3930K build with requirements.

chief barker

chief barker

chief barker

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Since buying 2 Gigabyte HD 7970 Windforce cards my i7 920 CPU @ is just not enough to drive the cards. So I have my eye on a 3930K build.

I currently have an ASUS P6TD Deluxe which has a nice gap between the cards. So the new board,

1. Must be PCI 3.0 ready

2. I need a board that will fit my 2 7970s with a decent amount of space between the cards.

3. Must have space to fit an ASUS Essense STX sound card (PCI-E). The STX sits above my 1st graphics card on the P6TD so that's ideally what I want.

4. At least 8GB of quad channel ram.

5. Able to be overclocked to 4.6

6. All this has to fit in my Coolermaster Cosmos 1000 case.

7. Am I correct in saying that my Corsair H50 is compatible with socket 2011?

Oh and nothing too crazy on the price.

Thanks in advance.
 
with a H50 you won't be hitting 4.6ghz on a 3930k, the H50 isn't even as good as a decent air cooler so you either need a top end air cooler for around £50, or a different water cooler for £100-150

mine hits 4.5ghz on a X79-UD3 with a silver arrow - although fitment of the SA is tricky, you might be better off with the UD5 as it is extended ATX (which your case does allow), although the UD5 has 1 less x16 pcie slot than the UD3, but it should be easier to OC

any X79 board will support at least 8GB of ram in quad channel... in fact they all support up to 32/64 I think, they all have at least 4 slots and some have 8 slots (on which you can just fill every other slot for quad channel with one per channel for best throughput)

I can't find any X79 board that has a small pcie slot above the 1st x16 slot, but most X79 board have lots of slots so fitting it all in somewhere should not be a problem

define too crazy on the price? there are a lot of X79 boards in the 150-230 range and they are all pretty much of a muchness it just comes down to which slots/ports you want more of and whether you have a brand preference
 
andybird123 said:
looking at the spacing of the PCIe slots... you might be better off with this one;

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-495-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2174

should be a good clocker too but I can't vouch personally for that

if you go with a big air cooler you will need "normal" profile ram (e.g. not ripjaws or equally silly big ram), but then the Samsung green ram looks like a pretty good deal if it does run at silly high speeds
Click to expand...

I'd step up to the PRO version for not much more, and yes they are decent clockers :)
 
You'd put the GPUs in the two blue slots, then you've got either of the white ones available for your sound card (matters not that they are a full length slot, the sound card will still work fine).

I'm assuming your GPUs take up two slots?

To be fair, given that the board is PCIe 3.0, you'd be fine with one GPU in a white slot and notice no slowdown at all (I have two 6970s, one in the top blue one, and one in the 2nd white one). This would leave you the bottom most 1x slot free.
 
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yeah, the white one is 8x, which at pcie 3.0 is still fine for 2 way crossfire (as it's equiv. to 16x pcie 2.0)

however, I suggested the non-pro as the pcie layout is more suitable for you imo, because your 2 7970's can go in the 2 blue pcie 16x slots and your sound card can go in the shorty pcie just above the 2nd GPU
 
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andybird123 said:
yeah, the white one is 8x, which at pcie 3.0 is still fine for 2 way crossfire (as it's equiv. to 16x pcie 2.0)

however, I suggested the non-pro as the pcie layout is more suitable for you imo, because your 2 7970's can go in the 2 blue pcie 16x slots and your sound card can go in the shorty pcie just above the 2nd GPU
Click to expand...

More flexibility with the full length slots though, and no lack of compatibility with 1x devices. You also get a more feature-rich board.
 
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Nothing wrong with that RAM, it will work fine if you get another stick (or another triple-channel kit and a dual-channel kit to fill all 8 slots).
 
told you mate 6 core is the future:D i take it there was a bottleneck then? you could just put a 980 locked or 990 in that board for the same results just not get a higher clock which you really do not need due to the extra cores/threads or even have Quad channel an full 6gb's support , but it is catch 22 again on highend cpu's on older platforms that make you rip it all out and start again:( :D:mad:

on Mb's though you could consider the Asus P9X79 DELUXE over the pro as that has 16 Phase power,i.e http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-487-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2174

also there is the X79-UD7 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-373-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2174
nice mb that one ,

if you want to use your existing cooler which you really want to change but you could use it buy get the X-socket asus boards i think there the ROG ones that gig one might do it but not looked lately as i have not been around much as i have had issues, i would get a Quad mem kit as well but that's easy sold and swapped latter on mate as you no.
 
REAPERUK said:
told you mate 6 core is the future:D i take it there was a bottleneck then? you could just put a 980 locked or 990 in that board for the same results just not get a higher clock which you really do not need due to the extra cores/threads or even have Quad channel an full 6gb's support , but it is catch 22 again on highend cpu's on older platforms that make you rip it all out and start again:( :D:mad:

on Mb's though you could consider the Asus P9X79 DELUXE over the pro as that has 16 Phase power,i.e http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-487-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2174

also there is the X79-UD7 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-373-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2174
nice mb that one ,

if you want to use your existing cooler which you really want to change but you could use it buy get the X-socket asus boards i think there the ROG ones that gig one might do it but not looked lately as i have not been around much as i have had issues, i would get a Quad mem kit as well but that's easy sold and swapped latter on mate as you no.
Click to expand...

Cheers mate, ;)

I really want to upgrade the whole lot to be honest. I want to put my old stuff in the kids pc as that is an old P4.

Another question for you chaps, the ram I linked to would that limit the overclock on a 3930K as it's only rated at 1600mhz. I really want the cpu to be clocked at 4.2-4.4.

Sorry if it sounds like a dumb question but I need to read up on OC'ing the 3930s.

Thanks.
 
chief barker said:
Cheers mate, ;)

I really want to upgrade the whole lot to be honest. I want to put my old stuff in the kids pc as that is an old P4.

Another question for you chaps, the ram I linked to would that limit the overclock on a 3930K as it's only rated at 1600mhz. I really want the cpu to be clocked at 4.2-4.4.

Sorry if it sounds like a dumb question but I need to read up on OC'ing the 3930s.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

The RAM won't limit it at all, as you'll be overclocking mainly using the CPU multiplier (which is unlocked on the 3930K). Even if you increase the CPU BCLK Strap to 125MHz (or possibly 166MHz) SB-E can run dividers on the memory to bring it back down to 1600MHz (or 1333MHz). Infact, if you are populating all 8 DIMMs Intel's "official" line is that you should be running a max of 1333MHz (obviously mine is quite happy at 1600MHz with 8 DIMMs and a CPU strap of 125MHz).

Here's a good read for SB-E overclocking http://www.overclock.net/t/1189242/...anations-and-support-for-all-x79-overclockers
 
paradigm said:
The RAM won't limit it at all, as you'll be overclocking mainly using the CPU multiplier (which is unlocked on the 3930K). Even if you increase the CPU BCLK Strap to 125MHz (or possibly 166MHz) SB-E can run dividers on the memory to bring it back down to 1600MHz (or 1333MHz). Infact, if you are populating all 8 DIMMs Intel's "official" line is that you should be running a max of 1333MHz (obviously mine is quite happy at 1600MHz with 8 DIMMs and a CPU strap of 125MHz).

Here's a good read for SB-E overclocking http://www.overclock.net/t/1189242/...anations-and-support-for-all-x79-overclockers
Click to expand...

Brilliant stuff, thanks again mate. Saves me a bundle on buying more ram.
 
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