Terramax is very correct on the Prescot situation from what I've read.
My switch is based on $$ vs performance. I'm looking at the fact that I expect Intell to drop thier prices as we get closer to the release of the Prescot. I'm going to go for a extreme system using the 3.0 or 3.2 Canterwood. At the very least I'll be able to pick up a 2.8 reasonable. And any one of those chips should O/C higher than I could possibly hope to get even the XP3200 to go (performance here not mhz). RAM will be PC 3700 or the new PC4000, not sure yet who's though, but a full gig of it.
The pump is going to be a Iwaki MD-15 driving my Cascade along with my single pass core that BillA tested a while back vs Sence 87's Caprice dual pass core. I'm not sure how many other blocks will end up in the system. I'm going to wait and see how well I can clock my card on air first. NB will almost certinly be air cooled, to hold system resistence down for max O/C of the CPU. I'm going to add a few small passive sinks to the southbridge and mosfets as well. I'm not sure how much a Intel MB needs them but they won't hurt anything. I'm going to go as far as my skill level will allow, and maybe a bit more with this build.
Cards I like best right now are both Ati 9800 pro 128 cards. Powercolor and saffire both look pretty good, leaning more toward the Saffire as it's got a hell of a nice software bundle with it including three games and a O/Cing program. I'm thinking I'll buy a 1U CPU copper cooler about like you've been working with to grind down the base then cut it up for RAM sinks on the card. More cost effective than buying Tweakmonster or other copper ready made sinks and should also be more effective as well. Will most likly stick a Crystal Orb on the GPU to see how far air can get me. If I can get 15% O/C or higher I will forgo the watercooling of the GPU until I see Cathar's next block. Although I may try to make one I have floating around in my head first.
This system should sure do me for a good while. Long enough for the new PCI-X to come out along with Tejas and Hammer & DDR II to boot not to mention further speed increases in SATA drives.
Sad thing is I'll still be a while getting all the parts for this. Like BigBen2K I need to shop with care to make it happen. But I'm determined to not cut corners on quality of parts. I've got the case, most of the fans and the Cascade. Next I expect to order the Iwaki and a PCP&C turbo 510 powersupply. Then perhaps the DVDs ect.
Just have to see how fast it goes.
BE
|