About to order..Post Date: 2010-08-25 |
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shinylunar 
Newbie 
Joined: 25 Aug 2010 Online Status: Offline Posts: 13 |
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 Topic: About to order..Posted: 25 Aug 2010 at 8:31am |
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Hi guys~ first time posting here!
I was very close to order a +1700 rig from cyberpowerpc and at the last moment, my recommended this site and i fell in love with professionalism. Any comment would be appreciated :) After hours of forum researching.. i went with this i7 build.. total cost: $2022. Specifications: Chassis Model: Special Deal Hot Seller - Cooler Master CM Storm Sniper Exterior Finish: - Standard Factory Finish Trim Accents: - Standard Factory Finish Processor: Intel Core i7 930 2.8GHz (Quad Core) Motherboard: EVGA X58 LE Edition SLI (Intel X58 Chipset) System Memory: 6GB DDR3 1600MHz Digital Storm Certified Performance Series (Highly Recommended) (Hand Tested) Power Supply: 750W Digital Storm Certified (Dual SLI Compatible) (Silent Edition Recommended) Expansion Bay: - No Thanks Hard Drive Set 1: Operating System: 1x (40GB Solid State (By: Intel) (Model: X-25V Edition) (Extreme Performance) Set 1 Raid Options: - No Thanks Hard Drive Set 2: Multimedia\Data: 1x (1TB Hitachi/Seagate (7200 RPM) (32MB Cache) Hard Drive Set 3: Backup\Misc.: - No Thanks Optical Drive 1: DVD-R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 24x / CD-Writer 48x) Optical Drive 2: - No Thanks Internet Access: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections) Video Card: 1x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1.5GB (Includes PhysX Technology) Add-on Card: - No Thanks Sound Card: Integrated Motherboard Audio Extreme Cooling: AIR: Stage 1: Noctua Dual 120mm Fans High Performance Cooler (Compatible With ONLY i7 Processors) H20 Tube Color:- Not Applicable, I do not have a FrostChill or Sub-Zero LCS Cooling System Selected Chassis Airflow: Standard Factory Chassis Fans Internal Lighting: Internal Chassis Lighting System (Blue) Enhancements: - No Thanks Chassis Mods: - No Thanks Noise Reduction: - No Thanks Boost Processor: FREE: Stage 1: Overclock the processor between 3.3GHz to 3.9GHz (Cooling Upgrade Recommended) Boost Video Card: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my video card(s) Boost Memory: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my memory Boost OS: - No Thanks, Please do not tweak the services on the operating system Windows OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-Bit Edition) Restore Kit: Digital Storm Specialized Recovery System (DVD Image Based) Virus Protection: - No Thanks Office: - No Thanks Benchmarking: - No Thanks Install/Test Game: FREE: Hot-selling game with a NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 or above graphics card Display: - No Thanks I'm just little curious about Noctua 120m fan.. will I able to oc to 4.0Ghz with this fan? or should i upgrade to stage 2 Noctua NHD-14? My room gets pretty hot during the summer... |
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Dragoonseal
DS Veteran 
Joined: 03 Apr 2009 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2247 |
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Posted: 25 Aug 2010 at 8:50am |
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Remember to thank whomever recommended DS to you. 
Either should get you to 4.0GHz easily enough, with their default fans the bigger NH-D14 only cools a few degrees better, but if you want to maximize cooling because you're worried about your hot room then I'd at least switch to the HAF 932 case for better air flow, and if your budget allows the NH-D14 for the extra +$55. |
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Lilim
Intel Core i7 920 @4.2GHz HAF 932 - Dual SLI Nvidia GTX 480s 3x Intel X25-M G2 (80GB) SSD RAID0 |
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shinylunar
Newbie
Joined: 25 Aug 2010 Online Status: Offline Posts: 13 |
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Posted: 25 Aug 2010 at 10:03am |
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thank u for the quick reply~ yea i had a tough time choosing between those 2 cases.. does 932 really have better airflow than sniper? I really like the 3 blue LED fan compare to 932's 1 red LED fan.
Edited by shinylunar - 25 Aug 2010 at 10:05am |
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!ender_
DS Veteran
Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Online Status: Offline Posts: 4219 |
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Posted: 25 Aug 2010 at 10:04am |
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looks good to me!
air plateaus annoyingly fast, but if you want to try and squeeze the most possible out of it, you need to make sure the noctua has somewhere to get the air out. mine chokes up on the 932's rear exhaust fan.. still evaluating how i want to fix that... the temps are pretty good and the case is so much quieter than im used to that i kinda want to just leave it alone.
what im getting at is that if you go up to the noctua 14, dont stop with just getting it, you need to get the 3rd fan for it or upgrade the rear/top exhaust fans or both if you expect an improvement over the noctua u12p and stock case fans
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Dragoonseal
DS Veteran
Joined: 03 Apr 2009 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2247 |
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Posted: 25 Aug 2010 at 10:10am |
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With your motherboard do you have the ability to mount it vertically, so the Noctua exhaust points at the top 230mm exhaust instead of the rear 140mm? You know that reminds me I'm still meaning to get a third fan for my NH-D14, possibly even three and replacing the default Noctua fans as well. I'm usually wearing very noise canceling headphones so I don't mind louder fans, though I'd prefer to not have ridiculously loud ones unless the performance was really exceptional. I could even optionally upgrade the HAF 932's rear 140mm exhaust fan. Any suggestions? |
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Lilim
Intel Core i7 920 @4.2GHz HAF 932 - Dual SLI Nvidia GTX 480s 3x Intel X25-M G2 (80GB) SSD RAID0 |
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shinylunar
Newbie
Joined: 25 Aug 2010 Online Status: Offline Posts: 13 |
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Posted: 25 Aug 2010 at 10:14am |
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thanks enders~ i think i will just stick with noctua u12p. dont wanna bother with other fans.. too much hassle, lol
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!ender_
DS Veteran
Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Online Status: Offline Posts: 4219 |
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Posted: 25 Aug 2010 at 11:07am |
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Yes, but where my case/desk is set up right now, im in pretty tight quarters while we're trying to find a more permanant place to live, because of the space limitation, my best airflow choice leaves my top vent about 20% blocked. I actually have that top fan tuned down and the rear exhaust running at full, ive mentioned elsewhere that i think the HAFs are great cases, but this new concept of having top and rear exhaust pulling from the same air space makes no sense to me. I feel it causes an unnessesary amount of turbulance. My plan for after i move is to try and tune down the top exhaust even more and replace the rear 140mm with a really strong, hopefully not too much louder fan to remove that choke. I have a front intake 5.25x3 kama bay with a 110 cfm slipstream turned to about 60%. But ive already tested and found that jacking it up to 100% doesnt help since the exhaust is limited.. not too suprising really. When I rebuild here shortly i might try doing a front in and rear out slipstream at full tilt, which will definitely push up the noise but im interested to see if it can show a significant difference.
Interestingly enough, i had the same idea (with the u12p) and it didnt work out as well as i had hoped. Hooking up 2 110cfm slipstreams on "voltage" proved to work decently well, but i actually went back to the noctua stock fans because the 1-3c difference wasnt worth it. idle temps were lower, but thats a pretty ineffective justification for the noise difference. After some thought, i believe the slipstream temps would have been a lot better if i had modified the case exhaust. It would probably be more effective to use a slipstream to replace the rear exhaust, and not even have a front intake fan. I also dont know how consistent the scythe slipstreams are... im worried that at the speed they hit, the push and pull fans could be out of sync, which could also mess things up.
another interesting note is that i acually tried 4 different fan setup options IN the case, all with the stock noctua fans:
push = yes / pull =yes
push = yes / pull =no
push = no / pull =yes
push = no / pull =no
To my dismay, comparing the results with the pull fan on and off were almost no different, they were noticibly different with the pull only, and of course very different with no fan at all.
I also tried out the LN and ULN resistors that noctua includes to make thier fans even quieter.. not sure why. This didnt seem to make much difference in my opinion, soundwise. It did hurt the temperatures. I will say that i am used to far louder setup, and sound difference is very difficult to quantify.
I could talk about air cooling all day, but the moral here is that i believe the case cooling bottlenecked all of my tests, so they could all be wrong lol
I'm planning to overhaul Prime with some new changes soon, so when I do that I'll do some more extensive bench testing with the case out of the equasion, hopefully with some better results |
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Dragoonseal
DS Veteran
Joined: 03 Apr 2009 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2247 |
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Posted: 25 Aug 2010 at 11:28am |
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Alright. I look forward to the results.
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Lilim
Intel Core i7 920 @4.2GHz HAF 932 - Dual SLI Nvidia GTX 480s 3x Intel X25-M G2 (80GB) SSD RAID0 |
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justin.kerr
DS Veteran
Joined: 06 May 2008 Online Status: Offline Posts: 5084 |
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Posted: 25 Aug 2010 at 11:54am |
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when doing tests like this, you have to make sure that ambient temps are measured, and kept to 1C maximum delta, throughout the testing.
what are you using to put a load on the CPU? how long are you running each test? 30 min each test usually is about the minimum to get accurate results.
I replaced the crappy 140MM exhaust on my HAF, first mod I did. lol then replaced all the crappy CM fans. did help out, less noise, better cooling. but also splitting hairs, very minimal differences, but again I usually try to get the most performance I can.
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!ender_
DS Veteran
Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Online Status: Offline Posts: 4219 |
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Posted: 25 Aug 2010 at 12:03pm |
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ambients were for sure the same but the tests were definitely not done for 30 minutes, just did a 5 pass of intel burn test.. i think next time ill do something a little more real world like maybe cinibench or a gaming benchmark test, that would probably show much more realistic results than IBT or prime
do you know of a program that will log core temps over time, like afterburner does for gpu?
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justin.kerr
DS Veteran
Joined: 06 May 2008 Online Status: Offline Posts: 5084 |
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Posted: 25 Aug 2010 at 12:30pm |
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OCCT will log your temps, and stress test. I use the power supply test on air cooled rigs, because it tests the CPU/RAm and GPU at once, like in a heavy gaming situation. heat will continue to build in a case over a long period of time, you might be suprised with the rsults, goimng 2 hours VS 5 minutes. |
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!ender_
DS Veteran
Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Online Status: Offline Posts: 4219 |
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Posted: 25 Aug 2010 at 12:47pm |
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that sounds perfect, ill definitely get that. ive seen it mentioned around but i didnt realise it monitored so much and over time thats great |
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