[Review] Corsair H70 – Water Cooling for the Masses?7 Comments By miahallencloseAuthor: miahallenName: Jeremiah Allen Email: miahallen.ironmods@gmail.com Site:http://www.ironmods.com About: Well, I was playing with computers ever since my Dad got a Commodore 64 when I was 6 years old (1986), when I was 10 (1990) he bought a custom build 486DX33, and I was in love. Mostly back then I was just a kid playing games, but my fascination with computers had a start. Because I had no money of my own, I was stuck playing with my Dad's computers, and really couldn't "play" too much. So in 1998, the year I graduated, I spent some of my college savings to by a "computer for school", haha. It had two Voodoo2 12MB 3D accelerators in it, so you can imagine how much school work was done on it ;-) It had an AMD K6-233 that I had a really mild OC on, but my custom computer builder friend Aaron had done all the work. So I can't really take the credit there. My fascination with graphics just kept growing and growing over the years, and I was constantly in a struggle to keep my games looking as sharp and smooth as possible. OCing played a big role.
My whole world was rocked in 2004 when I was deployed to Iraq as a US Army soldier. The whole year I was there I had a cheap IBM Thinkpad R40 with a 2GHz Celeron, 1GB DDR-333 RAM, a 60GB 4200RPM HDD, and ATI Radeon Mobility graphics (same technology as a 7000 series with only 16MB of memory). It started out rough as I was really into Command and Conquer Generals at the time, and the machine would only play the C&C slide show LOL. So, I downloaded PowerStrip, and OC'ed the GPU by 40%...amazingly, the game was playable!
Things changed dramatically in 2007 when I met a guy named Matt while I was stationed in Japan. He introduced me to www.ocforums.com, and the "Benchmarking Team" there. I had not had much interest in benchmarking previously, I always though of myself as more practical. But, I thought I'd play along and I joined the team. My first introduction to an actual competition was was is "The Raptor Pit", "Forum Warz 2008" in the spring of 2008. I was running a Q6600 and an 8800GTX. With air cooling I was able to bench my Q6600 at over 4GHz, and tore up the competition in my class. Overall OCF won the Forum War in 2007, Winter and Summer of 2008, and 2009...that means five in a row. I was not part of the first one in 2007, but the four since then, I have participated in. After winning the 2008 Winter and Summer Warz, Tom's Hardware Guide announced they were looking for nominations for individuals to compete in their first ever international overclocking competition, called "Overdrive". I was nominated, and chosen to compete in the North American semi-finals in Los Angeles in November 2008. I was placed on "Team IRONMODS" as they only had two guys, yet three man teams were allowed. We won the semi-finals in LA, and our prize was a trip to Paris the following month, to compete with the best in the world.
The following month, Ton, Jake, and myself flew to Paris as "Team USA" to face off against the best from Taiwan, France, Germany, and Italy. It was a very intense competition, but after two heated days of battle (16 hours of benching), we emerged the victors. Amidst our celebration, Ton and Jake officially invited me to join "Team IRONMODS" on a permanent basis, and I graciously accepted. Ton, aka "TiTON", is a world renown case moder, and is also very well known for some of the AMD overclocking he has done. Jake, aka "CPT.Planet", is a genius overclocker, and a really fun guy. The team has a great synergy when working together, we really have complementary styles.
After winning the world championship in December 2008 things were a bit quite for a couple months, then in the spring of 2009 I received an invitation to the 2nd annual Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship "GOOC". I would compete in the North American semi-final in LA, where the winner would win a ticket to the world championship in Taipei Taiwan during CES in June 2009. The competition was tough with 14 of the best from North America gathering for a 1 on 1 competition of OCing. But once again, I completed the competition well, and rose above the others. I won 1st place and the trip to the world finals in Taipei.
My luck ran dry in Taipei where I started off with a bad motherboard, and went through 5 more during the course of the competition due to various reasons. Despite the poor finish in Taipei, I have high hopes to redeem myself next year.See Authors Posts (24) on October 14, 2010
Introduction
I’m not a huge fan of water cooling, and I suppose that’s because my first venture resulted in disappointment. I gather that happens with most people during their first water cooling ventures. Why is that? Well, building a custom water cooling loop is a bit complex, much more so than air cooling a computer. With water cooling, custom water cooling, there are so many things to consider and plan for. So many steps to take, and precautions to be aware of. My fir...
[Review] Seven Way AM3 Cooler Shootout – Winner Takes All11 Comments By mav2000closeAuthor: mav2000Name: Ashish Mehta Email: ashish.dm@gmail.com Site: About:See Authors Posts (18) on April 19, 2010
Introduction
Hello and welcome back to the last installment of the AM3 round up for this half of the year. Over the last year, we have done a number of cooler reviews on the AM3 platform and this review will look to add to these results. But before we begin, we would like to thank Noctua and Thermalright for helping us to put this extensive shootout together.
Over the last two years, there have been a number of changes in the rankings of the top air coolers. The TRUE was at the top for a long ti...
Thermalright Venomous X Roundup Vs TRUE and V10 on I74 Comments By thebanikcloseAuthor: thebanikName: Madhusudan Banik Email: madhusudan.banik@gmail.com Site: About:See Authors Posts (4) on January 24, 2010
INTRODUCTION
I have been using the Thermalright’s earlier flagship cooler Ultra Extreme for almost the last 3 years since it first launched. Though I have tested a few air coolers in between but none were able to beat this cooler sans the Megahalam and D14 which didnt grant an upgrade for the miniscule improvement they were bringing to the table. And when after so many years Thermalright announced a new flagship cooler, I was sure to test them out even if after buying them. So as ...
Thermalright Venomous X – Return of the King2 Comments By mav2000closeAuthor: mav2000Name: Ashish Mehta Email: ashish.dm@gmail.com Site: About:See Authors Posts (18) on January 21, 2010
Introduction
A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a new cooler and my mind was quite firmly set on the NH D14 from Noctua. But sometime in late December there was a bit of news from Thermalright about a new cooler and I thought that I should probably wait for it to come out before making a decision.
Now, Thermalright held the performance crown for a long time with its TRUE series and it was only in the last year or so that it lost the crown to the Megahalems and then to the NH D14 from ...
Introduction
I’m not a huge fan of water cooling, and I suppose that’s because my first venture resulted in disappointment. I gather that happens with most people during their first water cooling ventures. Why is that? Well, building a custom water cooling loop is a bit complex, much more so than air cooling a computer. With water cooling, custom water cooling, there are so many things to consider and plan for. So many steps to take, and precautions to be aware of. My fir... 
Introduction
Hello and welcome back to the last installment of the AM3 round up for this half of the year. Over the last year, we have done a number of cooler reviews on the AM3 platform and this review will look to add to these results. But before we begin, we would like to thank Noctua and Thermalright for helping us to put this extensive shootout together.
Over the last two years, there have been a number of changes in the rankings of the top air coolers. The TRUE was at the top for a long ti... 
INTRODUCTION
I have been using the Thermalright’s earlier flagship cooler Ultra Extreme for almost the last 3 years since it first launched. Though I have tested a few air coolers in between but none were able to beat this cooler sans the Megahalam and D14 which didnt grant an upgrade for the miniscule improvement they were bringing to the table. And when after so many years Thermalright announced a new flagship cooler, I was sure to test them out even if after buying them. So as ... 
Introduction
A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a new cooler and my mind was quite firmly set on the NH D14 from Noctua. But sometime in late December there was a bit of news from Thermalright about a new cooler and I thought that I should probably wait for it to come out before making a decision.
Now, Thermalright held the performance crown for a long time with its TRUE series and it was only in the last year or so that it lost the crown to the Megahalems and then to the NH D14 from ... 
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