System Builder Marathon: Overclocking

[falcompsx]

Anyone who looks at these articles and expects a "BEST DAMN SYSTEM FOR THE MONEY" to show up is retarded. Even if its up to date within the hour, its still only the best system for one particular goal. What if i don't play games at all? Why would i spend money on two geforces when I'm better off with a faster CPU and/or more memory? These are always interesting ways to see just what you get for your money with a paticular goal in mind. Here at toms that goal is usually gaming/multimedia oriented and there is nothing at all wrong with that. It also takes a good deal of time to acquire these parts and test them thoroughly then write up a review, edit and publish it so it will always be somewhat late compared to the news that broke 2 weeks ago, or a month ago or whatever. The articles give their time frame reference so you know what time it was relevant to and any intelligent person can apply that knowledge to their own build, changing parts as they see fit for their own needs.

 

[zenmaster]

The articles must have been far better than I thought at first glance.

The reason?
Pages and Pages of Whines and Complaints, but not one intelligent critique.

 

[Ogdin]

I always enjoy these system builder marathons and this one was no different.Nice work.

 

[wtyrrel]

I'd just like to say thanks for all the hard work. I've running a Prescott 2.8 up ~3.5 now, and I get moderate performance out of it; given that to upgrade requires that virtually everything but the case and drives be swapped out. I've been looking for nearly a year now, and can say that most systems weren't worth the upgrade to me, and now that they are, they're always 1 step away from the next newest thing. (Look at that review for the P5 supposedly due out late this year, WOW!) What I *want* is for these guys to try all these decent mid-ranged products and tell me what they can do. That will impact what I end up buying, because I'm never going to buy the $300 mb, or the $650 video cards. I'm going to buy mid-range stuff, and I want to know: what's the best mid-range stuff that I can squeeze the OC into the realm of high-range. I shall do that which they will as well, learn from the mistakes of picking the cheapest board, but at least very wisely steering clear of the known malfunctioning one.
Who knows, when I end up buying that SLI configuration they tried may be down another $100 because the ATI 48** are out and putting the squeeze on them, which makes them simply that much more attractive.
In the end, I wish I had $10000/month to build my dream systems too!

Thanks for all the work, Tom's, love this site!

 

[wtyrrel]

[citation][nom]wtyrrel[/nom]I'd just like to say thanks for all the hard work. I've running a Prescott 2.8 up ~3.5 now, and I get moderate performance out of it; given that to upgrade requires that virtually everything but the case and drives be swapped out. I've been looking for nearly a year now, and can say that most systems weren't worth the upgrade to me, and now that they are, they're always 1 step away from the next newest thing. (Look at that review for the P5 supposedly due out late this year, WOW!) What I *want* is for these guys to try all these decent mid-ranged products and tell me what they can do. That will impact what I end up buying, because I'm never going to buy the $300 mb, or the $650 video cards. I'm going to buy mid-range stuff, and I want to know: what's the best mid-range stuff that I can squeeze the OC into the realm of high-range. I shall do that which they will as well, learn from the mistakes of picking the cheapest board, but at least very wisely steering clear of the known malfunctioning one. Who knows, when I end up buying that SLI configuration they tried may be down another $100 because the ATI 48** are out and putting the squeeze on them, which makes them simply that much more attractive. In the end, I wish I had $10000/month to build my dream systems too! Thanks for all the work, Tom's, love this site![/citation]

 

[dark41]

As a system builder, I haven't tried every motherboard manufacturer, but I've tried a lot of them. I haven't tried every chipset, but I've tried a lot of them. Have to say that I've never had an MSI board where everything worked correctly. (Only bought about 10 of them before we decided to steer clear of them completely, and that was 2 years ago.) Also have to say that Nvidia chipsets have been nothing but a pain for me, especially when running RAID. We got blue screens constantly with Nvidia chipsets regardless of the other components, and often ended up with a corrupted OS as a result. I have yet to get a BSOD with an Intel chipset (knocks on wood).

Of course I expect others have had no issues at all with either one.

I'm not saying that I'm glad Tom's got a lemon. But I am glad they got a lemon and still posted the results rather than just get another board until one worked. TG has been partial to MSI over the years, probably because they've had few problems with them. But it's nice to know that I'm not the only one who gets lemons from MSI, even if mine seem to be much more frequent.

Nothing but Gigabyte motherboards and Intel chipsets for me until something better comes along. Fortunately I'm not dependant upon SLI.

 

[dark41]

BTW, have to say I haven't needed to RMA a Gigabyte board with Intel chipset in the past 2 years. That's a lot of systems in that time. Maybe MSI sends their bad stock to AU and Gigabyte sends their good stuff to AU.

 

[Guest]

Hi...

Thanks for the articles. I have one small issue. I read the $1000 build and thought, sweet, tom's knows what they are doing for overclocking, and went and ordered all the parts. Then I read the overclocking article with the caveat, this MB+CPU are a bad combo for overclocking... Obviously I should have read them both first, yes its my bad.

It would have been awesome to have had a note put on the $1000 build retroactively that said "we don't recommend this exact build, see the overclocking article but you could try substituting..."

Why? Its simple, there are people like me, who trust you. We are reading a "How To" article. In the same page where the system configuration is specified, "why we chose these parts x y z" it should also have updated "actually don't do this". Maybe a simple retroactive "Tom's Recommends" or "Tom's doesn't think so" next to your system build specs.

A question: What should I substitute (aka send back)? I assume the cpu? I read through all the comments and afaik the mobo is good, the cpu is good, they just don't play nice together. If I get a slightly upgraded cpu is that the way to go?

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]shouldhavereadit[/nom]What should I substitute (aka send back)? I assume the cpu? I read through all the comments and afaik the mobo is good, the cpu is good, they just don't play nice together. If I get a slightly upgraded cpu is that the way to go?[/citation]

I'd suggest a different CPU with a higher default FSB.

 

[Guest]

like an e8400 for example? that looks nice.

 

[Crashman]

E8400 is excellent.

 

[Guest]

Just so you know, I'm that guy who bought the system in these last two comments. The only difference is I got a deal on an evga 8800gt that is a similar card, and I only have one of them. Same CPU, same MB, same RAM. I was able to overclock the system to a 1466 fsb, for an overclock of 3300 mhz total so far. Perhaps the video card was to blame for your fsb limits? I am using slightly slower memory timings for now but I'm not done working with it.

 

[coupe]

Its pretty obvious that Laakuma is an asshole

 

[computerninja7823]

great article i thought. i was reading the whole "Laakuma vs. crashman" thing it was pretty funny but i think laakuma is in the wrong...