The motherboard of our previous $2000 build became unstable after prolonged heavy use when overclocked. Relatively low CPU temperatures tend to indicate a voltage regulator that has been pushed beyond its optimal thermal range. The previous build was able to maintain stable voltage up to the point where it got hot, crossing its thermal threshold at around 1.35 V with our Core i7-2600K CPU maxed out.
The problem was that our CPU needed a little more voltage to get a decent overclock, and we couldn't give it anything more without asking too much from the platform.

MSI’s Z68A-GD55 lost our motherboard comparison partly because its voltage regulator was always saggy. And yet, the same board had superior voltage regulator cooling. The practical impact of switching to this board was that we needed to set 1.40 V to approach our target 1.38 V, but we got there without encountering heat issues. Mission accomplished.

Our memory is known to overclock past DDR3-1866. Unfortunately, its default timings wouldn’t permit that setting on MSI's Z68A-GD55. The board didn’t automatically loosen timings when we specified higher data rates in the same way as many competing products, and manually choosing higher latencies still wouldn't permit DDR3-1866 operation. To get a slight boost in memory bandwidth, we chose 45 x 102.2 MHz, rather than 46 x 100 MHz, to reach a CPU clock of 4.6 GHz.

With our memory only 2.2% above stock, we were instead forced to optimize latencies for added performance in the system’s overclocked state.

Even at the board’s 1.40 V setting, voltage dropped to 1.368 V when the overclocked CPU was loaded with eight threads of Prime95.

A combination of higher-grade chips and better cooling allowed our GeForce GTX 580s to overclock eagerly, even though we didn’t touch their voltage levels.

Take this warning to heart: PNY’s liquid-cooled cards should only be used with custom fan speeds, even when they're not overclocked. That’s because the memory and voltage regulator are still fan-cooled, and the fan is controlled by GPU temperature. Our tests indicate that PNY doesn't alter the air-cooled-card’s fan profile, and the lower GPU temperatures enabled by liquid cooling result in the fan slowing down to a point that the card can overheat.

An ideal solution would be to move the thermal sensor that controls the fan to the card’s voltage regulator. However, the reference GeForce GTX 580s that PNY uses aren't designed to allow this. Instead, we used MSI Afterburner to set a custom fan profile keyed to the moderate temperatures these liquid-cooled GPUs experience under stress. Afterburner must be running for its fan controls to work, so we set the “Start with Windows” and “Start minimized” options under its Properties menu.
- A Bigger Budget For A Better PC
- Motherboard, CPU, And RAM
- Graphics, Case, And Power
- SSD, Hard Drive, And Optical Drive
- The Build
- Overclocking
- Test Settings
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Benchmark Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Benchmark Results: Crysis And F1 2010
- Benchmark Results: Just Cause 2 And Metro 2033
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Are Liquid-Cooled Graphics Cards Worth The Extra Expense?
Also, as much as I understand the frustration with sacrifices, IMHO that's where the best lessons are.
Fun to read, yes, but just not practical. Hmmm, I guess that means the downvoting is about to begin...
Also, as much as I understand the frustration with sacrifices, IMHO that's where the best lessons are.
Fun to read, yes, but just not practical. Hmmm, I guess that means the downvoting is about to begin...
So, I wait until tomorrow to enter?
No, you're good today. It should start with today's story. I'll see if I can get that changed.
Its also half the price.
Toms needs more current benchmarks, some of these games were talking are ages old. And need i say we need a RTS game in this mixture. I am a bit disappointed that the 3930k wasn't in this build along with a nice X79 board. Not that a 2600k processor isn't fast enough but you never know. I would rather pick up my six core but thats just me, and most likely it could be a waste. But like i said you never know, i remember SupCom came out and that required some CPU multi core power. Not sure how many cores were needed but a Quad was definitely better then a Dual core.
Considering the price of the 2 gtx580s, 3 hd6950s might offer better value - as long as the game allows multi-gpus.
You can compare the two by using another article by Thomas Soderstrom that also utilizes the i7-2600k but is looking at SLI/Crossfire scaling.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-3-way-scaling,2865.html
In the 3 games that the two systems both had shared benchmarks, the 3x 6950 was the clear winner.
Toms, can we get some reviews on how the computers from each bracket compare year over year as a general summary to end the year out? I would love to see what $2000 gets you in 2010 vs 2011, and even 2009. My bet is that there would be some decent changes over the last 2 years as everything has droped in price with the exception of those peskey hard drives.