Yes, this is entirely for my sake of showing off my awesome new wiring job:



The Radeon is my old video card until I can get a hold of one of those blasted Geforce 680 GTX's.

Only sad part about the wiring was the extra power line for the motherboard didn't have enough length to go under.

Specs:

i7-3770k @ 4.1ghz (for now)
8GB RAM
ASUS P8Z77-V LK Motherboard
Soon: Geforce GTX 680
Corsair Obsidian 550D Case (OMG LOVE IT)
Corsair H60 watercooling unit
Existing Vertex 3 SSD, and a bunch of 7200RPM hard drives.

* Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz LGA1366 (CPU)
* Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P, LGA1366, X58, DDR3, SLI/Crossfire, ATX (mobo)
* Ati Radeon HD 5870 1GB, GDDR5, 256-bit, PCI-E, Dual DVI/HDMI/DP (GPU)
* Corsair 6GB Kit (3x2GB) Dominator, TR3X6G1600C8D, DDR3 1600MHz (PC3-12800) (RAM)
* Western Digital 1 TB Caviar Green, 3.5", SATA II, 64 MB, IntelliPower (HD)
* Corsair 650W 650TX ATX2.2 (Power supply)
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium 7.1 PCI-E (sound card)
* LG Blu-Ray 8x SATA, Black Retail DVD+-RW
* Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM
* Antec P183 ATX case

Had it since February 2010. Playing Crysis with maximum settings and only minimal (yet noticeable) lag when there's lot of shooting going on is just gracious. And no, I'm not going to get one of those Extreme mods to get beyond that, I don't want my GPU to overheat and blow up. Hell, I've already lost two GPUs from the $150 price range that way (in 2007 and 2009) and this GPU actually cost like $650!

I also liked how all the 99% of the lag in DX:HR was eliminated when I just updated my GPU drivers. Wow!

Sexy systems guys. Mine hasnt changed since my last shameless bragging thread, it's a massive amount of hardware crammed into an Antec 300.

* i5-2500K @ 4.8GHz w/ Corsair H100 cooling
* Asus P8Z68-V Pro
* PNY GTX580 Liquid Cooled
* 16gb DDR3 1600 G.Skill CL9
* Cosair F3 180gb SSD + 2tb Hitachi 7200rpm HDD
* Rocketfish 900W

Sadly I can't find any reasons to upgrade yet, those new Ivy Bridge cpu's are having trouble overclocking past 4.8ghz which makes it a little pointless for me. I'm getting bored tho, I might have to build something crazy like a Bulldozer-based pc for the hell of it.

I also need to look up how to proper overclock this sucker. All I did was up the multiplier a couple times right now, which doesn't get me too far.

On my old CPU, it was much easier (Core 2 Duo), all I had to do, and all I could do, was just increase the FSB. But that's apparently all changed now.

Haha Triscuit, I think I have more things stuffed in an Antec 300...

i7-920
ASRock X58 Extreme
Two Radeon 5870s (I think one's XFX and one's Gigabyte if I remember correctly)
12 GB DDR3
128 GB WD SSD, 2 640 GB WD Black drives in RAID 0
Antec 750W power supply
Mega huge 30" HP ZR30W to play it all on

I haven't felt a super demanding need to upgrade, but my brother just got an i7-3770K and two GTX 680's, so I may have to go nuts just to show him up...

I don't think anything has changed with z77 / Ivy Bridge, all your overclocking is still going to be done via the multiplier- you just might have to give the cpu more voltage. Everyone is saying Ivy Bridge runs hot- if you start having some high tempatures, you night want to consider adding another 120mm to your H60.

Sounds exactly like my previous system, I hated how loud my crossfire'd 5870's would get. It's like one was feeding heat directly to the other, then the fans would ramp up.

I've been considering overclocking my 2700k, but I have no idea where to beginning. Right now its running at an average of 30-41 degrees, the latter being after a while of cpu-intensive work. I'm running off the stock cooler so can I bump it a few notches without risking anything, and without ditching for a water-cooling system?

Really? I've never had a problem with noise.

Just bought an i7-3770K, 32 GB of RAM, Asus P8Z77-V deluxe (or whatever), Samsung 830 256GB SSD, existing Radeon 9790. Not **** lian li case

Coolermaster HAF 312 Case
ASUS P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3
INTEL i7-2700k (base speeds)
Nvidia GTX 680
8GB RAM

Btw, Matty that looks like my old Radeon X1900XT... please tell me you weren't still running with one of those O_o

You could probably bump it up a little. Go into your BIOS and look for a setting for 'Turbo multipler' it's probably set at 39x. Try changing it to 42x. I'm guessing that wouldn't even need a voltage bump. Check your tempatures while running something CPU intensive.

The only way to damage your CPU would be by putting too much voltage thru it, all modern CPU's have excellent thermal shutdown protection. There is a slight risk to the data on your HDD, but usually only when pushing much to hard or overclocking something that effects the PCI-E bus speeds.

Pretty sure it's his 4870

Oh yes, you're it, that's why I was getting mixed up. I used to have a 4650 at one point. Now that I think of it the x1900xt was a huge slap of white with some red.

And thanks, I'm going to look into that! How would I tell if it needs a voltage bump?

Based on my experience? If it doesn't work, then it needs a bump.

I haven't been able to push this thing anywhere beyond 4.2ghz though, even with a significant voltage bump. Could be not enough cooling, although temperatures are only getting into the 70's C at load. Not a big deal, the CPU is so fast as is that I basically don't know what to do, hah!

Trying to pull significant heat off of that tiny surface area is going to be interesting... The fun downside of die-shrinkage that hasn't really been much of an issue until now.

Right, although it's likely he would boot into Windows without an issue, but when stressing the system it would generate errors or bluescreen.



Might want to take a look at this- http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/zardon/asus-p8z77-v-deluxe-review/5/

Granted it's not the same exact board, but Asus is pretty standard on their UEFI/BIOS options it might give you an idea how to proceed.

Also, since Massassi seems to have a large number of i7 owners- You might want to consider disabling 'Core Parking' in Windows 7 if you are willing to trade some power savings for performance.

Asus CUSL2-C
Pentium III 930, running at 980 (140 FSB)
Geforce 2 Ti Ultra (64 MB)
Soundblaster Audigy
512MB SDRAM (133 mhz)
40GB PATA Drive.
DVD Combo Burner

having fun playing JO on medium there?

theres gotta be a hipster joke floating around in this somewhere...

Well I assume you meant the one I was using at the time? I built this so i can get some ~retro gaming~ on, and slowly upgraded the parts for faster over time. (This started as some POS PIII 450)
I keep a Voodoo 4 4500 on hand, with an installed 98SE with the drivers, I swap it out from time to time to get my glide on.

I might actually replace it with a Core 2 Duo I was able to pull out of the trash, but as far as I can tell that would kill dos compatibility while overlapping with things I could just use my main desktop for.

Is this method right?



Also, what does this do exactly, and does it risk the integrity of my i7? Additionally, are there other tips to optimize the cpu's performance?

Core parking is what Windows uses to automatically disable cores when they are not being used. It does this to reduce power consumption and heat output. If you disable core parking, all of your CPU cores will always be available.

Doing it could shorten the lifespan of your CPU, but not enough that you would notice it before you bought a new one. The effectiveness of Turbo Boost also depends on base power consumption and temperature, so disabling core parking will decrease single-threaded performance if you are not already overclocking.

Yes there are also utilities to do this for you like:

http://bitsum.com/about_cpu_core_parking.php

or

http://www.coderbag.com/Programming-C/Disable-CPU-Core-Parking-Utility

Honestly, you probably wont notice either way. This didnt get alot of publicity until the whole Bulldozer Win7 scheduling issues came to light. It wont hurt anything, it's a power savings technique- basically Win7 doesnt use the Hyperthreading cores until there is >50% load on the physical cores. For some applications that are heavily threaded this parking is too aggressive and results in a small performance loss.

She's getting old but still runs with the best of them. Not overclocked at all at the moment.

Cooler master Cosmos S case
PC Power and cooling 750 watt
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
EVGA nForce 780i SLI FTW 775 ATX Motherboard
Corsair Dominator 8GB PC-8500 DDR2
EVGA GTX260 SSC Edition x2 SLI
WD Velociraptor 300GB x2 raid 0
WD 250 GB sataII
WD 500GB cadaver
Feser X-Changer Dual 120mm Extreme Performance Radiator
4x antec LED 120mm fans
Kaze Master 5.25" 4-Channel Fan Controller - Black
Rheobus Black Fan Controller
Danger Den MC-TDX for Intel
Danger Den D5 pump (varible speed)
Danger Den dual Bay Reservoir
TFC ½ tubing
Danger den Fill port
HeatKiller v3 GTX260 water block
Danger den Memory sinks

It wouldn't have an effect on lifespan so long as the processor is cooled effectively. Slap a 30 dollar 3rd party cooler on there and OC the hell out of it.

Core i5 750
Gigabyte P55M-UD2
Sapphire 5870
12Gb DDR3
2x 64Gb Kingston SSD RAID0
1Tb WD Caviar Black
1Tb Samsung
HDDVD/Bluray combo drive

I haven't OC'd anything on this yet and I've had it for a while...seems plenty fast enough already, and it's two generations behind. SSD made the biggest difference, by far.

It's pretty old at this point

I only have 2GB RAM and a 128MB Geforce 8300 GS

Some ****ass old case
AMD Phenom II X6 1045T 2.7ghz
Corsair H60 Watercooler
Kingston 2x2 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 803MHz
ASUSTeK Computer INC. M5A78L-M LX PLUS
ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series (Gigabyte)
SAMSUNG HD322GJ ATA Device (~320gb)
Antec 350w PSU



I need a new case (for an actual 120mm fan bay and some cable management options), psu (lol350w), gpu, and eventually a motherboard, maybe.

You run that on a 350W? You are brave.

With a few key upgrades Roger Spruce and Alan computer's could still be quite powerful.

This thing pales in comparison to some of the computers posted here, but it plays things, so I guess that's cool.

Gigabyte GA-770T-USB3
AMD Phenom II X2 550 3100Mhz
Ati Radeon HD 5670 1GB
8GB some sort of ram
Roughly 1.5TB some sort of hard drives
Some sort of power supply that runs it all. I think it's a 550W Antec.
Some NZXT case that I got for like 50 bucks.

I don't really worry too much about this sort of thing anymore. When it starts not playing games well, I start to replace things. At least I feel like I did a pretty solid job on the cables, aside from that horrible looking green IDE cable stemming from my old-ass DVD drive.

I've been debating getting something along the lines of this...

Processor: i7-3770K
Video: Either two GTX 680s or one GTX 690, haven't decided on that yet. Going big though as to have enough power to not have much issue running my 30" monitor at native resolution and full detail.
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth Z77
Cooling: Corsair H100
Case: Corsair 600t
Memory: 16 GB of something
Power Supply: Haven't decided yet
Storage: Either a 256 GB Samsung 830 or a 256 GB Vertex 4, leaning more towards the Samsung as it seems to have faster read speeds on smaller data blocks and the controller's probably more reliable. Then I'll throw in a big hard drive or two for mass storage.

Darth: SLI is overkill even for that. SLI is basically a waste of cash now unless you plan on double some crazy multi-monitor gaming. Basically what I'm saying is, stick with one 680 (which are hard as hell to get right now anyway).

I'd also strongly recommend SeaSonic for a power supply. 620W will be all you need for one GTX 680. If you do go the SLI route, just go up one level.

Finally, unless you're a huge overclocker, I wouldn't bother with an H100 cooler, nor such a big case. Myself, I've been pushing for quieter nowadays, and the 550D delivered easily.

There are still some things out there that can stress one 680 at 2560x1600 pretty heavily (remember, roughly twice as many pixels to render as your average 1080p monitor). Two may not be the ideal price/performance ratio, and not everything can take full advantage of SLI, but I'm not worried about that.

Yes the 600t is a huge case, but having messed with one in person, I love it. It's also basically made for the H100.

I've been looking at the leaked benchmarks for the GTX670:

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/4710/nvidia_geforce_gtx_670_2gb_video_card_performance_preview/index1.html

If your looking to save some cash GTX670 SLI should be pretty beastly as well.

I'm a huge fan of everything Corsair, I built a coworker's computer using the 500r and thought that was pretty sweet.

The only way water cooling makes sense is to cut down on GPU noise or for extreme overclocking. Have you guys seen the stock heatsinks on the 3770K? They're about half the size of the old Core 2 Duo heatsinks. You really don't need much.

Isn't that the point? I've been running a computer with an H50 in it for a couple years now, and I wouldn't have it any other way. They're not all that expensive, they're piss easy to install, and they're quiet.