I just thought I would share a little experiment based on the Toms Hardware article http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/10/ ... ghz_cores/
Basically, you can take this CPU which sells for about $130 and overclock the hell out of it, up to 4 GHZ or more. They say you ca get 4.1 GHZ but I left mine at 4.01 GHZ to leave a little margin.

I guess you wouldn't exactly call it an experiment as I followed the directions listed at the above URL exactly. Anyways, I rebooted after making the setting changes, installed the operating system, and have NEVER had one bit of trouble since doing this a month ago.

This is also my first experience with water cooling. I have a Corsair Nautilus 500 unit which can dissapate 500 watts worth of heat energy. This severely overclocked and somewhat overvoltaged CPU runs COOLER than with the stock settings and stock CPU cooler. The capacity of the cooler appears to be WAY more than needed even for this overclocked CPU but this was my first try so I wanted to be safe.

Anyways, I was wondering about a good SELF CONTAINED water cooler for this project if I were to do this for someone else. The external cooling unit is somewhat of a pain to transport and isn't exactly cheap (more $$$ than the CPU). I believe I would need to dissapate only 250 to 300 watts of heat energy so this project could make do with a lesser cooler.

I'd hate to get your electricity bill .

lol... read the $1500 computer thread.

From my experience internal water cooling is a trade off. I doubt there's many people in Rolla who do water cooling, so your best bet is to google search "water cooling forum" and see what pops up.

I did that a while back when I decided to go with a larger external kit for my computer. It works great for what I need, has quick disconnect for transport, but it's really not meant for moving. If you want my advice get that external pump that T.H. used and buy the quick disconnect pump cables and take it off when you move it.

Even if it's internal, it's going to make your case really heavy, so go with what works best. As far as saving money, watercooling isn't something you want to skimp on if your doing a massive overclock. Besides, internal watercooling makes things alot tighter, even in a massive case.

I did a 45% 0verclock of my opteron 165 on stock volts and used the Ninja Scythe cooler and the cooler is cool to the touch when running. For reference the fan on it (which came with my model) is 120mm.

It's a monster!!!!

If you don't want to go water cooling get that baby as it is considered to be the best air cooler on the market. With the processer on almost no load (>5% total between both cores) fan spins at 900rpm and cpu is at 30C. With both cores at 100%, fan spins at 1200rpm and the cpu is at 60C and I still can't hear the fan over my 120mm case fans, 80mm psu fans, and gpu fan (idling). I also used Artic Silver 5 which kicks ass.

I had a horrible time air cooling my Pentium D until I water cooled it. It's all internal and I dropped my idle temps from low 60s to the 20s. I highly recommend it.

My 2200+ atm [to be a 3200+ soon], runs pretty well with my Zalman cooler. Usually mid-30s.

Extra $13 a month just for 300 watts continuous, nice.