$1500 to spend on a new computer

[Finzz]

Lol personally I dont give a shit about looks, just how well it performs, and in the case of fans, sounds.

 

Anyway, which cpu cooler of those would you reccommend the most? I didn't really look at all of them, but I'm hoping that the most expensive one isn't the best. If it is, whats a good runner-up thats a lot cheaper, but almost as good?

 

Please ask if my question doesn't make any sense.

 

Or should I just stick with the Vertical Noctua, not the horizontal one, I heard it didn't work as good. I was watching a video on it and they said it has some special oil bearing in the fan so it is quieter and lasts longer. Also the fans' fins have like bevels on them that do something to make the airflow waaay better.

[Finzz]

Ahh double post, internet lagged when I submitted..... >.

 

Also Shadow, in that pic, is that heatsink sticking out to the left of the mobo (not the one sitting on the table) just the little tiny one. Is that part of the main thing? Thats crazy.

[Shadowex3]

Yep. The IFX-14 has a piece that goes BEHIND the motherboard.

 

The best heatsinks are, according to anandtech, the Noctua followed by the TRUE. They're both $64 at SVC, but the trick is that noctua's fans are known for literally being so quiet you can't tell they're on. I've got a 120mm one on my TRUE and if I block the other 3 fans in the case I can BARELY hear noise caused by the air whooshing through the heatsink's fins. Plus the Noctua also comes with TWO fans so you can do push-pull with it right from the get go.

 

A heatsink is something that once you buy it you've got it for live and just keep moving it from one comp to the next, buying a new mounting kit for $20 when you eventually need to. Since CPUs come with "stock" heatsinks that kinda suck you generally just put those on the old computers, or get a much cheaper heatsink for the old ones.

[Finzz]

Alright, I get to order at the end of the month

 

I know this is kind of off topic, but if you can't overclock thru the BIOS, is clockgen a good program? Because I just went from 2.6 GHZ to 3.0 GHZ and I'm not sure if it worked, but I think it did because CPU-Z reports my processor as 3.0010 on the taskbar when I minimize it.

[Shadowex3]

you REALLY want to do it through bios, and the overclocking features of good quality mobos from Asus and Gigabyte make it much easier. I wouldn't overclock until at least 6months in after reading up on it at OCforums though, OCing a Core i7 is a bit more touchy than previous core revisions.

[Akaru]

you REALLY want to do it through bios, and the overclocking features of good quality mobos from Asus and Gigabyte make it much easier. I wouldn't overclock until at least 6months in after reading up on it at OCforums though, OCing a Core i7 is a bit more touchy than previous core revisions.

 

This.

[Shadowex3]

^^^ I didn't even overclock my Q9450 until after I'd been studying stuff and practiced underclocking my old pentium4 for almost a year. Core i7's benefits are it's architecture and capabilities, clock speed is becoming less and less the deciding factor in the power of a CPU as we switch over to multithreaded stuff.

 

I've gone from about 2.6 to 3.2ish ghz with my Q9450, it gave me the most noticeable fps boost in non-threaded games like pre-orangebox HL2 mods. In UT3 it was a minor boost in physX maps because the game uses all 4 cores. On top of that are hardware considerations, Core i7 is now to the point where we're dealing with individual electrons and handfulls of atoms making up parts of the processor, overclocking that is a lot more touchy than Core 2 Duos where you just basically raised the speed and volts. We're brushing up against the limits of physics.

[Finzz]

Awww that kinds makes me sad when you think about it, that games won't require any more power,

 

but then again, they will always be finding ways to make things faster and more efficient, just wait till we have octo core processors haha.....