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I've already got 6gb, I've got another 6gb on it's way, my systems fine I got the chance to pick up some ram cheap so figured why not
i7 with 12GB RAM
- Thread starter MarcusCatterall
- Start date
I wouldn't use EasyTune - it's not advisable making BIOS changes via a third party app in an OS environment. It’s far better that you get your hands dirty in the BIOS and get a feel for what your doing – that way if things go wrong/become unstable you have a better understanding of how to correct it.
It would be far more sensible to just go for a modest clock and make the changes manually in the BIOS. You could, ostensibly, leave everything on auto and just up the BCLK until the system buckles under prime95 and then revert back to the last known stable setting. Then use and abuse with all your favourite games and apps and see if it remains stable. I would suspect you would get at least 3.0 – 3.2 GHz out of the i7 920 D0 without any changes to the voltages using this method.
This is a very simple clocking methos with zero voltage increases or subtle tweaking - plus you know where to look if you start getting stability issues i.e. you just lower the BCLK a fraction more.
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Hey everyone! My PC parts have started arriving. I will be building it next week. I shall keep you guys updated about the build, performance etc.
Can't wait!!
Can't wait!!
Hey everyone! My PC parts have started arriving. I will be building it next week. I shall keep you guys updated about the build, performance etc.
Can't wait!!
Hi Plasma
Enjoying your neverending student holiday?
What components did you decide on the end - is it a complete build including screen, speakers etc?
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Hi Plasma
Enjoying your neverending student holiday?
What components did you decide on the end - is it a complete build including screen, speakers etc?
Haha hi Plec
My holidays ended like 3 weeks ago but just been busy with assignments and a project which is why I never posted here. But now I have some time again and the parts are coming in so thought I'd update 
The final parts I went for are:
Intel Core i7-950 Quad Core 3.06 GHz
Western Digital Caviar Black WD5001AALS 500 GB 7k2
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1 TB 7k2
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1 TB 7k2
OCZ Intel i7 6GB DDR3-1600 Triple Channel OCZ3X1600LV6GK
OCZ Intel i7 6GB DDR3-1600 Triple Channel OCZ3X1600LV6GK
Galaxy GXY-GTX285-1GB-V2 GTX 285
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 Socket 1366
Antec P193 Gunmetal ATX Case
Antec CP-850 850W ATX PSU
LG Electronics GGC-H20L Blu-ray drive SATA (upgraded to the new CH08LS10 drive)
ViewSonic VX2433WM Monitor 23.6" FullHD LCD
Logitech Illuminated Keyboard
Logitech M555b Bluetooth Mouse
Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000
Logitech X-540 5.1 Speaker System
CNet CBD-220 USB Bluetooth Adapter
CNet CWP-905 802.11a/b/g/n PCI Wireles Adapter
A-Data 52 in 1 USB Card Reader
It is a complete system build with everything as mentioned above. I haven't ordered the mouse as it's out of stock everywhere in NZ. Can't quite help it (think a month's wait). But that's OK, I have a mouse already that I could use
The 950 is a luxury (i thought students were meant to be hard up?) - if i had known i would have tried to talk you into buying the 920 D0 and introduced you to the dark arts of extreme overclocking.
Although, i hope you'll be trying to make that 950 sweat a bit, for its money, with a healthy clock? (The UD5 is a clockers MB so it has to be done - but you need to buy a decent thirdparty cooler!)I see you went with the 12 gig of memory - it's going to be a monster of a machine when it's built. The only thing that seems to stick out is a lack of an SSD - did you decide to wait for the larger drives to come down in price?
Additional: Are you doing a RAID 1 with the 2 x 1 TB drives?
Great spec overall Plasma (very envious) - hope it all goes smoothly when you come to build. You should have a lot of fun benchmarking and finding it's limits - although, i doubt it will have many...
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Don't suppose there's anything worth reading on thiis topic out yet? Currently on 6gb, very likely to move to 12gb even if it costs me in cpu speed.
20x200 at 12gb looking probable? I'm going to do the widely considered stupid thing of watercooling the ram, but it's my toy so there
20x200 at 12gb looking probable? I'm going to do the widely considered stupid thing of watercooling the ram, but it's my toy so there
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@Plec
The 950 is a luxury indeed. Don't get me wrong, I am indeed tied for money but my parents are paying for it all right now but I'll be paying them back. I was at one stage considering the 920 D0 but I figured I'd be happier having a stock 3 GHz CPU and then clock it over for the fun of it. Currently, I'll stick with stock but later on I shall get onto clocking it. Sure will
I totally agree it'll be a monster of machine. I wonder how long its going to last me. Yes I am waiting for the prices to fall. ATM, I think the 7200 rpm HDD should do me fine.
No I'm not. One 1TB is for my VMs and the other 1TB is for storing all my documents and what not.
I am very pleased with my specs indeed. Some call it over-kill. I call it being prepared I sense a big hand coming my way to silence me
I am actually looking forward to benchmarking actually! Got a copy of SiSandra Soft Engineering 2009 to get all sorts of results. Ofcourse will be running Prime95 and SuperPI as well. Any other you'd suggest?
Also, I have a question. The gfx card I got shipped yesterday is the STANDARD edition Galaxy GTX 285. The one on the supplier's site was the tri-fan WITH PWM edition. Do you reckon that should make any difference?
Here are the links:
STANDARD
TRI-FAN
The 950 is a luxury (i thought students were meant to be hard up?) - if i had known i would have tried to talk you into buying the 920 D0 and introduced you to the dark arts of extreme overclocking.
The 950 is a luxury indeed. Don't get me wrong, I am indeed tied for money but my parents are paying for it all right now but I'll be paying them back. I was at one stage considering the 920 D0 but I figured I'd be happier having a stock 3 GHz CPU and then clock it over for the fun of it. Currently, I'll stick with stock but later on I shall get onto clocking it. Sure will
I totally agree it'll be a monster of machine. I wonder how long its going to last me. Yes I am waiting for the prices to fall. ATM, I think the 7200 rpm HDD should do me fine.
No I'm not. One 1TB is for my VMs and the other 1TB is for storing all my documents and what not.
I am very pleased with my specs indeed. Some call it over-kill. I call it being prepared
I sense a big hand coming my way to silence me I am actually looking forward to benchmarking actually! Got a copy of SiSandra Soft Engineering 2009 to get all sorts of results. Ofcourse will be running Prime95 and SuperPI as well. Any other you'd suggest?
Also, I have a question. The gfx card I got shipped yesterday is the STANDARD edition Galaxy GTX 285. The one on the supplier's site was the tri-fan WITH PWM edition. Do you reckon that should make any difference?
Here are the links:
STANDARD
TRI-FAN
Forum banter would suggest that 12 gig (i.e. all dimm slots filled) doesn’t seem as limiting as one might expect. Although you, obviously, have to consider some exaggeration in results – but if you take the general consensus as a whole the findings are very encouraging.
With your attention to detail and penchant for: taking things apart, tinkering, rebuilding and going through the whole process again for data analysis and result confirmation - I can’t see your setup being hindered for very long even if your OC were to hit a brick wall earlier than expected
. (As noted in my reply to your other thread – link.)20x200 at 12gb looking probable? I'm going to do the widely considered stupid thing of watercooling the ram, but it's my toy so there
I enjoy reading your posts you invariably don’t give up on a problem and seem to hold no fear of how the hardware will fare in your quest to resolve an issue/theory. Your quest for knowledge/data is refreshing and your resilience to breaking parts in the process is admirable especially considering your living off student finances.
With the above acknowledged – I am in no way surprised that you’re considering water-cooling your memory. I, of course, think you're barking as you can get a relatively quiet and efficient fan that will sit neatly over your memory and ‘probably’ produce the results that you’re after. But that, I suspect, is not the sole reason of the experiment – I’m guessing it’s something you haven’t tried before – and therefore it has to be done?
In which case I’m in full support – and will be very interested in your results and mandatory pics. You could very well turn out to be a bad influence on me as I had started to leave those days behind me… (at least I’ll have someone to point at and blame if my wife starts to question the state of my study and redundant parts if I do start to tread down that path again…
) @ States
Top of my head - IBT, ORTHOS, Furmark, Everest and of course Memtest86 – but, TBH, if it passes prime95, memtest and IBT and then works faultlessly when you use and abuse it with apps and games, consistently, for a few weeks you can be content that your system is stable. Look in this thread – link - under 'benchmark apps' for the links.
As for the card – if you’re implying that you ordered the trifan edition but have been shipped the standard version in error then make the company replace it – and ensure that they cover your return p&p too as it’s their mistake.
If, however, you’re asking how they compare then they're essentially the same card/spec apart from cooling and Digital PWM. The trifan edition is better equipped for clocking as the cooling is superior and with the addition of digital PWM it will run more economically. Basically the card you have is excellent – i usually buy the standard edition and if the cooling needs attention I’ll add a third party cooler – it’s usually the cheaper option, with newer cards, and will often give up better results when clocking. It's a great card for the above spec - either version.
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This may help some people suck if it's worrh it or not http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews.php?/memory/3gb_6gb_or_12gb_investigated/1
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Sorry for digging up an old thread but I am having trouble with stability overclocking my i7 920 to 4ghz with 12gbs of RAM.
System (CPU and GFX) are water cooled so temperatures are nice and low.
Specs:
12GB Corsair XMS3 Dominator DDR3 1600MHz (6x2GB sticks)
i7 920 D0 stepping
Rampage II Extreme Mobo
ATI 4870X2
PSU, Really can't remember make/model but it's half decent >1000w.
To overclock I increased BLK to 200, CPU Ratio to 20 and CPU voltage to 1.35. However the system will be unstable and crash or fail to boot windows if I attempt to set DRAM frequency to 1600MHz, @ 1200MHz all is 24/7 stable @4ghz (occt, prime95 and I've had 7 day up-time). Every other bios setting is default/auto.
Any clue whether this could be down to inadequate power supply or broken bios settings etc?
Under advice on another forum (http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=334923) I tried a few things (cmd rate 2T (2N), 1.65Vdimm, QPI up to 1.6, B2B CAS at 10 and 12) Any advice?
System (CPU and GFX) are water cooled so temperatures are nice and low.
Specs:
12GB Corsair XMS3 Dominator DDR3 1600MHz (6x2GB sticks)
i7 920 D0 stepping
Rampage II Extreme Mobo
ATI 4870X2
PSU, Really can't remember make/model but it's half decent >1000w.
To overclock I increased BLK to 200, CPU Ratio to 20 and CPU voltage to 1.35. However the system will be unstable and crash or fail to boot windows if I attempt to set DRAM frequency to 1600MHz, @ 1200MHz all is 24/7 stable @4ghz (occt, prime95 and I've had 7 day up-time). Every other bios setting is default/auto.
Any clue whether this could be down to inadequate power supply or broken bios settings etc?
Under advice on another forum (http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=334923) I tried a few things (cmd rate 2T (2N), 1.65Vdimm, QPI up to 1.6, B2B CAS at 10 and 12) Any advice?
It's most likely because Intel only designed the memory controller for 1066Mhz operation, it's easier to overclock to 1600Mhz when the IMC is only doing half the work (3 sticks).
Just use 1200Mhz the difference is negligable with triple-channel anyway, that's why Intel didn't put in a super fast IMC to begin with.
Just use 1200Mhz the difference is negligable with triple-channel anyway, that's why Intel didn't put in a super fast IMC to begin with.
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thanks for the quick reply. Is 1600 even an overclock, isn't that the stock speed and I should be able to get that. I'm underclocking.
I got 12 Gb twice only because I found good offers.
First I found 1600 Mhz Patriot Viper Series 6 Gb kits at £85 so bought two, then the price went up like crazy and I got £120 + £99 for each kit on Ebay after getting some Geil 2133 Mhz OEM sticks that OCUK had at £72 per 4 Gb (It costs more now just to get 6 Gb of 2000 Mhz ram).
My Patriot ram would not reach 1600 Mhz with all 6 modules installed, and I had to run it at either 1333 or 1440 Mhz.
My Geil ram runs up to 1800 Mhz at Cas 8. At lower BCLK, it can can manage 1600 Mhz at 7-7-7-20, buth a 200 BCLK, only 8 Gb is available at such aggresive timings, so I leave it at 1600 Mhz 8-8-8-24 instead.
If you are overclocking and want high ram speeds with tight timings, you want just 6 Gb. I only got 12 Gb because of those prices, and both sets of 12 Gb were then worth a lot more second hand after the prices went back up, but I doubt I want to get rid of my current sticks as I'll never get better ram without paying a fortune.
I did the same back when I had DDR2 ram, I went through 4 x 1Gb 800 Mhz, 2x2 Gb 800 Mhz, then OCZ Flex II 1200 Mhz. Each lot that I bought I got on OCUK this week only offers, and they all sold on Ebay for £5-£10 more or less than the price I paid for them after the better modules became cheaper. But now I believe I'm stuck with my current modules as I've gotten as good as I can get for the money.
First I found 1600 Mhz Patriot Viper Series 6 Gb kits at £85 so bought two, then the price went up like crazy and I got £120 + £99 for each kit on Ebay after getting some Geil 2133 Mhz OEM sticks that OCUK had at £72 per 4 Gb (It costs more now just to get 6 Gb of 2000 Mhz ram).
My Patriot ram would not reach 1600 Mhz with all 6 modules installed, and I had to run it at either 1333 or 1440 Mhz.
My Geil ram runs up to 1800 Mhz at Cas 8. At lower BCLK, it can can manage 1600 Mhz at 7-7-7-20, buth a 200 BCLK, only 8 Gb is available at such aggresive timings, so I leave it at 1600 Mhz 8-8-8-24 instead.
If you are overclocking and want high ram speeds with tight timings, you want just 6 Gb. I only got 12 Gb because of those prices, and both sets of 12 Gb were then worth a lot more second hand after the prices went back up, but I doubt I want to get rid of my current sticks as I'll never get better ram without paying a fortune.
I did the same back when I had DDR2 ram, I went through 4 x 1Gb 800 Mhz, 2x2 Gb 800 Mhz, then OCZ Flex II 1200 Mhz. Each lot that I bought I got on OCUK this week only offers, and they all sold on Ebay for £5-£10 more or less than the price I paid for them after the better modules became cheaper. But now I believe I'm stuck with my current modules as I've gotten as good as I can get for the money.
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See Intel's specification:
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=37147
Core i7 only officially supports 800/1033, 1333 & 1600 are both overclocking.
The problem is memory manufacturers are selling memory that most CPU's don't officially support, they obviously won't tell you that though because then you wouldn't pay extra for it.
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