what the best motherboard and cpu to overclock for newbie?

[sadonhonghun]

i was thinking of an evga 680i and a quad core q6600. i saw most of the people online clock it up to 3.6ghz easily. i already heard they say you should start with a dual core if you a newbie. so what do you guy think?

[Webby]

I think avoid nvidia chipsets at all costs! Unless you want to run SLI in which case your stuck with them at least until x58 is released.

Personally I don't see it being any harder to overclock a quad than a duel all the procedures are the same.

Look at the Asus or Gigabyte P45 boards in the £70+ price range they should have all the overclocking features you will need and more

Oh and don't forget a decent CPU cooler!

[cptwhite_uk]

Get this CPU cooler, its a reasonable price and ace. http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=700899

See my £700 new build thread here for my experience with it.


Edit:
I'd highly recommend the Asus P5K-E board as it's jst a quality package with native 400FSB (so you can overclock the processor to 3.6Ghz without even overclocking the motherboard, or RAM if you have PC6400 RAM and a Q6600 CPU (or any other CPU running on 1066FSB))

[cptwhite_uk]

*double post*

[richieuk]

For newbies wanting a very easy overclock for decent price some people generally go with an Abit iP35 Pro board as they are stable, can be pushed far and very good build quiality. A little bit less flexible but newer board is the P5Q Pro board from ASUS.

Processors depends on your affinity to how many cores. Quad core is an easy Q6600 choice. The dual cores are a bit more flexible, staffsmike will no doubt correct me but IIRC the newer E7* series dual cores can be pushed quite far for a good price.

Arctic Freezer 7 is very good for newbies as it can handle a standard overclock and as it has grease ready applied, you cant accidentally put too much on. The install im told is also a little easier than more costly, higher end coolers like the Sythes and Thermalrights.

[Whiternoise]

The P5K series from ASUS are generally well regarded. Personally i don't think there's much point in getting a "newbie" board. They're all going to be using more or less the same sort of BIOS (with respect to the board make) and the general principles of overclocking are incredibly simple.

My advice would be to get a board that has a decent layout, is generally well respected for overclocking and follow Clunk's thread.

CPU wise, pretty much all C2Ds will be good. For instance my E2160 is running at 3.0Ghz without much difficulty.

I have Scythe Mine, and it was dead easy to install. Just four push pins and it was done.