Questions about cooling, et. al.

1. room temp at 72f is great, however putting the case in a closed space can create a higher ambient case temp, if this happens you could have high load temps.

here is the deal you want a tri sli setup (forget the quad sli 590, we will get into this later), and for that you are talking lot of heat when underload, you gonna want good air flow, best case scenario IMHO is when you have the front fan bring in air, side fan bring in air and blow direclty over gpus, now we know heat rises, so you want the top fan to suck it up and help it get out, also in the rear towards the top, there is another fan sucking air out, for best airflow that is what you want. If the whole system is under lc, its a little different but not too different since you still got rads with fans on them.

2. ok first you do want oc on the cpu, cpu is the brain of your system and ocing it is like making your brain work 10 times faster, and you don't need lc for oc.

now you don't want 590 sli, 590 is dumb card to begin with from every aspect, on top of that quad sli 590 gets beat by tri sli 570/580.

temps for cpu/gpu over 85c is considered hot, 85c is the start of the red line.

lc is not a necessity, its a luxury, if your room temp is at 80f or higher, both air and lc can't help you, they both use fans to help with heat exchange and blowing 80f air is not gonna be help either way.

3. you can always setup lc in any system, of course with anything its easier to do it from the beginning, but again lc is a luxury and not something that can help you if your room temp is above 80f, blew 80f air cooling will go great so no need for lc.

4. for tri sli you want the corsair 1200w.

5. ok hold on, you said you gaming on 3 x 24", three 24" monitor together have a res of 5700 x 1200, but at this question you make is sound like you gaming on one monitor, if that is the case we need to know.

your res is purely dependent on the native resolution of the monitor for 2560 x 1600 res you looking at a 30".

6. for gaming 8GB is more then enough, I will make a config for you once I have all the info I need, don't worry about what to get, leave that to me.

Having said that the 2600k is a great cpu but its on the p67 platform, this platform can't do tri sli correctly, there is a new platform and cpu coming out this month, the highend platform of SB, p67 is the mid grade platform of SB, with it comes a new cpu that is 6core and will be king for this year at least, and the x79 platform/mobo that can do tri sli correctly, should we realize that you do need tri sli after I get all the info, then you should wait for the new platform, the 6core you don't need for gaming tho.

now to give you the most performance for your money, we first need to figure out what res you gonna be gaming at, so

A. are you gonna be gaming on three 24" at the same time, or are you gaming on one 24" or are you gaming on one 24" but like to go higher res on a 30" or are you gaming on three 24" and like to replace them with three 30"?

once we have that info, I will know what kind of power it takes to max it out, then I can tell you what you need to do that.

Edited by DST4ME - 10 Nov 2011 at 7:26pm

Hey BF3Addict,
if youre not going with liquid cooling you're going to want a HAF X case (Dreadnought). it has the best airflow. (its what my system is in, its great). The case is exactly 9.5" wide, but should have space left on one side as it has a side fan that helps cool the gpus.
i also have a 2600k overclocked to 4.5 GHz and have never had a stability issue. if you're air cooling you're going to want ether the Nactua or the A70. the Nactua is marginally better. i dont know about the video cards.
good luck! BF3 is a great game and what ever system you get will make it even better.

You've pretty much convinced me to not use my niche, so case size is no longer an issue.

You mentioned the 590 wasn't a good choice. Is this purely a price/performance value issue? The raw specs seem pretty awesome.

Looking forward to the x79 release.



Edited by BF3Addict - 12 Nov 2011 at 6:19pm

So it looks like the x79 mobo is out.  What is a good configuration for my gaming needs?

the x79 does tri sli correctly, and for tri monitor you gonna want a tri sli/cf setup, p67 can't do tri sli/cf correctly.

Edited by DST4ME - 16 Nov 2011 at 2:14am

Ticket Number: 618599

ask DS to use 2.5GB 570 instead of the 1.2GB ones, they didn't have that option for some reason, I emailed Alex about it.

Edited by DST4ME - 17 Nov 2011 at 1:25am

My pleasure and good luck