Are You Liquid Cool?

Source: TGDaily.com

Liquid cooling is one of those things most users tend to approach with an awkward combination of awe and trepidation. It’s a reaction born out of not understanding the practical application and a general, pretty healthy, distrust of liquids around electronics. While most users will never try their hands at it, we can perhaps satisfy some curiosity on the subject.

Any liquid cooling setup will have the same basic components: tubing, a pump, a reservoir, a radiator and water block(s) for the component(s) you’re cooling. Since you’ll have to assemble the kit yourself, there’s always going to be a lot of worry over things like leaks and condensation. Fortunately enough, the manufacturers of liquid cooling kits, however, have kept all this in mind in their efforts to outshine one another in the bit to get their hands on your cash…

The materials used will prevent condensation from becoming an issue and the seals provided for the tubing connections are generally good enough for long term use without having to worry about destructive leaks, provided you use them properly. That’s far from saying there’s no danger at all; it can be all too easy to forget to tighten a seal properly, or secure a component correctly, which could easily lead to a leaky or ruptured tube. These risks are generally taken in stride though, as an accepted part of opting for liquid cooling and, once overcome or circumvented, all add up to that sense of personal achievement you get from first time installation.

In practical terms, a liquid coolant with well-regulated flow is more effective at removing heat from an object than air. A really accurate description of the how-and-why behind this would require a degree in thermodynamics (and sadly we have none on hand), so instead we’ll just run with an example. Consider a car engine. I’m sure most of our readers will have a cursory understanding of what a radiator is and the fact that that it uses fluid to regulate the temperature of the engine rather than simply letting the wind manage engine heat as you motor about. Perhaps in certain circumstances it’d be better if you really could just let the air cool your engine as you drove… but what happens if you end up somewhere where the air itself is unusually hot? Or if you end up stuck in traffic and there’s no wind? Very suddenly you end up with problems that a well-regulated liquid cooling system won’t encounter.

Granted a computer isn’t a car and generally won’t depend its own movement to generate airflow; it has fans for that. That said, if airflow is somehow restricted by the environment (for those of us who keep PCs in cabinets, where the air it takes in to cool the components isn’t necessarily cool) or in situations where the components have been overclocked to squeeze out that bit more performance, thus generating more heat… When you start to take all the variables into account, liquid-cooling starts to look more and more attractive.

Serious overclockers will always tend to be the best customers for liquid cooling kits for the simple reason that it allows them to push their systems harder, and for longer, than any air based solution. These are people that look at a system and don’t see what is, but what could be, and aren’t satisfied until they reach that potential. They’re the dreamers of the engineering world. Entire online communities exist solely for the purpose of notes and comparing results in an effort to better understand, and so to more acutely tweak, the technology they have. Within these circles, using liquid cooling is commonplace. Overclocking using air coolers is something of a challenge (especially on a budget), while fanciful materials like liquid nitrogen are a rare experience with no long-term practicality. Generally, liquid cooling provides an agreeable middle ground between cost, availability and performance.

None of this means, however, that such elaborate kits for cooling the processor, motherboard or graphics card(s) are exclusive to the overclocker crowed. There are any number of idiosyncratic reasons you might want to give it a shot. Many users may simply want the challenge, to prove to themselves (or like-minded peers) that they can do it, a sort of badge of honour. Others want something a bit flashier in their case to show off as the fruits of their labour. Those in the business sector, especially electronics retailers, will use such kits and systems to draw you in the much same way a restaurant will display a particularly appetizing dish or a theater will offer previews of shows to come…

For most of us, the benefits just aren’t enough to justify the cost, effort, or potential loss involved in liquid cooling. Naturally enough, it’s kind of expected that liquid cooling will remain geek chic, rather than going mainstream anytime soon, and yet there’ll always be those seeking the personal challenge or performance gains offered by these (and other) custom solutions.

The Best Graphics Cards For Your Money, April-May 2009

Chasing the proverbial performance carrot is a difficult task in the ever-shifting world of graphics. Even within a particular price/performance category, one card will provide a better cost-per-%-of-performance. In the below tables we’ll outline to you the best players in particular price categories to give you a benchmark to work from when deciding your purchase. We’ll be updating this feature on a regular basis, so be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Facebook, where we’ll also be posting the updates.

0 – 100 Euro
Model				Cost	Score	SKU	Price per 100 Points
Gainward 9600 GT 1GB				90.00	4116	420092	2.19
Gainward 9500GT 512MB				47.00	1226	400679	3.83
100 – 250 Euro
Model				Cost	Score	SKU	Price per 100 Points
Sapphire HD 4890				224.50	9871	444231	2.27
Sapphire HD 4870				169.01	8690	383505	1.94
Gainward GTS 250				125.00	6493	440946	1.93
250 – 500 Euro
Model				Cost	Score	SKU	Price per 100 Points
MSI GTX 295 1792MB				493.00	18284	444273	2.70
Club3D HD 4870 X2 2GB				409.01	14195	378201	2.88
Gainward GTX 285				315.00	12182	427166	2.59
Sapphire HD 4850 X2 1GB				271.01	11554	404841	2.35
***It should be noted that all of the above scores have been obtained from the Futuremark website, and therefore the actual performance for selected models, as well as the “Price per 100 points” are rough estimates. If the selected model is an “Overclocked” edition, then you can reasonably expect the performance to be that bit higher.   The best part about Futuremark’s scoring is how all this data is cooked up. It’s often the case that the strange laboratory voodoo involved in some hardware testing situations means that there are relatively few similarities between hardware tests and practical computing situations. The above scores from Futuremark on the other hand are estimates based on user submitted information for cards running 3DMark Vantage under the performance presets. What all of this means is that the Futuremark results are a reasonably reliable representation of a card’s performance under real world conditions.   As the charts show nice and clearly, the nVidia Gainward 250 currently has the best cost/performance ratio at 1.93 euro for every 100 points it would score. Overall, you can see that nVidia has stronger offerings at the cheap and expensive ends of the spectrum, while ATI tends to shine brighter in the mid to upper mid-range.   This is what whole chart looks like if you reshuffle it so that it runs from best price for performance down to worst.   0 – 500 Euro (Organized by Price/Performance) Model Cost Score SKU Price per 100 Points Gainward GTS 250 125.00 6493 440946 1.93 Sapphire HD 4870 169.01 8690 383505 1.94 Gainward 9600 GT 1GB 90.00 4116 420092 2.19 Sapphire HD 4890 224.50 9871 444231 2.27 Sapphire HD 4850 X2 1GB 271.01 11554 404841 2.35 Gainward GTX 285 315.00 12182 427166 2.59 MSI GTX 295 1792MB 493.00 18284 444273 2.70 Club3D HD 4870 X2 2GB 409.01 14195 378201 2.88 Gainward 9500GT 512MB 47.00 1226 400679 3.83

 

 

Building A Home Theatre PC For The Complete Beginner

In part one of our series on building your own media centre PC we’ll be dealing mostly with hardware choices because, let’s face it, it’s the first thing most people will be doing first… This series will hopefully arm you with the basic knowledge required to go out there and build your own. If you need any help you can drop us a comment here or pop over to Komplett on boards.ie

 

What is a HTPC and why should I bother?

Home Theatre PCs are becoming more and more popular as computer components and storage get cheaper, not to mention the formats available and the increasing size of LCD TVs today. If you are at all technically inclined you’ll be familiar with the increasingly common practice of using a main PC or a laptop hooked up to a TV as a kind of stand-in DVD player, or to play that video your cousin gave you whose origins you’ve not investigated too rigorously…

So, this series is a multiple part guide that should assist you in building a media PC that you can safely set aside and dedicate to storing and playing whatever media you’ve accumulated without a machine being out of commission for the duration.

We’re working under the assumption that this PC will be primarily used for home entertainment purposes and will be situated under or at least relatively close to a TV. All this means is that the hardware selected needs to add up to a system that can happily play HD content at 1080p but, for budgetary reasons, won’t really cut it as a gaming machine.

We’ll start with the processor and build up from there. Usually we’d give some spiel about AMD and Intel, but for this build we’re content to go with an Intel due to a combination of its vast selection of processors and the fact that (as a rule) Intel’s tend to run a little cooler. Cooling and silencing the HTPC is no small job, and we’ll go into that in another part of this series.

 

Processor

The majority (if not all) of Intel’s current CPUs are dual core, while the “Q” models are quad core. Quad core would be a bit of overkill for a simple HTPC so we wouldn’t advise it unless you have plans for the PC to do some video editing or other particularly heavy CPU tasks in the future. For consistency’s sake we’ll be sticking with the dual core.

We’ve opted to run our HTPC on an E7400 dual core CPU. The primary reasons for this are the spec and our general experience of it as a stable, reliable processor.

Processor	Speed	L2 Cache	FSB speed
Intel E7400	2.8 GHZ	3 MB	1066 Mhz

Its stock speed is 2.6 GHz which is more than enough for a media PC and also leaves enough headroom that we won’t expect the system to be overloaded. Coupled with 3MBs of onboard level 2 (L2) cache there’s enough speed and efficiency to this CPU that it’ll perform most HTPC tasks without breaking a sweat.

Normally when you purchase any CPU you will also receive a “stock” cooler. This is a combination of a heatsink and a fan to reduce heat build up generated by the processor itself as it works You can choose to install the supplied heatsink, or install an alternative CPU cooler/heatsink combo that will (in many cases) prove more efficient and give a little extra security for overclocking, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Now that we have our CPU picked, we will move onto the major component in any system – The motherboard (also called mainboard or “mobo” depending on how nerdy your friends are).

 

Mainboard

We’ve chosen an LGA socket 775 processor, so now we have to pick a motherboard that will take an LGA775 CPU. While this all sounds nice and complicated, it’s not as confusing a process as it used to be.

Most Intel-friendly mainstream boards will be either LGA775 or the new LGA1366 socket type. LGA1366 is the new Core i7 standard and is very new. While Core i7 is faster, it’s still very new technology and isn’t something we’d consider installing in a media PC until LGA1366 becomes the standard for Intel.

Once we know what socket type we are looking at, our next choice is chipset. We have two choices of chipset manufactures in the mainstream market:

·        Intel

·        nVidia

These easy way to read this is in simple terms of model number – the higher the model number, the better it is. For simplicity’s sake, we’ve chosen an Intel P45 chipset. If you’re interested in choosing an nVidia chipset, we’d recommend something in the 780i to 790i range.

Back to our choice, we’re running with a Gigabyte P45 mainboard. You can find the specs for it below:

Make	Gigabyte
Model	GA-EP45-DS3L
Chipset	Intel P45
Ram type	DDR2
CPU socket	LGA 775
Max Bus speed	1066MHz

 

The simple reasons for choosing this board are its build quality and the specs that it offers.

The CPU’s max bus speed is 1066 MHz and, as you may have noticed, the max bus speed of the mainboard is also 1066MHz too. As the processor and the board’s max bus speeds match, there is no form of “bottleneck” caused by the mainboard. Our mainboard is also compatible with DDR2 (DDR meaning double data rate) RAM.

By now, we have everything pretty much matched up in our system, but there is one last vital component needed in every system we’ve not got to – a nice block RAM.

 

Memory

All computers, regardless of purpose, require some form of memory so that the system can actually manage to get through tasks. You can think of RAM as a kind of short-term memory within your PC. Pretty much in the same way you would write a number down on your hand over the phone. It is a form of data that you can quickly refer back to without having to take time to remember it off by heart.

There are 3 types of memory on the market for consumers.

·        DDR

·        DDR2

·        DDR3

As you can probably guess, each one outdoes the previous type of memory. In any system you were purchasing to build today, you’d be unlikely to use DDR memory. This is primarily due to the fact that it’s generally considered outdated and is still on sale only to facilitate people looking to upgrade their old machines for the relatively brief window before they’ll be replaced.

DDR2 and DDR3 are far more common, with DDR3 becoming the future standard for motherboards especially in the core i7 range. But as our mainboard is DDR2, we’ll be looking at that specification and various types of DDR2 RAM available for our motherboard.

When purchasing memory, it’s best to find the type you need before considering how much you require and what speed you require also. In our previous mention of the bus speed of the mainboard and the CPU we mentioned that both have a max of 1066MHz. This is going to come into play when selecting our memory. Memory will always be advertised as its module bandwidth or its peak transfer capacity.

To simplify things here is a quick comparison chart of the most common DDR2 RAM on the market.

RAM	Data transfers per second	Bandwidth
PC2-3200	400	3200
PC2-5300	667	5333
PC2-6400	800	6400
PC2-8500	1066	8533

 

Bandwidth is calculated by taking transfers per second and multiplying by eight. This is because DDR2 memory modules transfer data on a bus that is 64 data bits wide, and since a byte comprises 8 bits, this equates to 8 bytes of data per transfer – hence 1066

So, combining the numbers we know as 1066 we will choose PC2-8500. There is faster PC2-9200 RAM, but our processor will limit this speed, so it’s not really worth dropping the extra cash on it.

Next we’ll be looking at how much memory we need. The more – the better, but there is one limitation.

 

32bit vs 64bit Operating Systems

In a 32bit operating system, we can only use up to a max of 3GB’s of memory, while a 64bit OS can see more beyond that. In the case of building a media PC, it’s best to install the maximum amount of memory that your OS can take and, as we’ll be running with a 32bit OS, we’ll need a max of 3GBs of memory. Most memory comes in matched kits, so we chose a kit of matched 2GB sticks from Corsair.

Since memory is cheap, there’s no real harm having the extra 1GB – just in case the OS gets a 64bit upgrade at some stage. As this kit leaves 2 free slots on the mainboard, this also allows for more memory to be added in the future, should you opt for an OS upgrade later.

Brand	Corsair
Speed	PC2-8500
Capacity	4gbs (2 sticks of matched 2GB sticks)

 

Now that we have the vital components selected it’s time to move on to easier things to choose.

Power supply

Your system is only as good and efficient as the power with which it’s supplied. We’ve chosen a modular PSU from Corsair to supply our needs and, since the whole affair is modular, we can remove cables we don’t need – keeping the inside of the case uncluttered makes it easier to keep everything cool.

As our system will not demand a lot of power from the PSU to supply its components, we decided on a 450watt PSU

You’ll find the PSU’s specifications below.

Brand	Corsair
Wattage	450
Type	Modular
Feature	120mm Fan

 

Graphics

This will always be a bit of a tricky choice; we need a graphics card with enough power for our needs, but not so much that it would be wasted. Our main objective is to have smooth 1080p High definition playback to a TV and the graphics card will do the bulk of the work in providing that.

One of the main things we looked out for was a card with HDMI and HDCP, the latter is a form of copy protection to allow you to display any copyrighted material on your display.

Our choice for this build is the nVidia 9500GT with 1GB of its own dedicated memory. This card also boasts a passive cooler, which will allow for a quieter PC. Again, we’ll go into more detail on silent hardware in another part of this series.

Storage

This is pretty simple. Most hard drives you’ll see on sale will be SATA. In all desktop installations you will choose internal 3.5” hard drives. In our install we begin with a 500GB hard drive. There is also a wealth of options to add more space as and when you need it. Naturally, if you think you’ll need it you could always start with the installation of a 1TB hard drive instead. Just keep in mind; the more space you add the more you’ll lose if the whole edifice comes tumbling down at some stage.

Connecting external hard drives is a simple option if you need additional storage in the future without cracking open the case and muddling around inside.

 

HTPC Case

This is where cosmetics and personal taste come into it. There’s plenty of choice out there for people looking for HTPC cases, however you don’t necessarily have to use a HTPC case to have a HTPC. That said, we think most will agree that it’s a fair shout nicer to have a HTPC that fits in well with your TV and doesn’t look like a conventional PC tower.

A lot of manufactures do make the cases in desktop form factor rather than a tower and either include optional remote controls, LCD displays hidden drive bays/expansion slots etc. so you won’t be stuck with something entirely unpalatable in the living room.

Our choice of HTPC case in this build was the NOX Media IMON HTPS.

The biggest reasons for this choice, over so many other cases, are that it has ample room inside for our components, looks sleek, has two drive bays for DVD/BLU-RAY drives and includes a remote control, not to mention the pretty feature of it hiding its front USB ports. Small touches like that really do add up in the long run.

 

Blu-ray/HD-DVD Drive

This was a pretty simple choice. We know that HD-DVD is a dead format compared to Blu-ray, however there are some great deals to be had on HD-DVD media across the internet… if you’re looking to pick things up on the cheap.

 We chose a Samsung Blu-ray/HD-DVD player that also doubles as a DVD burner too. It’s a very handy all-in-one player and burner that (compared to if you had to purchase the equivalent as an all in one unit like any other standard media player) would leave you with a fairly big hole in your pocket.

 

Next Up: Keeping Your HTPC Quiet

That’s all for now. In future parts we’ll be looking at keeping your HTPC as quiet as possible, installing and setting up a media-oriented OS and keeping the whole thing in line. You can subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog to be notified of the update.

Note: If you already have computer components that you would like to add to your PC, why not register for and bring them along with you to one of our Build your own PC classes and we’d be happy to show you how to do it! Visit http://www.komplettblog.ie/events/ for location and dates.

Lessons In Trust From Digital Distribution

A lot of my mysterious job as country manager for Komplett in Ireland is to be the guy in the company who understands the Irish consumer. Every now and again I have to remind myself that I am one of those very same consumers, and it helps in gaining insight into how to best serve our customers.

I’m big into digital distribution – iTunes for music, Steam for video games – and have been for quite a while now. I saw the potential back when it was The New Big Thing(TM), and in many ways for many people it still is fresh territory.

It’s also an area where I’m a rather picky consumer – the two services above are the only two I’ll use for their particular field. You won’t catch me downloading a game from any service other than Steam, even if they have a game I’m specifically looking for that’s unavailable there. Why not? Trust.

Trust is that elusive thing seldom bought, often squandered and rarely more highly prized of customers to a business. Engendering trust leads to brand loyalty, and that’s something that comes with all kinds of benefits from repeat business to customers touting your products or service for you.

Trust is something that means different things to different people in different industries: In digital distribution it’s largely a question of trusting the service, the delivery methods, the copy protection – as you don’t have something physical to show for your purchase you want to trust that one day the company won’t lose any record that you spend €49.99 on a video game that you want to re-download.

In retail it’s also a question of service delivery, and it’s very elastic: Customers have to trust that you are the right guy to deliver the right products at the right price and provide the right backup customer service in the event that something goes wrong.

Barriers to engendering trust with your customers range from logistical failures – delaying an order – to not having the right stock on hand at a particular time or, worst of all, bad customer service after the fact. Screwing up any, but mainly the latter, is grounds for termination of a customer-retailer relationship, and it’s grounds for kicking some serious ass internally. Not to say that we don’t ever fumble the ball, but we do work hard to make sure that we don’t fumble it the same way twice.

Trust does not automatically lead to brand loyalty in this industry, either: Like shopping from Tesco or Dunnes you likely trust them both but are intensely loyal to neither. You simply join the pool of trusted brands to which a customer is going to look to when making a purchasing decision; and that’s fine.

The question that often wanders in my mind, and to which I often ask the opinions of others, is: Do you trust us? If so, why? If not, why? I always want to strive towards this image of Komplett as a customer friendly company who you can trust to come through for you on a one-to-one level when you need us.

We have thousands of happy customers every week, but it always sticks in my mind to wonder exactly what they thought of the experience of shopping with us – did it stick in their mind? Will they think of us twice?

I guess my question is always, like the girl dressing up for the dance, “What do you think?”

Why Nothing To Stimulate Spending, Mr. Lenihan?

Everyone + Granny is weighing in on yesterdays emergency budget, and from pundits to punters there are a lot of different views to take into consideration. Everyone has one or two areas of the government economy – outside the universal levy’s – that’s a sacred cow or long overdue a cut, in the opinion of the individual.

There are a myriad of different areas of interest that we could comment on, be it the public service or where cuts should and should not be applied. How and ever, we will limit ourselves to the most pertinent topic to our mind: Consumer confidence and economic stimulus.

Apart from the rather pathetic 100mEUR the government has designated for enterprise they have taken no steps to try and stimulate the consumer economy or promote business in the near term: They have taken money out of people’s pockets with the increased levy’s, the “bad bank” will not take effect on the credit side of things until later in the year – when we could be in an even deeper hole – and there is nothing substantial for business or employment generation or to prompt people to open their wallets.

Indeed, during the budget speech we were told to expect more to come for the end of the year.

At the very least we were expecting a cut in VAT, going by the wisdom that 21.5% on spending that’s going to the UK and NI equals 0EUR, versus (say) 10% VAT on spending that’d stay at home.

A great deal of consumer confidence isn’t entirely linked to what people have to spend, but their confidence that if they spend what they’ve saved then they won’t get caught short tomorrow. In other words, people aren’t confident that the economy will improve – or that the government won’t hit us with something else in 6 months time – then they’ll not spend what they have. No spending means failed business, means rising unemployment… You know the story.

We won’t argue that this should be cut and this should be spared. What we will say is that the government seems to be doing precisely what it was agreed was the wrong thing to do – attempting to tax their way out of the recession. It was a politically sound budget, not an economically sound one.

Spending drives everything. We need to promote it; promote business and promote credit, both personal and trade.

On the upside, we in Komplett at least see ourselves as being in a good position compared to some others thanks to our cheaper prices compared to the high street. That being said, we could all do with a break and the lack of at least a VAT decrease – after the Minister for Finance admitted that raising VAT 0.5% was a mistake last budget – is a real shame and a missed opportunity to provide a feel-good factor to the economy and drive some spending.