Advice for quiet and powerful? system

zamboni · Post by **zamboni** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:37 am

Again, few most common questions. Don't get bored

I'm looking for stable and quiet PC and I have this setup in mind:

CPU: AMD 64 3000+
HS: Zalman CNPS7700-ALCU
Case: Antec P150
Mem: 2x 512MB DDR 400MHz Kingston Valueram CL2.5
Hd: Seagate Barracuda 7200.8, 200GB SERIAL ATA
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9
Vga: Asus GF N6600 Silencer PCI-E 128MB

This should be quiet, stable and lasting PC, but is it powerful enough? I haven't read a single (before last week) PC review in six years so I'm pretty lost. Last weekend I read tons of reviews and some say that GF6600GT is almost twice as fast as GF6600. I'm wondering if 6600 is enough for me (some reviews say it is

). To make this easy (?), here are few games that I would like to see run smoothly on my new computer:
Colin McRae rally 2005, Civilization 4, EA NHL Hockey, Brothers in arms earned in blood. Is GF6600 enough to run these games with decent settings or do I need better GPU? I'm only casual player so if the 6600 is enough I'll go for it. 6600 is only passive one available and it is also the cheapest:)

Here are few options for graphics if YOU think that I must get faster GPU (and toss away passive option):
Gainward GF 6600GT 128MB GAIN-6862
Sapphire X800 GT PCI-E 128MB 256-BIT TVO
Club 3D X800 GT PCI-E 256M GDDR-3 256BIT, CGAX-RX86DD

Only difference between nForce4 and nForce4 Ultra seems to be SATA speed and activearmor. Are those useful things to have (and give up passive NB cooling)?

BTW, what does it mean if it says in the game package that minimium requirement for game is 2GHz CPU. Does that mean that AMD-Intel equivelant thingie (3000+) or actual clockspeed or what?

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:58 am

you can get a 6600gt and put a passive heatsink on it like This one from Zalman

thats how i currently have my 6600gt setup and it works fine even with all the fans set to 7volts. and i have no fan blowing directly on the video card. and yes the difference between a regular 6600 and a GT is huge. if you want to do any kind of real gamming i'd really suggest you jump up to a GT. you really dont need a 6800/7800/x800 unless your playing some serious graphics intensive games. a 6600GT looks like it would suite you very well.

even if your motherboard doesnt have passive northbridge heatsink on it, as long as its orientation isnt being obstructed by anything (like the video card etc) you can put your own large passive heatsink on it afterwards. so dont let the fact that a motherboard your considering has a fan on it deter you from it, board layout and features is much more important. you can change the heatsink/fan for a passive heatsink afterwards if need be.

the hard drive seems fine, if you want a 3.5" drive and you want it to be a little quieter the samsung spinpoints are supposed to be a little better in that department. but seagate hard drives are good too. just make sure you take advantage of the suspension features on that case to decouple them from it.

the heatsink is a little overkill. a zalman 7000-alcu would do fine. theirs ways of doing a fan swap on either of them, but its a little more entailed than just a simple fan swap. if you'd like somthing easier to put a different fan on check out the "light and easy" heatsinks from thermalright. the xp120/sp120 and the xp90/sp90's are all good heatsinks. the only real differences between an xp and an sp is board compatability. 120 is for 120mm fans, 90 is for 92mm fans.

you didnt mention which PSU your getting. i take it your just gunna use the one it comes with. if you dont i highly recommend seasonic PSU's.

if it says min requirment of 2ghz, a 2000+ from amd is the equivolant. actual processor ghz speed doesnt mean everything. Intel's pentium M's are around half the ghz rated speed of the P4's and perform very similarly in games. "higher ghz = better" is a big intel marketing myth. usually games dont just state a certain ghz, and will rather state the minimum speed from both the intel and amd camps indipendantly.

stromgald · Post by **stromgald** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 11:53 am

Gigabyte also has a stock passive 6600GT that might be appealing. Its a little hard to find, and you will need decent airflow in the case. If you're getting a P150, it should be fine. For the motherboard, you may want to try and find the Abit AN8-Ultra. Its passive so you won't have to replace the heatsink and worry about issues of the heatsink getting in the way of the graphics card.

Like Aris, I would also recommend saving some money and getting a 7000B-AlCu instead of a 7700. From the SPCR tests, the 7700 runs 1dB quieter at some of the voltages tested (no difference in noise at lower voltages), and only has a 2ºC advantage over the 7000. With a 3000+ Venice core, the 7700 is overkill, and the extra 2ºC is fairly insignifcant for the extra ~$10 (USD) you'll be paying.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 11:59 am

just a bit of warning about the gigabyte 6600gt's that come stock with passive heatsinks. they run incredibly hot. ive seen some people say over 100c under load. id highly recommend you just get whatever 6600gt you want and put a passive zalman heatsink on it.

asus has a stock passive 6600gt Link Here

snowman59 · Post by **snowman59** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 3:06 pm

if I was you i'd look for a slightly faster processor than a 3000+ simply becuase the newer processors run on 90nm instead of 130nm and are suppose to be a little cooler. I haven't used any of the XP series or the lower end 64s so I can't say (my pervious processor was a T-bird; 5 years old now). Thats just from the perspective of more power and its not necessarily more costly becuase AMD just lowered prices (althougth only slightly). You might also want to consider getting a processor with 1MB of L2 cache because that has been shown to increase performance versus a processor of the same speed with only 512kb of L2.

If your looking for more power on the GPU side you might just have to ditch the passive approach. I would recommend either the Zalman like in above posts or going with an Arctic Silencer. These are both quiet solutions and allow you to greatly up the GPU to the likes of the X-800 series or the 6800s. I personally ditched the passive approach only because I needed something that could play some games and still be able to play games in a year...hence my OCed X-800XL w/ a arctic cooler.

Its always hard to take high performance and make it all silent...I guess its just how you personally define silent. For me that was a matter of getting the performance I wanted and then making that as silent as possible. But thats still an ongoing quest of mine....case mods here I come!

~best of luck to you

teejay · Post by **teejay** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 3:32 pm

3000+ Venice core is a 90nm cpu (the Newcastle is not). Apparently it is no longer in production but it will be sold as long as resellers stock lasts... given the choice between a CPU and GPU upgrade in your case I'd definately go for the faster GPU (I second the suggestions made by Aris).

Obviously a faster CPU will matter too, but if budget is limited a better GPU than the 6600 will get you more bang-for-buck. I am notoriously bad at predicting hardware prices, but with the 3000+ gone I'm guessing it's only a matter of time before faster CPUs will drop a bit in price, so if you can/want to wait a few weeks... OTOH, there is always this "next best thing in a few weeks" and sometimes you just have to go for it

stromgald · Post by **stromgald** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 3:34 pm

Well, the 3000+ Veince and Winchester cores are both 90nm. I think all the socket 939s are 90nm now, I'm not sure, so just make sure its Venice or Winchester core.

Whether you want 1MB L2 cache CPU (mostly 3700+ and higher) or a 6800/X800XL GPU really depends on what you consider 'powerful' and 'long-lasting' If it just needs to run the games you listed, a 3000+ Venice or Winchester paired with a 6600GT would handle it just fine. In fact, with 1GB worth of good RAM, it should run all new games out there for a few years. You won't get the best performance, but you will be able to run any mass produced computer game produced in the next 2 years. In the third and fourth year, some more intense games might give a 3000+ and 6600GT trouble, but you don't seem to be into running bleeding edge games now (i.e. FEAR, BF2), so I'm assuming you won't become mad overclocker going for that last bit of fps over the next few years. As a casual gamer myself, I would just get a 3000+ with a 6600GT.

nguyenkj · Post by **nguyenkj** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 4:50 pm

If you're looking for a stock 6600GT, the MSI NX6600GT is pretty quiet. MSI's video cards tend to be quieter, in my experience. For me, it's almost inaudible. The GPU is is cooled by a big copper heatsinkfan, and RAM is cooled as well.

oakdad · Post by **oakdad** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 3:36 pm

LeadTek is in the top 3 for for Noise, idle temp and load temp so it would get my vote.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2295&p=19