# Best 1366 mobo for 24/7 overclocking



## twilyth (Nov 6, 2010)

This probably belongs in the overclocking and cooling forum, but if anyone knows the value of 24/7 stable overclocking it's the WCG crowd.  If the mods thinks this should be moved, I won't bitch about it.

The egg has i7-950's on sale ($5 off - woo-hoo) for $295.  I have a couple of questions.

1.  are the ppd for 950 and a 1090T at the same clock speed about the same?  I vaguely recall that on a cpu intensive app like WCG you only get about 50% of extra performance per core with the new architecture's virtual threads - which by itself is pretty impressive but that still only makes it equivalent to an X6.

2.  assuming that the 950 has the advantage, what is the best 1366 mobo to use.  I'd rather not pay $350 for an Asus Rampage II, but if that is hands down the best choice, then give it to me straight.

I just finished a second 1090T build so this is just window shopping at this point.  I don't have any plans to spend another grand on a machine I don't really need.  But even so, I'm curious if I did decide to do something insane like that, what board would give me the best overclock for the fewest dollars.

I should also point out that the 1090T is now around $240 and equivalent Asus boards for that chip are a bit cheaper.  So should I even be considering a 950?

I don't want this to become a fanboy pissing contest and I trust the WCG members here to be objective when it comes to matters involving PPD.


----------



## bogmali (Nov 6, 2010)

Budget board would be the Asrock Extreme3 but for better value you can't go wrong with an X58A-UDR3 from Gigabyte. If you're interested, I'm about to put my X58A-UD7 for sale either tomorrow or Sunday.


----------



## [Ion] (Nov 6, 2010)

An i7 will pull roughly 8 PPD per MHZ, an X6, roughly 6.  WCG points OFC 

The Giga UD3R is supposed to be pretty good...although you could go for an i7 860 and a P55 and save some money, 3.8ghz is still reasonably easy if you can keep it cool (not too hard IMO)


----------



## LAN_deRf_HA (Nov 6, 2010)

I'm loving my P6X58D. First truly flawless board I've had.


----------



## twilyth (Nov 6, 2010)

[Ion] said:


> An i7 will pull roughly 8 PPD per MHZ, an X6, roughly 6.  WCG points OFC
> 
> The Giga UD3R is supposed to be pretty good...although you could go for an i7 860 and a P55 and save some money, 3.8ghz is still reasonably easy if you can keep it cool (not too hard IMO)



Really?  That's comparing a quad i7 to an X6?  Damn.  I knew AMD was behind in terms of instructions per cycle, but when your 6 core trails their 4 core . . . I love AMD, I really do, but they need to pull a rabbit out of their hat with bulldozer. /fanboy rant.

edit - oh, and thanks for the tip.  My problem is that I'm kind of a klutz (or I guess that's the reason) and I tend to burn out even good motherboards even though I think I'm being cautious.  That's why I love the crosshair.  You can't kill it - at least I can't kill it easily.  But if I can get 3.8 with just voltage and fsb clocks, I can probably manage that much.


----------



## [Ion] (Nov 6, 2010)

For my i7 860, I just upped the BLCK, disabled Turbo, and upped the vCore and it's been stable @ 3.8ghz since June 

Asu P7P55D Pro BTW


----------



## twilyth (Nov 7, 2010)

Well, just for yuks I priced it out with the Asrock mobo, 12gig of ddr3-2000, the new thermaltake case (V9) with dual SATA docks, i7-950 and 750 Antec 80+ PSU - came to about $1100.

{Sigh} Thankfully it doesn't cost anything to fantasize.


----------



## mstenholm (Nov 7, 2010)

6 GB of DDR3-1600 will serve you good too and it makes it easiere to OC I have heard. Could be a thing of the past. Asrock is easy to get to 3.8 GHZ but from there it gets hard.


----------



## twilyth (Nov 9, 2010)

Well, I pulled the trigger on this.  I got $25 off on both the i7-950 and the Gigabyte board.  If you don't get the emails from Newegg, you have to sign up.

The gf finally deigned to take the laptop I'd bought her.  Really, she's very sweet but needed Word and Excel installed on it and I kept putting it off.  So I finally got around to that and now I need a computer for the spare room.

I'm justifying this in my own mind by the fact that I'll be selling the Q9450 I've got running now (CP has dibs on that chip) plus a couple of other cpu's, a butt load of DDR2 memory, a couple of mobos and whatever else I can scrounge up.  It won't pay for the new rig but I should be able to get about 1/3 to 1/2 of the $600 or bucks that I had to put out in parts.

I just hope I don't fry another mobo trying to overclock this sucker.  that shit is gettin' really old.


----------



## n-ster (Nov 9, 2010)

i7 950s are 229.99$ + 3.5% tax at the NJ microcenter....


----------



## Flibolito (Nov 9, 2010)

+1 on the UD3R
great bang for the buck and overclocks like a champ
min has been running strong for almost a year not a single hitch


----------



## twilyth (Nov 9, 2010)

n-ster said:


> i7 950s are 229.99$ + 3.5% tax at the NJ microcenter....



Checked it out but is for in-store pick up only and Paterson is at least a 45 min drive.  But thanks anyway.  Plus since it's an OEM part I'm not sure I can even return it to new egg.  I'd have to check their return policy,.


----------



## n-ster (Nov 9, 2010)

Did you use EMCZZYX74 ? ended up just a tad over 500$ correct?


----------



## CJCerny (Nov 9, 2010)

I7-950 is $230 at Microcenter. Microcenter almost always has better CPU prices than Newegg.


----------



## n-ster (Nov 9, 2010)

CJCerny said:


> I7-950 is $230 at Microcenter. Microcenter almost always has better CPU prices than Newegg.



He just said it was too long of a drive for him... and besides, only a few posts up did I mention this....


----------



## twilyth (Nov 9, 2010)

n-ster said:


> Did you use EMCZZYX74 ? ended up just a tad over 500$ correct?



I don't know - that's not the sort of think I would ever remember.  But here is an excerpt from my invoice if that helps.



> .  	1
> 
> Rosewill Green Series RG530-S12 530W Continuous @40°C, 80 PLUS Certified, Single 12V Rail, Active PFC "Compatible with Core ...
> Item #: N82E16817182199
> ...


As you know, the promos come off of the bottom line and aren't reflected in the invoice.

Also, it was only $15 off for the mobo, but that made it the same price as the Asrock board.

edit:  It does suck paying $40 more and if you can order those specials through the mail rather than going in person, I will make it a point to check MicroCenter in the future.


----------



## JrRacinFan (Nov 9, 2010)

I'm just trying to understand why you went with a Rosewill psu and a 950 rather than a 920/930 and a better psu"??"

EDIT:
I mean, I'm not " knocking/dissin' " your build, it's damn nice!


----------



## n-ster (Nov 9, 2010)

oh I thought you went with the X58A 

yea JR is right, you shouldn't cheap out on that PSU... Especially if you want to Overclock!

But for a 24/7 build, I would have paid the 90$ more to go for the E5620, the fact that it is 32nm and has 12mb cache helps with performance and with controlling temps / having stable 24/7 clocks

Anyhow, good luck with your build!


----------



## Deleted member 74752 (Nov 9, 2010)

Evga X58 SLI for $129.99 here... http://www.evga.com/products/prodlist.asp?switch=20


----------



## twilyth (Nov 9, 2010)

JrRacinFan said:


> I'm just trying to understand why you went with a Rosewill psu and a 950 rather than a 920/930 and a better psu"??"
> 
> EDIT:
> I mean, I'm not " knocking/dissin' " your build, it's damn nice!





n-ster said:


> oh I thought you went with the X58A
> 
> yea JR is right, you shouldn't cheap out on that PSU... Especially if you want to Overclock!
> 
> ...


Well, you have to understand that this machine will be mainly used by the gf when she's here and so won't be doing much besides crunching.  Also, as you can see there isn't much of a demand on the PSU since the biggest draw will be the cpu.  i'm putting a GT210 that I already had in there for the video.  So the psu will be running well below specs even if I oc.  I'm not going crazy on the oc either.  I'll be happy to get a 25% increase to 3.7 or 3.8ghz.

Even my X6's oc'd to 3.9-4ghz with 4 x 2gig sticks have sub-600watt psu's and seem to be doing fine.  I'll have to put the kill-a-watt meter on them to see what the draw is but I'm sure they're running under spec as well.

edit - I appreciate the tip about the server chip, but I avoid those because they're always more expensive and clocked much more conservatively for a given price point.  The E5620 chip is $100 more and stock clock is 600mhz less.  I know they clock better but I don't want to count on that.


----------



## n-ster (Nov 9, 2010)

A better PSU doesn't mean a bigger one... the advantage of, say, a 500W Corsair, is that the current etc is of higher quality and more stable

As for the overclock, an i7 920 D0 and an i7 950 is basically the same, but factory overclocked. 3.7~3.8 ghz should be obtainable from any lga 1366 quad lol

But I'm sure everything is going to work out, you pulled the trigger, lets not look back and enjoy what is coming lol


----------



## twilyth (Nov 9, 2010)

n-ster said:


> A better PSU doesn't mean a bigger one... the advantage of, say, a 500W Corsair, is that the current etc is of higher quality and more stable
> 
> As for the overclock, an i7 920 D0 and an i7 950 is basically the same, but factory overclocked. 3.7~3.8 ghz should be obtainable from any lga 1366 quad lol
> 
> But I'm sure everything is going to work out, you pulled the trigger, lets not look back and enjoy what is coming lol



I appreciate the advice - even if it seems that I'm arguing with you.

I did a shopping search on the 920 and the lowest price I saw was $268.  Since I paid $270 for the 950, I figure that it's basically a wash.  Of course you probably know of someplace I could get it cheaper and next time I'm definitely going to solicit prices from people.  Google shopping is ok but I don't think you ever see the really good deals there.

The point about the stability of the PSU is well taken and I hadn't thought of that.  I was going to get a Corsair that was a little more expensive but it wasn't 80+ certified.  Normally I don't cheap out on components but I feel guilty about doing this to begin with so I cut corners.  For example, I would never normally consider anything less than 8 gig for a new build.  But I've had good luck with the Wintec DDR2 chips and figured 6gig should be more than enough for running MS office an web browsing.

But if I run into problems with the overclock not being stable, I'll definitely consider the PSU as a possible culprit.  I'll have it hooked up to a UPS but I suspect that won't make much of a difference if the PSU itself is squirrely.


----------

