opteron 146 or 3700sd...o' the humanity, please help!

[thesurge]

Ok, so I'm trying to drive the price of my future rig down as much as i can without hurting the performance too much. Thanks to compusa's black friday deal i got my case and hitachi deskstar 7k250 for 50 bucks total. This leaves me some room. Now down the nitty gritty. after my minor research i've realized an opteron 146 is an affordable and viable option compared to the 3700 sd because i can overclock it. now, that being said, would an opteron 146 clocked at like 2.7 ghz outpace a 3700 stock? What fan/heatsink should i get? also, what's the best 'bang for the buck' RAM i should be getting if I'm overclocking the opteron. im willing to part with 220 bucks for ram, but i wanted 2 gbs, but if im overclocking it wouldnt seem right to buy corsair value ram anymore...any ideas? thanks

future rig:
opteron 146 or 3700 sd
2 Gb of Ram (dont know which)
epox nforce4 ultra

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

Originally posted by: thesurge
Ok, so I'm trying to drive the price of my future rig down as much as i can without hurting the performance too much. Thanks to compusa's black friday deal i got my case and hitachi deskstar 7k250 for 50 bucks total. This leaves me some room. Now down the nitty gritty. after my minor research i've realized an opteron 146 is an affordable and viable option compared to the 3700 sd because i can overclock it. now, that being said, would an opteron 146 clocked at like 2.7 ghz outpace a 3700 stock? What fan/heatsink should i get? also, what's the best 'bang for the buck' RAM i should be getting if I'm overclocking the opteron. im willing to part with 220 bucks for ram, but i wanted 2 gbs, but if im overclocking it wouldnt seem right to buy corsair value ram anymore...any ideas? thanks

future rig:
opteron 146 or 3700 sd
2 Gb of Ram (dont know which)
epox nforce4 ultra

LOL Opteron 146 @ 2.7 GHz is almost as good as an FX-57 . . . (just 100 mhz shy) so yeah it would be better than a 3700 SD @ stock . . .

If you get lucky and get a good stepping on that Opteron it should do better than the SD but both are great chips for O/C. Opteron can probably O/C a little higher but the 3700SD has the 11x multiplier meaning it's less motherboard-dependent . . .

For cooler, Big Typhoon, SI-120, Scythe Ninja would all be good . . .

For RAM, 2x512MB of OCZ Gold is good for $139 @ Newegg (BH-5 sticks I believe)

For 2x1GB sticks, these are a good deal also . . .