Can anyone recommend a good HSF for the i7 series CPUs? I'm leaning towards a Prolimatech Megahalems, but the price and fitment issues may preclude it as a choice.
I have a Tuniq Tower 120, but they don't make a bracket for the LGA 1366, the bastards. $50 down the drain, twice.
“For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?”
@Ani: the Megahalems is good. I would recommend that one myself. You could also look at the Thermalright 120's latest revision. That one is also good, as is Noctua's flagship(?) cooler with the 14cm fan (forgot the model - update when I get home and search). They don't vary too much in size and price though, so you'll have to work out what you can put in your case.
@En: you can use two different pairs of ram in dual channel if you match the pairs up (eg channel A uses 2 OCZs and channel B uses two Corsairs). You can actually run dual channel using any mismatch of sticks - only the slowest clock speed will be used though. I'm not sure how AMD's bus works (hypertransport on that board?), but Intel would just use the slowest stick's spec for the RAM overall, from memory.
Really though, quantity >speed for general computing and games. Only until you get to the point where more ram doesn't matter that you start looking at speed. Just get any stick that's not worse than your current.
Last edited by Buffalobiian; Mon, 04-18-2011 at 08:40 AM. Reason: spelling, because typing on the phone sucks
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
To add to Buff:
I guess you meant using DDR3 4GB+ with Win7 (upgrading) or using new DDR2 up to 4GB with WinXP (keeping the old set up)?Originally Posted by enkoujin
To answer your question; most likely, not always. Using different pairs of dual channel memory might work provided they're the same speed. Still, the best you can do is sticking with the same exact type of memory. If that's not possible you'd have most luck using ram supporting JEDEC. Last, I'd recommend using Asus' QVL sheet. I've always found memory to be a bit tricky, especially with different types and brands. But that's my 2 cents.Question - if I buy two more sticks of memory (aren't the OCZ as previously listed above) and use them in conjunction with my current ones, would my computer still be able to use its dual channel memory function even though I have two different pairs of memory sticks?
I think Buff will be able to help you on that one.He just did.
Now... we can click as warriors... button to button, it is the basis of all internet.
Only a fool trusts his life to a virus.
Sometimes you can get good deals on semi-high quality ram, making them easily worth the small extra money. It'll allow some freedom at setting the speeds.
Anyway, Enkoujin, if you really budgeted the 700 dollars, my personal opinion is to look more at building a new system. Any money you now invest in old technology (like DDR2 or AM2) will most assuredly be wasted when you next time upgrade. But that's just my opinion, of course.
Additional info: the Noctual model I was talking about was the Noctua NH-D14, while the particular thermalright 120 revision was the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme Rev. C. If you're conscious about the budget, then get the Noctua. It comes with 2 fans (and good ones) at least.
True enough, but I find that sometimes people who don't understand the relationship between bus speed and memory clock end up spending money on RAM that is fast, but yields no more performance benefits. Memory that is faster than your bus speed is useless. My current memory at 1333MHz is one of the slowest in the DDR3 market (aside from 1066MHz). But the thing is, my CPU without overclocking (thereby raising its bus clock) can only use 1333MHz worth anyway. All the other performance memory chips are only if you overclock.
And with the crazy turboboosts in the Sandybridge range of processors, I hardly consider it necessary unless for whatever reason you need every core running in overdrive.
(a bit of explanation for En, since he said he wasn't so sure on the topic)
edit: regarding Kraco's comment about setting the speeds, I suppose you can buy performance RAM, use it with the standard CPU bus speed and try to decrease its timings, but I doubt En wants to go that in-depth with it. Error testing is a pain too.
I was planning to do it, then deemed the effort to decrease the latency from 10ns to maybe 8 was not worth the result.
edit2: Actually, a nice budget cooler with pretty good performance would be the Cogage TRUE Spirit 1366
Last edited by Buffalobiian; Mon, 04-18-2011 at 09:03 AM.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Well, I'm running my memory at that 1333 but with lowered timings. Actually my first 4 GB is HQ ram that I could never put to the optimal use even if I wanted with the kind of budget I typically use in hardware, my second set of 4 GB is only semi-HQ and works fine with lowered CASes. I could probably lower them even further but haven't bothered. My video card is so lousy it will hamper performance much sooner and I barely do any other processing heavy stuff than gaming on regular basis.
If the windows performance index has any degree of accuracy or relevance, my standard speed RAM is nothing to worry about.
Did your lowered timings reflect in the score Kraco?
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Probably not... My memory score is the exact same with yours. Although I never checked the results with higher timings. The dude at the shop where I buy most of my hardware didn't believe in it making much difference either, but for some reason I like lower CAS settings, believing against reality that they make a real difference. And nothing can shake that belief!
Basing your experience on your disk data transfer rate is silly. My WEI would be 7.9 without the HDD data rate, but it's only 5.2 with it.
“For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?”
Indeed, the overall score is silly. I only use the subscores.
And even then, only for kicks and not as an indicator for programs to run and stuff. Maybe if more programs picked this up it would have meaning, but it's pretty arbitrary at the moment.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Why is the max score a 7.9?? Should be on a 10 scale like everything else.
Also, have you heard of the Spire Thermax Eclipse II HSF? It's made by a small company from China, so it has low distribution rates (Big etailers like newegg don't carry it). But the few sites that have reviewed it have only good things to say about it. Probably the most tech savvy person I know recommended it.
“For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?”
The max score actually used to be 6.9 when Vista came out. The idea is that the score is scalable. Old hardware will keep their old score, but newer hardware that are more powerful would also be able to be compared on the same system.
(*bumped to answer Ani's question RE Heatsinks*)
edit:
@ani: (sorry, missed the second part of your post), I can't seem to find much info on the cooler to come up with much of a researched opinion. If the reviews you found said it's good, and you're happy with the price too, give it a try. It'd be great if you found reviews where they compared the performance to other heat sinks. That at least will tell you how good it is.
I bought one around 2 weeks ago for 15AUD and gave it a spin. It definitely cuts out any background noise. When it should be silent, it really is so. Problem is that when it's actually trying to reproduce sound, it's completely broken. I can't even begin to describe it. It's just.... shit. From memory, the tones were out, it skipped and muffled at times, cuts out etc etc. Anything that could go wrong, it pretty much did so. The other USB sound device I looked at was the one that looked like a hub from ASUS, but I decided that didn't really need it. Plus, it's not really portable like that, since I like to use my laptop on my lap away from a desk, and it means the entire thing would be dangling off my laptop in an unsafe manner.
Last edited by Buffalobiian; Wed, 04-20-2011 at 10:03 AM. Reason: *bumped to answer Ani's question RE Heatsinks*
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Ended up getting the Xigmatek Dark Knight
“For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?”
What's the mounting system like? I see it mentions "tool-less", but from the pictures of the accessories it looks like your spring-loaded 4-screws and backplate system - which is fine.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Yep, spring-loaded with backplate. This is one of the highest rated coolers out there, and with it being under $50, with a $20 rebate, and a free multi-card reader, it's a great deal. Only bad thing is it's not set up for dual fan push-pull, it only has mounting slots for one fan. But I can set it up for a second fan to get improved cooling and then OC my i7.
“For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?”
If you can find (or make yourself) and air duct to connect between the back of the cooler and the exhaust fan of your PC, you c an have the push/pull effect without a second fan. It'll also ensure the hot air gets completely expelled instead of circulating around your case.
But that's a minor thing, especially if you already have good chassis cooling.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
I'm currently in the market for a ~250GB SSD to use as my primary drive (programs and OS).
So far, some of the ones that seem rather appealing are the Intel 510, OCZ Vertex II and OCZ Vertex III models. (I'm open to suggestion regarding other ones too). I'm putting less emphasis on sequential read/write speeds and more on both reliability AND longevity.
Even then, I haven't arrived at a clear-cut answer for those two categories regarding the Intel vs Sandforce controllers (well, the Intel 510 actuall moved off to use the Marvell controller in this latest edition..)
Any recommendations/opinions from thsoe who've been in the SSD loop? I've only just started.
PS: My system's doing a long-ass chkdsk run at the moment that will take ~20hrs, so I'll post the system specs later on for your convenience. The mobo's a P55 chipset with Sata II, off the top of my head.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
I've been looking to switch to SSD for my boot drive as well. From what I've read, OCZ drives are both slow and unreliable. I'd recommend sticking with Intel, but hopefully we can get some more feedback from others. I'll probably go with the Intel 320 models, since I only care about quick OS boot times and maybe quick load times for one or two games.
“For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?”
Regarding game load times, most of the time the are CPU limited. On rare occasions you gain like a couple of seconds. However, some games that constantly seek textures or data from the harddrive might see an improvement, like Flight Simulator.
As for which SSD to choose from?
OCZ cheat their customers. I write it when I have a 240Gb vertex II...
Intel is the choice for reliability and even if you're unlucky enough to fall in the 0.5% of failure, you do not have to pay for shipping for return (to be controlled before purchase).
The 510 range is only for benchmarking, the 310 is a more balanced drive.
Problem is that this new generation only have bigger storage versions as a bonus compared to the last.
Performance and prices did not improve that much.
I wouldn't really know what to buy right now. Maybe a Crucial M4, should I have a 6Gbps compatible motherboard. If not, a C300 would do the trick if purchased with a good rebate.
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening. And then: Golf.
I'm pretty close to pulling the trigger on this SSD: Patriot Wildfire. It uses the new Sandforce controller and has read/write speeds up to 500MB/s.
“For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?”
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