Do I need to overclock this new system?

Need is always subjective. Most people here are in the free speed why not catagory. If you dont want a heat spewing electricity chewing PC that is the other side but most i7's get a 1 ghz overclock at close to stock volts so again why not. With that jump in spead it is noticible in day to day useage..

Thent

The system looks good. You could save some money by using a 2500k. My personal preference in HD would be a Samsung F3 Spinpoint. As to OCing no one has to, but we do it to get better performance. With either processor you could expect to boost the speed to 4+gh. This is a substantial boost in performance. You would see a difference in the uses you described. So in the end it is up to you.

I agree with devin93 here. That I7 will be good for at least 3 to 4 more years to come as is. But if your gonna over clock. Please don't use a stock cooler, unless ur only going maybe extremely minor (20-30 mhz). Stock coolers (depending on CPU) are not really made for OC'ing. 3.4 GHZ is plenty enough for even the most demanding scores. And with that GPU. If you wanna go out on a limb and arent gonna have multiple hardrives and extra's OC'ing your CPU and getting another GTX 560 TI for SLI will save you money down the road. Im considering Skipping Kepler and saving some money down the road and just SLI. But i dont think my FX 6100 is gonna handle it well

LOL, it is rare that anyone 'needs' to OC. Overclocking is for fun, or if you are churning out 24/7 rendering on a server or something. If everything runs up to your expectations then leave it well alone. OCing (while fun and rewarding) has a dark side of burnt out parts, instability, higher utility bills, and shortened life expectancy that nobody seems to want to talk about. If you know what you are doing, then go for it. But if you are a first time OCer then do a lot of reading, get your theory and method figured out, and then start with baby steps and move up from there as you feel comfortable. There is nothing wrong with getting a little extra performance here and there if you can... just don't go nuts with it.

However, it is my personal belief that OCing gains are largely overblown (unless buying a 1.8GHz processor and doubling your clock speed; but you can no longer do that on the Intel side), and generally if you NEED to OC your system to do what you need to do then you are better off buying a better class of hardware in the first place. Normally you are just talking a real world performance increase of 10-15%, which is not really noticeable in most applications, and is mostly good for guys who suffer from penis envy.

Exactly. A game that needs an overclocked i7 would be a terrible failure. The ultimate end of line for casual gaming on the PC

1) Remember; CPU speed is only part of the equation on performance gain. Games will not see a big difference unless a high OC is used as Games are more limited by GPU. If program is HDD intensive then gains will be nill as A HDD is SLOWWWWWW, An SSD would speed that up, BUT still Would limit performance gain. Encoding and recompute of large spreadsheets would gain. To be noticeable the OC should be at least 15% higher before you would notice a performance gain - For CPU intensive apps.

A OC to 4.2 for a single threaded app is only a 10% increase (3.8->4.2), so NO noticable increase. For multi threaded apps the gain is 27% an would be noticable in cpu intensive apps. For single threaded apps you would really need to go to 4.5/4.6 GHz which would yield a 21% gain in single threaded apps, and a wopping 40% gain for multithreaded apps. NOTE CPU utilization is NOT a factor on performance gain, if 100% usage, you need more cores, not more speed.

As to shorting the life. With a modest 4.2 -> 4.6, Unless you are hitting low 70C or above and/or your vcore is over 1.35, the CPU will be ready to be upgraded before dieing in most cases. I have a E6400 OCed from 2.1 -> 31.2 which is still going strong and that is a OC of 2.1 -> 3.2Gigs (a 50% over OC). As to a gooler (HSF). weather I'm OCing or Not, I always buy a upper end HSH. The Cooler the BETTER.

Lifespan with overclocking?

I found that as long as you keep within a reasonable increase in voltage something like a extra 0.05volts is pretty standard, and make sure the cpu is prime 95 stable so it is not making errors. Keeping the cpu temp under 60C is also good.

1. My old athlonxp 3000+ is still working in my aunt's pc with a big all copper thermaltake cooler on it. 2.58ghz, 1.80volts, 2.16ghz/1.65volts is stock.
2. a 939-x2-4400+ 2.2/1.40volts is stock, 2.65ghz/1.45volts.
3. 939 3500+ 2.75ghz/1.50volts. 2.2ghz/1.40volts is stock.

The extra safe voltage is different for each line of cpu. The athlon xp is 130nm and the other two are 90nm, so they can take more voltage than the new cpus can.

The 3000+ and x2-4400+ have been overclocked since new.

As you can see eventually the cpu goes obsolete so you might as well enjoy it while its still current and seems fast.

It's pretty safe if you stick with a resonable voltage increase, keep it cool, and make sure it passes prime95 testing.

If the cpu is making errors if you keep using it it will burn that bad trace damaging the cpu. So making sure it's a stable error free overclock is important.