some really in depth questions regarding overclocking and component selection

[themisfit610]

Okay, so it's finally time to go quad core.

I'm very frustrated with my 3800+ X2 bottlenecking my 8800gt in Crysis, and I'm also very sick of 1.5 fps 1080p H.264 video encoding. I'm NOT having it anymore and I will have a very fast quad core system running at no less than 3 GHz - quietly.

So, I've got a P180 and a Corsair 520 PSU, which should give me plenty of overclocking headorom.

For RAM I'm sold on 4 gigs of DDR2 800 CAS5. It's stupid cheap, and I need it for Photoshop and Lightroom. I'm also totally sold on a q6600.

CPU cooler I'm still not totally sure. Leaning towards a Scythe Ninja or an Ultra 120 Extreme. I will also pick up several Scythe S-Flex fans to replace my Antec tri-cools, since they aren't perfect

The big question is motherboard.

I'm worried about a couple of things. First of all, I'm not your average gamer. I do a lot of content creation work, and need my system to be stable even loaded up with lots of hard drives. I remember hearing some horror stories about motherboards not overclocking well or having SATA issues on some of the channels at high FSBs. I'm NOT having any of that. I need a system that can really handle some overclocking without nerfing out other features.

I have an eSATA drive that I would like to be able to use without losing an internal connector. I know some boards have eSATA ports on the back, but I'm not sure if any of them actually dedicate a controller to this - most share them with the ports on the board from what I understand. I would like to avoid this.

I have 3 internal SATA drives right now (plus the eSATA), so I want to have at least 6 SATA ports, since I plan to expand. I have one IDE drive that I could stand losing (just an 80 gig), since I still have an IDE DVD-RW and don't want to share a channel.

I need to have onboard firewire for the times I work with external hard drives. My sound card has firewire too, but I don't want to depend on it.

So, I'm leaning towards the Abit IP35 Pro. The one thing that irks me is the sideways SATA placement. I worry about this in my sometimes cramped P180. I have already broken several SATA cables trying to get those damn things tucked away, and a 90 degree rotated connector might help or hinder the situation. I can't quite decide. Has anyone thrown this board in my case before?

The DS4 looks pretty stacked as well, but it doesnt have eSATA (not such a big deal, I've got a passthrough cable ATM). I also like 8 USBs on the back.

The P5K-E also looks very nice. It has the eSATA, and lots of copper, but the SATA placement looks absolutely dreadful.

I'm having issues deciding between the DS4 and the IP35 Pro. Recall that my biggest concern is total stability with a bunch of hard drives. Data loss is not an option for me.

Help!

~Misfit

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
CPU cooler I'm still not totally sure. Leaning towards a Scythe Ninja or an Ultra 120 Extreme.

I have a Ninja B on my Q6600, and get these temps with it running Prime95. But then again, it isn't quiet. I have a 110 cfm fan on it (which is amazingly quiet, btw), and two 79 cfm case fans.

The DS4 looks pretty stacked as well, but it doesnt have eSATA (not such a big deal, I've got a passthrough cable ATM). I also like 8 USBs on the back.

All Gigabyte P35 boards, except for the DS3L, have eSATA. Only these two have firewire, though. Also, all motherboards with eSATA share a controller with the SATA ports that are on the motherboard.

I'm having issues deciding between the DS4 and the IP35 Pro. Recall that my biggest concern is total stability with a bunch of hard drives. Data loss is not an option for me.

Both are great boards. You'll be happy with either. Just pick the one that looks like it's layed out the best for your needs/wants.

 

[Comdrpopnfresh]

If you want quiet and oc, get something with a heatpipe configuration. You don't want a board with individual heatsinks, because the fans will be loud, and many have no active cooling on the northbridge. Asus and gigabyte have good designs.

If you're worried about pci slots not working, make sure the board can lock the pci, and pci-e (you'll read reviews if it is otherwise, and most midrange-upper boards autolock the pci slot [not much performance gain here now that agp is dead] and allow for seperate clocking of pci-e. )

If you go with the ultra-120 extreme, you're probably going to need to lap it, as well as the 6600. I would use arctic ceramique (better than as5, no cure time).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835100009
with the case you have, you might get better cooling with a downward-flowing heatsink like this:
http://www.thermalright.com/a_...n_product_si128_se.htm
you can strap a 140mm fan on it for lower rpms, lower noise, but more airflow which = better cooling. It'll aid in cooling the ram, power regulators, and hitting the heatsinks of heat pipes on the way out- all will reduce temps, and aid in oc'in
if you really want balls-out cooling:
http://www.thermalright.com/a_...main_product_ifx14.htm it's basically 2 120's together, and you can put two 140mm fans in a push-pull on low speed for good cooling
a lot of people really like this one too:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835186134
dunno how it'll compare to the others, but I have the a64 freezer (that one's lil bro) on my 3800+ x2, and it is quiet

A lot of people prefer the 90-degree positioning of sata ports. They're good if you have long cable you can snake behind or (most likely in the antec case) around the board. In the case of the board companies I mentioned, they will have esata, usually on a separate marvell or other controller- but the port itself will have its own lane.

I don't know what your budget is (might want to add that to the thread), but I would get an external enclosure for the ide drive, and get a sata dvd-rw. You can attach it to the secondary controller the esata drive will be on. Doing this will increase airflow in the case, make cable routing easier, and preserve you're 80 gig drive (just get a usb enclosure)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16827135156 (highly rated, and I love asus)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16827106073 has a longer track record, but I still view lite-on as budget- you'd be fine with either way

not sure what memory you were gonna get, but a lower cas value may help (4), or with some boards going 1066 vs 800 (although a bit more expensive)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...lectedRating=-1&Page=2
^^^ highly rated, good for overclocking, and 4 gigs for 100 bucks (cas of five, but oc value will aid)

boards:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813127030 looks good
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131196 wifi, firewire port built in (some boards have headers, but no port), and a nice bit of room for your gfx to be away from nb and cpu (plus good pci-e expansion 1x and for dual gfx)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131182 balls-to-the-wall overclocking, great cooling, and meets needs on sata, esata, and firewire (plus p35 chipset)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131196 looks better-
6 onboard sata ports, two esata

if you want stability, be sure to run memtest (test 5 looped shows errors well), orthose/prime65 for a day too. Load all cores!

do you have your 3800+ x2 overclock? What does it achieve? Mine will do 2.6, @ 1.375 volts

 

[themisfit610]

thanks for the detailed replies.

I pulled the trigger last night on the following:

OEM q6600
Gigabyte DS4
2x 2GB Wintec AMPX DDR2 800 CAS5
Scythe Ninja 1100P
2x Scythe S-Flex 120mm FDB case fans
500 GB Samsung

I decided to toss out the 80 gig. I will migrate down one of my 250 GB data drives, and replace it with the 500.

I went with the DS4 mostly for its board layout, and massive load of copper heatpipe cooling. I went with the Scythe Ninja mostly out of impulse, but I have heard some very good things about it. I wasn't too excited with the prospect of lapping a $260 CPU (for the time being anyway), so I decided to stay away from the Ultra 120.

I plan to stick with XP 32 bit for awhile - since my 6 week romance with Vista x64 didn't go so well in the end...

As far as the old X2, I tried overclocking it, but the system was never really stable over stock speed. It was strange, my temps were never bad, my system was perfectly stable when I was using it, but then at night it would randomly shut down occasionally - even if it wasn't doing anything. I never seriously considered overclocking as a viable option, since my system was never built from the ground up for it, and is a mismatch of components.

The new one should be 3 GHz stable without even thinking about it!

~MiSfit

~MiSfit