E6600 Overclocked

[Eekeyze]

I have decided it's time to get more serious about building my first complete build. I'm going for video editing and gaming performance(DX9). I love these forums; they have taught me a lot in the past four years despite the decline in quality of THG's published articles, so I've decided to come to the best source I know of for practical information. I already have hard drives, opticals, video card, power, and case figured out. Essentially, I want an E6600, with the ability to overclock to a nice stable clock somewhere in the range of 3-3.4 ghz. As such, I will need to know what is
(1) a good motherboard for this
(2) a good after market cooler (I prefer it not be watercooled)
(3) 2 gigs of proper RAM.

These are the three components I am least familiar with, and I know they all pertain to overclocking the processor properly.

I am not interested in SLI/Xfire as I am trying to keep my budget under $2000, and feel it is gratuitous, anyway.
Onboard video is nice, but not vital. I will do without it if possible, but it is always nice to have something in case my vid card decides to shit out like my last one.
I don't care about sound output...I'm half deaf, in college, and use headphones, anyway.

Here are my other components, and my budget:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115003 - $310 Processor E6600

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112105 - $209 Case Lian Li Full ATX

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341002 - $150 Power Supply 700W

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116059 - $140 WIN XP PRO SP2

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136033 - $160 OS/APP HD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152052 - $130 Storage HD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106057 - $40 Optical Drive

+roughly $200 for a video card (My video card will be whatever is the best value at the time I purchase all of this, I'm waiting on AMD to move) = $1350. This leaves me with about $650 for these last few components, which should be plenty. If you can help me select these three components, or even constructively criticize my build so far, I would appreciate it greatly. Thank you!

 

[dr_kuli]

@1) any mobo capable of 380-400 FSB will do, take a look here http://images.anandtech.com/reviews...s/2007/p965-awards/overclockingresults-lg.png. Asus P5B-E and up or Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 and up are considered the best. Abit AB9 is exeptionally stable at these speeds thanks to its 5-phase voltage regulator & Silent OTES technology, also has adjustable Northbridge Strap & 1T/2T Command Rate, which is not usual. µGuru chip&app comes with it, great for monitoring and really accurate.

@2) Scythe Infinity/Ninja Plus/Mine, Tuniq Tower 120, Thermalright Ultra-120/SI-128/SI-120, Noctua NH-U12, Thermaltake Big Typhoon.

@3)any RAM specified 4-4-4-12 DDR2-6400 800MHz will do.

 

[vietdeity86]

First and foremost, your build is pretty good overall. Stay away from IDE drives !!

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-e6420_6.html

read that article and see what you really want to spend your money on. The 6420 will be I believe around 100$ less than the 6600 while really not offering THAT much more performance. Of course, we'll see when the prices drop the in 2 days right? Anyways, things I'd like to add.

1: Get good thermal grease -> it DOES make a difference.

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/DaClan-Review-Thermal-Interface-Shootout-ftopict221751.html

read that, I have ceramique and shin-etsu x23, both work GREAT.

2: Why raptor? What a waste of money imo. I would buy 2 x 250GB WD caviar 16MB cache for 69$x2=140$ and run those in raid 0. Setting up raid isn't hard, depends on the controller (i'm sure gigabyte's ds3 and asus p5b will have decent ones compared for my crappy 80$ gigabyte mobo) I have those running in raid and they're amazing.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822144701

3: Can't you use the OS cd from your old comp? Make this your main comp and scrap the other one.

4: For memory, I don't think any 4-4-4-12 memory will do. I use patriots and they work awesome. OCZ/corsair/patriot/gskill/super talent are my recommendations. (PC6400 will probably do) 3.2-3.4 = 8x400-425 , so yea running 1:1 memory with pc6400 will do just fine, will provide some headroom too if you go to a higher FSB than just 400ish.

edit: My patriots went to 1040 mhz @ 5-5-5-15, they overclock WELL

 

[Eekeyze]

Thanks for replying; it's been helpful and I think I'm close to finalizing.

Vietdeity86...that's a good point about the 6420. I'll look into it more. I think I'll probably stick with the 6600, though.

I have some arctic silver lying around from when I helped my friend build a rig.

I also have no OS disc. My compy is a display model Gateway that did not come with any software or recovery disc. My parents gave me $700 and an hour to buy a computer (at Best Buy of all places) before they left me at my college freshman year. Anyway, I just got the display model with no warranty, and got as much PC as I could get in an hour, making modifications over the past two years. I am going to sell the rig off for two or three hundred dollars to help pay for this rig, and it's hard to sell a PC with no OS in it.

I'm just going to go with the raptor, most likely. I want my info to be stable and fast...and I've heard RAID can be unstable? At least one of my friends had his setup fail to devastating effect.

I actually considered Patriot earlier in the process, but I think I'll end up going for some OCZ.

I think I'll end up with the Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 and the Thermaltake Big Typhoon.

Again, thanks for helping, and if anyone can inform me as to why I should use RAID 0, besides cost, that would be nice, too.

 

[vietdeity86]

Heres a good read

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/IDE-RAID-Single-Raptor-ftopict170668.html

Anyways, for the E6600, you don't have to have 306$ for it, its ALREADY out for 232$

http://www.lagoom.com/Intel_FREE_T-SHIRT_BX80557E6600/BX80557E6600/partinfo-id-557155.html

up to you! in short, raid 0 will increase your video editing and whatnot more than a raptor will, but because its TWO disk instead of one, common sense would tell you that your risk for disk failure is double.

 

[Eekeyze]

Thanks for the links! I'm glad you just saved me $70 or so.

I think I'm going to stick with the Raptor, though.

Call me the avatar of excess, if you feel like it I really don't want to risk disk failure since I've seen it happen.

I may try it one day if the performance is disappointing with the raptor.

Thanks Veit!

 

[dr_kuli]

For memory, I don't think any 4-4-4-12 memory will do. I use patriots and they work awesome. OCZ/corsair/patriot/gskill/super talent are my recommendations. (PC6400 will probably do) 3.2-3.4 = 8x400-425 , so yea running 1:1 memory with pc6400 will do just fine, will provide some headroom too if you go to a higher FSB than just 400ish.

edit: My patriots went to 1040 mhz @ 5-5-5-15, they overclock WELL

I use Patriot LLK and I can confirm they're great. Mine are doing 1080@2.25V 5-5-5-15 on Asus P5B-E. But I still think any 4-4-4-12@400 MHz will do 9x400=3.6 GHz...

I think I'm going to stick with the Raptor, though.

You'll be disappointed. I personally know a lot of setups with single Raptor as OS drive (audio/video editing systems) - they're much noisier and not enough faster than single Samsung drive! Intel Matrix Storage with RAID1 for OS and RAID0 for workspace is much better.