New to Intel (sort of)

[Maedar]

Hey all,

So I am finally moving back to Intel based machines after about 10 years or so of using AMD. Just bought and currently am waiting on delivery of my parts.
I have built one Intel based system (2600K) for a friend of mine about 6 months ago, and it seems to be ok but we left everything stock and have not done any Overclocking.

I am curious if anyone has ran similar hardware/configuration and if so, if anyone wants to pass along some wisdom it would be appreciated. I have not overclocked a processor since the good ol' days of the Celeron 300's and some tips in this area with the new BIOS's would also be appreciated.

What I will be putting together is as follows:


ASROCK Z77 OC Formula MB

Intel 3770K I7

Samsung 830 256 GB SSD as Boot

2X WD 1TB Black Edition (have not decided on Straight or Raid installation, have 2 more matching drives and could do a nice RAID 1+0 (Thoughts?))

Kingston HyperX Black 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1600 Model KHX16C10B1BK2/16X X2 kits for 32 GB's total. (this is probably overkill but I have had my RAM usage hit 14GB's on my current AMD rig and I want to get into more CPU and RAM intensive work like some CAD/CAM; and, the price was reasonable)

ANTEC Kuhler H20 620 (have always wanted to do liquid cooling so this will be in use only until I start to plan and build a true liquid cooling setup.

Kingwin ABT1220 Power Supply

Nvidia brand GTX660Ti (thinking of either going to a 680 or SLI another 660Ti, current card runs rock stable with a modest software overclock which I am hoping will not be needed on the INTEL based system)

Creative SB X-Fi sound card as primary and will be using integrated sound as secondary

LG lightScribe DVD combo drive (not terribly high end but love using light scribe)

Possibly use Intel PCI-E 1000 NIC if I have any issues with onboard NIC (pulled from old Windows Home Server build)

I also bought all new SATA cables just in case what comes witht he board are not adequete and wanted to make sure I don't use any of my older SATAII cables by mistake and bottleneck anything.

Anyway thanks for the read and thanks in advance for any tips or tricks anyone may want to offer.

[wazza300]

have you already bought these components?
things i would consider changing is the ram for 16gb of samsung green(in my sig) its dirt cheap in the u.s and overclocks very well
other thing would be the psu,do you really need 1220 watts? its overkill imo,750-850w at the most is plenty juice for these boards/cpu's,you could save yourself some money on those two components and put towards a single gtx 670???


oh and how cheap is the samsung 840 pro 256gb compared to the samsung 830 256gb? if its similar price choose the 840 pro,its alot faster

[Maedar]

Hey Wazza, thanks for the reply.

I already have the SSD, and the power supply. I used to run a dual and sometimes a triple 5870 setup, till two of the cards went belly up on me. Gave the last 5870 to my girlfriend for her PC and picked up the 660Ti. If I have any issues with the RAM I will check out your recomendation, its not on the QVL but that doesnt always matter...

[kick]

Wave
If going for hard oc.what sort of performance difference will you get for the price between the 2600k and 3770k.
I mean in the sense that the 2600 can take a higher speed for the same temp(not voltage).
I suppose if your going liquid cooling it wouldnt matter.
Check out the cpu reviews here on tweaktown main site.

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Hey Wazza
I see that memory you use is £36 for 8g now at ccl..definitely worth getting?

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I too was a celeron 300 does 500 afficionado ;0
I had one amd pc .a duron,,no headroom at all :(

I only have an "ancient" asrock p67,but Im happy enough with it, dunno on z77.

As long as it isnt a version with "mr fatality face" UEFI, thatd get annoying.

The hyperx memory has that been tested on the board?.
Probably be ok and memory is cheap now, but you dont want anything that might interfere with your best oc,even if its just for benching.

The oclocking .well the base clock/fsb doesnt like to move off 100mhz much,youve already put together a 2600 system so,you know yourself, cpu its just multiplier and sufficient power to hit the turbo boost,without going over!.

One thing .my board doesnt like items connected.. well no that isnt quite accurate.
My board doesnt like usb 3.0 legacy enabled /active devices on usb3.0 front slots for posting,after uefi and into windows,it doesnt matter.Might only have been a p67 peculiarity.

The gx660 should be nice
When my old gx card died on my mid system, I hoped a 640 would be like a 460 1gb..not even close ,it seems anything below a *60 in the nvidia range isnt that great.
I like sli(now) and at least you would have the psu for it :)

gl.

[wazza300]

yeah kick for £36 id get some,you should reach 2133mhz with it

@maeder thats ok if your using psu from an old system,i just wondered,high ram speeds doesnt really benefit z68/z77 systems tbh but its always nice to see high numbers,it does help a little in games but 1600mhz will be fine

[Maedar]

Hey Kick,

Because I have been out of the OC scene for too long I wanted something with the raw power in case I don't have much luck in OC'ing. I would say over half of my old celeron 300's running on the old tried and true Intel BX platform didn't OC as well most people saw. I just don't seem to have a lot of luck in getting components that will take the OC. I am a tad hesitant about getting into it this time around but it sounds like the basic principals are the same, just instead of Dip switches the changes are al being done by BIOS profiles and recovery seems easier. (no more having to clear and/or pull a CMOS battery, don't miss those days...) I did have an old AMD Supersocket 7 300 that hit over 500 once though... That was pretty cool.

The HyperX memory is on the QVl for the board, mainly the reason why I got it, plus the $20.00 instant off per kit, made it fairly reasonable, and it didn't have that insane blunt tooth heat sink design, man I hate that...

Good to know about the USB thing, I think I will dig out an old PS/2 keyboard just to be safe.

As for the video card naming/classification system, yeah what a pain in the a$$, you might get a faster gpu or whatever but the rest of the card is knee-capped and runs like crap.

I checked Newegg for that RAM Wazza was talking about, they are sold out for now, I will keep watching for it though, pick up a few sticks when I get brave enough to try higher OC's.

[wazza300]

overclocking is pretty straightforward on these cpu/boards,you should be able to hit 4.5ghz with decent cooling

[kick]

@Wazza :
Yeh I have this £50 lying around on a prepaid card ,that I had earmarked for a cheap good gx card.for q 8400,theres hardly anything in that price rangeworth buying dx11..
Aside from the samsung mem or maybe another 8gig of the memory I have now ,I cant see anything else for less than £50.Higher speed will probly win out as I dont really use memory that hard and the samsung I have in the d820,mv6 I think it is allways worked well above specs,even tho it too has no heatsinks.

@Maedar:It was the 300a I think and there was a certainbatch range..the early ones that did 500 np.Later ones and 330's I think only did around 450..Heady numbers!
Id still investigate the 2600k vs the 3770k abit unless you can make use of the improved on chip gx.

Just in case its like the x58 platform where one of the earlier cpus was like just as good if not better than some of the later super chips.
Waz would know more about that tho..I skipped that series :) with its triple channel n all.

Its also not impossible to corrupt the bios on asrock boards as you can see on the forum, with bios flashes gone wrong etc.At least the bios chip is socketable so it can be replaced.
Other than that the usual things like make sure its not still on ide when installing windows,The windows sys file ,might still install on the largest HDD that is connected,even if you install windows on the ssd,so you might not want the hdd's connected on installation.Im not sure on that tho.
xfast usb utility,I use.
I dont use instant boot,just never have.
I dont use raid ,so no ideas there.
Thas all I can think of.

[wazza300]

is micro centre in the usa? i think samsung green are on sale there too

clock for clock the ivy bridge cpu's are roughly 300mhz faster than sandy bridge,with any chip some have high voltage vid and some lower,the poor thermal paste used on the internal heatsink on ivybridge might limit you in overclocks,with sandybridge they soldered the heatsink to the core

[Maedar]

Yeah Kick, the a series of the cele's. My buddy and I worked in a mom and pop style computer store back then, we both ordered 300a's at one time, ordered the exact same build, and his OC'd like crazy and mine was a piece of crap. If I remember right they were getting the best OC's from the Malay chips. I think our chips were only seperated by like 10 or 15 cpu's... Luck of the draw I guess. And who knows could have been the RAM, MB, anything... We would get these chips in by the case load and OC them silly for customers. I remember something about the old AMD's and having to pencil in a channel on the chip to unlock them or some such nonesense, can't remember the exact details and don't think we ever did one...

Wazza, i will check, never heard of Micro Centre, but that doesnt mean anything. I didn't know about the difference in the internal sink mounting, good information to have. On your 3770k, overall how happy are you with it, do you do any video work or anything like that? I have a fairly decent DVD collection I want to push over to my server and the time it takes to encode on an AMD is insane, hoping this will be 30-50% faster, if not I guess I can always use CUDA off the Nvidia...