Overclocking and cooling advice

[krazykarl925]

I built my dream rig a few months ago and am now in the process of wanting to overclock it. I built it myself and since watercooling wasn't very big when I learned I had no experience doing it so I went with the old school traditional air cooling. My goal is to see how stable I can overclock this rig, I'm really only doing it as an enthusiast.

AMD 8150
Patriot G2 Series Division 2 Edition 8 gig sticks PC3 12800 x4
RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-730SS 730W
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX
Rosewill BLACKHAWK Gaming ATX Mid Tower
MSI R6850 Cyclone PE Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit x2

I need suggestions/advice on a good aftermarket heatsink and also a good fan controller for the case since the case will hold 5 120mm fans and 2 140mm fans. Also if anyone has any good suggestions on where to find a good fan that is less than 18mm thick that would be awesome. Any suggestions on how to make this rig more awesome (its at least awesome in my eyes) would be very much appreciated.

P.S. The video cards are not ran in CrossfireX because I have it set up in triple monitor display and couldn't/didn't think it would allow me to do that with it enabled. Also looking for suggestions for fan controllers.

 

[Z1NONLY]

I just overclocked an MSI R6850 for a friend and found that it ran hot when stock.
~75C under full load. I recommend two high CFM 120mm fans (side and bottom for intake), connected to a splitter and then to oneof the many fan headers that board has (that change fan speed with load) This should help your GPU's when they need it and keep them quiet when at idel/low load.

Then I would connect the top fan and the rear fan to another splitter and then to another load-controlled fan header.

I would connect the front fan(s) to another fan header.

This is assuming your board can run adjust fan speed in "voltage" mode. My gigabyte board detects what kind of fan is connected to any given header (all but one, at least)and controls fan speed with whatever is needed. Check to see if your MB can do the same.

As for the CPU cooler the hyper 212+ works well for me, and the fan can be shifted a little higher on the heat sink to get clearance over the first stick of RAM.

 

[skaz]

I built my dream rig a few months ago and am now in the process of wanting to overclock it. I built it myself and since watercooling wasn't very big when I learned I had no experience doing it so I went with the old school traditional air cooling. My goal is to see how stable I can overclock this rig, I'm really only doing it as an enthusiast.

AMD 8150
Patriot G2 Series Division 2 Edition 8 gig sticks PC3 12800 x4
RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-730SS 730W
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX
Rosewill BLACKHAWK Gaming ATX Mid Tower
MSI R6850 Cyclone PE Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit x2

I need suggestions/advice on a good aftermarket heatsink and also a good fan controller for the case since the case will hold 5 120mm fans and 2 140mm fans. Also if anyone has any good suggestions on where to find a good fan that is less than 18mm thick that would be awesome. Any suggestions on how to make this rig more awesome (its at least awesome in my eyes) would be very much appreciated.

P.S. The video cards are not ran in CrossfireX because I have it set up in triple monitor display and couldn't/didn't think it would allow me to do that with it enabled. Also looking for suggestions for fan controllers.

NH-D14 is a good choice if your ram isn't to intruding. It is huge though so make sure you have the room. Some smaller options are thermalright Venomous X, and prolimatech megahalems.

Lamptron seems to make some solid fan controllers. I use to recommend scythe. But their soldering work sucks. I had to get an RMA for a 3 month old fan controller because a solder joint wasn't correctly soldered on to the 4th fan header so fan 4 wouldn't start. They sent me a refurb. Pretty quick turn around time. Only negative is the refurb had a cold soldering joint it as well! Luckily it was on a cap and in workable range so I re-soldered it myself. Sorry I'm trailing, but yeah Lamptron seems like they have some solid options =).

Can't think of any good thin fans off the top of my head at the moment.

 

[krazykarl925]

I ordereed the NH-C14 and a fan controller a few days ago for the system. They should be arriving in the mail tomorrow and will be installed Wednesday night. I appreciate all the help guys and I did get a thin fan suggestion from one of my friends. I'll let you guys know how far I can get this thing to run. Also the 6850s were bought fairly cheaply to be place holders. I'm normally Nvidia and Intel man but just didn't want to eat the cost of a Intel processor, also the 8-core kind of intrigued me. Thanks for all the help again guys!

 

[skaz]

No problem brother. Good luck and have fun.