i openned the box for my case yesterday, and it's really awesome. the frontsie is all bay mounting, but 6 of 9 are blocked by 2 120mm fans. if i move one to the top 3 bays it lines up perfectly with the rear 120mm and crosses the spot where my CPU sits on my mobo... it's really, really perfect. there's also space to mount a 120mm on the back of the bays; i can basically create a wind tunnel (especially with the right HSF).

btw, any of you have experience with copper vs. aluminum with heatsinks? i know copper radiates better, but does aluminum have any advantages compared to copper besides lower cost (like lower weight)?

it looks like really a great case for modding and air circulation in general.

edit: comparing stats for otherwise identical models on the Zalman homepage, aluminum appears far lighter. 500g for the CNPS7500-AlCu vs 848g for the CNPS7500-Cu.

I don't know, maybe. Both the AMD and Intel HSF units exert a lot of pressure on the CPU. The motherboard has to support that force. AMD motherboards have a beefy backplate that takes the brunt of it. It seems Intel boards don't so the board gives way. You'll see what I mean if you look at it endways with the HSF installed. The bowing at the CPU socket is quite obvious. The AMD design is worlds better and I'm surprised by such an oversight on Intel's part. Though, it could be on Gigabyte's part, but usually board makers simply comform to specifications from the CPU manufacturer, especially when it comes to the HSF/socket arrangement.

If you're concerned about the mounting system, why not ditch the Zalman and go with one that has a better system instead? The 7500 doesn't cool any better than the stock hsf when the fan's turned down to comparable noise levels anyway.

Gotcha. On that subject, it appears that the best performing heatsinks have copper bases and heatpipes, and aluminum fins.

The Thermalright SI-128SE is a really nice unit, what separates it from other Thermalrights is that it shares the IFX-14's extremely robust mounting system. Take a look at the installation page to see what I mean. Plus it's got mounting options for Intel and AMD, and enough performance to handle any upgrade path you'd choose in the future.

Hi,

If it's a bad power supply, why can't you just buy
a replacement for it? Is there more issues other then a
bad PSU?

Yea, that's the ticket right there. If they dont' improve the design, I'll bail on the stock HSF next time. Since I already have this one installed and working, I'll just live with it. However, that's a price point against Intel. The stock AMD cooler works fine and a good after-market cooler isn't that cheap.


I'll do that. I haven't had a chance to do any benchmarking on it, but I'll check it out. If it does get pretty hot, I'll think about using a different HSF. My Athlon is a late model and has a fluctuation of about 10F between idle and load. I would expect a similar result with the C2D, but I don't think the Athlon has variable frequency/voltage. We'll see.

The OP discussed this earlier in the thread. It just took him a while to come to the obvious conclusion, it was time to put together a system for himself. It's pretty much the the issue with any big maker system. They tend to use the cheapest volume discount components they can get.

I think they must have mis-boxed my CPU. It's running stable right now with a host clock of 433 MHz which puts the CPU at 3.5 GHz and the memory at 1040 Mhz, all with stock voltages. That's a 30% overclock...wow!!! The best system I had before that could make about 20% on stock voltages so this is an awesome build. I'm not going to run it that high normally, but with such a huge margin, I'll probably run a 15% overclock. Very nice, can't wait to benchmark this sick puppy.

BTW, CPU temps are still cool even at these high clock rates. With prime95 running on one core and CPUburn running on the other, the CPU hangs around 120F, which is fine as far as I'm concerned. Heck, my old T-bird system *idles* at those temps. I did find a good, relatively inexpensive CPU cooler with a beefy backplate so I *will* be changing out the exceedingly lame stock one.

IT LIVES!!! (well, sorta, but back to this in a moment)...



i had a very unusual system from Dell, an XPS 200 (dimension C...something). basically the PSU was a very strange shape and wouldn't take any standard design as a replacement. i decided it was better to build a new one than to sink any more money into a Dell.



i need to read up on what OC'ing involves before i try it myself. i'm still installing some of the more peripherial drivers (USB wireless adapter... i lost the driver CD).

the airflow in my case is great, but the wiring is a mess right now. i've seen sites that detail how to dremel out holes in the mobo tray and run the wires behind everything else, and i think i'm going to try that sooner or later. the ATX 12v is extremely close to the CPU cooler as it is.

i'll have to take some pics soon.

That Core 2 is amazing. What a great product.


The Gigabyte BIOS makes it really simple with a bunch of automatic overclock options in the "Intelligent Tweaker" section. Since I was just checking stability, I ran up only the host clock, one setting that ups the CPU core frequency, Front Side Bus (FSB) frequency, and memory bus frequency simultaneously. Increasing voltages is generally something done to push things to the limit and that's where the risk of damage comes from. The Gigabyte BIOS can do that for you automatically and it trys to coax you into it by flashing a red "not optimized" banner until "System Voltage Control" is set to automatic. However, I was able to run up the host clock surprisingly high without it and I didn't even push it past the limit. I may have been able to run even higher, but a margin that huge is more than good enough for me. I imagine you could get amazingly high up there with increased voltages.

One thing that I was dissapointed about with the Gigabyte P31 board, it doesn't provide access to memory timings. The Crucial memory I have is capable of running 4-4-4-12 timing, but the board is running it at 5-5-5-18 and there's no option to change it. Well, nothing's ever perfect. It still blows away my fairly new Athlon 64 system on just about every benchmark and that system is no slouch. I'm not going to get too concerned about it.

Your journey is not yet complete, my son.

Sorry, I haven't been a Linux guy for years. I finally decided that I didn't really need it for anything and it wasn't worth the trouble.

Which ironically enough is what Linux users generally think of Windows