I need some help from you pros...

[djembeplay]

Hey guys. I have some hardware coming right now and am in need of some advice. I have never overclocked before, but am considering it now. I have ordered a ds3 with 965g chipset from newegg that will be shipped out monday (as well as 2g corsair, e6400, rosewill heatsink, thermaltake 500w, pny geforce 7600, and a 250 gig sata2 WD). But now I ponder a couple things during this early morning.

Primarily I am going to be using this system for a video editing studio (video rendering crunch times). Will overclocking modestly to maybe 2.8-3.2 ghz give me a substantial performance boost for this? Also, I ABSOLUTELY ABSOLUTELY need to keep my system 100 percent stable. So if I wont see big gains... im thinkin why dont I quick cancel my order and instead go with with this nice intel WHMKR which has dolby sound and the ich8R chipset which form what I understand is a raid controller. I am not even positive what raid does (assuming it networks 2 sata drives together for enhanced performance.) This leads me to another question:

Would I see more benefit for my purpose by having this ICH8R chip (as opposed to non-'R') or would I see more benefit from modestly overclocking?

If the majority think overclocking is the way to go, I suppose I will keep my DS3 order. And in doing so, this leads me to my final question/request:

As a new bord chick to overclocking, I need an explicit, informative idiots guide to overclocking the e6400 on the DS3. I apologize if this has already been written, but my research didnt return anything that was informative and clear-cut enough for me to get ahold on just what I need to know about fsb increasing and how that correlates to my voltage and my ram clock, ram voltage, PCIE settings, PCIE clock speed, multipliers (not even sure that that is), and whatever else there is to consider.

Thanks alot for any help you guys/gals might have for me.

Looking forward to reading the responses-

T

 

[kwalker]

For your needs you chose the right setup even at stock core speeds.
The motherboards supporting the Core2 CPU are still very new and full of surprises to a first time builder or even the Pros.
Personally I am more fond of the Asus mobos so I can’t really give you good advice on the Gigabyte board you mentioned.
The advantage of raid in disk performance is quite unique.
Better data control (more secure) and better throughput.
As for overclocking
Wusy is the Pro and has a very good guide to follow
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/Core2Duo-Overclocking-Guide-v1-ftopict197995.html
The one thing I would change is the power supply for overclocking and possible multiple disk applications.
Also consider water cooling or aftermarket hsf to protect your investment if you’re overclocking.
Good luck in your adventure.

 

[djembeplay]

Hmm so is raid something I can get later if I need it via an expansion card?

Also, If I am going to overclock to 2.8 or 3 ghz... I am going to need more power than the thermaltake 500w I just bought?

And... Am I going to need extra cooling on the motherboard chipset of my ds3? How long will its life last without extra cooling?

Last but not least... Again, I am using this to decrease my rendering times and increase my real-time previewing ability. Is overclocking going to vastly improve this or should I just play it safe (and get a cheaper board with ICH8R?). I realize this is a matter of choice, but please voice your opinions. I have... until tomorrow morning when Newegg ships out this MOBO... heh. Thanks-

T

 

[kwalker]

I’ll try to answer your questions as best as I can.
In regards to raid the on board features of your motherboard are raid 0, 1
Although this is functional there is no security for one drive failing.
One drive fails the data across all drives are lost.
Raid 5 (the most common) spans across multiple drives with performance enhancements and will mirror your data to another drive incase of one drive failing (no lost data)
This motherboard will not suit you for raid 5 and the price of a good raid controller is upward of $400.00 plus you would need a workstation board with pci x slot to have better bandwidth of the motherboard.
The $240.00 main board has raid 5 on board for your future needs.
The power supply issue safeguards you against failure for many reasons and not just overclocking.
You are going to use this system at near maximum CPU utilization at times.
This puts a stress on the other devices such as ram, voltage regulation circuitry, Northbridge …ect..Not including graphics card.
Play it safe.
Cooling is to protect your investment even if you are not going to overclock.
There are no real statistics for life span of your system in regards to stock or overclocking.
Heat is the killer and not necessarily voltage in overclocking.
With your choice of core2 CPU you may not even need additional voltage to achieve a moderate overclock.
But heat will be an issue at any speed at high demands.
I have had amd’s lasting over four years oc’d to extreme levels and a few P4’s over 3 years and never had issues that I caused by overclocking.
Then again I upgrade to keep myself occupied as of late and can not give you an accurate time frame with the newer technology.

And Last of all to answer your question about Performance gains while overclocked.
You will notice tremendous improvements on the core architecture.
It’s just my personal preference to state that you should not skimp on quality.
Don’t go cheap if you plan on keeping this system for awhile and using it hard.
You won’t regret it.
But saving money is never wrong.

 

[djembeplay]

I bought the G because the reviews on Newegg said it was the same thing only with a graphics card and firewire. And it was the same price... Or am I missing something here? As for cooling, I bought a rosewill RCX-Z3. Reviews were good and it looks up to the task. I think I will overclock then because I would really like to keep my render times as low as I can. So now my questions are:

Should I have gone with the 'P' and not 'G' DS3

Do I need to have a bigger power supply than a thermaltake 500w

Will the rosewill RCX-Z3 suffice for overclocking cooling

and Do I need to add cooling to my motherboard as well?

Again, I am not going to overclock extreme... looking for 2.8-3.0 ghz.

Also, I have corsair 2g ram rated at 5-5-5-12... that ok?



Alright, thanks a bunch for the help guys-

T

 

[djembeplay]

Oh right, almost forgot, what is the 240 dollar mainboard that has raid 5? Does the ICH8r chipset have that? And how can that be integrated on Intel's 120 dollar motherboard if an add-on raid card is that pricey? I feel like im missing something here...

-T