Striker II extreme Fusion vs Swiftech chipset watercooling

Only a 220 rad with a GPU + CPU loop?!?!? What are your temps?



Probaby, yes.

As for specs, list full specs, esp. GPU. By the looks of it you are not currently doing SLI?

No I am not doing SLI now, but I might like to in the future to get a few extra years out of my system without upgrading to a new socket type (and presumably having to buy all new components).

Before the accident I didn't have the gpu in the loop, I was adding it when I loosened a barb allowing liquid to discretely leak onto the southbridge. I figured I may need to add another 120 rad after installing the GPU, but was going to see how it went since this is my first water cooling attempt. I have a silverstone TJ09 chassis with the 220 rad installed within the chassis under the top-side exhaust. I might have added the 120 into the mid-chassis fan as was done on this website during a system builder marathon.

My temps were:
CPU: ~37 idle, ~45 load - at 3.8 ghz 1.45v
Northbridge: ~31 idle, ~38 load
Southbridge: ~29 idle, ~34 load
GPU (stock air): ~55 idle, ~75-80 load
System: ~29 idle, ~35 load

Those are estimates as I recorded temps on my currently dismantled computer.

Full specs:
Mobo: BFG 680i SLI (now dead)
CPU: x6800 (@ 3.8 ghz, 1.45v)
GPU: BFG 8800GTX OC (stock air)
Chasis: Silverstone TJ09
PSU: 850W silverstone strider
RAM: 2x generic POS 1gb while I RMA my corsair 8500s
HDD: 2x 250gb WD @ 7200rpm RAID 0; 1x 1tb seagate

Am I way off base here? Is waiting to upgrade to SLI not cost effective in the long run? Should I forget the nvidia 7 series and go with an intel chipset? Is removing the heatpipe assembly from the striker II and replacing it with my swiftech waterblocks an option?

I know thats a lot of questions but thanks for any help

I guess if I have all the cooling components already getting something like the striker II or rampage with a heatpipe jungle is a waste. Is there a good 790i board or even an intel chipset board without a maze of useless heatpipes?

Thanks

1. The 8800GTX is already an old card. Don't bother doing SLI on it. A modern single slot card like the 5850/5870 will pwn that 8800GTX.

2. Get a single PCIe x16 slot P45 board like the UD3L and it should be good. Swap out for a better single slot card (ie 5850/nVidia 3xx when released) down the road if you need to.

3. No point in trying to extend the life of LGA775 and/or GPU. They are both old tech now. The motherboard/CPU will however last longer than the GPU assuming no bottleneck by CPU.

PS: Make good backups of what ever in that 1TB drive. The 750GB+ HDDs have quite a high failure rate.

Ok so probably better not to spend too much trying to salvage an aging system.

I'm going to go with a P45 system but I would really like one with an eSATA port and great OC abilities.

That gigabyte board has no eSATA port, and as far as I can tell none of the Asus p45 boards without that obnoxious heatpipe jungle have one either. The P5Q doesn't have one, and the P5Q deluxe/premium have them as well as too many heatpipes!

I'm going to keep looking, but thanks for the feedback it really helped get me on track.

Actually I realized eSATA isn't that important. If I get the right board I can pop in my eSATA PCI card and that will take care of that.

I've narrowed it down to two boards I think.

The Asus P5Q Pro
http://asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=qH6ZSEJ8EPY6HoNU&temp...
OR
The gigabyte board you recommended
http://www.gigabyte.us/Products/Motherboard/Products_Ov...

The gigabyte board is more friendly in terms of heat pipes, but I'm concerned about the clearance of the PCIe slot and the southbridge. If I put a tall waterblock (MCW30) on there a large graphics card like my 8800 might not fit.

The asus board has great reviews for OC'ing but the heatpipes for the northbridge extend to the area around the CPU making life a little more difficult for me. Think I could get away with some cheap ramsinks right there? Or maybe just some well placed airflow? If I'm correct that heatsink by the CPU cools the components which power the cpu? If so I don't want to destabilize the board by pulling off that heatsink.