Should I get liq cooling or better pow source

S

saulat_99

New Member
I just purchased a bare bones system. I am building hopefully a nice system, its my first. I was wondering if I need or could use liquid cooling system and if I will need a better power supply. I plan on having a nice computer for video editing/encoding and dvd ripping/burning, and gaming. Any help is appreciated.

Intel CPU : Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz, 1333FSB (Dual Core) 4096K
Intel CPU Fans : Spire Socket 775 Intel fan
Intel Motherboards : ASUS P5K PLVM G31, 1333FSB, Onboard Video,PCI Express,DDR2,Sound,1gb LAN
Sound Cards : AC 97 3D Full Duplex sound card (onboard)
Network Cards : Ethernet network adapter (onboard)
Cases : Nikao Black Neon ATX Case w/ Temperature control, front USB & iEEE
Power Supply : Okia 400W ATX Power Supply
 
I would say that for onboard video, air cooling is probably fine. The major exception would be if you wanted to seriously overclock the CPU, memory, etc.

Furthermore, a decent liquid cooling system will run a couple hundred bucks. For that kind've money, it'd be better to buy better components. Plus, if this is your first build--and here I'm assuming you've never done a liquid install before--make it as simple as possible.

I can't say for sure how well-suited the 400W Okia is to your needs. How many HDs and opticals will you be running? I can't find any specs on that particular model, but the 450w only seems to have 23A on a pair of 12V rails. That's kinda minimal. And from what I can gather about Okia, they seem to be a real budget manufacturer. I could be wrong, however. Anyone have any experience with Okia?

As Ceewi1 says: "Cheap power supplies account for 2% of total system cost, and 28% of system failures." Meaning a cheap power supply does a nice job of frying an expensive processor.

I'd definitely consider a better, more powerful PSU. If you had the water cooling possiblity in your budget (I'm figuring $200 here), I would spend $50 on a better PSU, and $150 upgrading to a SATA HD--which will definitely help with what you plan on doing. Also, check in the CD section of the forums to see if those guys recommend SATA DVD-RW drives for your application.

Hiper 480W PSU, pushes over 30A on the 12V rails.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817128005

500GB Seagate Barracuda SATA3.0 HD, assuming your planned motherboard supports SATA3.0
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148151

Lastly, unless you only want to play low-graphics games or older ones, I would plan on integrated graphics not working. Add roughly $300 to the budget for a brand-new 8800 GT with the G92 core, that should work, and could be powered by the Hiper PSU. The Okia, I believe cannot power any 8-series cards reliably.
 
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What video card are you planning on? (You will need a video card other than onboard for any sort of reasonable gaming).

Those Okia PSUs are pretty much junk. Certainly not something I'd use for that sort of system with or without a decent video card.

I'm not a huge fan of the Hiper 480W either. Here's why: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM5NywxNywsaGVudGh1c2lhc3Q=

What does a company get when they take a long-in-the-tooth design built be a decent OEM, combine it with poor component selection, and then inflate the rating by a good 180 watts? It gets the Hiper Type-R 480w. The Type-R isn't really a bad power supply for a 300w unit other than its questionable capacitor selection but as a 480w unit it is a miserable failure as seen in the load testing and DC output quality. The unit posted decent, for this roundup, efficiency values and had decent voltage regulation but it failed at any load greater than 348w; that isn't good for a supposed 480w unit. Beyond that at 348w the unit was outputting such horribly dirty DC output that any component downstream of it would likely be silently damaged overtime if the system was stable. It really it is hard to say whether or not this unit was the worst in the roundup but if it wasn't it was very close. At $50 ($49.99 currently) the Hiper Type-R 480w is one of the poorest "values" we have seen to date.
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Patently inadequate for an 8800 series card.

As always, my complete list of recommendations is located at http://www.computerforum.com/90117-ceewi1s-psu-recommendations.html, but I'll need to know what sort video card you're planning on using before I can speculate as to what sort of PSU you'll require.
 
stay away from liquid cooling. in most cases it sounds better than it functions, and its a pain in the butt to install, maintain, and fix.
 
Video cards are something that I know little about, I have a post asking for recommendations. I was reasonably sure that this motherboard would support a decent one. My current computer does not run Doom 3, FEAR, Hell gate London, or any of the newer games. Its a P4 1.4ghz. I am also looking at speeding up encoding and video editing on my new computer. That and I just want to build a kicking computer. I am guessing I'll have maybe 1200 in it once its all together, give or take a bit.

I was pretty sure I would need a better power source. I figured the one that came in the barebones system would be cheap. I am more wondering what wattage PSU I would be wanting. Are the 500 or 600 watt PSU all that necessary?

Thanks about the liquid cooling, I probably will stay away from that. I thought it was a nice little addon that the case has a temperature read out.
 
Not really; saving money is good but I want quality, the power needed, and especially safety from failure or damage to system. I am building over time and can spend whatever although I don't want to spend thousands. I need a monitor and all still so I would like to stay around 1500 including what I have now the future ram and video card and eventually some add ons.
 
Okay, tomorrow I am totally going to log onto Newegg and come up with a big options list, but it's late and I'm tired. $1200 in the build-it-yourself world buys you some pretty nice stuff. I spent $800 on mine and came away all smiles, save my video card (and probly coulda gotten a better mobo...both shall be rectified soon).

Ah, for the games you mentioned, a G92'd 8800 GT should work fine. Of note: I only suggested the Hiper because I popped on, found it roughly in budget, and I was sure it would support onboard graphics. Any kind of really serious video card, as ceewi1 points out quite frequently, requires a fairly serious power supply.

If you need a justification for giving a big chunk of the budget to the PSU, remember that a cheap PSU can kill everything in your shiny box. You're not spending money to power stuff, you're spending money to PROTECT stuff.
 
I think a hundred dollars for a PSU seems about what I would want to pay but again protecting everything in the box and having enough power are necessary too. I am sure the 150 - 250 dollar PSUs are nice but I would rather spend that money on a LCD monitor, 8800GT video card, nice sata HD drive, ect. I have tons of externals from owning a lab top. I have a 320GB external HD, a dvd-RW drive that I think I can take out of its mount and install to the case, camera, CD-rw drive, flash drive, along with several I don't use very often.
 
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That sounds good to me. I'll look into it and select one after I order the video card. I'll post whenever I decide on one.
 
My system is below, I have pretty much ordered everything. I may add a second hard drive, second, cd/dvd drive, various other things to the case. I am getting the 8800Gt as soon as I get a chance. Am I missing anything that stands out to anyone? Can you tell if I have appropriate cooling devices? There is a temp gauge so I should be able to figure that out.

-Ram: 2GB Kingston HyperX 2GB PC2-6400 DDR2 800mhz
-Monitor: Hanns·G HG-191RPB 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 2ms, 700:1, WXGA+ 1440x900, DVI, VGA(D-sub), 300 cd/m²
-Lite-On LH-20A1L-06 SuperAllwrite OEM Lightscribe SATA
-Hard Drive: Samsung Spinpoint T166 320GB Hard Drive - 7200, 16MB, Serial ATA-300, OEM
- PSU: Ordered - CORSAIR CMPSU-550VX 550W
- GPU: 8800Gt 512mb - ordering soon
 
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saulat_99 said:
-Ram: 2GB Kingston HyperX 2GB PC2-6400 DDR2 800mhz
-Monitor: Hanns·G HG-191RPB 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 2ms, 700:1, WXGA+ 1440x900, DVI, VGA(D-sub), 300 cd/m²
-Lite-On LH-20A1L-06 SuperAllwrite OEM Lightscribe SATA
-Hard Drive: Samsung Spinpoint T166 320GB Hard Drive - 7200, 16MB, Serial ATA-300, OEM
- PSU: Ordered - CORSAIR CMPSU-550VX 550W
- GPU: 8800Gt 512mb - ordering soon
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You haven't listed a board or CPU, but they're in your sig, so I assume you have them. I also assume you have a case.

Other than that, looks good. Not sure what your case includes as far as fans go, so you may need to add a couple.
 
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