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Intel Core i7 975 chip what motherboard and memory

IanBoyle

IanBoyle

IanBoyle

Associate
Joined
1 Apr 2006
Posts
117
Location
Central Scotland
hello,

Ive decided to upgrade slightly to a better chip
unfortunately this is going to mean a whole new motherboard and memory

fitting this chip into a choice of motherboards is not difficult but i really want to do a small air cooled overclock on this chip to probably 4gig +

so really just need a board and memory that will run this sort of overclock 24 hours a day at full load

as i'm stretching the budget for this upgrade on pretty much the chip if i could have some ideas on slightly less expensive motherboard and memory that would be great

all i seem to see is that the mother board of choice and memory of choice cost around £500 together :eek:

thanks in advance for all your help

best regards
Ian
 
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Why are you getting the 975? You can get a cheaper chip and still be able to overclock it ti 4GHz+ with little effort :)

You can get this CPU:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-283-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1272

with this cooler:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-005-PL

and a couple of 120mm fans, and this motherboard:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-320-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1283

with these RAM:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-071-KS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

This system should be fine :)
 
Under air cooling the highest you can hope for with the 975 is just over 4ghz. Under air cooling, the highest you can hope for with the 920 is just over 4ghz.

This makes the 975 a foolish buy if using air cooling, it'll cost you a lot more and offer no more performance. I'd suggest 920 d0, 6gb of 1600mhz cas 8, gigabyte UD5.

This gives you ram which is overspecified, as in 1333mhz cas9 will perform so close to it that you wont notice, but 2ghz ram is unlikely to run stable at spec and will end up being run at 1600mhz anyway. The UD5 is an excellent board which is very popular on here, the P6T is also very good but backed by the worst rma support in the industry.
 
hello,

i'm using an overclocked q6600 at 3.4 gig just now using a tuniq 120 tower heatsink so i'm looking for something that will add at least 1 gig to the output from the quad chip i'm using just now

when i mentioned a 4 gig overclock seeing as the 975 has a default freq of 3.33 gig i was kind of hoping to get closer to 4.5 gig than slightly over 4gig

as after this upgrade i dont see me making another one any time soon

i am planning to use all 8 threads on full load so the overclock numbers will not quite be as high with stability and heat issues creeping in earlier in the overclock

thank you very much for your very quick and informative response
maybe i should have been a bit more descriptive about where my system starts from

best regards
Ian
 
hi,

we both posted at the same time so didnt see your reply above and i'm a bit baffled by what you say about the two chips

surely a 3.33 gig chip can be clocked higher than a 2.66 gig chip ?

is there some weird thermal runaway problem with these 975 chips ?

yours very puzzled

Ian
 
I'm sure a lot of people buy the 975 hoping for 4.5ghz on air. None of them are going to get it. It's just about within reach on very good water cooling, but then the 920 D0 will do 4.4ghz on good water, 4.5 if you're persistent/lucky. On normal air you'll be thermally limited to just over 4ghz on any of the x58 chips, hence the popularity of the cheapest one.

If you were going the custom watercooling route, the 920 D0 probably still makes the most sense, but the 950 would be tempting. Motherboards tend to do 200 bsck (new version of fsb) without any bother, 210 with some hassle, and 220+ with considerable effort. 210x21 gives 4.4ghz which would be vanishingly unlikely on air, and I haven't managed to get under water yet.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. The 975 just isn't going to clock as high as you want it to.

The 920, 950, 975 are all the same chip in almost all respects. All that changes is multiplier, x21, x23, x"any". Bsck and thermal limits mean nothing over x21 is helpful on air cooling. Your only shot at 4.5ghz on air will come with 32nm quad cores, but they don't exist yet.
 
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^^

It would be very very unlikely that you would get ANY i7 to 4.5ghz on air, especially with HT enabled.

The 975 only comes into it's own and makes sense if you are running it under Phase or better. As an air cooled chip it is no better than a 920.

I'm saying this as someone who runs a 975 under phase at 4.7ghz 24/7. If i had air cooling, i would have a 920.

Save the money and get a better GFX for whatever mobo you have in mind.
Obviously i would suggest the EVGA Classified E760. A great board that will take anything you throw at it.
 
4.5Ghz is a really difficult thing to achieve even if you get a decent chip with a low Vcore you will need some serious cooling to do so.

Most people on here have a 920 @ 4Ghz or more it's easy and wont skint you.
 
if you read this and this you will see that the Thermal Design Power, Thermal Specification and VID Voltage Range are the same, therefore would it not mean that the 975 would have to do less work to achieve the 4GHz, so it could go higher? sorry my knowledge is limited on this side of things.
 
hi
i'm truly shocked by this revelation about this chip as all the bumf that i've read from intel and review sites rave about this chip

although there are not too many reviews of huge overclocks of it which i put down to the chip being quite new

i think i'll have a bit of a rethink about it maybe just getting the 920 and using the saved money for a slightly better motherboard and memory ?

this has been an eyeopener thanks everybody for your help so far

best regards
Ian
 
IanBoyle said:
hi
i'm truly shocked by this revelation about this chip as all the bumf that i've read from intel and review sites rave about this chip

although there are not too many reviews of huge overclocks of it which i put down to the chip being quite new

i think i'll have a bit of a rethink about it maybe just getting the 920 and using the saved money for a slightly better motherboard and memory ?

this has been an eyeopener thanks everybody for your help so far

best regards
Ian
Click to expand...

Yes basically just get an i7 920 D0 and with the money you save get better RAM, motherboard or graphics card :)
 
i7 950 is a good middle ground if you've got the money, the trouble with the i7 920 is that you only get a 21 multiplier which can be limiting as you need to run high BCLK which is the main source of instabilities.
 
IanBoyle said:
i'm truly shocked by this revelation about this chip as all the bumf that i've read from intel and review sites rave about this chip
Click to expand...

The 975 is a brilliant chip :confused:

But as an "Extreme" chip, it needs extreme measures to get the very best out of it. That is, Phase cooling, Cascade cooling, LN2 or DICE.

Air and water cooling will get nothing more out of the 975 than it would a 920.
 
My artic cooler pro rev 2 struggles past 3.8 with HT on. So im deciding to get an H50 this year to get it to 4 ghz and beyond with better temps.
 
Why do you need to run all 8 cores maxed out??

As others have said overclocking is not really the way to go unless you have extreme cooling. The difference between a stock 975 vs overclocked is minimal anyway doubt you would even notice it in a blind test.

Overclocking is a waste of electric nowadays you gain several % performance at the risk of component damage & it cost you more electricity to do so :rolleyes: Most software is a long way behind the hardware as multicore development is more expensive.

Games see no more than a few % difference FPS & even encoding is not noticeably quicker only a few secs.

I've had my i7-965 for over a year now since they first came out & nothing software wise stretches it at all. Most apps are just not optimised for it & apart from media encoding or 3d rendering its the same as having a quadcore unless I use a game which can take advantage of the extra virtual cores via HT (you can count those games on 1 hand btw!).

If your going to buy a 975 just run it at stock with the Intel onthefly Turbo mode which boosts it to 3.6Ghz & your warranty is still intact!
 
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