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Upgrades and Future build


JoshT

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First off, I want a better than stock cooling for my LGA 1155 Core-i7 2600K. (Should have done this a few years ago.) My 16gb of Corsair DDR3 is has high profile heat sinks which pretty much kills using larger air cooling. Any recommendation on a closed loop water cooler for it? My case wasn't designed with radiators in mind, I might be able to get a single 120mm or single 140mm radiator at the back of it if it'll do enough. Might be able to get a dual radiator in but I'm not at the computer to study it.

Probably next year I'll be building a new gaming rig. To lighten the load on the wallet a little I want to upgrade my current system with components that I'll move over into the new build. First purchase will be a Samsung 850 EVO 500gb SSD, it'll help my current computer and be a nice drive for the next one.


Biggest expense and probably hardest for me is graphics, Nvidia is the easy part. I don't need to play crisis 10 or battlefield 25 on ultra max settings on a 4K monitor, so GTX Titan X ($1000+) or TRI-SLI GTX980 water cooled kits ($2000+) for me.

Right now I'll be buying one card to upgrade my current system. It will be a GTX 980 class card and will be a reference design (more on that later). these are the options I'm thinking about:

1) GTX 980 now > SLI GTX 980 later (maybe TRI-SLI eventually)
2) GTX 980 TI now > GTX 980 TI later (maybe SLI eventually)
3) GTX 980 now > GTX 980 TI with GTX 980 PhysX later (Maybe SLI eventually)

If I get a GTX 980 card I will definitely be running two cards when I build. Can't decide which way to throw my money. the way I figure is in 2 or 3 generations of graphics cards I'll upgrade again, at which point one of the GTX 980 (TI) can be used as a PhysX card for those and the other card(s) can be put to other use. Just can't decide which way I want to go.



For the future build I'll wait to see what motherboards and processors are available then. What I do know is that I want to incorporate liquid cooling. That is why I want to stick with reference design graphics cards, full coverage application specific water blocks are available for them. Any recommendations on full tower cases that are good candidates for liquid cooling? I know that you get what you pay for, but lower price range would be best.
 
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Mark_88

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I remember someone on here posted pics of their water cooled computer and it was quite impressive...can't remember who or when...so I went searching but got distracted by something else...

Anyway, I found this under the sticky by mjones up top of this section...

http://www.heatsink-guide.com/content.php?content=case.shtml

There is a link to a cooling site that has some interesting ideas...not sure if you've seen it already since you are more of the research before asking type...seems to be current or recent information...

I've shied away from water cooling...not that I do anything serious that would cause my system to overheat...but I also remember someone telling me they had their computer sitting inside a freezer...apparently it worked wonders and never had an over heat problem.

Edit: I was looking into some of those parts you listed and saw a gaming machine listed on one site for $5,100 or so...freakin' spensive hobby these days...not to mention what the data charges could be in a month of heavy gaming...unless you have unlimited data...
 
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JoshT

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Mark, I appreciate the response. I'm already pretty good on the air cooling for a computer. Never seen that site before, and it's got a lot of good information there even if it is a bit out of date. Unfortunately none of it pertains to liquid cooling as I needed. If I had space to put a nice air cooler on my processor I'd do it, unfortunately with the heatsink design on my memory I can't fit a larger air cooler. That's why I am going with an AIO (all-in-one) water cooling set-up. I ended up getting an Antec Khuler h2o 650 from Tiger Direct for about $30. It's a preassembled system that includes a water block, pump, 120mm radiator, and fan. A dual 120mm radiator would have been better, but sometimes you've got to use what will fit and for the price it was worth a shot. Regardless it should be better than the stock cooler.


Ended up spending the money and going with a GTX980 ti. When placing my order for one of the other cards at Newegg I was reminded that I have a Preferred Account credit line. Currently orders over $500 are 12 months same as cash, so I opted to get the better card and pay it off in a month or two. Hopefully they'll have the promo going again when I'm ready to build next year. The 8 core i7 processors are still new to the market, I'm hoping that by then they will be more common and the price will have dropped a little.

I'd say $5100 was probably more of an entry level benchmarking platform than a gaming machine. For that I could assemble a 6-core i7 processor, 64gb DDR4 ram, Quad GTX980 ti, and motherboard. I'd still have $1100+ left over for a case, power supply, and drives and I didn't even shop around for the best prices. I can't even imagine pushing enough enough display at high enough resolution to need all of that. That said I'm sure the say will come when I'm running 12 core processor, 128gb ram system with single graphics card that makes the 4 look weak, and all of it will be an everyday occurrence. Truth be told it probably isn't that far off with the rate at which technology advances.
 
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Mark_88

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Oh, sorry, I thought there was water cooled info in that link...I guess it was the vapor cooling system I saw as I just glanced over it...but, as I thought, you've researched this effectively to give yourself a good idea what you will need.

I bought a 486DX computer in 1992 for my computer courses that I thought I would need...it was top of the line then...cost me nearly $2,000 with software et al and I was obsolete, no, the computer, in six months but I used it for the next three or four years...at that time Dune was the hot game to play and I went through the first game pretty quickly...mostly because I was addicted to it and blasting aliens was just plain fun...

It didn't take me long to see where this was going and what it would do to my health so I backed away from upgrades and spending long hours at the computer...it wasn't my thing as I was always a physical type of player...I like to shoot those aliens in person...but until they actually get here in the flesh...keep practicing...the world might need you to save us all from being alien chow...or your children...or your grandchildren...:)
 

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