First Build, Overclock or Not?

[Deleted member 407502]

Hello,

I recently bought the parts for a new computer for my first build with help from the guys over in Systems:

Asus M4A785TD-M Evo
MSI NGTX 460 1GB OC
Athlon II X3 445 Rana
Corsair XMS3 4 GB
OCZ ModXStream 600W
Seagate 1TB HD
Lite-On DVDRW
Rosewill Case

1) I believe it may be possible to unlock another core in the Rana but from what I've researched the performance increase won't be big will it? I bought a triple core so unlocking is not a big issue but I'm curious how beneficial it will be. Should I unlock and overclock or pick one? I'm pretty sure my PSU will be sufficient but some reassurance is welcome.

2) I did not purchase a aftermarket CPU cooler because I didn't plan to overclock but there seems to be large gains available if I do. If I do overclock, should I do CPU, GPU and Ram or just some of them? The MSI GTX 460 comes overclocked but I believe it is possible to push it further from reviews I've read. Scythe SCMG and Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus are the two coolers I am considering. Will one be better than the other? I've read some of the guides on here and I don't think it will be difficult to install after I have the build running.

3)I am willing to do any research necessary and I did look for guides before coming here but most I found were old. Are there any updated guides or do the old ones still apply? Any links and guides are welcome, just point me in the right direction. Ones I've found:

Core Unlocking
Hyper Master Install Guide by saint19
Benchmarkreviews TIM Application
Intel and AMD Overclocking

Thanks in advance for any and all advice.

 

[Wolygon]

Hello.

1) It depends what your doing with your PC. If you are gaming then unlocking the core won't get you any performance. But if your using CPU intensive programs then you will see a large increase in performance, more than with OCing. So if you are not only gaming then you should unlock the core and then OC it as well. Yes your PSU is sufficient.

2) It depends on what your doing, if your gaming then I reckon you won't see any performance increase in games especially as that CPU is already at 3.1GHz. But then again if your using CPU intensive applications then you will see a large increase in performance from OCing. With the stock cooler you will probably be limited to around 3.3GHz. If you have a hole in the back of your motherboard then you will beable to just replace it without even removing the motherboard. I would pick the CM Hyper 212+, especially if you get it from Amazon (if you trust em):
http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-RR-B10-212P-G1-Universal-Heat-Pipe/dp/B002G1YPH0/ref=sr_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1284789375&sr=8-1

If your running CPU intensive apps then the cooler would be beneficial but if your not then I'd skip it.

Hope that helps.

 

[Deleted member 407502]

Hello.

1) It depends what your doing with your PC. If you are gaming then unlocking the core won't get you any performance. But if your using CPU intensive programs then you will see a large increase in performance, more than with OCing. So if you are not only gaming then you should unlock the core and then OC it as well. Yes your PSU is sufficient.

2) It depends on what your doing, if your gaming then I reckon you won't see any performance increase in games especially as that CPU is already at 3.1GHz. But then again if your using CPU intensive applications then you will see a large increase in performance from OCing. With the stock cooler you will probably be limited to around 3.3GHz. If you have a hole in the back of your motherboard then you will beable to just replace it without even removing the motherboard. I would pick the CM Hyper 212+, especially if you get it from Amazon (if you trust em):
http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-RR-B10-212P-G1-Universal-Heat-Pipe/dp/B002G1YPH0/ref=sr_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1284789375&sr=8-1

If your running CPU intensive apps then the cooler would be beneficial but if your not then I'd skip it.

Hope that helps.

Thanks punkinator. Aside from basic office applications and web browsing, the most cpu intensive things I will be doing is transcoding and possibly transcoding while streaming the media. It should be easy to lock the core if I decide I do not need it right?

I was linking from Newegg because it was on sale when I was thinking of purchasing it, I don't have a problem buying from another site. This is a Arctic Cooler Freezer I am also looking at, should I stay with the Hyper 212? What kind of overclock speeds can I expect with either cooler?

 

[Wolygon]

Hello, it should be just as easy to disable the core. Though since your transcoding its probably best to keep it on, as it will speed up your result substantially.

The Arctic Cooler is 92mm which means it can't compete with the 120mm. It is good value but not really up to cooling a great deal. Therefore I'd say go with the Hyper 212+, it is only $30 with free postage on Amazon compared with $40 + $8 on Newegg. I'm not too sure about your maximum OC with this cooler, I did a search but it seems hard to find...

 

[Deleted member 407502]

Hello, it should be just as easy to disable the core. Though since your transcoding its probably best to keep it on, as it will speed up your result substantially.

The Arctic Cooler is 92mm which means it can't compete with the 120mm. It is good value but not really up to cooling a great deal. Therefore I'd say go with the Hyper 212+, it is only $30 with free postage on Amazon compared with $40 + $8 on Newegg. I'm not too sure about your maximum OC with this cooler, I did a search but it seems hard to find...

Thanks again punkinator, I'll definitely stick with the Hyper 212 if I overclock.

Can anyone offer any insight on what kind of performance increase overclocking the GTX 460 will bring?

 

[Wolygon]

Heres a bit of an example, though I'm not sure how stable they are but still it shows something:

Last 2 ones on this:
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/3496/msi_geforce_gtx_460_hawk_1gb_video_card_overclocked/index12.html

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=559&Itemid=72&limit=1&limitstart=19

"Far Cry 2 video frame rate performance increased from 57.36 FPS to 71.67, equaling a 25% bump in performance for this DirectX-10 video game. That's a nice start, but DirectX-11 is really where the market's at these days... so I turned to AvP for another series of test runs.

Aliens vs Predator jumped from 22.2 FPS at stock/default settings to 28.3 FPS, resulting in nearly 28% performance gain. What does that 28% mean to you? For a mere $200~$220, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 just matched the $400 ATI Radeon HD 5870. That right ATI, you read that correctly: NVIDIA's $200 product can perform as well as your $400 flagship video card. Ouch! That's gotta hurt. "

Seems like there are a lot of performance gains to get, though this might require over volting which might not be supported on your card...though I'm not sure. You can find these reviews all over the web.

If you are looking at these kind of GPU OCs then a CPU OC will probably be required to eliminate the bottleneck. This adds more support to the aftermarket cooler as CPU OCing would probably give you more gaming performance if your running at these GPU clocks.

 

[Deleted member 407502]

Heres a bit of an example, though I'm not sure how stable they are but still it shows something:

Last 2 ones on this:
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/3496/msi_geforce_gtx_460_hawk_1gb_video_card_overclocked/index12.html

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=559&Itemid=72&limit=1&limitstart=19

"Far Cry 2 video frame rate performance increased from 57.36 FPS to 71.67, equaling a 25% bump in performance for this DirectX-10 video game. That's a nice start, but DirectX-11 is really where the market's at these days... so I turned to AvP for another series of test runs.

Aliens vs Predator jumped from 22.2 FPS at stock/default settings to 28.3 FPS, resulting in nearly 28% performance gain. What does that 28% mean to you? For a mere $200~$220, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 just matched the $400 ATI Radeon HD 5870. That right ATI, you read that correctly: NVIDIA's $200 product can perform as well as your $400 flagship video card. Ouch! That's gotta hurt. "

Seems like there are a lot of performance gains to get, though this might require over volting which might not be supported on your card...though I'm not sure. You can find these reviews all over the web.

If you are looking at these kind of GPU OCs then a CPU OC will probably be required to eliminate the bottleneck. This adds more support to the aftermarket cooler as CPU OCing would probably give you more gaming performance if your running at these GPU clocks.

Thanks punkinator. Everyone here is too helpful, it's made me lazy and I forgot to use Google. I followed your example and Google'd a review for the card I got and it turns out it does support over volting. To eliminate the bottleneck, would I have to unlock the core and overclock the cpu or will overclocking the cpu suffice?

 

[Wolygon]

Good job, always remember to Bing though.

To eliminate the bottleneck you just need to OC, the unlocking is to increase you performance in transcoding. 3 cores is enough for gaming at the moment.

To check what bottleneck your CPU is giving you can:
Benchmark your games @ stock speed and record the Min/Avg/Max
OC the processor somewhat, 10%? Then redo the benchmarks.
If the games performance increased 10% then you likely still have a bottleneck at the new speed. If they increase but less then 10% you don't have a bottleneck anymore and if they don't increase then you never had a bottleneck at the previous speed.

Get it? Its rather easy to figure though note that even with a full bottleneck the performance might not increase 10%. Also this can be done with underclocking also, just underclock a small amount (1/2 hundred MHz) and if the game performance does not decrease then you do not have a CPU bottleneck.

This way you can figure out whether you need a new cooler or not.

 

[Deleted member 407502]

Good job, always remember to Bing though.

To eliminate the bottleneck you just need to OC, the unlocking is to increase you performance in transcoding. 3 cores is enough for gaming at the moment.

To check what bottleneck your CPU is giving you can:
Benchmark your games @ stock speed and record the Min/Avg/Max
OC the processor somewhat, 10%? Then redo the benchmarks.
If the games performance increased 10% then you likely still have a bottleneck at the new speed. If they increase but less then 10% you don't have a bottleneck anymore and if they don't increase then you never had a bottleneck at the previous speed.

Get it? Its rather easy to figure though note that even with a full bottleneck the performance might not increase 10%. Also this can be done with underclocking also, just underclock a small amount (1/2 hundred MHz) and if the game performance does not decrease then you do not have a CPU bottleneck.

This way you can figure out whether you need a new cooler or not.

Never tried Bing before, I'll keep that in mind. I've tried to find information on how high the Hyper 212 will allow me to OC but most reviews focus on temperatures. Reviews I've found for the Rana CPU I'm using claim it's able to get to 4.0GHz, I don't expect to reach those numbers but do you believe that fan will be able to get close to 3.8GHz?

 

[Wolygon]

Yes it seems pretty hard to find information about that. I reckon if the CPU can go to 4GHz you have a pretty good chance of getting to 3.8GHz with that cooler. But I'd give it a 90% chance of reaching a little lower like 3.7. Sorry for not being sure.

Though you won't really require an OC like that for gaming but maybe you want to boost your transcoding speed?

I reckon if you just want to boost performance with an OC then do some GPU OCing before you buy a cooler. It might be unnecessary to spend money on a new cooler, you never know...

 

[EXT64]

Remember that every chip varies as well. Sometimes the older ones are miserable OCers, and sometimes the newer ones aren't great (generally though the newer chips OC better).

 

[Deleted member 407502]

Yes it seems pretty hard to find information about that. I reckon if the CPU can go to 4GHz you have a pretty good chance of getting to 3.8GHz with that cooler. But I'd give it a 90% chance of reaching a little lower like 3.7. Sorry for not being sure.

Though you won't really require an OC like that for gaming but maybe you want to boost your transcoding speed?

I reckon if you just want to boost performance with an OC then do some GPU OCing before you buy a cooler. It might be unnecessary to spend money on a new cooler, you never know...

Honestly I just want to see how high I can get for the fun of it and also for the performance gains, but I will get the Hyper 212 cooler to be safe if I do. I will remember what you said EXT64, I would be happy to get even 3.5GHz. Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and for all the advice punkinator, I truly appreciate it.

 

[Wolygon]

Yes OCing is always fun even if its not overly practical. Glad I could help.

Good Luck!

 

[Deleted member 407502]

Best answer selected by TomH03.