New project... silence + overclocking
 

I'm starting a new project, making the pc overclocked and very silent.

Current specs,
Case Thermaltake skull edition
Thermaltake butterfly edition psu
Hercules 9800 XT
2 gb kingston 4 x 512 ddr pc 400
asus p4c 800 deluxe mobo
2 x 160 gb seagate 7200 serial striped
1 x 250 gb wd serial 8 mb
plextor dvd-rom
plextor dvd+r 4x
2 antec blue 80 mm fan
Xice watercooler ec900

Currently putting hd's in silentmaxx enclosures...

I don't know that xice cooling will cool enough if you start overclocking

I've tested it, overclocked 5%, only increased 1,5 degrees,
now running @ 3.15 ghz....
It's not much overclocked, but I don't dare to do more, I'm new @ overclocking. Will the rams hold it? Will the graphics card hold it... I don't know jack :)

your temperature will start going up more rapidly due to the extra wattage when you run it faster than that.
Why wouldn't your grafics hold? your pciagp can be locked at 33/66 with an asus p4c800

let me tell you what to do.
since you use 4 ramsticks, you won't be able to overclock much using a 1:1 divider... put your ram at tight timings(2-2-2-5 if possible) and a 5:4 divider in bios and then put your cpu at 3300 (220 mhz) and test it at that speed with prime95 to check if it's stable. (90% chance it will be, since all 3ghz p4's do at least 3.3.
If it is, increase the fsb again with 5 mhz and test it again with prime95.
When it gets unstable (prime gives errors) then go back a notch of 1 or 2 fsb until it's 100% primestable for some hours.

Don't overclock your vidcard until you're sure your cpu is stable.

We'll explaiun vidcard overclocking using atitool when you tell us how high your cpu is stable :)


btw, all those recents tests with raid0 prove that for gamers, it means nothing, the performanceincrease isn't tangible and the risk of dataloss is BIG.

So how is the silence of your pc? I know de Xice is a external passive watercooling => so this makes no noise.

What about your psu? I have a Zalman 400 W and the claim it is silent => well I can assure you it isn't. I am going to buy the NEPS 400: external passive psu from Zalman as soon as it is available.

How about your casefans do they make much noise?

I am also trying to make my pc as silent as possible, all components are Zalmanised in a Lian-L pc 6070, the only thing that make to much noise is my Zalman PSU, as it is tempcontroled the fan spins up as temps are rising. :grum:

It's silent, but it could be improved, the xice unit makes no noise,
but the thermaltake butterfly isn't so silent, but it will be replaced with a silentmaxx fanless 423 watt psu. Fans will be replaced with papst fans.

Then another funny thing, I overclocked it to 3.3 ghz but, very strange, my aquamark score is worse then it was at 3.15....

@ 3.15 my score is 46028
@ 3.3 my score is 44509

Shouldn't it be the other way around? :)

try 3dmark2001 instead.
aquamark doesn't care so much for cpu.
your ram is at 5:4 now?
is it at tighest timings?

I did that but was not impressed, the silent 80mm 12db Papst fans I used have a side-effect: they vibrate and they transmit the vibration to your case.

Hmmm, that's not the idea, I didn't know that, what about putting silencers between them?

I've found these

http://www.antec.com/us/pro_details_...p?ProdID=75006

Maybe that would work?

I used the Vantec dampeners, they have no effect with the Papstfans.

Maybe I your case is a heavy steal one, but with my alu Lian-Li PC 6070 the effect was not good.

I would check : http://www.silentpcreview.com - also visit their forums.