Building a pc...water cooling/tons of cooling?

[Shadow]

I'm going to be building my firs PC from scratch, really soon. I'm just waiting on the RAM, Motherboard, and floppy drive right now - I have everything else.

First off, the specs of the current system:
The case
ASUS A78NX MOBO
2 sticks of this RAM
AMD XP 2000+ CPU
17" KTC Monitor, 110mhz, 1280x1204
40 GB Western Digital 7200 2mb buffer hard drive
3.5 floppy drive
cd writer
dvd rom
Windows XP Professional

First, the case. The case in the picture, differs slightly from the model I received. The only thing different in my model, is, where you store the hard drive. Mine, has a tower-like structure, which can hold 7 hard drives. Or, a zip, a floppy, and 5 hard drives. However you slap it together. It came with a 300w power supply.

The hard drive that's being used, is just to get me off the ground - I can purchase larger ones, or a secondary, or whatever looks appealing, later on down the road.

The CPU is also in the same boat. I may upgrade to the XP 2800+ later on. I may even buy a stick of 512 ram to compliment my current pair of 256's.

Anyhow, the CPU and hard drive are certainly 2 components which are noticed as the first to go. But, they'll get me started and take me quite a ways.

My HDD requirements?
Hm, MAME has about 3.8gb of roms.
Other emus, MIGHT...just might add up to 1gb. I know for certain my non-MAME rom collection does not.
Visual Studio.NET
Original Quake(open gl build)
Unreal Tournament
Tomb Raider 3
_some_ mp3's, and _some_ music videos
MS Office premium

(everything else is small potatoes)

The emulation scene is where I'm at.

My CPU requirements?
Eventually, it'll be 8ghz as that's what the predicted requirements of Marvel VS Capom 2 will be. Primal Rage is going to be about 3.5ghz, so, that's under the MVC2 requirement - by alot. Once again though, that's down the road. Primal Rage probably won't have sound for a little while, and besides that, anything else I'll want to run or care about having super-perfect, will already be perfect.

RAM and CPU are what I need..no video, no nothing.
My MOBO comes with 64mb video, and 6 channel analog surround which will give me all of what I need. Graphics? Bah, I stopped following PC stuff a long time ago. Sound? My home stereo system is all PA analog, 350w per 15".

The real point of this post, is cooling. I think...I have provided enough information?

I might overclock, but once again, this is all to get me going. CPU might go, might get more HDs and bigger ones, and more ram.

So, upon inspecting my case thoroughly, I noticed that it obviously has a spot for a case fan, or system fan. I won't start out with one, but will probably get one immediately. I'm thinking of running a system blower to act as an exhaust for the case. Maybe, working a fan next to the HD tower. And then, replacing the factory fan+heatsink combo with a water cooling system for the cpu AS IS. This will help alot when I move into overclocking the CPU or just buying a faster one. I might look into the possibility of cooling off the RAM.

I've been looking into the following cooling system:
http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2...g/index.x?pg=1
It seems to be good, but, I'm not experienced with such. Never built a pc before, but generally understand how it works. End point: I want everything in the case, and the case itself super cool. I want to overkill what I have right now so when I upgrade, I won't need to replace or buy any new cooling crap. Lastly, how do you feel about water cooling for the CPU? Is there a better brand?

Provide some input for an eager hardware nut.

[RoD]

Heres how to choose with two example statements....

"My computer will be overclocked more then double its speed of to an insanely unreasonable and inhumane extent."

Liquid cool it, please for the humanity point of it.

"My computer will be overclocked a little less then double its speed, and i have two very good fans for it on a large heatsink, such as ORB ICE fans."

Fans are fine here, just get GOOD $30/per fans, say two, and a high performance heatsink to mount them on.

Also you may think about RAM heatsinks on your video card. Be careful as you o/c your PCI/AGP devices are also effected and can blow out if you go to high. Also remember to use thermal silicone or another proper adhesive for the sinks, as superglue is NOT, speaking from experience, a good idea.

Happy Havok!

[Shadow]

Thanks ROD, I'll keep your advice in mind.

I've been searching every site I can think of where they provide charts, detailed tests, alternate solutions, and just the whole 9 yeards. I'll keep going this route and probably whip together something nice.

Thanks again ROD.

[OneStiffRod]

Motherboard Video and Sound is terrible - if you want to play games you'll need a Video Card and a Good Sound Card -

I suggest ATI Radeon 9700 for Graphics Card
and XGamer Audigy from SoundBlaster for Sound Card

I would buy a 5.1 speaker system

Dont' know what you mean by "8Ghz" and "3.5Ghz"

I forget if it's DDR or RAMBUS RAM that is synchronis which means you need a pair and not just one.

[Shadow]

> if you want to play games you'll need a Video Card and a Good Sound Card
I don't care about computer games. The performance I get out of original Quake on this 500mhz 256mb ram is fine for me.

MAME, on the other hand, doesn't require a video card worth a crap, or much of a sound card for that matter.

> Dont' know what you mean by "8Ghz"....
8,000mhz

> ATI Radeon 9700 for Graphics Card
Since you're into it, why not just get the GeForce FX

> I would buy a 5.1 speaker system
I would too, but you see the reference volume levels for home theatre/hi-fi equipment isn't loud enough for me, and I'm satisifed with Concert/PA/DJ equipment, and the sound it produces.

> I forget if it's DDR or RAMBUS RAM that is synchronis which means you need a pair and not just one.
Well, the point is, one stick of the style of RAM I chose, will work, but I have 2 anyways.

[Shadow]

And, to clarify OneStiffRod, I meant that Marvel VS Capcom 2, when it becomes fully emulated, should require about an 8,000mhz processor in your computer tower to play it in perfection while being arcade perfect/fully exploited game performance.(44100hz audio, video effects, etc.).

The audio thing, I'm not killing my hearing, and in fact I've researched DB audio levels ALOT, and do it out of bordem quite often, it's all very facinating to me. I've heard a Federal Signal Model 2 Aerial Raid Siren approximately 15-20 feet from the telephone pole it was sitting on top of. I couldn't think straight, and the sound which was being processed by my ears was distorted. It was like something out of a horror movie. That lead to researching Aerial Raid Sirens and DB audio levels. Now, according to my vast research, there is something called a temporary threshold shift. This is when your ears adjust to the loud sounds, but, the loud sounds aren't permanently damaging. After taking yourself away from the audio source on a regular and consistent basis, your ears will readjust. I have witnessed and experienced this myself several times with detailed testing. For each sound intensity, there is a recommended exposure limit to the sound source. After that point, you will experience the "Threshold Of Pain" which is discomfort from the loud sound. Keeping in mind with charts that are much more detailed than the link I provided, and much more accurate measurements than the one I provided, you can sort of speculate, and create some sort of a boundary as to how loud you like it, and how loud you should be exposed to it.

For me, I don't listen to music for hours on end, on a daily basis, but when I do, I want to be knocked on my ass.

All in all, I'm not one of those dumb "I'm going to go deaf" freaks.

[Waldo2k2]

good luck getting an 8ghz processor

[Shadow]

> good luck getting an 8ghz processor
That's why the game isn't emulated yet.

- edit -
mame doesn't support dual cpu's also
one single powerhouse chip

works though..gets rid of the annoying, "Why isn't mortal kombat fast enough on my computer!!!" posters

[thedumbmutt]

Man, I wish I had the money to build a system like that

[...]

>I forget if it's DDR or RAMBUS RAM that is synchronis which means you need a pair and not just one.

its RAMBUS that needs pairs and blanks. DDR works just like PC100-133 does.

[Shadow]

> Man, I wish I had the money to build a system like that
Poor fella.

Soon enough, soon enough..

[RoD]

By the time they hit 8ghz you won't want anything thats in this new pc anymore, chances are, it won't even work in the new system you'd have to build :P

I would suggest getting a Pentium 4 2.2ghz chip. They have taken these chips, the Northwood version anyway, to 3+ ghz under aid of liquid cooling. That or wait to build it when a 3ghz breaks out.

[Shadow]

Marvel VS Capcom 2 can wait for now .

I need this pc for my own use, school, and to ehnance emulation experience..which it will, perfectly fine. A friend of mine who's a fellow mame guru runs a 1.33ghz Athlon and says that pretty much everything that I'll care about in mame will run fine for me. The rest, is just MSware that'll run fine.

I'm waiting on like 2 more parts anyways.

Just wanted some input on liquid cooling. That freon and nitrogen cooling is nuts!! (did some research)

[RoD]

Yea liquid cooling is nice of your extreme on the overclocking, i would reccomend using fans if at all possible strictly for electric bill purposes. My dads LC'n unit costs like $10 a month cuz he runs it 24/7.

[minesweeper]

how does liquid cooling work? Does it just pump a thin film of water held in some waterproof membrane over the top of the chip?