- Jun 30, 2004
- 16,889
- 2,206
- 126
I was pleased that I took the great risk of purchasing my Striker motherboard (ASUS). The reviews were good, but there's payola everywhere. Customer reviews at Newegg and some user forums were ambiguous and ambivalent. Problems with Corsair memory. But also, people who didn't know what they were doing. I like to think that I did. It's expensive, but it's a Cadillac.
I've been stoked on air-cooling, having read much on water-cooling options. I've had success at building Lexan ducts that reduce temperatures 5C degrees in my toaster-oven Prescott system. I'd done my homework on the best coolers since 2004, and as much as I don't like "sticking with any one company or model-line," I've been using ThermalRight coolers since '04 -- consistently -- because of the hard facts and data about their cooling performance. Now I have the Ultra-120-Extreme. By itself, just fine. In fact -- great.
For the VGA cooler(s), I went for the ThermalRight HR-03-Plus, because it seems to be the only (non-water) cooler out there that can handle the nVidia 8800 GTX and GTS. When it arrived several weeks ago, I had to set it aside -- keep in mind I'm testing these components in a test-case, and modding a "show-case" -- a serious sheet-metal and automotive-painting effort. And I don't want to be taking things apart fifteen million times before it all goes into the "show-case."
But today, to take a break from wet-sanding, and because it's so darned hot here so that working in my garage-shop is unbearable during daylight hours, I started working with the BFG 8800 GTS and the ThermalRight HR-03-Plus cooler. [IF only the weather here in Southern California would become like that in Seattle, and the crazy hoople-headed sun-worshipers would then move south, I'd almost . . . . almost sell . . . . my soul!!]
I'd tried to measure in millimeters whether the edge of the cooler's heatsink fins would clear the Striker's Audio Riser card. I'd heard of troubles with Creative Lab cards on the Striker, and when I tested the on-board sound -- Wow! They'd designed it to get around PCI-E bus noise interference with the audio -- while there were also configuration and instability problems with the Creative Labs X-Fi card -- so I'd heard.
BUT -- In order to make the HR-03-Plus FIT on the Striker board with the Striker Audio Riser card, I'll have to trim away 2mm x 2mm pieces vertically across the HR-03 heatsink fins, and the part that will get trimmed away will be one set of folded tabs that keeps that fin assembly rigid on the edge of the cooler that comes close to the audio-riser.
I turned the HR-03-Plus around, since it can be installed either way -- with the heatsink fins facing the CPU and CPU cooler (and audio riser), or with the heatsink fins on the component side of the VGA card.
The darned thing hangs over the PCI-E x8 slot where I was going to install my hardware RAID controller board!! So I have to move the RAID controller to the #2 PCI-E x16 slot, which means "no S - L - I." Or -- SLI? "No Cigar, compadre! No SLI, compagnero!"
If I remove the audio riser card, then I can't avail myself of the very nice bundled solution ASUS put together for this Striker "Cadillac."
DOES ANYONE KNOW OF A REALLY GREAT AUDIO CARD THAT WORKS WELL WITH THE STRIKER MOTHERBOARD?
Please -- help -- if you do.
As for air-cooling . . . . . that marriage is doomed if I move up to a Kentsfield processor, and I can see now how it only APPEARS that water-cooling consumes computer-case real-estate. NOT TRUE. It's the size of today's best heat-pipe air-cooling solutions that is starting to get in the way. Unless someone finds a way to make these things more compact, only people who DON'T overclock their Kentsfields will be using air-cooling.
I've been stoked on air-cooling, having read much on water-cooling options. I've had success at building Lexan ducts that reduce temperatures 5C degrees in my toaster-oven Prescott system. I'd done my homework on the best coolers since 2004, and as much as I don't like "sticking with any one company or model-line," I've been using ThermalRight coolers since '04 -- consistently -- because of the hard facts and data about their cooling performance. Now I have the Ultra-120-Extreme. By itself, just fine. In fact -- great.
For the VGA cooler(s), I went for the ThermalRight HR-03-Plus, because it seems to be the only (non-water) cooler out there that can handle the nVidia 8800 GTX and GTS. When it arrived several weeks ago, I had to set it aside -- keep in mind I'm testing these components in a test-case, and modding a "show-case" -- a serious sheet-metal and automotive-painting effort. And I don't want to be taking things apart fifteen million times before it all goes into the "show-case."
But today, to take a break from wet-sanding, and because it's so darned hot here so that working in my garage-shop is unbearable during daylight hours, I started working with the BFG 8800 GTS and the ThermalRight HR-03-Plus cooler. [IF only the weather here in Southern California would become like that in Seattle, and the crazy hoople-headed sun-worshipers would then move south, I'd almost . . . . almost sell . . . . my soul!!]
I'd tried to measure in millimeters whether the edge of the cooler's heatsink fins would clear the Striker's Audio Riser card. I'd heard of troubles with Creative Lab cards on the Striker, and when I tested the on-board sound -- Wow! They'd designed it to get around PCI-E bus noise interference with the audio -- while there were also configuration and instability problems with the Creative Labs X-Fi card -- so I'd heard.
BUT -- In order to make the HR-03-Plus FIT on the Striker board with the Striker Audio Riser card, I'll have to trim away 2mm x 2mm pieces vertically across the HR-03 heatsink fins, and the part that will get trimmed away will be one set of folded tabs that keeps that fin assembly rigid on the edge of the cooler that comes close to the audio-riser.
I turned the HR-03-Plus around, since it can be installed either way -- with the heatsink fins facing the CPU and CPU cooler (and audio riser), or with the heatsink fins on the component side of the VGA card.
The darned thing hangs over the PCI-E x8 slot where I was going to install my hardware RAID controller board!! So I have to move the RAID controller to the #2 PCI-E x16 slot, which means "no S - L - I." Or -- SLI? "No Cigar, compadre! No SLI, compagnero!"
If I remove the audio riser card, then I can't avail myself of the very nice bundled solution ASUS put together for this Striker "Cadillac."
DOES ANYONE KNOW OF A REALLY GREAT AUDIO CARD THAT WORKS WELL WITH THE STRIKER MOTHERBOARD?
Please -- help -- if you do.
As for air-cooling . . . . . that marriage is doomed if I move up to a Kentsfield processor, and I can see now how it only APPEARS that water-cooling consumes computer-case real-estate. NOT TRUE. It's the size of today's best heat-pipe air-cooling solutions that is starting to get in the way. Unless someone finds a way to make these things more compact, only people who DON'T overclock their Kentsfields will be using air-cooling.
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