System on overclockers - what € could it be built for?

grizzly

If I was to order the parts that make up this and assamble myself, what's the cheapest I could do it for?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-174-OE&groupid=43&catid=1917&subcat=

Also question on overclocking; what are the "cons" to it? Does it reduce the life of the parts? Or make games more likely to crash? (compared to standard configuration systems).

diddly3000

this is the same build from hardwareversand.de

Shy_Dave!

On the 'cons' of overclocking off the top of my head:
Generates extra heat therefore requiring better cooling, reduces the lifespan of your hardware (Although this could be from 200 years to 199 if you get me),
Most likely requires upping of voltages which means more wattage which means and extra 10-50 euro a year on your bills, If you give too little voltage it causes instability.
That's just a little bit off the top of my head, I'm sure others hear can give you a better guideline!

massy086

great saving there lol

challengemaster

massy086 wrote: »

great saving there lol

Tis actually some saving...

OC.UK is in £ remember?

It works out at €1,896.287

So that's €300 savings...

massy086

check out komplette they have good deals on sandy bridge

diddly3000

well £1599,98 sterling is 1896.65 euro.
so yeah 300 euro is good savings:P lol

diddly3000

komplett aren't a bad site but they have a very poor selection of components. the free delivery to ireland is only good thing

massy086

diddly3000 wrote: »

komplett aren't a bad site but they have a very poor selection of components. the free delivery to ireland is only good thing

i believe there try to sort that out

diddly3000

massy086 wrote: »

i believe there try to sort that out

hope so

grizzly

Thanks for the replies. Another question on overclocking –*if you can buy a system overclocked, but without an OS installed (as in the link in the first post), does that mean it is all done on a hardware level? I thought overclocking required a software component to interact with.

challengemaster

Nope. Overclocking (CPU) is done through the bios, no OS/software required.

grizzly

I asked about this system on another forum and got this reply about Sandy Bridge not being a good option for Dual GPU upgrades;

It is not the best for multi-GPU upgrades because the PCIe lanes on it are limited to x16 only, so if you add a second GPU, the bandwidth will be halved to x8 x8. Also take into consideration that USB 3.0 is not supported and thus, that USB 3.0 chipset links via PCIe which is already cluttered.

If you ever want a decent multi GPU support, and don't want to wait for the SNB refresh, current X58 does fine with 36x PCIe 2.0 lanes available. Not only that, if you do end up waiting, the SNB refresh of the LGA1366 line will be the LGA2011 line which is expected to have again 36x PCIe lanes, but these lanes are running at double speeds, from 500MB/s per lane to 1GB/s per PCIe lane under the newer PCIe 3.0 specification.

So yeah, more bandwidth for the GPU is always better if you need multi-GPU support.

Do you think this is a big issue?

Shy_Dave!

Don't take this as gospel but on the point about the multiple gpu's going down to x8 I think the difference between x16 and x8 is not even 5% at a max?
I'm probably wrong!

grizzly

On that forum I also got this detailed answer;

See, PCIe lane transport the data from the GPU to the CPU and rest of the chipset and vice-versa. The more lanes, the more bandwidth the GPU has and thus more data can be transmitted. This is even more important since in CrossFire and SLI configurations, the PCIe lanes are used for cross GPU communication and synchronization. True there are the SLI or CrossFire bridge to help out, but those have so much bandwidth before PCIe lanes are needed. In general, it is always recommended that your GPU(s) always have access to x16 lanes at the fastest speed possible. Moreover, PCIe lanes are also used to connect other third party chip controllers, like USB 3.0.

Now, why is this important on LGA1155 SNB motherboards? Well basically, these motherboards only are given x20 PCIe lanes. Of those 4x are reserved for the DMI, so in general you will only see x16. So, under one GPU the entire system will do fine to a certain point. This point is determined by the first bottleneck, which in many cases, is the GPU. The solution to this is either, buy a better and faster GPU or buy a second GPU of the same class, model and generation and put them to work as one. This increases in many cases efficiency and reduces that bottleneck. However, in LGA1155 motherboards there are not enough PCIe lanes to feed x16 to each GPU, so manufacturers like ASUS make the BIOS split the amount of lanes between each GPU. In LGA1155's case each GPU gets x8 thus reducing the available bandwidth to half per GPU.

Anandtech.com reviewed what happens in those cases (this was for the old P55 or LGA1156 chipset) and found that drops in frame rates were along the 10% to 8% loss. For an enthusiasts or heavy gamer, a big no-no; but a minor tradeoff for the average user/gamer. On the new LGA1155 this problem isn't so steep since the old LGA1156 has some of its PCIe lanes running in PCIe 1.x mode, where as others at full PCIe 2.x mode. The difference is the data rate. PCIe 1.x mode is only 250MB/s and PCIe 2.x is double that at 500MB/s. So you always want a motherboard with full PCIe 2.x support. The new LGA1155 gives full PCIe 2.x support to all x16 lanes but that is still bandwidth lackluster and leaves the entire chipset starved for bandwidth.

Now this is not the case with X58 or LGA1366 or the future LGA2011. Why? These chipsets are given x40 PCIe lanes, with x4 of those dedicated to the DMI, so in the end you will see x36. LGA1366 offers x36 lanes at full PCIe 2.0 speeds, giving all extreme setups more than enough bandwidth. You could have dual, triple and even quad SLI/Crossfire solutions with this much bandwidth (at either x16/x16, x16/x8/x8 or x8/x8/x8/x8). Even after that you are still left with x4 PCIe lanes for any bonus peripheral controllers any manufacturer wishes to add. As of late and in many cases, with LGA 1366, those x4 PCIe lanes are split in two x2 to serve bandwidth to a Marvell SATA 6Gb/s controller and/or a NEC USB 3.0 controller.

I'm in two minds, wait or jump in. I have a suspiscition that components will always have one part dragging the others back as they are never developed truly in tandem.