Or rather speed needs cool! To continue my obsession with playing around with PCs I've now set a target of overclocking my PC from 2.66 GHZ to 3.5 GHZ (or 30%).

To do that you need some serious cool stuff going on.

The stock coolers that come as standard with PCs just don't cut it!

Here's a reminder of the core spec and a pic of the machine before the Mod:-

The Core Spec & Pic

• Case: Bosse Galaxy III Mid Tower 420w Black/ Side-panel Window
• CPU: Intel Core i5 750 2.66 GHZ 8MB Cache LGA1156
  
• Memory: 8GB (4×2GB) PC10666 DDR3/1333mhz DC Memory
  
• Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 4870 PCI-E x16 1GB DDR5 Video Card
• Hard Drive: Single Hard Drive (1TB (500GBx2) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)

You can see the Intel Stock CPU Cooler and the ATI Stock GPU Cooler.

I'm replacing those, adding a front intake fan and a fan controller.

I'm adding the following components:-

• Zalman CNPS9900 LED CPU Cooler
• Zalman VF950 LED GPU Cooler
• Zalman ZM-MFC3 Fan Controller

I'm also replacing the existing side Neon fan with another fan and moving the Neon one to the front of the case as an intake fan.

Here's the results:-

Inside the case:-

You can see the rather beautiful 'flower' CPU fan and below the graphics card the new Neon GPU cooler.

Outside the case:-

Smoking!!! Bling or what? LOL!

Note the 'Skull' fan covers.

Was it worth it?

Too, right! Initial testing shows that on a fairly normal setting for the fans CPU temperature has dropped by 10 degrees C or 25%!

Whack the fans right up to the max and you can knock another 5 degrees of that.

That gives plenty of room to start overclocking.

Results on the OC to follow...