overclocking and financial investment

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jjyu2000

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Aug 19, 2007
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When I look at the cost of putting together a fair configuration for OC, I am not sure if the benefit matches up the cost appropriately.

Here is the cost might incur if I go ahead:

CPU (Q9550): 323.9
RAM (4G): 106.5
PS(HX 620): 150
VB( HD 4870): 280
MB (P5Q SE): 102
Total: 962.4

Tell you the truth, this is not what I was thinking: VB (BFG 9600 GTX 512) 399.99, MB ( P5E3 WS) 274.99 or ( Maximus Extreme) 342. At the end, I can't justify the cost between a "mediocre" configuration vs. a "fully OC configurable" version so the whole thing is put on hold.

Back in early 2003, I put together two PCs, 2.4G and 2.66G, they are still running. I used so called the best parts back then, their performance is fine if you just use them to surf the web today. I am convinced good parts could last for a while. However, with the fast falling CPU price I am a little confused if getting the "best" configuration is still right way to go as far as hoping the PC can run for another 5 years or so.

You can call me greedy, yes, I want the investment can serve me for 5+ years. Do you think this is realistic?

thanks in advance.
 
#1 - Get the Q6600 ($180) or E8400 ($150). (Save $170)
#2 - Corsair 550w ($80) (Save $70)

There is $240 saved right there.
No Clue where you get $100+ for 4G of RAM.
That should be about $50 or so.
 



Totally agreed.

The Q6600 has a better chance to be useful in 5 years. For now, the E8400 will beat it in games, unless you run downloads and other stuff while playing.

Maybe a Corsair 750W PSU ($110). The 550VX is absolutely enough for your setup. With the 750TX you will have no restrictions if want to upgrade the video card in 3 years. If you intend to use the HD 4870 for 5 years or more, I'm sure it's possible. It's a very good card. However, I'm sure there will be something much faster in 3 years and under $300.
 
I can see why more people prefer Q6600 to Q9550. What about the motherboard? ASUS's board are so expensive, I am not used to the $300+ price tag and dont believe the extra dollar would make a difference worth anything close to it.

What's your take on motherboard selection?

Thanks again.
 
I wouldn't pay $300 for a motherboard. That only makes sense for a few people, who go for overclocking records and have a lot of money and know a lot. Something like GA-EP45-DS3R ($110) or Asus P5Q Pro ($140) is already good enough for most people. Combined with HD 4870 and 750TX, the even offer the ability to add a second HD 4870 and get a totally kick-a$$ system. OK, a $225 motherboard based on X48 (GA-X48-DS4, P5E Deluxe) would be a little better for that scenario. Still, $300 for a motherboard is nuts.

BTW, I've seen benchmarks with a HD 4870X2 card and a Q9550 in a long list of motherboards. The $300 motherboards were only a few % points better (in fps) than the $100 ones.
 
well, it's not even the top end boards that have the highest overclocking capacity... Biostar Tpower P45 is a mainstream chip with the overclocking record.
 
=.= i still will actually if a piece is better then the more expensive piece.just remember something the 8x PCI-e in CF can also OC to offset some of the bandwidth limit.just dont do it above 120mhz and you will be fine.

do you remember that V3nom?
 
One thing I take comfort is that you dont actually reject the notion of expecting the new build would last for 5+ years. Over time I've heard a lot of upgrade, upgrade but I can barely feel the need of following because my old PCs are still working fine, not really slow when I surf the web. The time I wish to have a faster PC is when I watch boring DVD and want to surf the web, or when I compile applications (take 15 minutes or 2.66G (single core) vs 12 minutes on a dual core 1.86G laptop).

When it comes to application development and running dvd viewer/browser at the same time, do you think the difference from a Q6600 or Q9550 would be significantly visible than the 5 year old single core 2.66G?

thanks.
 
I agree with iluvgillgill. The limiting factor when compiling will be the hard disk. The Q6600 will be used at way less than 100%, and the Q9550 at even less.

I just did an experiment: I'm working on a Visual Studio.Net application, about 2MB of C# code, and I rebuilt it all on my Q6700/4GB RAM/XP-64 machine. I watched the CPU usage in Task Manager. It was between 7% and 25%, mostly at 16%. The Q6600 is just a bit slower than the Q6700, and the Q9550 just a bit faster. I expect either of them would be used under 30%, and they'd finish the same job in exactly the same time.

What I'd do is get a Q6600 and a good fast hard disk with 320GB+ platters. That is, a 320GB or 640GB or 1TB model. Seagate, WD, Samsung all have such models these days. My favorite is WD6400AAKS, mostly because it's the cheapest per GB. Depending on how much money you've got, you might even want to consider a Velociraptor or some RAID arrangement with multiple WD6400AAKS or Seagate 7200.11 drives.

 
Yeah, RAID is probably overkill. RAID 0 especially is best avoided on work machines IMO, because it can lead to data loss. That's why I said "multiple drives", as in RAID 5 for example. Anyway, I went totally off-topic, sorry. My work machine has a Q6700/4GB RAM and no RAID of any sort and it's just fine. Before this I had a single-core Pentium 4/1.5GB RAM. The speed difference when compiling is just unbelievable. :)
 
I bet it will be good for movies and surfing. You can get some idea from these newegg comments:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16813121342

I hated the part where the CPU consumes 4W but the MB consumes 10 times more. That defeats the purpose of the Atom IMO. Might as well add another 61W or whatever and get a serious CPU.

@OP: I'm afraid we went off-topic again. DO NOT buy an Atom for your compilation work, it will stink. :)
 
im waiting for the dual core variate which is called Atom 330 i think it was.its like more then twice better then the single core version.but im 100% sure it will limit the GTX280 or the 4870X2(if it fits!)LOL
 
yeah saw a story on techreport bout that dual core atom :)

im probly gonna post this in the RAID section too, but do you guys think a single WD6400AAKS (two 320GB platters) would be better value than two WD3200AAKS (single 320GB platter) in AID 0 (so not redundant lol)?

not sure exactly how much price difference there would be, edit soon with that, but is the extra performance actually worth it? theres no extra platters with two drives over the single 640... hmmmmm
 
You'd end up paying $130 instead of $85 and having the same space.

The same speed when dealing with small files, maybe less in fact. That is, two heads will have to find the right track and sector, and that speed doesn't change because of the RAID. The part about actually reading sectors will go faster, but it's negligible for files under 32K or whatever a sector is.

All you get for your extra $45 is double speed when dealing with large files, such as when editing or compressing videos, or loading large game levels. That is, if the large files are not fragmented, once the first sector is found, the RAID 0 helps a lot when reading the other sectors.

It may be worth it. $45 is not a fortune after all.

Theoretically, Raid 0 is bad because when a drive dies you lose files on both drives. In real life, who cares. I haven't had a WD drive fail in the last 15 years. I also do backups on a USB thumb drive whenever I produce or download something worth keeping, and on DVD-R whenever I have 4 GB of stuff worth keeping.

Another issue with RAID is if you need to change the motherboard. I don't know if you can still use the data in the RAID array. Sometimes you can't and you need to reformat.
 
and with the whole "extra risk with raid 0! scream, run and hide!", well, if you had a single drive and it failed you lose all your files as well! i guess if you had two drives in RAID 1 would be the argument, but in my case its either one or two for the same capacity :??:
 
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