 but if you don't plan on more than about 20-30% oc it's money wasted.

Keep in mind that cooling depends a lot on your surrounding temp.If the air has already 40 degrees (celsius) you might run in trouble with oc.

The MSI board comes with two different controllers. One is an Intel SATA controller and the other is an Marvel/Yukon SATA controller. It saids that there is only one SATA port for the Marvel/Yukon, but it is hard to figure out where is that port.

Liquid cooling is even more expensive than that heat sink. The Thermaltake Big Typhoon is very efficient and is low noise. I prefer active heat sinks that blow down and blows out of the heat sink to cool off other components instead blowing from the front and then towards the back of the case. For the best cooling, it does come with a very costly price tag.

It actually is in the Intel specs that the cpu cooler should blow down and out to cool other components.

That's actually the exact quantity of OC I am considering (up from the 2.5 GHz default to somewhere around 3GHz). In a couple of years though when I will be looking for a replacement computer, I will probably overclock more and then buy a slightly more expensive heat sink - just to juice the cpu of max power in the last year or so of its life.

Yeah, it doesn't get much over 20-21 in my apartment. So unless we are in for a extraordinary warm summer it should not be a problem.

Sure, I have seen a couple of tests on the net which confirm just that. Despite the good performance some have reported problems with the way the sink is mounted though: Since it is rather heavy and only has plastic clips to fix it to the proc/mobo it easily falls off. Read this about Thermaltake BigTyp 120 VX.

That's my problem - gets up to 40-45 around here in summer and the only speed my poor E4300 is running besides factory is 3 gig and then it sure does get too hot.

Kind of funny - runs at 1,8 and 3 gig and nothing in between

O_O Never a good idea to keep your computer in a greenhouse Hehehe...

On a side notice, my current CPU boots at temperature of 59 (!) and gets up to approx. 110 (!!!) when strained. It's not even OCed... But it still works and has done so for the past 4 years :P I seriously consider using it as a frying pan after my new box is built - you know, playing some random old game and making wok at the same time. Priceless (and not to mention environmentally friendly - energy recycling ftw)


I remember I have read somewhere that this was rather common on some CPUs. Have no idea why though...

crashmeister

They make these little roll around AC units that have a 4inch hose the you run out the window and another that you can route into the intake of your PC. Walmart usually has them here come the season.

A room that is 21 degrees C is cold. You are wasting too much energy cooling. I suggest between 25 and 27 degrees C.

If you are worry about the heat sink falling off, I think using some coarse sand paper and scratch the area where the clip is. Then use epoxy putty or Mighty Putty. Just make sure you mount the back plate, so the heat sink will not put too much stress at a small spot. It should work, but taking off the epoxy will not be easy. I suggest plan it out. Though heat sink mounting hardware should be designed as a spring to provide constant pressure to the heat sink over time, so keep this in mind.

You might want to construct your case, so the motherboard is laid flat like a desktop case. I think extruded aluminum might be the easiest. There is always rack units like 6U.

Uhm... I think you misunderstand. I have to *warm* my room up to that temp, not cool it In summer it rarely needs cooling because where I live it pretty much never gets hotter than 25 outside.

Thank you very much for all of your advice though

There seems to be something guys in some forums refer to as a 'memory hole' that prevents some cpu/mobo combos from oc'ing at some speeds.

From the freuent use of the word 'some' you can see that all sounds speculative to me.


Don't have AC - the way the houses are insulated here I would have to construct my own power plant to run one fulltime.

I'm not saying to completely do away with air cooling. I imagine that the OP would still have a case fan or two. When it comes to specific components that you're cooling, it's a great solution. Here's a new article in /. advocating the use of liquid cooling and it's a cheaper solution: http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardwar.../2049205.shtml

It may be a little more risky, but you CANNOT deny it's effectiveness on cooling processors and GPUs. Which appears to be one of the main causes for concern for the OP when it comes to overclocking.

I looked around for a price on this and could not find one. The bottom of the article links you to a Coolermaster product, which is not visually the same device.