Q: Whats the best buy i5-i7 for OC?

qwwwizx · Rated PG Joined: 28 May 2007 Posts: 23

Hi All,

Back after a long time. Over the past weeks I have been considering upgrading my comp: q6600@3.6Ghz to something more modern. It have work very well for me, and I cant say that I have any good reasons for updating it - I just need to get some new gear. The old beast is still going strong and I use it for playing every single day.

What should I go for?

I like to have something that will overclock like 30-50%, with a medium watercooling setup - nothing fancy. Has to be completely stable. CPU and Motherboard?

mrweasel · Posted: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 11:52:27 Post Subject:

I can do 3.5 on my i5-750 (2.66). could probably go further, but my board caps around 178 FSB

xoke · Rated PG Joined: 01 Dec 2010 Posts: 1

Wait a month for Sandy Bridge. Or better, wait 6 months for better Sandy Bridge or Bulldozer.

**Jason** · Posted: Wed, 01 Dec 2010 22:47:41 Post Subject:

Tough call - but I'm not a fan of waiting for the next technology if I need something soon. I'd probably pick i7 of the two. I have an i7 1366 system I really like still, and don't know where I would upgrade from there. OC's from 2.6 to 3.6 with ease... up to 4.0 once on air, but I backed off due to heat.

qwwwizx · Rated PG Joined: 28 May 2007 Posts: 23

Well, - I ended up upgrading to Intel 2600K, 8 GB 1600MHz memory and an MSI P67a-GD65 motherboard.

Quite an upgrade to my q6600.

The 2600k is very easy to OC - a nobrainer actually.

With the stock Intel cooler I did 4.8 GHz, ran 3dmark06. Temperature was pretty high, 98c on some of the cores in the CPU test. It felt stable, but considering the high temperature I didnt feel like taking it further.

Bought a Prelimatech Megahalem and some Silverstone 12cm fans and adjusted it to 5.3 GHz. 3dmark06. Temps are in the range 80c on the cores under the CPU test.

I can even push it to 5.4 GHz, but struggles a little with stability. I think I will need to take away some of the power adjustment features (EIST - C-STATE etc), to make it more stable. It wont pass through the complete 3dmark06 test.

You can read a little about my experiments on http://sites.google.com/site/qwwwizx/

One of the days I will recieve some corsair force 60GB ssd drives, capable of doing ~ 280MB/sec read/write. I will try different setups with them to find best possible performance.

1. Raid 0 using the Intel Sandy Bridge raidcontroller
2. Raid 0 using the Marvell SATA 3 raidcontroller
3. Raid 0 using the Intel Sandy Bridge controller, with Windows 7 software raid
4. Raid 0 using the Marvell SATA 3 controller, with Windows 7 software raid
5. No Raid, just used as plan disks.

What program should I use to test it? I prefer something that really shows real-life performance? What to expect?

dlb · Rated PG Joined: 21 Sep 2008 Posts: 24 Location: USA

Yeah - I was gonna recommend the new 2600k or 2500k also... everything I've read about these CPUs shows me that they OC very VERY easily on good air cooling (don't use the weak stock cooler). An OC to at least 4.2ghz is totally reasonable and achievable with one of these new Intel CPUs.

FlyingLigerZ · Rated PG Joined: 18 Feb 2011 Posts: 13

well he doesnt hafta worry about cooling. the cooling system on his current build is actually good enough. its just that by the time you get a new motherboard and processor, you might as well build a whole new computer.

AustralianGQ · Rated PG Joined: 18 Feb 2011 Posts: 10

personally id go with the I7 cpu