overclocking i7 , 920 or 940?

jkrause6

New Member
i was thinking of getting an EVGA x58 and either a 920 or 940.

i have an e8500 at 3.8 ghz. i want something noticeable faster that than this so i figure i need to be able to overclock the i7 to at least 3.8, does the 940 overclock better? is the evga an easy board to overclock?

is getting either of these to 3.8 on air realistic?

also:

i want to get a nice raid going. i have 2 old 150 gig raptors in raid 0 that's been up and stable for like 2 years now but was thinking of getting 4 of these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220342
and putting them in RAID 0 using this raid card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816131003

i'll keep the 2 raptors in raid 0 using the moterboard as the raid controller for them and just have em as a slave.

is that a dumb idea? just a waste of money?

3rd question, whats good memory for overclocking an i7? is this memory appropriate?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227388
remember i need at least 3.8 ghz out of the cpu.

OH! 1 last thing. i would love to have 12 gigs of ram but is putting 6 sticks in the motherboard going to hamper my overclocking. 4 sticks does w/ penryns on an x48 dfi board.

thanks for the help.

:)
 
I can hit 4.0ghz stable with all 6 ram slots filled.

You should just go with the 920, the 940 is not worth the extra money unless you know nothing about overclocking.

The harddrive thing is up to you. Remember though that solid state drives can only be written to a certain amount of times. After it's limit you can still access the information but will not be able to modify or remove the info. If I were you I would just go with the new Raptors instead (velociraptors). I went with regular Raid Edition drives and if you are not really picky, you could get a ton more space for a slight performance decrease.

The ram looks like a good choice. I used to be an OCZ fanboy but there is so many people making performance ram these days and they are all on par with each other so any choice is good. Those OCZ sticks are pretty nice because they have the 8-8-8-24 timings. Mine are rated at 9-9-9-24 but I run mine at 8-8-8-24 with no problems.

Hope this helps.
 
what motherboard are you using? i would love to get a DFI x58 but i don't want to even attempt to update a dfi bios. witch you have to in order to use over 1333mhz mem or so i have read on the dfi forums. i picked evga cause they have awesome tech support. what do you recommend? get an ASUS P6T?

what version of the P6T?
 
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I have the P6T deluxe, I am partial to ASUS (the best mobo company in the world) so it was a no brainer for me to get. The board is awesome for OC and has a very well laid out BIOS for tuning. The only problem with the P6T is you cannot do tri-sli unless your cards are watercooled due to the layout of the PCI-E slots.

The EVGA board is a good choice (really most x58 boards are good) and I haven't heard any problems with it.

I do not like DFI as I had a Lan party board before and all I had were problems with it. They maybe have there stuff together now but I still wouldn't buy there products. (that's my opinion tho)
 
WOW, THERMAL-REACTOR has 12GB ram !!

Having 12GB ram is completely pointless in my opinion

Nowadays programs, and games can barely use 4GB ram
 
WOW, THERMAL-REACTOR has 12GB ram !!

Having 12GB ram is completely pointless in my opinion

Nowadays programs, and games can barely use 4GB ram


i have 8 gigs now. i would love to have 12. i don't play games. like thermal i run multiple operating systems at 1 time. all my programs always have as much ram as they want. i could maybe squeek by on 6 gigs. Ram is cheep why not have as much as you can while still keeping low latency and a high FSB.
 
i have 8 gigs now. i would love to have 12. i don't play games. like thermal i run multiple operating systems at 1 time. all my programs always have as much ram as they want. i could maybe squeek by on 6 gigs. Ram is cheep why not have as much as you can while still keeping low latency and a high FSB.

Exactly and the performance difference of having 3 or 6 slots filled is minute. I can not feel the difference when I am gaming and that is only where it would matter to me so it`s all good. Plus I have had my comp at almost 4.5ghz and the ram at 1900mhz with all 12gbs in it.
 
WOW, THERMAL-REACTOR has 12GB ram !!

Having 12GB ram is completely pointless in my opinion

Nowadays programs, and games can barely use 4GB ram
The more RAM you have, the less you'll have to upgrade in the future...
So buying more RAM saves you money on future upgrades? That's the way I think about it, of course, unless you want faster and faster RAM etc..
 
I can't justify paying almost double the price for the 940, so I picked up the 920. No problems for me so far.
 
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