Gaming PC: Cool and stable

[smyter_m]

I am about to piece together my new rig. As the title suggests, I want it to be cool and stable. The case, ps, motherboard, proc, and HD were pretty easy:

Coolermaster Cent 5
COOLER MASTER UCP RS700-AAAAA3 700W
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz
Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB

The memory was a bit tougher. Gigabyte claims rates of "1600/1333/1066/800 MHz". I want cool and stable. So I choose:

2x OCZ Reaper HPC 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1150 (PC2 9200, which I may run at 1066.

And then comes the hard part. The video card. All the reviews of decent graphics cards say "This runs blistering HOT". I am willing to pay more for one that cools well and isn't loud doing so, or even take a performance hit (to some degree). Who can make some recommendations?

side notes: I have thought of a water-cooled system, but I am just too chicken to do it. Also with i7 just around the corner, I may puss out and wait.

 

[Avenger_K]

Which video card are you using?

Edit: Forgot to ask: where will you be ordering the parts from, and in what currency?

 

[jitpublisher]

My 2 cents,
The PSU you picked is very low quality. Look at something from PC and Power Cooling. You do not need 700 watts from a junk PSU, you need around 550 to 650 from a quality PSU.

The Raptor is overly expensive for the performance and storage you get.
Look at the new Western Digital 640 gig drives. Very fast, lots of room.

You do not need PC2 9200 ram unless you are planning to do heavy overclocking, PC2 800 is fine for Intel processors. There is no performance improvement by going with faster memory.

Unless you are planning some serious overclocking, water cooling is not needed.

Look for a video card that is dual-slot design, that blows the hot air out the back of the case, like the 4870.

 

[50bmg]

Although hard to find, there are dual slot 4850's. a little cheaper and will get the heat out.

+1 for jit's suggestions for a PC and Power Cooling psu and pc2 800.

 

[smyter_m]

Avenger: I am trying to decide which video card to use in this post. Most likely the egg, US$

Jit: Thanks for the input. I was curious on why you felyt that this paticular PS was junk. The reviews on it have been highly favorable and it has a high efficiency rating. But I will most likely look into PC and Power Cooling. They most likely are both made from seasonic anyways. I did not think running at 1066 was considered overclocking, I was over-speccing the memory because 1: stability and 2: it cost the same. The raptor drive is an extranagance, I admit... but I do not need storage space. This is my dedicated gaming PC. The hard drive tends to be the bottleneck in many systems... so I will still go with it, price/performance be damned. again, thx for the input. I had been looking at the 4870 mostly... I am hoping to find one that is both quiet and cool. I will not be choosing an OC model, I just wasn't sure who had the most conservative model with the best cooling fan.

50: Do the 50's run cooler than the 70's?

review of PS: http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1570/cooler_master_ucp_700w_power_supply/index.html

 

[Silverion77]

Jit that UCP is actually supposedly a very good PSU i dont kno where ur getting ur information from

 

[smyter_m]

It does have 80+ Silver rating too