Modest System

kaskuli · Post by **kaskuli** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 4:53 pm

E8500 E0
HR-01 Plus ( Thanks SPCR! ) + Orange D12SL-12 ( Thanks SPCR!)
2x1GB Cellshock PC3-14400 8-7-6-21
Gigabyte HD4850 /w Zalman Heatsink
ASUS P5Q3 Deluxe WiFi AP@n
ASUS DRW-2014S1
WD Caviar SE 16 320GB ( Thanks SPCR! )
3x Black & White D12SL-12
Antec 300 ( YOU NEED TO REVIEW THIS CASE ASAP! )
Samsung 2253BW

Cistron · Post by **Cistron** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 3:29 am

I don't how much you paid for the Asus Mainboard, but usually the top models aren't good value for money deals (at least in my humble opinion).

I don't quite get your choice for DDR3 either.

Strid · Post by **Strid** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 4:02 am

It's probably above average performancewise. But I voted "Poor". I can count a whooping seven(!) fans total? My ears hurt, just from watching the pics.

Especially since your poll is "for the money", I'd rate it poor - sorry dude!

You could get by with two or three fans (the one in the PSU included). The two intake fans are not needed with the three exhaust fans you got there. And the HR-01 is easily adequate for cooling a E8500 E0 fanless.
And as said, I don't quite get your choice of motherboard and DDR3 RAM. A budget P35 board would probably give you the same performance - though probably slightly less in benchmarks.
Finally, I don't know why you choose the Zalman GPU cooler over the good, old AC Accelero S1?

I don't wanna come off all bitchy, but your build needs a little more work before it's done IMO! Now, you got a lot of sweet components, so it's just a matter of tweaking your case a little, and it can easily be up to SPCR standard!!

What I would do:
- Suspend the HDD vertically in the HD mounting space using stretch magic or something similar.
- Accelero S1 on the 4850 GPU
- Remove the intake fans.
- Remove the heat sink fan
- 1 Nexus fan @ 5 or 7 V on an exhaust vents - cover the other blow hole.
- Fan swap the PSU for a Nexus fan

Hope this helps!!

rpsgc · Post by **rpsgc** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 6:28 am

Strid wrote:Finally, I don't know why you choose the Zalman GPU cooler over the good, old AC Accelero S1?

It's simple, it came stock with the graphics card

And I also agree with everyone else, a good P35/P45 and DDR2 would've been just fine and much more cost-effective.

kaskuli · Post by **kaskuli** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 12:49 pm

DDR3 is the only way to go for performance tuning. I have mine running at 7-7-7-18 DDR3-1780 1.96V. When this Cellshock Ram came out they blew my mind but I couldn't afford them. I was fortunate enough to get them retail a few weeks ago, one of the last pairs anywhere.I'm no good at cable hiding either. I know it's a bit overkill but the line was blurred between wants and needs.

The motherboard? Cost about $230, I was forced to choose a board with wifi. I'm not going to buy a pci wifi adaptor, I need my slots for other stuff. This is the ONLY way I can get internet in my apartment complex.

I appreciate the honesty guys, this was only a stop-gap measure... A week ago I had nothing at all. In just under a week I got everything and assembled this box. Despite the number of fans near-silence is almost achieved, can't feel any warm air coming out of the exhausts even at load, idles around 24 degrees.

Your feedback is really appreciated!

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:11 pm

Hi,

I agree that there are a lot more fans than you need: you may be able to do it with just the PSU fan, the rear case fan (with a duct to the HR-01 Plus), and the video card fan -- three fans!

Cistron · Post by **Cistron** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:54 pm

kaskuli wrote:DDR3 is the only way to go for performance tuning. I have mine running at 7-7-7-18 DDR3-1780 1.96V. When this Cellshock Ram came out they blew my mind but I couldn't afford them. I was fortunate enough to get them retail a few weeks ago, one of the last pairs anywhere.I'm no good at cable hiding either. I know it's a bit overkill but the line was blurred between wants and needs.

Did you overclock your E8500 to an FSB of 890MHz? The big advantage of DDR3 over DDR2 - I thought - was the lower voltage requirment according to the JEDEC standards. One reason why Apple used it in the new MacBook. There are no processors out there which actually make efficient use of such high RAM clocks.

I guess you could still sell it to a decent price, if you wanted to

That WiFi requirement over the mainboard is a shame. When I built me PC in March I had the same problem, but a 1xPCIe WLAN card solved the problem.

kaskuli · Post by **kaskuli** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:14 am

Performance is just as important as silence. I do lots of number crunching. DDR2 was not an option.

Strid · Post by **Strid** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 2:30 am

kaskuli wrote:Performance is just as important as silence.

Yeah, I don't completely agree, but you can have both if you want!!

kaskuli · Post by **kaskuli** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 3:27 am

That's what I was trying to do. But here people expect you to use just 1 fan, passive psu's, passive everything, solid state drives, pretty cable management...etc etc

Cistron · Post by **Cistron** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 8:18 am

kaskuli wrote:That's what I was trying to do. But here people expect you to use just 1 fan, passive psu's, passive everything, solid state drives, pretty cable management...etc etc

Only freaks here

If number crunching is important, I'm curious why you didn't go for a quad core?

speedkar9 · Post by **speedkar9** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 6:57 pm

I once had a 300. Too much noise escaping from the front, sealing the fan ports didn't help with noise, but surprisingly didn't change temps either.

Cables can be routed neatly behind the 3.5 inch bays.

Note the suspended hard drive.

Modest System

How good is this configuration, for the money?

Modest System