Happy Holidays everyone! I'd love some opinions to help make a decision here. I fly mostly FS2K2, Falcon4 SP3, and IL2. My system has held up quite well, and I'm big into tweaking and tuning for max performance. However, FS2K2 has become the main reason driving my upgrade (everything's on order to arrive next week). My two main questions are:1) Would I see enough clocking benefit from adding a water cooling system from Innovatek to the new system (see specs below). I'm already putting in an air cooled Termaltake AX-478 which gets some great reviews...and a Lian-Li PC-65 aluminum case...so maybe not that much benefit...priced at around $255 USD.2) Should I do a HD wipe (data enema)with a clean install of WIN2KPro SP2 or reinstall over existing installation? I don't mind clean install but to my knowledge I have to reload everything else too - FS2K2 is pushing 8Gigs. My main upgrade here is CPU (Intel 2.8 retail), Motherboard (Asus P4T533-C (i850E chipset with HT capable for next CPU), and RAM (Samsung PC1066 Rambus)...trying to squeeze every last drop out of that P4.Thanks for any thoughts!GinoCurrent System Specs:1Ghz AMD Thunderbird OC'd to 1.533Ghz (yes...it's stable!)Asus A7v133 motherboard384M PC133 SDRAM (CL2-2-2)Antec 350W Power SupplyNew System Specs:2.8Ghz Intel P4 OC'd to 3.somethingAsus P4T533-C i850E motherboard512M Samsung PC1066 RDRAMAntec True 430 Power SupplyLian-Li PC-65B Windowed Black Aluminum caseCommon System Specs:Win2KPro SP2 (SP3 and WinXP apparently broke SCSI RAID for now)Turtle Beach Santa CruzVisiontek Geforce4 4400Ti (OC'd to 300/635)2 Cheetah X15-36LP 18G SCSI U160 15K RPM HD'sAMI Megaraid Elite 1600 2 channel u160 SCSI RAID controllerPlextor UltraPlex 40 SCSI CD-ROMAdaptec 19160 u160 SCSI controller (for Plextor)19-in. Cornerstone p1450 monitor17-in. Viewsonic e773 monitorThrustmaster Cougar HOTASCH FlightSim Yoke and Pedals USB

Hey Gino,Wow, quite a system you've got going there, in a word, impressive!So your saying that the water cooling OC equipment is ~$250? That being the case, I suppose it depends on what you expect.Frankly, I don't have my 'sliders maxxed', but when I come into some heavy airports (Simflyers KDFW or Shez's new KDCA), even my system drops to under 10 fps. Funny thing, but I've noticed through reading reviews of processors over at SimHQ, that as the processors rise in Mhz, the frames-per-second for FS2002 only jumps 1 or 2 and are still in the 20's!Maybe your question is better suited for the tweak-freaks (I say that in admiration) over at HardOCP or one of the many OC'ers web sites. It is fun to read what can be done, but also read the stories of corrosion and leaking tubing. Ugly stories.I'd stick to air cooling and OC 'mildly', but that's just me.As for the OS, OF COURSE you should reinstall from scratch! :-lol Are you insane?!!! Chances are that your system may not even boot if you simply moved the HDD over, and even if you did, there are so many differences between the two systems, well it's just not funny. :-grr But it wont hurt to try, right?Have fun with the new system,

Tom,Thanks for your thoughts. I agree with the OS install...pretty stupid to even ask...I just wish there were a way to only reinstall my OS clean and somehow have that installation recognize existing software on other partitions. This would save a ton of time. But hey...I have all of Christmas week to mess with it, right?Also, I will most likely go with your opinion on the air-cooled system vs. water cooled for now. If nothing else I save some money for now! I'm sure I'll get at least 3.0Ghz out of the system as is. It's just my nature...tweak, tweak, tweak...BREAK...spend time learning how to fix...tweak, tweak...you get the picture. Sometimes I wish I spent more time flying than messing around!Best regards,Gino

Back in the days of the celeron 366 on an intel 440bx chipset, I was into overclocking also. What fun to buy a $50 processor and tweak it up. Got that celeron to 550, as most everyone did, which is a pretty big percentage increase, like over 50%.As the processor speeds have increased, and the prices have come down so far, I've stopped building in o'cing. I realized on a recent project that the cost of cooling and case gear I'd been considering would easily buy a far faster cpu then I originally considered, plus the ability to overclock is now reduced to a pretty small change, how noticeable is it to go from 2.8ghz to 3.0? a 7% improvement? And the hassle of a water system? Certainly, this is all justifiable if its your hobby to do it. I understand that angle completely. I just can't any longer justify it based on performance change.Bob B

n/t

Well said Bob. My first OC 'happiness' was with the same Celeron, putting it into an adapter for my Slot1, Abit BX6-2 motherboard. I was very happy considering everyone else was spending over $200 for a P3/550mhz at the time. I even brought a P3/550mhz processor home from work (yes, I returned it the next Monday :-)) and FS did NOT run any different. I was even happier with my Celeron purchase at that point.The gains are no longer worth shortening the life of my system, especially when your talking about an minor increase in performance. Of course, I may be singing a different tune next year!

Cooling! There is none better than Water! Okay, now with that out of the way I will tell you of my experience. I have a custom built Watercooling system (combination of Koolance and an added Radiator and 120mm cooling fans. I also have a DangerDen Maze2 cooling block and 156W Peltier powered by an EnerMax 450Watt power supply.In contrast to Air and the associated noise, I have achieved significant cooling advantages with this setup. (See below)XP1800 OC to 1771MHzI have not tried to boot the system on air alone once the CPU was unlocked simply because of the heat the AMD generates. I did not take a chance at cooking it with air - I prefer water boiling (more on that later). With the cooling system described above installed, I was able a very stable system even running FS2002 fully maxed out! Temps on the core ran at 14C! That is really cool for this CPU running this hard.All was well for about a year until I noticed my temps rising. Upon inspection of the system I discovered a lead on my Peltier had broken away from the chip. Wow! Glad I caught this in time or things might have gotten really hot, really fast. I removed the 1/4" cooper cooling plate and Peltier and reinstalled the waterblock directly to the CPU. Rebooted and ran for about two days after backing off the FSB clock until my system was running at 1721MHz. Still a bit shacky and not as dependable as before. FS2002 crashed several times with Page-fault errors! Yuk! Remember I said I was getting 14C on the cooling? Well now my temps are running around 40-45C! This is borderline for even a stock CPU. It's now about a year since I built the system and time to flush the coolant so I took the system down again and installed a new 156W Pelitier, flushed the radiators and installed fresh WATER WETTER and Distilled water. All is looking good until Bootup time. Upon powerup....NO BOOT! Crud! After removing the CPU for inspection it appears to me she is toast! (that is 1 XP1900 and 1 XP1800 gone to the dogs in 12Months). I have no way of knowing what caused the CPU to boil since the water block appeared to be seated well. BTW, the 1900 mentioned above was earleir boiled due to improper seating to the CPU.The moral of this story is...unless you've got money to burn on your insatiable desire for max performance, you really do not save anything by doing all this tweaking. Yes, there are those who do very well at this, but all of them have there own horror stories where catastrophy has struck. YOu can not play on the edge of technology with out getting cut from time-to-time.Will I buy another $61.00 XP1800, unlock it and risk all this again for the same performace an $84.00 XP2100 will deliver? I think not!Will I keep the watercooling/peltier system and use it with the new CPU? I have not decided. I may opt for a Retail XP2100 and try the Air cooling for a while. At least I won't have to risk the Waterblock not seating properly and risk boiling off another CPU.I think you have a great system now! If you want to experiment with water and Peltier it is great fun. In fact, I may wait until the XP1800 drop really cheap and build a replacement system for my son.( He gets all my hand me downs anyway, but for now I think I will play it safe!