Best item for Q6600 overclocking

David1542

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Hi, I have a asus striker extreme and a q6600 I was wondering whats the best cooler for overclocking for about 100-150$? I don't care if its air or liquid.
 

David1542

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I might go water cooling, what parts would you recommend? and perdon me but what is a true?
 

dagger

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Lower end fluid cooling have been benchmarked to perform lower than top air cooling, at much higher cost. Either spend lots of money on decent water cooling, or get top air cooling.

Those are few examples of top air cooling:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835887011
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233003
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118020
 

Granite3

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My Q9450 and 2x 8800 GTXs are on water, a swiftech 350 pump, $65, a pair of koolance gpu coolers ($85 ea), and now 3 x swifty 120 radiators, at $30 ea, along with 10 barbs($30), and $5 worth of worm clamps. Add in another $10 for 14' of tube and you have it. The cpu block, the swifty apogee gt was picked up for $35.
 

David1542

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thats about 400$ I have

Asus Striker extreme
Q6600
4 x1Gb of corsair dominators
2x250Gb 1x500Gb
2x eVGA 8800GTS SSC 640MB in SLi



And what is the single hands down best air cooler period? regard less of cost?
 

dagger

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The 3 I linked should be the best, result of my extensive research. :p

I built my pc about a month ago though, so new ones may have came out.
 

KyleSTL

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To make water cooling worth it you have to pour in some serious dough. An off-the-shelf LC unit is going to be many times more expensive than the top air coolers and barely out perform them. My suggestions:

Thermalright TRU/TRUE
Thermalright Ultima 90 (if you want something a little smaller)
Xigmatek HDT-S1283
Xigmatek HDT-963 (to save some room)
Scythe Infinity
Scythe Ninja

Thermalright has by far the best construction quality and mounting design, but Xigmatek performs just as good for a fraction of the price.
 

WestWarrior

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A TRUE is short for the Thermalright Ultra120 eXtreme, which is basically considered to be the best heatsink available right now by the overclocking community.

As for quality W/C on a budget, try this.

D-Tek Fuzion -$62 (or Apogee GT- $47)
Swiftech MCR320-$57 (+ 4 Yate Loon lows w/ special for $16)
Laing D5 Basic- $72
7' of 7/16" Black Tygon Tubing @ 1.85/foot- $13
T-Line+Fillport- $15

Cheapest price comes up to 220. Keep in mind you can get fairly decent performance from the 2x120 Radiator Swiftech Kit and save some money.

I think that is basically it aside from a few minor costs like extra barbs, or pump lubricant (you don't need Biocide w/ this setup) you might have to buy, zip ties are a much cheaper alternative to worm clamps, which arent really needed w/ 7/16" tubing.
 

David1542

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that price is great! few questions

1. where to buy froM?
2. room to improve? I have sli video cards and would like to add them eventualy would the rad cycle the heat fast enough and would the pump be strong enough?
 

WestWarrior

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1. I prefer to buy to buy from petrastechshop.com, but Sidewinder computers has some decent stuff as well.

2. Depending on what cards you have and what blocks you get, possibly. You have to understand that W/Cing is a big investment that is not going to be cheap to have a fully functional system. The one that I showed you would handle a high CPU OC, and a NB block if added, maybe one GPU. I have two seperate loops in my computer, one for my GPUs and one for my CPU+NB, the first on a Thermochill PA120.3, the other on a Thermochill PA120.2. Depending on how far you want to push your hardware and what hardware you have are very important in making a good loop. So what GPUs do you have?
 

David1542

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2x eVGA 8800GTS SSC 640MB in SLi
 

phreejak

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WestWarrior is dead on....

Your approach to o'clocking is every bit as important as what components you have that you want cooled. If you are an aggressive o'clocker (CPU, GPU, Ram, voltage adjustments, etc.) than the price of a complete loop (or loops depending if you want two) goes up. This would be due to upgrades, or additional equipment (like adding a NB waterblock). The Northbridge, typically, controls memory functions like – a memory controller (for Intel Chipsets), a level 2 cache communicator and bridges the gap between the CPU and Ram – it also handles functions between the CPU and the graphics processor on the PCI, AGP and PCIe slots. Since this particular part is always busy it can generate quite a lot of heat.

Otherwise, if you just mildly o'clock than things like a NB weaterblock aren't as necessary and the NB can be cooled by proper airflow and a decent HSF.

Also, you have to decide if you want to go cheap (as in cheap parts - which I wouldn't recommend) or make that significant initial investment. After that, maintaining a watercooled system is very cheap and the nice thing about them is that they can typically grow with your rig as it changes over the years - with minor investments ever so often for an upgrade or two.

So, it really starts with your your o'clocking intentions. To go top-of-the-line with a rig that has a quad-core and SLI could cost as much as $400 (i.e D-tek Fuzion or EK Supreme, Thermochill rads, one or two pumps, nonconductive coolant, tygon tubing, Swiftech MCW60's, etc.)
 

Perp

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I recommend the Xigmatek 1283.

frostytech.com - check out the top Intel heatsink link

I also have the zerotherm that came it at #5 and it's not too bad.

The Xigmatek keeps my Q6600 very cool with it mated to a Scythe ultra kaze fan. The downside is that fan is soo big you will probably block off the first memory slot, so use the included fan if you plan to run 4 sticks of ram.
 

KyleSTL

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I think it's pretty late to be making an expensive H2O cooling system based on anything G80. I would NOT include G80 waterblocks with your plan. I would say save the money (that you'd spend on the GPU loop) and buy two new 9900-series GPUs when they come out later this summer. You can turn around and sell the SSCs for $100-150 each on ebay and buy a good setup for them. Even having a top-end water cooling setup will not make those 640MB G80s perform like 128-G92s. Additionally, you [probably] wouldn't be able to use the waterblocks on future (more powerful) GPUs.
 

WestWarrior

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KyleSTL is somewhat right. If you were to buy G80 full cover blocks, you would not likely to be able to use them if and when you upgrade your graphics cards. However, this can be solved by simply buying GPU only blocks. They outperform FC blocks, are reusable, and 2 of them cost about as much as one FC block. Keep in mind you will have to buy RAMsinks since they wont be covered by anything.

Im talking more specifically about these blocks. http://www.petrastechshop.com/swmcgpuwawg8.html
 

WestWarrior

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Oh you are correct. The G80 had slightly different mounts than usual aroud the GPU, which is why an adapter plate is needed for the G80. However, the stock mounting plate with the MCW-60 basically supports every ATi and nVidia card from the 6800GT and up. Even if a wierd shaped mount came up for a new GPU, a new adapter plate would follow very soon afterwards, for a very cheap price.