Where do we go from here?

@Master&Puppet thanks again. I did a bit of reading and it seems like all the socket 2011 CPUs are aimed exclusively at the enthusiast market, so I really have no need to go that way with this build. Combine that with the raw data on performance and congrats, guys; you have a convert; 3570k all the way. Interesting about Intel and RAM speed; I've seen performance charts showing the FX-4100 actually running better with RAM clocked at 1600 rather than 1866 so... faster RAM clocks don't mean much for any processor? I guess it's down to the timings, anyway. That Mushkin RAM I was looking at (anyone know what the actual name of it is? this stuff; http://www.amazon.co.uk/A-Data-1600...UTF8&colid=2DXA6WIUK00RK&coliid=ICGHBWUM5HB8K) seems tight enough (presumably 9-9-9-24/28 given the title) and will look pretty nice with the Akasa case, I think. Although I was considering painting all the yellow bits on the case since barely anyone makes yellow components of any kind. Probably blue to go with the MSI MoBo. So... blue RAM; Corsair Vengeance, Kingston HyperX, Patriot G2. All 16GB kits are around £70, all timings are 9-9-9-24 @ 1.65v. Any reason to go for one over another, or just whatever's cheapest?
 
Kanped said:
@Master&Puppet thanks again. I did a bit of reading and it seems like all the socket 2011 CPUs are aimed exclusively at the enthusiast market, so I really have no need to go that way with this build.
Click to expand...
Well it's not so much aimed at the enthusiast market (most of us have an 1155 i5 but I would call us enthusiasts). It's to do with numbers of threads again.

In the same way as some AMD processors have more cores/threads than you need, so do some of Intel's.

As previously discussed, 4 threads is the sweet spot for gaming with only the latest games actually making use of all 4 (BF3 is the best example, others like d3 will use all the threads but are still heavy on one main thread).

The 1155 i5s (2500k and 3570k) are 4 core processors which run one thread per core.

All i7s run 2 threads per core (known as hyper-threading) which makes 8 threads in the case of an 1155 i7 (26/700k or 3770k) and the 2011 3820 or up to 12 threads on the 6-core 2011 3930k/3960x. So for this and the next generation of games you only need an i5 and since all the 2011 socket cpus are all i7s that kind of limits you to one socket and one cpu per generation i.e. the 2500k and 3570k.

M&P
 
May be getting slightly ahead of myself but I've been thinking more about aesthetics and cool mods I could do. Probably off in the future next time I have some spare cash but still, just ideas.

Firstly, that white LED fan that comes with the case in the front has to go; no idea what they were thinking (other than maybe 'we make a range of fans so lets put one of everything in there' or maybe 'well, we don't make a yellow LED fan so I guess we'll just stick the most neutral LED fan we have in there because LED fans are a selling point'. Yeah, I think I know exactly what they were thinking, actually).
The problem is that as far as I can tell, nobody makes yellow LED fan, much less 230mm ones. I dunno if you can make your own LED fan assemblies, I guess it must be possible, but for now I'm thinking Bitfenix Spectre Pro is black for that and the side panel (I could put in more, smaller fans but I just like the idea of huge fans; look cool, work well, run quiet). Depending on noise and performance, I may replace the ceiling fan with one as well. http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop...-Case-Fan--BFF-SPRO-23030KK-RP-pid-14840.html

Next thing; there's no reset button on the case and the power button has a white LED, which again, doesn't go so well with the rest of the case. So, I was thinking it'd be possible to remove the fan controller knobs and replace them with Phobya pushbuttons for power and reset. I've no real interest in fan controllers if the fans I'm running are quiet; rather just hook them up to the PSU and let them do their thing. I'm also fairly experienced in this kind of mod, after building a bunch of arcade sticks for Xbox (or dual-modded for PS3 and of course, PC too) and don't see it being any kind of issue to do this other than, maybe, the hole left behind from the control knobs being bigger than the 22mm diameter of the thread of the pushbutton but I can get bigger light-up pushbuttons from arcade machine retailers. As for the original power button? Replace the while LED with a yellow one and leave it as a light-up badge, or I could wire it to be a clear CMOS button or something like that if I really wanted. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/phobya-71139-push-button-19mm-black-alu-yellow-lighting

I'm not having any optical bays, not water-cooling so I have no real need for the optical drive bays. It'd also be a little silly doing all this modding and then only viewing it through the mesh in the side panel, so enter clear drive bay covers from KXNG. Not much description here, just think it'd be worth doing.
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_1167.html

Also thinking it would be worth individually braiding my cables. The multi-coloured cabling from the Silverpower PSU is clearly visible through their braid and it does throw the whole aesthetic somewhat. Never done this before but since my PSU is mostly modular, I'm comfortable with wires and, if seriously time consuming, this doesn't look particularly difficult to do, I think it's something I'd like to have a go at. Also, I LOVE the look of individually braided cables.
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_24730.html
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_7331.html

Finally, some lighting. Thinking one bar down behind the drive bays, next to the motherboard facing it, since it'll be all clear acrylic there. Add in a few LED arrays above the vents on the side and I think we'd have one pretty awesome looking rig.
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_2251.html
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_3323.html

Now my only problem is that the NH-D14 completely doesn't fit the look. But it performs SO well... ugh. I've been looking at plain black alternatives but nothing has really caught my eye. Obviously, the Akasa Venom Voodoo cooler fits the looks perfectly but I'm really hesitant about taking that much of a performance hit (especially in terms of acoustics) for the sake of looks. Also, Noctua have said that painting the fans could easily result in serious performance implications (as will replacing them, obviously). Any suggestions? Been looking at the Thermaltake Frio and Cooler Master V8. Both seem reasonable but still can get kinda loud; not really sure what way to go with this.
 
What about the BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 2? Performs well - albeit not as well as the D14, but still adequate for a good overclock. Still very quiet, and probably fits the look as well
 
Yeah, that's not bad at all, actually. 47dBA at full load is pretty impressive (I think that was a bit-tech review). It kind flew under my radar because Amazon don't sell it and nobody was putting against the noctua in their reviews (does OK against a H100, though). Actually, I COULD go for a H100 if the money stretches that far but I know I'll end up sinking more into replacement fans if I do that.

Anyway; that Dark Rock is a totally viable alternative and is now my first choice of cooler. Thanks very much!
 
No problem. We now have a BeQuiet rep here too, so that may help if you do want any more advice or help with it.
I can vouch for the fans that they are very very quiet. I'd even say it may be quieter than the D14, but obviously havent tested - just my guess as i own the D14 and one of the bequiet fans
 
http://www.hardwareluxx.de/communit...h-d14-doppelturmkuehler-vergleich-889491.html

Well, I did manage to find a direct comparison and (much to my surprise), the Dark Rock actually beat the Noctua on performance. In fairness, he did seem to mount the coolers vertically, which is a very odd choice and I imagine that due to the size of the Noctua, it was drawing more hot hair from the top of the GPU and had less room at the top of the chasis to vent it but still, a win is a win. No mention of noise levels but any reviewer has commented positively on that; this seems like a good choice to me.
 
They have been tested here properly, and the Noctua wins in every test. Dont forget that bequiet is German - as is the website, and other review sites can be biased towards companies...
 
If you're looking for pure cooling, the Noctua is the way to go - no doubt about that!

However, if you're wanting something that looks good as well, I'd go with the Dark Rock Pro :) (Or swap Noctua fans for something that looks better! :P)
 
If you are going for the Ivybridge - both coolers will keep it cool enough at 4.5ghz which is about the max you can manage on either cooler anyway, so it really doesnt matter. I'd go for the bequiet if aethetics are that important
 
ChrisGlobe said:
If you're looking for pure cooling, the Noctua is the way to go - no doubt about that!

However, if you're wanting something that looks good as well, I'd go with the Dark Rock Pro :) (Or swap Noctua fans for something that looks better! :P)
Click to expand...
Or the NZXT Havik 140 for a white build. Although it is a bit louder and the rubber things that you use to connect the fans to the tower look a bit off to me.
 
Yeah, the price is the same and the performance of the BeQuiet is good enough. I don't want to change the fans on the Noctua because a) It still won't look as good with the uncovered chrome grills b) That's an additional expense and c) There's no way to know what that will do to performance, both in terms of cooling and noise levels. I could end up with a noisy, hot cooler for the price of an H100!

Thinking about the H100 again... I'm not keen of having a big white Corsair logo slap-bang in the middle of my blank-and-yellow rig and also, I don't think any other logos will be visible, other than the very understated BeQuiet! logo on the cooler, which I'm fine with. Obviously, I'm removing that bloody gorilla sticker from the Silverpower PSU.
silverpower(1).JPG

Somebody seriously needs to lose their job for that design...
 
Well, I could but the finish wouldn't be as good and the design on the front is actually button settings, so I'd lose the fan control and possibly damage the whole mechanism by doing that; it might trigger all the buttons simultaneously or something weird like that and the fans would constantly change speed. Unlikely but not impossible and even at that, painting over the buttons in general doesn't seem like a good idea; it's a headache I could do without, basically. I'm pretty set on the Dark Rock at this point.

Thinking about calling this build 'Mandarinia' at the minute, after the Vespa Mandarinia (Giant Hornet; full-tower in black and yellow, get it?) but of course, I'm dropping the 'Vespa' part due to the connotations it has with a noisy scooter. I'm already having a bunch of fun with this; started out just wanting something functional for a bit of gaming but seeing what's out there has really got me into the whole idea of building rigs.

UPDATE: Thinking it might be nice rather than to just get the sticker off the PSU, to flip it round the other way and replace the grill with a gold-plated one to keep the theme going. Could do that for £2
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/120mm-12c...otn=21&pmod=270915449967&ps=54#ht_2978wt_1039
 
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We're a fan of PSUs being the 'wrong way round' on here, so it's all good :)
Your build sounds promising - can't wait to see it unfurl :D
 
Well, I guess this is almost the beginning of a build log now. Got a bit of cash in from work done in July, so decided to get some of the stuff that's currently on offer in scan/aria.
Namely, the G105 MW3 keyboard, CS Spawn mouse and Asus VE228T monitor, all currently on offer at Scan and 2 2x4 Mushkin Radioactive RAM kits from Aria (on offer but limited to 1 per customer, so one kit was £35, the other £42; BTW; yes, I could reasonably make use of 16GB of RAM). Should be starting the build log proper on my next pay-day, hopefully end of the month or early September.

So; quick once-over with stuff still to buy, this is what I've got. What do you guys reckon?

http://www.scan.co.uk/savedbasket/2dc8aa36a0f94ae19e8f2b63b9d16f8f
 
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