I have an AMD athlon 3000+ on an A8N SLI 32 Deluxe. With stock cooling, I can get it to 2.88 Ghz, with 1.45 V Vcore, with resonable load temps (just under 60*). What should my next step be? I have up to $ 200 to spend

Should I go for water, where I already have an ATX-sized radiator? I have the capacity for it, in the old cube.

Should I buy a new case with decent cooling and a real heatsink? Right now I have an ancient case 2 loud 90mm fans sucking air in the front, and lots of holes in the back for exhaust.

Don't bother with watercooling, the cheap ones don't do any better than a decnt air cooler, and the expensive ones are only going to give you another 100MHZ or so over a high end air cooler!

I love my Big Typhoon, and have had good results with the scythe mine cooler, I just upgraded the fans to higher flowing ones, and then turn the rpms down a bit when not benching...even the stock fans on them do a good job though.

Get a nice case with a 120MM exh and Intake, there are plenty of them for 130$ or less.

Here is one that is based of one of my projects, I think they realy liked my idea!



http://forums.pcapex.com/pcapex_dail..._case_fan.html

(Xioxide stocks it, or was it Frozen CPU?)

3DXtreme - Taking Hardware To The Xtreme...

Quote: Originally Posted by $SOLID$ Necro Here is one that is based of one of my projects, I think they realy liked my idea!

Yea but your innovation, was perfected with a few decibils lower, and as well as a few mm smaller. Although, they didnt touch your results.

Well TRG i would have to say, WC is a bit expensive for very little results, any nice big heatsink these days parted with a nice fan, can get you virtually the same results, water holds the temps a little more stable, and its gonna take longer to heat up with WC but in the end load is load, I like the new Noctuas, theres another called the tuniq tower, but these and the few necro desribed are arguably the best cooler, Most are based on personaly use that give the whole this is better than this, but i have the 92mm noctua, and soon willbe getting a 120mm version and they perform great.

You definately don't want temps anywhere over 50, usually just a safeguard, but i wouldnt let it stay at a load over 50 ever IMO.

with the 50$ or so 120mm Noctua and a nice 100$ case including shipping youll run about 200$ maybe with a fan or two, depending on your noise prefrence, either get a nice high CFM fan, and then get some sort of adjuastable control, or a case with lots of silent fans and a pretty good airflow.

Hope we could help

Thanks guys. I am looking at cases from chieftec, but they are a real pain to get a hold of in canada... only stupid stampers like ultra selling here. ( stampers: just stamp their name on it, and jack the price up )

What about the Cooler Master Stacker 830? With a bunch of 120 mm fans of course.