Changed an i7 4790 to a 4790K. Is this rig Overclock ready now???

[FranticGoat]

Ok so I have heard a few things about the components.This is my first build after my Alienware MX17 graphics cards failed. Had it 6 years so it's stood the test. I served in the Royal Navy so it had been knocked about a fair bit onboard ship and in storage.

As this is the first build I wanted some feedback. As I said, done some research, had no idea what overclocking was, but thought that if I get the components that could do me such a thing then fine. I think the motherboard comes with some software (installed or driver available) so that overclocking can be done in a snap. But really, these things are expensive, so I wanted to make sure I am getting a decent build here that will do me right in the future. I should also mention that I am now in Uni for a becoming a graphic designer so I needed a rig that could handle all of the Adobe style stuff without frexxing out with memory loss.

OK the Rig:

CPU: Intel Core i7 4790K

CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX Extreme Water Cooler

Operating System: Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 3

Memory: 32GB Corsair 2400mhz Vengeance Pro (4x8GB)

Hard Drive: Kingston 120GB SSD

Secondary Hard Drive: 1Tb Seagate

Optical Drive: 22x DVD±RW DL S-ATA

Graphics card: AMD Radeon R9 390 8GB

Sound Card: Onboard 7.1 Audio (I think the motherboard is specced well?)

Internet: Wireless 802.11N 150Mbps MIMO PCI-E card

Case: Zalman Z11 Neo

PSU:850W Corsair RM Fully Modular

Peripherals:
Getting a set of Creative A250 2.1 Speakers too and it comes with McAfee Antivirus Plus 2015 and 3 Year warranty.

Already have a 32" Smart TV as a monitor, MERC Stealth keyboard and a Logitech MX518 mouse.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Been putting this together for a while now, swapped parts in and out before thinking about my final design. Graphics card from the old 290x. I wanted two of them, then there was an overheating issue, so I would have needed GPU cooling. New cards, better build... I think...

[kalniel]

What software do you use and does it certify any particular drivers/cards? It *may* be worth hitting a quadro or firepro card rather than a gamer card.

Otherwise, going from a 290X to a 390 doesn't make much sense.

[FranticGoat]

Well the software is Adobe: Photoshop, In-Design and Illustrator. But I should say that essentially, I'm a gamer first and a designer second. In fact, im not even a designer yet. I'm a gamer!!! So looking at a gaming set up really. I have heard that 16gb is enough memorty for games, any more is just daft (quitly 32gb slipped in there) But then 32bg is essential for the Adobe software to work without a hitch.

[kalniel]

But then 32bg is essential for the Adobe software to work without a hitch.

Depends what you'll be working on. I'm only an amateur user of those products and I don't have any problems whatsoever on 12GB - having the cache on the SSD seems to help too. But if you can afford the 32 then no harm having it and it can only help if media gets bigger and bigger. 8GB is more than enough for gaming though!

[FranticGoat]

8Gb, wow... Really thats all you need?! Cool, well I guess as you said its prepped for the future then, which is essential again. We can have many files open at one time that are a few GB in size and its been said that when very large files are being used (PSD format) they can challenge the memory at times. Keeping the cache on the SSD. I'll keep that in mind mate cheers.

SO the build in itself looks OK then? For overclocking and what not?

[kalniel]

If using it for work/study related design then I wouldn't personally overclock. It'll be more than fast enough for gaming without needing to. Dropping overclocking would also mean you can get an air cooler and save the expensive/faff of water cooling. I'd look at your storage - looks way too small to me - budget for a bigger SSD (256 at a minimum) and HDD (no reason not to get 3-4TB). Also make sure you have a back up plan in place, so maybe budget for an external HDD or cloud storage.

[jimborae]

And pick a different SSD drive brand, Kingston are not the best if you value your data. My recommendations would be Crucial, Samsung, Intel or Sandisk.

[EndlessWaves]

Back when CPU and motherboard chipsets were made by manufacturers overclocking used to be a way to squeeze extra money from your CPU for little cost. These days it's more like a marketing hook Intel uses to get people to buy their more expensive products. Given the costs involved you have to overclock to get your money's worth as you're essentially buying the next processor up.

There's no point buying Windows 7 Professional and I doubt you can these days (you need a retail version for a self-build machine, not an OEM one). Windows 10 Pro includes the ability to install Windows 7 instead if you need the six year old OS for backwards compatibility.

Looking up that memory shows it's usually price is £225. The going rate for 32GB DDR3 is around £130-140 so that's definitely not the one to go for unless you can get it for the normal price.

120GB SSD is rather small. With 500GB model likely to hit £100 before christmas there's no reason to be stingy there on a built of this price.

That's rather a slow wi-fi card. It's worth considering faster models.

That looks like a £1300 build and personally I'd say it's not worth it. You're only connecting it to a TV that won't support high resolutions or refresh rates so game demands won't be very high and coursework is likely to be equally reasonable.

I would go for a nice mid-range £700 build with an i5-6400, DDR4 motherboard, 8GB memory, R9 380 4GB, EVGA'a £30 500W PSU and Windows 10 Home. A £600 chunk of cash to spend when a need for it comes up is far better futureproofing than anything you could spend it on now.

[FranticGoat]

OK cool. Yea the SSD is just for operating software. I have a 1Tb sat here waiting to go in. Windows 7 is defiantly worth it and yes of course you can still get it, its still regarded as the best yet (save for 10) and is far better than 8.1. Regardless of features. Having found Windows 7 Pro for £28, (yea, £28) it was a steal! As soon as I install the OS on the 120gb SSD i can upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for free. having the OS on SSD will speed things up dramatically, upgrading to 10 Pro will do so too.

A 4790k is built for over-clocking, as are the 4 Heat-sunk Corsair 32gb 2400mhz V.Pros.

Im still not sure if it was worth getting the 850w fully modular PSU though… At least there is room for improvement and power drain.

i5 vs i7? You would really go for an i5 over an i7?…. Ok… There is hardly anything in a 4790 vs 4790k but again, over-clock ready.

Getting more than 1TB to me just seems a bit silly. I can pick up a TB for a few quid around here anyway so its not too expensive. Plus with cloud storage and externals (working in office with clients) they come in handy and only game data and some work will actually be kept on the HDD.

The TV is a smart 1080HD, so it should be fine? I understand I need VGA cable for initial installation of the monitor/SMART TV, but thats fine, I have all the cables I need.

Thing with the internet is for emergencies or if my 15 meter Ethernet cable doesn't work. Its fitted with Ethernet KILLER ports so that should be fine for speed me thinks. It really depends on what my data packets are, I old get the best router in the world and ethernet. Not going to make that much difference unless its on a high bandwidth.

[EndlessWaves]

and yes of course you can still get it, its still regarded as the best yet (save for 10) and is far better than 8.1. Regardless of features. Having found Windows 7 Pro for £28, (yea, £28) it was a steal!

That sounds dubious to me. It's very unlikely there's any significant number of unsold windows 7 boxes around. At best it's likely to be an OEM key which you're not support to use except for machines you're building to sell but which Microsoft have never clamped down on. It could easily be someone flogging off their company's volume licence keys that'll stop working in a year or two.

A 4790k is built for over-clocking, as are the 4 Heat-sunk Corsair 32gb 2400mhz V.Pros.

Yeah, but unless you can actually benefit from it then it's just meaningless numbers. Right now buying fast memory is like buying a watch that's waterproof to 300m. A few people doing a very specific thing will actually make use of it but for most people it'll bring no benefit and cost more.

i5 vs i7? You would really go for an i5 over an i7?…. Ok…

Imagine you bought this system four years ago. Would you rather be able to buy a brand new i5 system now or continue for another four years with a 2011 i7?

When you've just bought a system everyone else in on older hardware so whatever you get now is going to be faster than the average adobe software user. Why spend more on a particularly fast processor when you least need it when you could save the money for when it's more useful?

[gupsterg]

A 4790k is built for over-clocking, as are the 4 Heat-sunk Corsair 32gb 2400mhz V.Pros.

RAM doesn't get very hot .

I may not have fair comparison on DDR3 but can tell you I owned some Adata / TeamGroup and the Corsair Dominator for my Q6600 rig and they run at higher voltage than DDR3 and even the Adata / TeamGroup RAM was not held back by the thin low profile sheets of metal they had on them. What made them OC well was the IC of RAM used on them .

Dropping overclocking would also mean you can get an air cooler and save the expensive/faff of water cooling.

Not IMO , air cooled getting 4.8GHz rock solid on my current i5 4690K, 2nd hand Archon SB-E X2 (£13.50). This OC profile is pretty much quiet IMO for general use / gaming, only audible when room silent and being set to stability test / pushed hard. MAX core temps are about 70c which in gaming the CPU is not gonna hit IMO.

Usually OC's I test for plenty of hours, above has done 24hrs F@H and 54 loops (9hrs) x264 stability test.

Given the costs involved you have to overclock to get your money's worth as you're essentially buying the next processor up.

Disagree with this part of your post, buying the right products with some savy buying = overclocking without the price tag .

Yeah, but unless you can actually benefit from it then it's just meaningless numbers. Right now buying fast memory is like buying a watch that's waterproof to 300m. A few people doing a very specific thing will actually make use of it but for most people it'll bring no benefit and cost more.

I can agree, currently my GPU limits system performance not CPU and that's even with low 4.4GHz OC (not tested stock). SO numbers can be meaningless. And here's the but, a heavily OC'd system can mean you may not upgrade system for a while, keep slotting a GPU as and when needed.

For example with my Q6600 rig (IIRC) it lasted through 3 differing GPUs and even had a 290 in it for a while (no 4 ) and yes it bottlenecked that and went for a i5. I will admit I stayed at 1680 x 1050 for gaming on my Q6600 .

[Marcvs]

OK cool. Yea the SSD is just for operating software. I have a 1Tb sat here waiting to go in. Windows 7 is defiantly worth it and yes of course you can still get it, its still regarded as the best yet (save for 10) and is far better than 8.1. Regardless of features. Having found Windows 7 Pro for £28, (yea, £28) it was a steal! As soon as I install the OS on the 120gb SSD i can upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for free. having the OS on SSD will speed things up dramatically, upgrading to 10 Pro will do so too.

A 4790k is built for over-clocking, as are the 4 Heat-sunk Corsair 32gb 2400mhz V.Pros.

Im still not sure if it was worth getting the 850w fully modular PSU though… At least there is room for improvement and power drain.

i5 vs i7? You would really go for an i5 over an i7?…. Ok… There is hardly anything in a 4790 vs 4790k but again, over-clock ready.

Getting more than 1TB to me just seems a bit silly. I can pick up a TB for a few quid around here anyway so its not too expensive. Plus with cloud storage and externals (working in office with clients) they come in handy and only game data and some work will actually be kept on the HDD.

The TV is a smart 1080HD, so it should be fine? I understand I need VGA cable for initial installation of the monitor/SMART TV, but thats fine, I have all the cables I need.

Thing with the internet is for emergencies or if my 15 meter Ethernet cable doesn't work. Its fitted with Ethernet KILLER ports so that should be fine for speed me thinks. It really depends on what my data packets are, I old get the best router in the world and ethernet. Not going to make that much difference unless its on a high bandwidth.

If you are going to be adobe-ing 250gb minimum preferably 500gb.

I use Adobe CC and a few other programs and I need over 500gb on my boot drive. Adobe CC is like 70gb on its own, add 35gb for OS and 120GB is too small. My recommendation is always 250 or 500gb 850 Evo, unless you are a heavy storage user in which case the pro.

Adobe and Visual Studio especially do not install well on 2nd drives.