Help a brother out! New build noob.

Here's my stuff arriving TODAY:

eVGA n680i - A1 motherboard
eVGA 8800 GTX
Mushkin 2GB RAM
150GB Raptor
Zalman 9700 CPU fan
PC Power and cooling 750W PS
Vista home premium

What i do: GAME GAME GAME (90%)...some encoding/burning and starting to do some video editing crap (10%)

Question: I just want to have a nice machine to game with. What's my processor going to be? Budget fits up to a QX6700 but these forums tell me otherwise...like get a Q6600 now and do a BIOS OC. BTW, I don't know how to OC so should I even mess with that?

buy the qx-6700 or better yet the qx6800 is 970 today at new egg

second when you oc to the below specs and check your bios temps you will see very little temperature change - tune your system by temperature change

set your pci-x to 100, pci - should be locked at 33.3 if you have that option, and turn off the thermal control and voltage and speedcontrol crap in cpu section

run your qx6700 at 3.325ghz or 1330 bus - get a good cooler that zalman is not a good cooler - thermalright is much better research it. the multiplier of 10 works best

a cooler that blows down will cool the mobo better - if you use a cooler the blow out the back like a thermalright utltra-120 (the best for that chip) then you need memory fans and chip set fan (included)


above: is p5n-e you can see the additional cooling on the mobo - this is a e6600 intel cooler works fine - sorry no evga photos (i have to take one later)

if you raise the fsb above 1333 you see a large increase in temps

the 6600 runs at 9 so at fsb 1330 its slower at 3ghz - since i have not use this chip i am not sure if you can raise the fsb without seeing that large increase in temps - check temps in bios after each change

as long as you stay under 1330 bus the qx6700 chip runs cool in most cases and at low voltage as low as 1.28v - use the auto voltage in bios to gage presetting the the final Vcore.

run your memory below its stock settings and tune one item at time

muskin with d9 chips run 4-4-3-10 with 2.1-2.2v depending on the memory - most boot up at 1.9 5-5-5-15 - you need to tune both in bios then in windows. if the system crashes on windows loading you need reduce the speed or increase the voltage - do not go over 2.2v or that mobo will eat your memory. keep the memory at 2.08-2.15v

load windows at default bios setting

make sure you have the right bios after v. 27 is best

leave the nb voltage on auto and tune it last - sometimes nvidia mobos work best with auto settings on the nb - since your fsb is low the nb voltage will not be that high 1.55-1.65v i am guessing

plus I read the 680i chipsets have burned up when high OC'ng from bug issues...