Configuration and Overclocking of a BEAST

[TriniXaeno]

Guys,

A friend of mine wants to put together and over clock a beast of a machine for customer/client of his.

Pretty high end stuff. (save for a suspect vid card)

Told him I'd take it to the experts (you all)

Also, when it's put together, he wants some hands on help overclocking the rig. Make a date of it at HQ on a Sunday or so.

What are your thoughts / recommendations?

Here is the mail he sent me:

 MB   ASUS P5W PH

Processor    Intel  Core 2 Duo E6700 Dual-Core, 2.66GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache

Memory:     OCZ, 4GB (4 x 1GB) ATI CrossFire™ Certified Edition PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz CL 4-5-4-15 SDRAM DIMM, Non-ECC

VIDEO:  ASUS, Extreme AX300SE-X/TD, Radeon® X300SE, 128MB DDR, PCIe x16, VGA+DVI, TV-Out

HDD:    4 x SEAGATE, 160GB Barracuda 7200.9 Low-Profile, SATA II 300MB/s, 7200 RPM, 2MB cache, OEM

OS:    MICROSOFT, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2b

Processor Cooler:    ZALMAN, CNPS9500 Copper CPU Cooler, Socket 775, No LED

Well there you have it, verbatim.

Gentlemen, start your engines.

[Crixx_Creww]

wah kinda jazzy ass card is that???
it eh even makin sense over clock that rig with that card there

it might blow up or something

that e6700 omfg beast
eww at those ram timings though bleh

steups i would say 4 x 512 with good timings better than that 4 gigs dere

an why windows xp 64 bit?

[Nephilim]

if i were him i'd drop to an E66 (is the same, save a 200 and sum Mhz reduction, but yuh overclocking anyway), 2 gigs of ram use the saved cash for a better v/c (x1950, 7900gt , r600 maybe?) make no sense to have a serious system with ah x300se. (<---and i talking from xp bout that) - but thats me

what is it going to be used for?Gaming i presume...

and as crixx said why xp 64?

[W1nTry]

I will review this in a bit...kinda busy.. off the top of my head.. things that wrong with this solution:
1. X300 - NO
2. Xfire certified memory - doesn't mean squat, just as well off with another well reputed brand with similar/better timing
3. HD should have 8MB Cache NOT 2MB. Reconsider Seagate (good drives but run HOT)
4. XP 64-bit - Known incompatibilties with MANY games - 64-bit Vista has better compatibility with games than this version

The other parts seem fine... E6600 is a good option, unless he/she wants QUAD.

You also failed to mention PSU, that will be CRITICAL if Overclocking. Also consider water cooling and CASE are also determining factors in an OCed PC.

[Spazosaurus]

The e6600 is probably really a better choice as there is lots of overclocking headroom. Regarding the power supply, i've had my eye on this one to use in my personal system. In terms of the board i've also been looking at the MSI P6N SLI Platinum if youre on a budget or probably a nv 680i offering for the 16x SLI and a couple more features.



fixed broken link

[Arcmanov]

I concur with all said here so far.

WTF is up with them RAM timings?  Are those correct?
I will say NOTHING about that video-card choice (coughballzcough)

Anandtech forums has a thread dedicated to overclocking the Asus P5W DH Deluxe (although a 'PH' is mentioned, not sure this exists)
(which is what I currently have) and can be found here

Pretty much all questions about OC'ing this board and tweaking it can be found on that forum.
Based on what I've read there, I can forsee lots of issues with that 4 GB RAM.
If this setup is being used for gaming, and is being OC'ed, then 2 GB RAM and Win XP Pro 32 bit
would be much more efficient.

[Netizen1]

Everyone's made their input and I'll agree for the most part with the recommendations on Processor, Memory, OS, GPU and Hard drives

4GB is not really gonna help, cuz as I recall, you lose some clock cycles with 4 chips installed (as opposed to 2 x 1GB = 2GB)
Maybe this set? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820144030

Of course, by all means get a much better GPU !!!

Why 4 hard drives? Why 2MB cache? If it's RAID you wanna run, then go for 2 Raptors, 16MB cache, 10,000 RPM




And of course get a better graphics card...

[Saxito Pau]

he should consider Corsair Dominator with timings of 3-4-3-9 @ PC2-6400 (at near $300USD for 2GB). The 4GB is overkill, depending of factors like if the RAM double sided or not the board may not even show up 4GB (3GB max, varies with board and choice of RAM used)...2GB and use the money for some uber cooling HSF

CPU - oh yeah!!

Nonsense for vid card choice.. At 'absolute' bare minimum GF6800/GF7600/Radeon X800/Radeon X1650

And why "just" 8MB buffer hard drives?? 16MB buffer!! Netizen, with the 4 drives you can run RAID 0+1, eh. (just hope he have the case and cooling to match!) A recent Tom's hardware review concluded that Raptor just might be price overkill now if using RAID...

other than that I tend to agree with everyone thus far.

[W1nTry]

RAID 0+! is by far the more inefficient resource (amt of HD) type RAID out there... I also didn't suggest 16MB cache as those are only needed for larger drives. Yuh doh see a 80GB with 16MB cache... at least not normally. As for raptors... they ARE overpriced... however perhaps 2 74GB raptors in RAID0 + 2x 400GB drives for storage would be nice :p I would suggest an 8600GT as the preferrable BASE card (yes they are NOW available) and their performance is JUST above that of a X1900XT (256MB) card. I know cause I JES looked at the benchmarks for that card against my own. 4GB of RAM is fine esp if yuh planning to run Vista and well thats about it really... get a GOOD FULL SIZE ATX CASE!

[Saxito Pau]

I just HAD to post this:

Enermax Uber Chakra Case (yes, that is the name):
http://www.pro-clockers.com/review.php?id=212

just might suit builder's needs

[Netizen1]

RAID 0+! is by far the more inefficient resource (amt of HD) type RAID out there... I also didn't suggest 16MB cache as those are only needed for larger drives. Yuh doh see a 80GB with 16MB cache... at least not normally. As for raptors... they ARE overpriced... however perhaps 2 74GB raptors in RAID0 + 2x 400GB drives for storage would be nice :p I would suggest an 8600GT as the preferrable BASE card (yes they are NOW available) and their performance is JUST above that of a X1900XT (256MB) card. I know cause I JES looked at the benchmarks for that card against my own. 4GB of RAM is fine esp if yuh planning to run Vista and well thats about it really... get a GOOD FULL SIZE ATX CASE!

hit we a link to the card boy W1nTry

[TriniXaeno]

That enermax case looking decent.

[Crixx_Creww]

wowsers @uber chakra case!!lololol


um ram should be 4x 512
dual channel baby
plus even lower latency on de 512 sticks

dont over look that

[W1nTry]

Nah 4x1GB, lower latencies is good, however @ 1066MHz and better, the speed alone compensates nicely for the added latency. 512x4 would limit the rig to 2GB which whilst good, 4GB would be a better bet for the long run.

[.:Jedi:.]

^^totally agree with this here. as for the psu, if u have no problem with the non-modular units, u should check out the OCZ GameXstream series (prolly 700w+)