2 quick questions, overclocking DDR3 Ram with E8400 and Power supply 1

[nukesgoboom]

Greetings. I have 2 quick questions about overclocking with DDR3 RAM, and also a power supply question. I'm using Windows XP 32bit.

I'm considering the following items for my next upgrade. As you can see I'm not an early adopter. I like to get the final revisions in the previous generation of things:


Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EP45T-UD3LR http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128371
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037
Power Supply: Antec BP550 Plus 550W ATX12V V2.2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371016
Video Card: GIGABYTE GV-N26SO-896I GeForce GTX 260 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125294
RAM: CORSAIR 2GB (2x1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1600 (PC3 12800) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145248



1. Will I be able to achieve a 4.2+Ghz overclock with this motherboard and DDR3 RAM with the e8400 processor? I've heard that the DDR3 ram has a divider of 4, for example if you had DDR3 1600 ram, the supported front side bus would be 1600/4=400 mhz. And I've heard that DDR2 RAM has a divider of 2, so DDR2 1200 would have a supported front side bus of 1200/2=600 mhz therefore making it better to overclock with? I know the maximum multiplier of the e8400 is 9, so if I wanted 4.2 Ghz, 4200/9= 466.66 mhz. We know also that the FrontSideBus on the e8400 is quad-pumped, so 466.66x4=1866.66 mhz. That means my DDR3 ram would have to overclock, but only if I want to stay in synchronous mode. Could I switch to Asynchronous mode to a 3:4 FrontSideBusRAM ratio or similar and get that 4.2 Ghz overclock? Is that a good idea? Would this DDR3 ram be able to overclock to 1866 mhz? The motheboard claims to go up to 2200 mhz...

2. Will this power supply be acceptable for the video card? If I want to overclock it? If I want to software based Volt mod it with EVGA GPU Voltage Tuner v1.1.2.2? It says on the specifications page of this cards non-overclocked version, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125291, that it needs 36A on the 12V rails of the power supply. The Antec BP550 power supply has the 550W, but it says each of the 12V rails has 22A. If it uses 2 12V rail connectors as the video card needs, would that satisfy the 36A? 22+22=44? Alot of the power supplies I see in a wide range of Wattage don't offer 36A on each of the 12V rails.




Thanks very much for helping me!

 

[richardscott]

ok thats alot of questions so ill try to answer them all but not in order lol,

the ram divider is set by the bios not the ram , secondly any ddr2 1066 is all you need with a e8400, as you wont reach any where the 533 fsb,

keep the mem linked to the cpu it provides alot more stabilty,

that psu is fine aslong as you use two rails for the gfx card

 

[jsc]

I am not a proponent of DDR3 in a Core2 system. I'd get the DDR2 model of the motherboard.

For the video card, the "36 amp" specification is for the total system, not just for the video card.