I will propably go for athlon x2 3800+ and overclock it to 2,2 or 2,4 GHz
Can anyone recommend some good cooling solution that will keep CPU cool enough without much noise? (i would prefer air cooling, i dont want to mess with water cooling, unless its really good and reasonably priced)
i heard of arctic cooling freezer but i dont know if it will keep CPU cool enough…
any experiences? thanks
the components for successful overclocking are so expensive, why not just buy an officially faster cpu for the same money and not worry about heat
in some cases your right but i think actually it depends… there are A LOT of products that have been just “down-scaled” to supply the demand for “mid-end” market. For example there where a lot of ati 9800 LE graphic cards that where fully functional 9800 pro cards with just disabled 4 out of 8 pipelines… and its similar with many products. Many CPU-s are actually same silicon, with different clock speeds. That means that not all products are equally oveclockable of course. So if you are on tight budged it makes sense sometimes to buy some component witch is “downscaled”, cheap(er) and have good overclocking potential.
I read reviews that said that athlon x2 3800+ is easily overclockable from 2,0 to 2,4 (equivalent to athlon x2 4600+) and even 2,5 GHz. And if i look at prices then 3800+ is WAY less expencive than 4600+. There is no chance that i will buy 4600+ 
nice. well i wouldn’t expect a very good response about this kind of thing on the renoise forums. you might want to check some hardcore enthusiast forums, try http://www.firingsquad.com , http://www.tomshardware.com , or maybe the madonion/3dmark forums, http://www.futuremark.com/community/
i haven’t really had a need to OC my cpu, but i like to oc my geforce fx 5800 by about 10% 
water
Alphacool NexXxos parts
of course this is just the CPU cooler and you’d need some further equipment like a pump (eheim recommended) a radiator (either passive or active with a fan) a reserator and so on…
but price/performance is currently best with the sonictower i assume.
and it definately cools nicely with a 120mm fan and a fanbus for manual adjustment of noise/performance ratio.
But what is the use of purchasing a cheaper cpu for overclocking when the cooling-equipment required to make this possible, possibly extends the costs of a complete cpu and cooling set that are made for the speed you want to overclock the cheaper cpu to?
Also:if you going to use watercooling for your CPU’s, ususally you have to buy extra components to incorporate all other mainboard areas like chipsets etc. as well.
This is not cheap trust me.
absolutely untrue and wrong assumption.
i’m overclocking my PCs ever since i went from amiga to a x86 compatible.
let me give you some examples:
Athlon 800mhz “unlocked” and overclocked to 1Ghz via multiplier.
extra cost for cooling: none, used the stock-cooler.
money saved when comparing the 800 to the 1000mhz model: i don’t recall any numbers anymore, but it were around 100-150EUR of pricedifference back then.
athlon 1,333 @1,6Ghz
extra cost for cooling: around 30EUR for a Globalwin FOP32 heatsink and a 60mm delta 7000rpm fan. this was hella loud but cooled pretty well.
money saved: there never was an Athlon 1,6Ghz Thunderbird. the highest model was the 1,4Ghz version, which already was around 80EUR higher in price. so in that time, i was using a CPU which was faster than the fastest you could buy.
-Pentium 1,6Ghz Northwood @2,66Ghz
extra cost for cooling: Alpha PAL 8942 Heatsink + 80mm Delta Fan = 40EUR.
percentage-wise, the best overclocking result i ever had so far. the 1,6Ghz Northwoods with a certain stepping were able to reach 2,4Ghz without vCore increasements, because they actually were downlabeled 2,4Ghz Northwoods. you also have to keep in mind, that a stock 2,6Ghz Northwood would have never been as fast as my overclocked 2,6Ghz CPU, because i was using a way higher FSB than the stock counterpart (100mhz vs 166mhz). this increased memory bandwidth and therefore overall system-performance by a fair margin.
money saved: i can tell you - A LOT. the 1,6A Northwood was cheap at that time… i remember buying it for around 110EUR. the fastest P4 money could buy was a 2,8Ghz P4 Northwood-B (133Mhz FSB). it was over 550EUR in price and performance-wise, it was about on par with my rig, because of the FSB difference.
currently i’m on a P4-C 3Ghz which runs @3,82Ghz (255Mhz FSB).
the fastest p4 northwood ever produced was the 3,4Ghz model.
there is however a P4 with the prescott core, running @3,8Ghz.
the core is inferior to the northwood and the CPU has a price of 618,71 EUR. i bought mine for 180EUR one year ago.
sure i’m on water cooling meanwhile, but i spent 200EUR for this and have a more than just silent system, which is being cooled more effectively than a louder air cooling alternative.
and never forget that all the stock systems are running standard FSBs.
P4 3,00Ghz @3,82Ghz, FSB: 255mhz, RAM: 510Mhz DDR
P4 3,80Ghz, FSB: 200Mhz, RAM: 400Mhz DDR
so now tell me… why is overclocking a bad thing to do?
you save money
you gain speed
it is fun
here where i live athlon 64 x2 3800+ costs 354 EUR and athlon 64 x2 4600+ costs 703 EUR. So this makes 349 EUR more!! So even if i would buy very expensive and good water cooling kit, it would be still cheaper.
I heard though that 3800+ runs @ 2,4 GHz event with stock cooling.
I just decided to replace it for better air cooling (around 25-30 EUR) to be more secure and have less noise (i would actually replace the stock cooler even if i wount overclock, because of noise issues. So basically i wount spend more money)
EDIT: I will propably go with arctic cooling silentium case and arctic cooling freezer CPU cooler. Price to performance ratio seems to be very good.
I can post results when i get my system up (in a couple of weeks)
You should also check the Auccusticase out.
http://www.acoustiproducts.com/en/acousticase.asp
Its a bit more expensive, but I heard that the silentium does not have much space inside, still it should also be a good buy…
thanks for the link! ill check it out.
Yeah, silentium has quite little room inside, there is only one isolated/dedicated hard disk space (you can put another hdd in but it wount have vibration isolation etc). And also the power supply is 350 W only. Although they say its effective/continous watts im not really sure if it will be enough… it should be theoretically but it would be sad if i discover after that its not. 
Gotta do some more research…