Please offer some advice on a new build

[bcsbcs]

Greetings all,

After having read through a number of posts on this forum and appreciate the knowledge some have about overclocking and systems in general I thought I might ask for any suggestions on the system im proposing to upgrade to:

Part Description Product Name Line Total
Motherboard Asus Striker II Formula nForce 780i (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £229.11
Processor Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £166.84
Ram OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-9200C5 1150MHz Reaper HPC Edition Dual Channel DDR2 (OCZ2RPR11502GK) £234.98
CPU Heatsink Fan Noctua NF-S12 1200RPM 120mm Silent Case Fan - 3 Pin £14.09
Heatsink Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/LGA775) £41.11
Thermal Compound Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) £7.04
OS Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66I-00788) £70.49

Part Description Hardware already owned to be installed as well
PSU Tagan 700w easycon XL
Soundcard Audigy 4 Pro Soundcard with external port unit – PCI
TV Card Hauppague 1300 hybrid TV analogue / DVB / FM tuner – PCI
Graphics Card Evga 8800 GTX graphics card
Hard Drives SATA Western Digital Raptor 74gb * 2 (Raid 0 Performance Spanning) + WD4000YR 400gb Western Digital SATA
Floppy Drive 1.4mb generic FDD
DVD Drive ASUS P140 Rewritable DVD Recorder/Player
USB/Card reader X-Pro multi card reader and front USB port

I know the striker II isnt actually availiable yet but it fits with my wish to not rule out SLI despite thinking of changing it to a X38 in hope of my next graphics card handling my 24" benq 1920x1200 res monitor better without the need for SLI. Having just looked at the striker II review and was less than impressed I guess I could go x38 and hope for a graphics card next year to handle 1920x1200 better than 2*8800 gtx's.

I am looking to overclcok the q6600 to about 3.2ghz or higher if temps permit. Unless the release date of the penryn's ever becomes known before my itchy fingers clicks the 'buy' button.

My current system is only a 939 clawhammer 4000+ which is decent for most things but I use skype a lot whilst playing and other games which benefit from multicore and use a Kandalf supertower case for this system and am thinking of keeping this system running, thefore i would need a new case, the antec 900, cosmos 1010 or stacker 850 i belive its called are on my possible lists, any case advice here? I am wanting to stay on air cooling, maybee liquid next time but for now I just cant be dealing with that.

I'm not sure about my choice of memory as its pretty expensive which is ok if its just not going to be wasted, not sure if I should be looking at SLI certified memory and if i need to really go up to this spec'd ram for air cooling system.

Any advice on this system would be greatly appreciated as like most who dont upgrade every 3-6months i'm a bit outta touch with it all despite all the reading ive done.

Kind regards, please help as im all confused lol too many options and complications.

BCS

[SiM]

Bad choice of RAM as it costs 4-5 times the amount of 800MHz ram and 800mhz does have some headroom for overclocking... Also motherboard looks expensive- P35 or x38 ones are usually what recommended unless you want SLi

[Pob255]

Yes that memory is going to be very wasted as you'll never get the fbs that high to make it worth it.
4gb of PC6400 (800mhz) would be a far better choise as that'll still give you plenty of overclocking head room and the extra memory will give you more longevity.

Remember the FSB of the cpu is x4 the motherboard fsb and the memory is x2 the motherboard fsb
So the q6600 is only actually 266fsb x4= 1066 (266x9 = 2.4ghz) so pc6400 is rated at 400fsb x2 = 800
Unlike the AMD cpu's which have the memory controller built in, the intell cpu's rely on the north bridge for the memory controller, so they get less benifit from running the memory at a faster fsb than the cpu, the same also applies for timeings.
Yes an intell based system will benefit from faster memory with smaller timeing, just not as much.

EDIT: Not sure on the motherboard or the new nvidia nforce chipset, they are very expensive though.

[bcsbcs]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I am looking to overclock the q6600 up to about 3.4ghz on air if it will permit maybee 3.6ghz so the 8500 ram be ok for this?
I'm not sure either about the 780i as the first indication is that the chipset runs pretty hot even at stock voltages etc...
Guess i'll have a closer look at the x38 boards, any that are particularly good for OC'ing quads and will definately support the 45 penryn quads?

[staffsMike]

Running stock, PC6400 RAM runs a Q6600 at 3.6GHz

this is often around £30 but £35 isn't too bad either
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC)

don't spend much more than that on RAM at the moment, there is no point.

[bcsbcs]

Appreciate the advice Mike/Pob255/SiM. My first time intending to overclock and hadnt quite realised what the relationship of the ram to fsb/multiplier was etc before my recent reading.

Regards

BS

[Thorsson]

As far as the HS goes, the U120 is the best there is, but the Ultima90, coupled with a 120mm fan is almost as good and cheaper, smaller, lighter.

I have that Noctua fan and also a Scythe SFlex 1600, and the latter is just as quiet and shifts a lot more air.