Looking for fan/airflow feedback on i7 new build

[Gary Seven]

Hello everyone.

After 4+ years of suffering with my current AMD Athlon 64 system, I am preparing the following build:

1. Case: Fractal Design Define R3
2. Mobo: Asus P8Z68 Deluxe
3. CPU: Intel i7 2600k
4. Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 4 x 4GB (16GB total), 1.35v
5. GPU: My six month old Sapphire HD 6850
6. P/S: Seasonic X-760 Gold
7. Disk drives: Boot drive: not sure if I will go with Hitachi HDD or an SSD;
Data drive: two Hitachi SATA 600 2TB, Deskstar 7K3000
8. CPU Cooler: Antec Kuhler H2O 920 liquid cooling solution
9. OS: Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit

This rig is NOT for gaming. It will be my business (at home) machine, but also the machine I do my Adobe Photoshop CS5 work and also lots of video (HD) rendering and transcoding. For this reason alone (ie, rendering and transcoding) I am going with the i7 and the Z68 chipset. I will however, do some mild OC.

My primary question here is of cooling and airflow orientation. To me, logic dictates that if I mount the Antec Kuhler 920 in the rear fan location, I should set it up to PULL cool air in from the outside, through the radiator, and then exhaust the air out the top of my Define R3 case. I was thinking of mounting two 120mm fans in the front, one 120mm on the bottom, the Antec 920 as described, with all hot exhaust air passing to the top of the case with either one OR two 120mm fans. Yes, I prefer a positive pressure set-up.

I would sincerely appreciate your advice/feedback on this planned set-up.

Note: I'm still on the fence on whether to mount the boot drive as a 120 or 240GB SSD, or go with a traditional HDD. I've heard a ton of horror stories about SSD failures.

 

[lehtv]

1. good. I would add one 120mm fan to the front and use the included fan controller to quiet the three fans
2. has lot of the features which will go to waste. E.g. dual-GPU compatibility, bluetooth, extra SATA and USB ports, dual NICs. You won't be any worse off with an Asus P8Z68-V LE that's half the price.
3. good
4. good as long as it's not more than 1600mhz and not too expensive
5. good but unnecessary for a non-gaming machine, might as well use integrated graphics
6. X-760 is almost twice as powerful as needed for this setup. If you want to capitalize on silence, a fanless X400 or X460 would be more than powerful enough. However many good quality ~400W power supplies half the price are quiet enough for the vast majority of people.
7. definitely buy an SSD, a work system at this budget is not complete without one. Crucial M4 128GB or Samsung 830 128GB, or possibly 256GB so you can fit more project files in. Don't worry, these are very reliable SSD's. Of course, you will want to backup data as you would even if you were using a HDD.
8. overkill, you really don't need this. a tower cooler half that price (e.g. Scythe Mugen 3) will perform more than well enough for a highly overclocked 2600K setup while being easily quieter than Antec 920 (which is max 2400RPM times two fans!! big no no)
9. why Ultimate? do you know for a fact that you need the features in Ultimate?

 

[lsv]

If you have the money having the Antec Khuler is fine, no big deal. But as the above post states, the Mugen 3 will perform about the same and be quieter as there's no pump attached to the unit increasing noise. Just one of those crazy quiet Scythe PWM fans.

I'd def go SSD for boot drive. Even a small 80gig model will be fine. It'll make a difference

The PSU, again as lehtv said, is overkill for the build. You could def get away with an X-460 fanless or get an X-560, it just saves money.

Below is my i7 920 R3 build, specs in sig, it's for work as well and doesn't really get above 30db while under my desk. You can't tell it's on unless I run project backups and my HDs are going hard.

 

[Gary Seven]

has lot of the features which will go to waste. E.g. dual-GPU compatibility, bluetooth, extra SATA and USB ports, dual NICs. You won't be any worse off with an Asus P8Z68-V LE that's half the price.

Yeah but, that leaves me with only two SATA3 ports. If I use a boot SSD plus the two HDD's previously mentioned, I will need a minimum of three. I could in theory need a fourth SATA3 port should I add even another HDD. Also, I like the Bluetooth feature. However, I will consider your suggestion!

X-760 is almost twice as powerful as needed for this setup. If you want to capitalize on silence, a fanless X400 or X460 would be more than powerful enough. However many good quality ~400W power supplies half the price are quiet enough for the vast majority of people.

Ok, thanks. I will consider something less overkill. ;-)

overkill, you really don't need this. a tower cooler half that price (e.g. Scythe Mugen 3) will perform more than well enough for a highly overclocked 2600K setup while being easily quieter than Antec 920 (which is max 2400RPM times two fans!! big no no)

I considered liquid cooling because I thought it might be the more "elegant" route. Hanging 1000g air coolers from the CPU can lead to mobo bending, not to mention I find them ugly. However, now you have me reevaluating if hanging a huge radiator with TWO fans is the smart choice or not. I think you nailed me here...I will consider air cooling for the moment.

why Ultimate? do you know for a fact that you need the features in Ultimate?

Simple. I already have the software. More to the point, I use the language function available only in Ultimate to switch between English and Spanish interfaces. I prefer to work with the English UI, my wife (Spainsh) prefers the Spanish UI.

Thanks for all your suggestions.

 

[Gary Seven]

If you have the money having the Antec Khuler is fine, no big deal. But as the above post states, the Mugen 3 will perform about the same and be quieter as there's no pump attached to the unit increasing noise. Just one of those crazy quiet Scythe PWM fans. I'd def go SSD for boot drive. Even a small 80gig model will be fine. It'll make a difference The PSU, again as lehtv said, is overkill for the build. You could def get away with an X-460 fanless or get an X-560, it just saves money. Below is my i7 920 R3 build, specs in sig, it's for work as well and doesn't really get above 30db while under my desk. You can't tell it's on unless I run project backups and my HDs are going hard.

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I'm going to consider those points for sure. Geez, how do you see your motherboard with that gastly (but functional!) cooler sitting there above it like that? LOL! ;-)

 

[lehtv]

Yeah but, that leaves me with only two SATA3 ports. If I use a boot SSD plus the two HDD's previously mentioned, I will need a minimum of three. I could in theory need a fourth SATA3 port should I add even another HDD. Also, I like the Bluetooth feature. However, I will consider your suggestion!

HDD's don't need SATA 6gb/s. The difference in HDD performance between SATA 6gb/s and 3gb/s is minimal, you won't notice it. If you still want all HDD's to use 6gb/s there are more cost effective options than a P8Z68 Deluxe. Of course, pricing/availability may be different in Spain.

3 x SATA 6gb/s: P8Z68-M Pro ($125)
4 x SATA 6gb/s: Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3 ($145), Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H ($160), among others

Is the microATX board missing some features you need?

I considered liquid cooling because I thought it might be the more "elegant" route. Hanging 1000g air coolers from the CPU can lead to mobo bending

I have never heard of a single case of this being a problem, ever... Don't worry, mobos are actually quite sturdily built. And it'll also be securely attached onto the case - the weight of the heatsink is not really even bending the motherboard, as the force acts mostly on the motherboard tray and the rest of the case.

Simple. I already have the software. More to the point, I use the language function available only in Ultimate to switch between English and Spanish interfaces. I prefer to work with the English UI, my wife (Spainsh) prefers the Spanish UI.

Ok, that's nice

 

[Gary Seven]

Just wanted to follow up this thread and thank both LEHTV and LSV for setting me straight on a few issues here.

Thanks!