What type of cooling would I need for....

[jaysond]

Hello all,

I am in the process of building a new gaming PC and have a question about cooling. The specs are:

Motherboard: ASUS M4A78T-E
Processor: AMD Phenom II x4 945
Memory: mushkin XP 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Video Cards: SLI - EVGA 896-P3-1255-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Hard Drives: 2 x Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5"
Power Supply: XCLIO STABLEPOWER 850W 850W ATX SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply (I am questioning if this is enough power?)
Case: I am going to be putting this into an Alienware full tower case (my previous system).

Will I be fine with fans, or should I look into some sort of liquid cooling for this setup? I am guessing this is going to run pretty hot

Thanks everyone!

JD

 

[hunter315]

Fans should be fine, liquid cooling is only needed if you want a super quite machine or want to do heavy overclocking, but if you havent bought the parts already there are a few things that you might want to change up.

The F3 is cheaper and faster than the 640GB caviar black, granted it is slightly smaller.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152181&Tpk=F3%20500gb

You wont get a boost from 8GB of ram for gaming vs 4GB, toms has done many tests on it. 4GB of fast low latency ram would be better
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231279

For a 790GX board, it supports crossfire so swap your graphics card out for an ATI equivilant like a 1GB 4870, that way you can just add a second in the future.

As for the PSU, XCLIO doesnt make great PSUs, they arent crap like raidmax, but there are better, a corsair 750TX will provide enough power for 2 high end GPUs while costing you less and running more efficiently so it generates less heat.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006&Tpk=750TX

With the money saved you may also want to consider upping the GPU to a 5850 or a 4890 as they are more powerful with similar power usage.

 

[jaysond]

Fans should be fine, liquid cooling is only needed if you want a super quite machine or want to do heavy overclocking, but if you havent bought the parts already there are a few things that you might want to change up.

The F3 is cheaper and faster than the 640GB caviar black, granted it is slightly smaller.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152181&Tpk=F3%20500gb

You wont get a boost from 8GB of ram for gaming vs 4GB, toms has done many tests on it. 4GB of fast low latency ram would be better
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231279

For a 790GX board, it supports crossfire so swap your graphics card out for an ATI equivilant like a 1GB 4870, that way you can just add a second in the future.

As for the PSU, XCLIO doesnt make great PSUs, they arent crap like raidmax, but there are better, a corsair 750TX will provide enough power for 2 high end GPUs while costing you less and running more efficiently so it generates less heat.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006&Tpk=750TX

With the money saved you may also want to consider upping the GPU to a 5850 or a 4890 as they are more powerful with similar power usage.

Awesome info, thank you for the reply. This is just the kind of info I was looking for.


Thanks again!

JD

 

[jaysond]

I do have one question about your graphics card recommendation. I already have one of the video cards I mentioned above, would it be much more beneficial for me to purchase the two ATI cards in the place of one more of the others? The price on the ATI cards don't seem to be very bad, so that's a plus.

Thanks,

JD

 

[hunter315]

Well you cannot run SLI on an AMD chipset, it cannot be done, and the nVidia chipsets tend to be problematic so its not advised. If you already have a GTX260 you could use one of them for a while and then upgrade to a 58xx series down the line.

 

[jaysond]

Well you cannot run SLI on an AMD chipset, it cannot be done, and the nVidia chipsets tend to be problematic so its not advised. If you already have a GTX260 you could use one of them for a while and then upgrade to a 58xx series down the line.

Awesome, thanks again for the answer. I am going to run the nVidia until I get the dough to pickup the ATIs.

Thanks!

JD