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Saturday, January 7, 2012

The mistakes I have done when building my current PC

I'm sure you would say I have an awesome PC, and that I should have pretty happy with what I have got. But there are so many areas to improve and I could have made it perfect if not for the following mistakes I've made when choosing the components.
 
The PSU
 
The PSU I have in the rig is a Corsair Enthusiast Series TX850 850W model. It is very stable and has enough juice to power the system even if I add a 3rd graphics card. However, the mistake I made was choosing this series: the TX series. TX series has one *big* problem. The cables are non-modular. While some people might say modular cables are unreliable and such, but it would have been a whole lot better if I could remove those ATX molex connectors from the PSU. I don't need them, but they are there. I should have bought the HX850 which is pretty much the TX850 with modular power cables.
 
The RAM
 
This is the biggest issue I have with the PC. I have Corsair Vengeance RAM installed in all 4 slots of the motherboard. They have a very tall heat-spreader which seems to do nothing but look big and stop good air-coolers from being installed. They don't overclock at all, nor can I tighten the timings. I'm stuck with the stock XMP profile. These heat-spreaders offer no advantage over the other low profile RAM. What's the point of having them if you cannot get any benefit out of them? It's just a marketing scam. People should stay away from these RAM if possible, even though these are one of the cheapest RAM you can buy these days. (Maybe people aren't buying any) I can remove the heat-spreaders if I must, but then all you get is the dull green PCBs. Yuk! (however, if you are using conventional water cooling or an all-in-one water cooler, the height of the heat-spreader is a non-issue.)
 
The CPU Cooler
 
While this is a arguable, I wish I could get a decent air cooler instead of the all-in-one water cooler than I currently use. I have an Antec Kühler H2O 620. The problem with it is the problem every water cooler has. They need fans that move a lot of air (not just CFM rating, but static pressure as well), to get the same performance from a decent air cooler with lower RPM fans. This means, these type of small water coolers are very loud. But there are many advantages of having one.
  • can use my current RAM without an issue
  • the area around the CPU is clean and not crowded
  • can move the PC around without wondering whether it will break the socket (because the big air coolers are so heavy and that whole weight is carried by the CPU socket alone)
  • you can remove the heat from the CPU out of the case without getting it trapped inside the case
The biggest issue I have with the current water cooler is the low performance to noise ratio. The thing is, none of the other AIO water coolers seem to offer even this much of performance to noise. The Kuhler 920, Corsair's H80 and H100 all are very loud when the fans are spinning at full scream.
 
So there you have it. These are the only things I can think as "what I should have done".  Anything else can be called just luck. Mostly when it comes to overclocking.

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