I7 930 or i7 960? Please help

[Kon37]

Hi, my main objective is attaining a clock between 3.6 and 3.8 for stable 24/7 use.
I've read that the 930 can be easily overclocked to that.
Is the i7 960 easier to attain a 3.6, 3.8 clock and remain stable and cooler than the 930?

I thought that had a obvious answer but after reading a review, it said the 960 is actually about 10 degrees hotter on stock settings.
I will be using a hyper 212 plus cpu cooler.

Should i get the 930 or 960?
These are the only two i can get, the 920 will not be restocked on the store i have to buy.

 

[LePhuronn]

get the 930 - the 960 will be no more or less stable. Bear in mind that stability of overclock, required voltage and resulting temperatures will all depend on the individual chip, not the range it comes from, i.e. no 2 chips are ever the same.

Personally I'd get something a little beefier than the Hyper if you want sustained 3.8GHz OC - the i7 900s are hot lil buggers.

 

[SpidersWeb]

What he said. Get the 930 and get the highest rated cooler you possibly can. These things are hot.

166 x 22 will get you your 3.6 easily. Mine did it on stock voltage.

 

[Kon37]

get the 930 - the 960 will be no more or less stable. Bear in mind that stability or overclock, required voltage and resulting temperatures will all depend on the individual chip, not the range it comes from, i.e. no 2 chips are ever the same.

Personally I'd get something a little beefier than the Hyper if you want sustained 3.8GHz OC - the i7 900s are hot lil buggers.

Thanks for the replies, really appreciate it.
Would a corsair h50 be able to keep the 930 at 3.6 to 3.8 stable in your opinion?

 

[Kon37]

Best answer selected by Kon37.

 

[LePhuronn]

Thanks for the replies, really appreciate it.
Would a corsair h50 be able to keep the 930 at 3.6 to 3.8 stable in your opinion?

Some (Corsair) say yes, others (watercooling experts) say no - generally a single 120mm radiator is not enough to keep an overclocked i7 cool.

I tend to go with the people who know about watercooling, so personally I wouldn't bother.

If you get the right fans, air cooling can be just as effective as watercooling and very quiet, and the better the heatsink the less your fans need to crank up to get the air moving.

I'd seriously consider a top-end cooler like the Prolimatech Megahalems or Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme Rev. C and a good quality 120mm fan (or 2, but things can get noisy then).

 

[dkapke]

For the price, the Hyper 212+ can't be beat. It's a great cooler. I've got it on two of my machines - a Core i7 920 overclocked to 3.6ish and it keeps it around 52c full load, and an Athlon II X2 240 overclocked from 2.8 to 3.5 and it keeps it at 48c full load (MUCH better than than the 72 the factory HSF did). Can you do better? Sure, but it'll cost you 2-3x more and it isn't going to buy you THAT much of a drop in temps. Heck, I was running my OC'd 920 on an Arctic Cooler Freezer Pro 7 and at full load it was around 68C. I could encode MKVs all night with all 8 cores pegged and never had any troubles with the machine...just wanted slightly lower temps. 70 and under on the i7s and your fine.

 

[skeletore1]

Hi, my main objective is attaining a clock between 3.6 and 3.8 for stable 24/7 use.
I've read that the 930 can be easily overclocked to that.
Is the i7 960 easier to attain a 3.6, 3.8 clock and remain stable and cooler than the 930?

I thought that had a obvious answer but after reading a review, it said the 960 is actually about 10 degrees hotter on stock settings.
I will be using a hyper 212 plus cpu cooler.

Should i get the 930 or 960?
These are the only two i can get, the 920 will not be restocked on the store i have to buy.

I currently have a Core i7 930 overclocked to 3.6 and I never had to adjust voltage at all. It is very stable and have not had any crashes. My temp during a full load averages 60 degrees Celsius. All I did was adjust frequency up and left everything else the same. I have it set so my ram is linked with overclock. My ram is ddr3 1600 and it pushed it to somewhere in 1700 range. Temperature at idle is low 50's. I also have my video cards overclocked as well.

My complete setup is the following:

Corei7 at 3.6
OCZ Platinum DDR3 1600 (6gb kit)
Soundblaster XFi Titanium
Asus motherboard
Ultra X4 1200 Watt modular power supply
2 GTX 480 EVGA Superclocked in SLI (Run fans at 100% all times)
Ultra ChillTEC cpu cooler
I have 7 case fans mounted (Max Speed)
Thermaltake Armor+ Full tower
2 1TB western digital HD's in Raid 0