Intel i7 860 and an Asus P7P55D - thoughts

[jimbojames]

Hi All,

I have an Intel i7 860 (2.8ghz) on an Asus P7P55D with 8 GB of crucial RAM and a 128 Kingston SSD - can I overclock it?

If so - what clock speeds should I expect and if I throw a GTX680 or GTX690 - will I end up with a decent gaming rig? (Sorry if that last part of that question should be in a different thread)

Thanks in advance,

James

 

[SieB]

You can overclock but by how much depends on how good your CPU is, all CPUs are different. At a guess though, with decent cooling, around 4ghz+.

As for a gaming rig, you shouldn't have any probs running any games on it with a 680/90.

 

[jimbojames]

As for a gaming rig, you shouldn't have any probs running any games on it with a 680/90.

Thanks SieB

I can see that the 690 runs on PCI3 - is it backwards compatible with PCI2?

 

[SieB]

Yep, PCI-E 3 is backwards compatible and will run fine on PCI E 2.

You might be bottlenecked with the 690 though, i'm not to sure but apparently two PCI-E 3 cards (which the 690 basically is, but in one) are exceeding PCI-E 2 bandwidth.

 

[jimbojames]

Running prime95 on it now with stock cooler and no OC and after 10 mins it's at 98c - hmm no OCing on the stock cooler me thinks!

 

[jonnyfgm]

somethings wrong there, did you fit the cooler yourself, how long ago? stock paste? done up as tight as it will (safely) go?

 

[jimbojames]

somethings wrong there, did you fit the cooler yourself, how long ago? stock paste? done up as tight as it will (safely) go?

Well thats a bit of a story - when I became an IT manager at my last company, we had 2 cowboys that were based on site that did 'IT support' and at that time, we ordered everything through them. I asked them to hook me up with an i7 system and they built it for me. I bought the system (over £1500's worth at the time) for £300 when I left (STEAL!) and I've not done anything with it since then.

I am in the process of looking at a new system:

Corsair Obsidian 650

Corsair AX1200 PSU

Corsair H100 cooler

ASUS Maximus Gene mobo

i7 3770k CPU

GTX680 or gtx690

16GB of Dominator or Vengance RAM

But I had a thought about just using my existing CPU, mobo and RAM and playing with my current CPU and banging in a 680 or 690 and the H100 just so I could start gaming so tonight I was going to see what I could get out of the CPU on the stock cooler but after those results, I stopped. I also might wait to see what the next CPU brings in 6 months time.

I think I'm gonna wait until I have the H100 before I even think of overclocking

(and use a decent thermal paste!)

 

[jonnyfgm]

just try re applying the heatsink, i think you'll get great improvements by doing it properly.

Yeah I'd try just getting a decent cooler, if you cant get the performance you want out of your system after overclocking you can always use the cooler in the next system.

What GPU do you currently have?

I have a 960 @ 4GHz and im pretty much not limited at all by the CPU, except in badly coded games that cant utilise multi threading properly

would i like an upgrade to 1155 or 2011? of course, is it worth my money, probably not lol

 

[jimbojames]

GPU is a ATI Radeon HD 4800 (name takem from the devicer manager) - it's crap!

I'm with you on the upgrade but what the hell

 

[jonnyfgm]

i'd seriously consider just upgrading the graphics and cooler, overclock the hell out of it, see if you're happy with it, and if not you can always upgrade further

 

[yassarikhan786]

Well thats a bit of a story - when I became an IT manager at my last company, we had 2 cowboys that were based on site that did 'IT support' and at that time, we ordered everything through them. I asked them to hook me up with an i7 system and they built it for me. I bought the system (over £1500's worth at the time) for £300 when I left (STEAL!) and I've not done anything with it since then.

I am in the process of looking at a new system:

Corsair Obsidian 650

Corsair AX1200 PSU

Corsair H100 cooler

ASUS Maximus Gene mobo

i7 3770k CPU

GTX680 or gtx690

16GB of Dominator or Vengance RAM

But I had a thought about just using my existing CPU, mobo and RAM and playing with my current CPU and banging in a 680 or 690 and the H100 just so I could start gaming so tonight I was going to see what I could get out of the CPU on the stock cooler but after those results, I stopped. I also might wait to see what the next CPU brings in 6 months time.

I think I'm gonna wait until I have the H100 before I even think of overclocking

(and use a decent thermal paste!)

Just to add to your proposed system an 850w PSU would be more than capable of running all of the above components.