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What about the Noctua stuff for water cooling? I´ve read that even though the H80i is the most secure bet, Noctua is much more quiet and has a better performance, don´t know if I can use a water cooling Noctua for the Processor, and another Noctua to replace the front fan, and then connect both of them creating a system I can actually manage from the computer, and checking it on the frond LCD (am I asking too much?
Corsair Link is an external piece of hardware you have to buy to set it all up. Personally, I wouldn't use this, and it certainly wont work in OSX, only in windows. Also, the DIMM is what the chip is called. If the motherboard only has two ram sockets, then buy what you think you'll need (maybe 32GB which is the max the motherboard supports and if your using 64 bit applications, they will be able to use all of that if necessary, but overall 16GB would be fine)
Iv'e seen those screens you can use to monitor your temps, it basically works independently from the OS. You stick on temperature nodes on your components, and you connect the screen to your fans (assuming you want to control your fans) and the display will give you a constant readout of temps and fan speed. I think some even change automatically for you. This is a good option, and I don't see how it would affect OSX because its independent from the OS, so it should be perfectly safe. Make sure you double check and do research, im pretty much in the same situation as you in terms of building and understanding the components.
Now, about power supplies. Power supplies are generally quite quiet. You want to make sure you go with a fully modular power supply, because it makes cable management easier and optimises your airflow in your case, and just makes everything easier overall. I would recommend a slightly higher wattage power supply for this build. You will be hitting about 400 watts or so, and when you go to add some extra drives/fan etc, that will start to rise and your PSU is going to be more taxed. Also, because you have selected an i7 3770K, it is an unlocked processor so you can over-clock it, meaning you are going to need more power to keep things stable. Everywhere you look, people are saying to always overkill your power supply, choose a PSU that is quite abit over the wattage you need for the simple reasons of upgradability and safety. Just look for a high wattage modular PSU that boasts to be extra quiet.
Also, you get different ratings for power supplies. You can get bronze,silver,gold and platinum power supplies. The rating is the efficiency the power supply runs at, bronze being the lowest and platinum being the hgihest. Do a quick google saerch and you will get very detailed explanations.
For my build I'm choosing a Corsair AX860 modular PSU, which is a Platinum rated PSU. Im going to be using an i7 3770K and probably a single GTX 680, so 860Watts is way more than I need (my system would probably be running at about 600/650 watts) but I want to be safe and sure that I'm going to be getting more than enough power, just in case the power rate fluctuates and something needs some extra juice! Plus I have more room for upgradability, if I add more fans, more had drives, more memory, then I should have enough power. If I add an extra video card however, then I probably wont have enough power for stability, but I don't plan on doing that and just getting a beast single gpu to power one monitor.
I think your mixing up the Noctua Fans the Corsair H80i as to what they do. Noctua don't make water coolers, they make fan's and fan based cpu coolers, the best ones in the market in fact. Any water cooler has a radiator to take the heat away from the cpu, and that radiator uses fans on it too cool it. Now the fans on the H80i radiator are said to be very loud, but if you replace those stock fans on the corsair h80i radiator with Noctua fans, you'll get much better performance and much quieter operation. If you replace ALL your fans with Noctua fans, then your system overall will be cooler and quieter than if you kept those stock fans in. There are also Corsair H55 and H50 quiet coolers, which are even more quiet than their others, but generally adding a Noctua fan will be even quieter.
Also, I would recommend a Samsung 840 Pro Series SSD. They offer the best performance/price ratio on the market and are recommended by a lot of people. I wouldn't use a sandisk SSD, they only make good memory cards
For the HDD, i'd recommend a WD Black for performance. DO NOT choose a WD green as they always have trouble with OSX not waking properly, and the drives shut down a lot and they are not very fast. A velociraptor HDD will be noisy as its 10000 RPM, and it costs alot aswell, but if you really need that extra performance then thats up to you.
Hope this helps.
If you got the velociraptors at a good price, then kudos to you
You can make two partitions on an SSD for windows/mac, but you have to install Mac OSX first before installing windows (you would install windows through bootcamp on OSX, which makes it super easy to get it all to work. It will even download all the drivers for windows, and give you the mac volume pop up display thing on windows)
I personally think the corsair link thing wont be a good idea for a hackintosh. Best to save your money and buy a AX760 instead of a AX760i, and put that money towards one of those drive bay fan controllers, or even a touch screen fan controller and temp monitor. That way you have a universal solution for cooling across OSX and windows.
A very detailed thread about the H80i positioning for your case (pictures included)
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=23543652
I'd say for your cooling setup,you want to have hot air going out rather than going in. The prodigy can hold 1x 120mm/140mm fan at the rear, 2x 120mm fans at the top, and 2x 120mm fans or 1x 140/180/200/230mm fan in the front. The case itself comes with 2x 120mm fans, one for the front and one for the back (but they would probably be the same0
To get the most out of your money, your h80i radiator would be mounted on the back, with the Noctua fan pulling in cold air and another fan pushing hot air from the radiator. This is what corsair recommends - http://blog.corsair.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Push-pull-image.png Maybe it would be worth getting 2 Noctua 120MM Fans to achieve this configuration.
You could then you could install the 2x supplied 120MM fans that come with the prodigy on the top of the case, or put them at the front to pull in air.
Altogether, you'll have 2x 120MM top free fan spaces and 2x 120MM or 1x 140/180/200/230mm front free fan spaces, so you might want to buy 1x Noctua NF-A15 PWM (which is a 140MM and not a 1200MM which actually has a 150MM spacing that will still mount to a 140MM size, making it perfect to put in the front because you will gain less noise and more air) fan to pull air in from the front, and put in the 2x supplied prodigy fans on the top. OR, you could put 1 prodigy fan on the front and one in the top. Its all up to you.
Really hope this helps you. Hopefully its not too confusing. Just read it over and over till you understand.
Edit: If you choose the H60 or H80i, I'm pretty you will be able to fit two fans on either side of the radiator. The H60 is the newer version, it uses better pipes to prevent evaporation and is overall quieter than the H80i. It also doesn't have the fancy glowing lights the H80i has, which saves on cost (with the prodigy case, you wont see the fancy lights on the H80i)
thanks!
You know, I was almost decided for the H80i ´til you started speaking about the fancy lights and how the H60 is quietier, what I like of the H80i is the double fan configuration, I´m actually taking your advice and replacing both, that should make it quietier right? on the other side on the tests I´ve read the H80i has an overall better performance (the db difference lstays between 5-6db between the H6ß and H80i, but acording to what you said earlier on, the Noctua fans are much quietier and silent).
My idea was to get the H80i, replace both fans, and put it in the back as you described, then get the NF-A15 for the front panel to pull fresh air inside, and maybe (depending on the noiseratio- taking in count its a Studio Computer) putting then the two Corsair fans on top to also pull fresh air inside, what do you think?? Plus I´d get the standalone controller to be installed on the optical drive space, to take advantage of all of its potencial.
About the PSU, finally I decided to go for the AX760 instead of the AX760i, It performs a bit better than the AXi in general Benchmarks, plus thinking about it, I don´t really mind of tweaking stuff from the PSU, I´d actually just let it work as its supposed to.
The other thing is, if I´m investing on a good cooling system, I´d like to invest on a controller that might let me control several fans, does that even exist?
