Help choosing!

[lucasrivers]

Hello,

I will be upgrading in April & i want to know what will be my best option.

My current system:

AMD Phenom II X4 840 3.2GHZ
4GB DDR3 1600MHZ
EVGA GTX 260 896MB
Wesern Digital 1.5TB 5900K RPM
Thermaltake 750W SLI PSU

Here is what i'm looking at getting, if you have any other suggestions please keep in mind my upgrade budget must be $500 or below including taxes & shipping. All parts are being bought from newegg.ca.


Option 1:

ASUS P8Z68-V LX LGA 1155 Intel Z68
Intel Core i5-2550K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz
G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866

Option 2:

AMD Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition
Mushkin Enhanced Chronos MKNSSDCR120GB 2.5" 120GB SATA III
G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866
CORSAIR H40 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler


Thanks

 

[o1die]

Go with option 1, or keep what you have now. Use 1333 ram for option one, as recommended by Chris, our resident Intel rep. He states that alot of folks have failures running the ram above 1333; if your board won't maintain this speed when overclocking or tries to increase the ram by the same percentage as the cpu, then drop the ram speed in manual mode to 1066 or even 800 before increasing the cpu fsb. If using the multiplier only for overclocking, then set it to 1333.

 

[lucasrivers]

Hey,

Could you please explain a little better why 1333MHZ memory? I know quite a few people that are using RAM with speeds above 1333MHZ and have never had an issue. Going down to 1333MHZ will give me a performance decrease won't it?

Thanks

 

[o1die]

Not that much; lower speeds run at faster timings, such as 7-7-7-20. Lower numbers for timings mean more speed. But if you don't care about warranty, then run it faster. Just don't tell Intel if you have to rma the cpu. I rarely use warranty. Whatever you do, run the ram at 1.35-1.5 volts, no higher.

 

[lucasrivers]

Ok, that makes since.

I would like to hear someother peoples opinions before i select a best answer.

 

[lucasrivers]

Best answer selected by lucasrivers.