For more than a year i had some liquid cooling stuff lying around. It was a customized purchase meant for use with my old Asus Striker Extreme for building an XTREME rig (well at least xtreme for a guy like me).... . But then the introduction of Intel's 45nm processors and even 65nm quads demonstrated there severe incompatibility with my Striker Extreme and may be with other nvidia 680i chipset boards as well, especially in terms of overclocking . This overclocking failure (even to a mid level) shattered all my dreams of building an extreme rig. I still remember that in early days of 65nm Core 2 Dous, Striker Extreme ocing capability for those processors was nothing but pretty outstanding but then it failed miserably to produce the same results for quad cores and 45nm processors. Several bios fixes from Asus couldn't even resolved the problem (for most of the users i guess). Pretty much dishearten i sold that so called extreme mobo and gave up the idea of liquid cooling any more for few reasons, one among those i just explained.

For the last few days i was thinking about using all that liquid cooling stuff that has been stored in boxes for nothing. It was quite an investment going to waste. Learned from my past experience, this time i decided to grab a budget board along with a budget processor. I already had an Asus P5K-VM in my possession, so i thought of using E5200 (2.5GHz, 2MB L2, 800MHz, 45nm) as my budget processor due to its low price.

Following is a list of all the components that was lying around which i used for building my cheap XTREME PC

INTEL E5200 2.5GHz
ASUS P5K-VM G33 MOTHERBOARD
CORSAIR XMS2 2X512MB-667MHz RAM (4-4-4-12)
SEAGATE 160GB SATAII HDD
COOLER MASTER EXTREME 500W PSU
RAIDMAX SMILODON CASING

Dtek FuZion Extreme *Performance CPU Block *with High Flow KIT
TYGON R3603 TUBING 3/8" ID-1/2"OD.
Swiftech COOL SLEEVES 625 HORIZON UV BLUE
Swiftech MCB-120 RADBOX
HARDWARE LABS 360(TRIPLE) STEALTH EXTREME RADIATOR
FLUID XP+ NON-CONDUCTIVE COOLANT (BLUE)
THERMALTAKE 3X120MM LED FANS-78CFM EACH
ASETEK WATERCHILL XTREME 12v PUMP WITH SOFTWARE CONTROL(Qmax 1020L/H)
MICRO COOL MOSFETS HEAT SINKS

From all the above mentioned stuff i only needed a processor which i grabed from a retail store.

Following are some overclocking details and screen shots from my cheap XTREME PC (NOW YOU MUST HAVE GUESSED WHY I CALL IT CHEAP )

E5200 @ 4.0Ghz [320*12.5] / 1GB DDR2-667 @ 641Mhz - Dual Channel









I guess i wasn't lucky enough and got this E5200 with a significant higher VID of 1.225V. Having a CPU multiplier of 12.5, installing a NB liquid chipset cooler wasn't looking necessary as higher FSBs were not required. (Unless you want to lower your CPU multiplier for higher memory bandwidth and stuff).

Overclocking to 4.0GHz wasn't easy on this board with perfect stability. I had no option but to supply a Vcore of 1.55V to keep my E5200 perfectly stable @ 4.0GHz and passing stability tests like OCCT and playing CRYSIS. Windows was able to boot at 1.5v and complete Hiper Pi and Wprime and other bench test calculations but OCCT was crashing in less than a minute. Fortunately due to the Liquid Cooling set-up, the temps remained well under control as core temps stayed around 59C,58C (ROOM TEMP 25C). I also had to perform the VDROP/VDROOP Pencil mod to completely make the system stable as before applying the mod, E5200 was unable to pass OCCT @ 3.5GHz, i guess due to significant vdrop/vdroop.

Everything was done on an average motherboard that has only 3 phase power delivery system and not much ocing features. Max Vcore available is 1.6 so i guess can't push my processor anymore. I am very much sure that at any high end board xtreme ocing will be pretty much easy especially for the likes of xtreme overclockers on this forum . Do like to mention that i used additional mosfet heat sinks to keep them cool.

At the end all the hard work got paid by achieving 60% or 1500MHz overclock and even the liquid cooling components found there use as well. I will try to squeeze bit more juice out of my rig.

I am not an extreme overclocker, neither i've enough choice to grab some good or extreme components (PC hardware and cooling, both) as these are not available where i live. Usually i order stuff from overseas which get too expensive at the end.

Well may be the OC doesn't look extreme to you people, but it is extreme for me so i guess i posted in the right section.....right?