Watercooling my Rebuild

[s162217]

1. For £100 you could do an upgrade that would give you a lot more performance than a couple hundred extra MHz out of your current CPU.
2. This will only increase the performance of your GPU unless you're buying a GPU block as well which would be a waste of money.
3. You can't be serious...

I don't want to get better gpu performance, the gainward agp 7800gs+ has an excellent closed air cooler like nvidea gtxs so I was not planning on a waterblock for that anyway.
I could easily overclock my cpu to 2.4 or 2.6ghz with aircooling and to about 2.8 to 3.2ghz with watercooling (about another 1ghz to 1.4ghz above stock speed) it is still one of the most overclockable processors ever and you could say one of the main reasons for me to not upgrade is the Nvidea Soundstorm. A new processor = a new motherboard, which means I lose the quality digital output and dolby digital live encoding. I have an AV reciever for my computer to put my games in surround sound through the digital out. The only other soundcards that have DD live are the Asus Zonar soundcards which are hellishly expensive (£150!!). I don't think I could not have my games in surround, its just so much better and my reciever does not analogue passthrough.

 

[Cabbs]

3. You can't be serious...

No kidding, why would you want to run a dead socket?

Anyway, it's your money so do what you want with it. We're just trying to steer you towards a better way of spending your money. Even though you can possibly take it that high, it still has only one core in a world where dual is standard and quickly moving to quad. Not to mention that even if they were still single core, they perform much better clock for clock.

 

[s162217]

No kidding, why would you want to run a dead socket?

Anyway, it's your money so do what you want with it. We're just trying to steer you towards a better way of spending your money. Even though you can possibly take it that high, it still has only one core in a world where dual is standard and quickly moving to quad. Not to mention that even if they were still single core, they perform much better clock for clock.

I have just had an idea - I could retain my PC as a gaming machine for games up to about 2007 with a decent air cooler if I am able to find one as well as being my HTPC and in a year or so when I have the cash, buy a Quad Core Phenom I and a good GFX card (possibly a GTX 265 or 75) and feed the audio through my computer to get the DD live encoding. Then I could get the watercooling.

Phenom I's will be quite cheap I predict in a year anyway as I have looked at them before and they are only about £150.

 

[Cabbs]

Just curious, what motherboard do you have currenly?

 

[s162217]

Just curious, what motherboard do you have currenly?

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe with SATA 1.5gb, gigabyte ethernet, Nvidea Soundstorm and AGP 8 Pro

 

[Cabbs]

If you get a motherboard with the Realtek ALC882D, ALC888DD, or ALC888H you can get Dolby Digital support.

Take a look at this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital

 

[s162217]

If you get a motherboard with the Realtek ALC882D, ALC888DD, or ALC888H you can get Dolby Digital support.

Take a look at this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital

The ones mentioned can only DECODE not ENCODE. I did notice that some other soundcards do support it though, previously I had been told that it was possible but disabled on all other cards apart from the Asus Zonar.

 

[Cabbs]

There are hacked drivers out there for the Auzentech Prelude if you're on Vista that'll give you encoding back. The X-Fi Titanium does too, but I think you mentioned it earlier and it's a pricey sound card.

 

[s162217]

There are hacked drivers out there for the Auzentech Prelude if you're on Vista that'll give you encoding back. The X-Fi Titanium does too, but I think you mentioned it earlier and it's a pricey sound card.

The digital out is susposed to be not very clear either.

I almost feel like I can't get rid of my current Pc as two yeaes ago when the stuff was not too old, I took the stock cooler off and found that the guy who had put the thermal paste on had messed up and it was locking up due to overheating. I reattached the cooler but the cooler did not attach properly to the lug, so it fried the cpu as I did not notice. For the last year and a half I have been sourcing a new cpu, motherboard etc to replace the one I damaged as the whole lot was destroyed. But now after trying to get the exact cooler for almost 9 months, all the stuff is quite old. In total I only paid about £140 total including the very rare graphics card, but I just don't want to not build it after spending so long getting the bits.

 

[Cabbs]

Isn't S/PDIF what you have?

Well it seems like you're left with two options: Finish building this old rig or start a new one with an aftermarket sound card.