Intel i7-920 is a BEAST.

[kevanlol]

Had this thing for like.. over a year now.

 

I forgot that I bought the thing because it was good at overclocking. I never actually got around it till today.

 

 

 

 

And... oh, boy.. is it. Currently running it at 4.2 MHz, and holding at under 70 deg.

 

Considering the thing is safe up to 100, and it actually breaks at about 115... I wonder how much higher I can get... But I am scared now! He is in big-boy leagues with that clock speed.

 

i7-3960x, I spit on your 3.9Mhz, and your 1 grand price tag. Buwahah!

[Ryanhabs]

not to bust your bubble... but the 1-5 2500k is like 220 bucks and most are fully capable of 4.8 on air and 5Ghz+ under water. If you have subzero cooling methods I have seen a few hit 6Ghz. While 4.2 is a good OC for a "locked" processor, the 3960x and its little brother the regular 3960 are far more capable of stabilized high 4Ghz to mid 5Ghz clocks.

 

@ 70c under full loads (prime95 or intel burn test) your very stabil but I wouldn't push much higher than 75c. I'm assuming your aircooling and if your using the stock cooler or a mid grade after market you could always go with a CM hyper 212 evo for 35 bucks from newegg which has amazing temp performance for your buck to see if you can get the temps down for a little more headroom in bumping to about 4.5Ghz.

[Slammer64]

I use a i5 2500K myself Ryanhabs, and I agree with you.

[Ryanhabs]

To be completely honest... I have an i5 2500k build, an i7 2700k build on water, a 990x build on water and my spare parts core 2 extreme build that I used for most of my games atm. The i5 is by far my favorite as far as performance per dollar. Its a beast of a processor and really can keep up with the 2700k through most benchmarks (mostly due to luck of the draw chips purchases). My 2700k gets crazy hot @ 4.9ghz even under watercooling so I'm too worried about the voltage bump to stabilize +5ghz. The i5 I have had as high as 5.2 already but it crashed pretty quickly when I tried to benchmark it. Best 220 dollar processor ever.

[Skagg]

._.;; shouldnt this be in off topic?

 

EITHER WAY! This is helpful to me because I'm getting a new comp in about a month. I'm spending 1.5k on it and I want to make sure I get the best parts possible (hard to do when you know hardly anything of hardware....) but I'll def look into this stuff.

[Ryanhabs]

I always looked at off-topic and general discussion as virtually the same thing myself.

 

As far as your pc build goes, You already completed the first step as setting a budget for you project. are you looking in to building it yourself or are you going for a pre or custom built? If building yourself you can stretch 1500 a hell of a lot further than ordering a custom build and about 99.9% of the time off the shelf systems are only build for general needs and skimp on graphics processing power (video card).

[Spell]

My 2700k gets crazy hot @ 4.9ghz even under watercooling so I'm too worried about the voltage bump to stabilize +5ghz.

Do you really need 5GHz?

I think 4.5GHz is a decent compromise between speed/performance+stability and heat.

(aircooling) - yeah ' date='I don't use HT:D

 

[img']http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/9104/msprime2600k.jpg[/img]

 

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

 

[Ryanhabs]

I don't really NEED to oc any of my machines at all. I'm more of a pc overclocking enthusiast. I just try to get crazy ass speeds for nothing more than the knowledge that I can get it to run that fast. If I can get them to go really fast and stable under certain temps without any failures at all then I back them down a notch or 2 and run them as a 24 / 7 set up. I have had my 2700k as high as 5.4 but it would crash shortly after entering windows. I have some forum buddies that have hit 6+ Ghz with 2600k's and I think the world record atm is with the AMD 8100 series processor @ 8.2Ghz. I'm just fascinated by this stuff.

[Glugg]

I was going to chime in here to say that I'm very happy with my slightly OC'd i5, but after doing some poking around on my system, I don't think it's OC'd at all (which kinda pisses me off, because it was supposed to be slightly OC'd when I bought it). While I am still happy with my i5, I think there's some tantalizing extra speed to be wrung from it, so I guess it's time to do this the old-fashioned way -- i.e., by myself.

[Spell]

Keep in mind :

 

***OVERCLOCKING GUIDELINES***

 

Do not exceed 1.35-1.38v core voltage, doing so could limit lifespan of the CPU

Do not overclock with BCLK, again doing so could limit lifespan of the CPU

 

[Ryanhabs]

the i5 and i7's are rated up to 1.5v and as long as you can keep the temps in order are warrantied by intel to operate with in spec up to 1.5v going over will void the warranty.

 

I always up the fsb or (bclk) while only slightly to stabilize the rest of the system to the higher clocks of the processor. on my spare parts system which uses a qx9650 (socket 775) I have a fsb of 425 with a 11 multi on the cpu to get it stable @ 4.6Ghz at 1.45v on air. temps are 25c at idle and never break 60c even under prime or intel burn test.

Then again I don't pay for my pc parts and I have been doing this stuff for about 7 years so I may not know everything there is to know about OCing but I know enough to watchout for what is dangerous to the components.