I want to get a good overclocking board (for my Q6600) (pref user friendly) and 2 X 2 gig sticks of memory Prices are much cheaper there in UK plan is for my dad to get me the items and me collect them off him when we meet up in Europe in 2nd week of May I will run Vista 64 bit and use the Q6600 from my present machine I will also transfer my card etc across to this machine New case and PSU in the process of being accuired here prob then get a cheaper card and proc for old machine and donate to my son Got about 180 quid for the board and mem what would you recommend as being my best combo within that budget and taking into account CPU I will use This will be air cooled got a freezer pro 7 on the way should arrive here this week What could I expect to clock to with the pro 7 Thanks Nigel
I would say the new DFI LANPARTY DKP35 T2RS for the motherboard, and for memory ... I just read Bit-Tech's review on the Crucial Ballistix Tracer Red PC-6400 4GB and would like to get me some Crucial Ballistix Tracer Black PC-6400 4GB despite their price.
Lan partys are flakey as hell. Not to mention DFi has lost most of its people and aftersales forums. Also the ram mentioned is overpriced and can be had via another company much cheeply e.g. corsair
The DFI is an overclockers board though and yeah I agree the RAM is overpriced but it does OC extremely well; considering I usually find the best hardware I can on the tightest budget possible, I always take cost into account so certainly agree on the price. I flounder a bit with RAM, I know what to look for but, just like anything, it gets confusing.
for user friendly-ness you will HAVE to go with Abit iP35 Pro. you cannot get any more user friendly than that. i've overclocked on 2 other Asus P35 boards before, and neither are as easy to overclock as my Abit iP35 Pro.
i think the key of getting super OC with DFI board is having the "Right" RAM. my gut feeling is DFI tune their boards with a narrowER range of memory modules, but probably spend more time on each batch of DIMM. Hence, there may be specific RAM when combined with DFI boards, you could OC like a bat out of hell! go read all the reviews of the DFI board you're getting and take note on which brand of RAM modules reviewers have used. 2ndly, go to DFI site and see if they have a RAM list that says Tested. you could try to contact them and ask which RAM (make, brand, CL, size) that works best. Unless you get a specific Corsair RAM brand and DIMM version, you may like to stay away from Corsair as i think they change the DRAM chip often on a single brand, more so than other maker. this makes it harder to gauge compatibility. If you try to reach support, you may need a serial number on a white sticker with the specs at the corner of the box. If could not reach them, try PR. Create a new yahoo mail or gmail, as you'll probably start getting tons of chinese spams soon after. Worst thing is chinese spammers use your email address as a sender in their spam. God, this is nuts.
There is no "proper" DFI anymore all the main people left the company and work for Foxxconn and others. All mobo's ive come across based on the Intel "P" chipsets OC extremely well. Some even hitting the magic 500FSB mark. I would really be surprised if a "new" DFI board could beat that by some large margin. People still hold onto this magical beast that was DFI. DFI was the best during the 939 era but even then their mobo's were super flakey and extremely difficult to work with, only those who wanted bragging rights would get one of these. All intel "P" series based mobo's from vairous makers OC verywell, i cannot see where the DFI would make this any different. Even Asus's ROG series have overtaken them on all fronts(Looks,Bling,features...etc) Untill proper reviews come out for such delayed mobo's i reserve any judgment. But don't expect the good old days when the OC'ers board of choice were the Lanypartys, just take a look what happened to Abit after the SocketA was phased out. As for the ram Nothing beats the D9 chipsets even if Crucial are using these new chips nothing beats the D9's. Also getting just as good clockers can be had cheaper.
I have found the abit ip35 pro here at a reasonable price so going to go with that as it does look to be very user friendly which will suit me as this will be my first serious attempt at overclocking. Question which memory should I use if at a later stage I really want to push the Q6600 DDR2 800 or 1066 as if I understad correctly the 1066 would allow me to push past 3.6 GHz ??? is this poss or should I just go for a good 4 4 4 12 800? Thanks Nigel
Even DDR 6400 will allow you to get to the magical 3Ghz mark. Obviously the higher the capability of the ram the higher it can be pushed without any stress. If you can afford the faster ram then go for it but remember it don't mean your cpu will hit 3.6 ghz. OC'ing isnt an exact science, its pure luck.
I recomend a Gigabyte DS3R. I have 3 Gigabyte boards and love them. My older cpu/board is pushed to 3.2 GHz, to get it higher I have to change the memory timings.
great choice on Abit. you'll love it and you will find other mobo's BIOS overclocking functions are so crap after using this. depends on whether they are good 800Mhz. do NOT go for OCZ Platinum 800Mhz, they seems cheap but they will limit your CPU overclock at 3.6Ghz. i'd say go with 1066 or 1000Mhz if you can afford it.
Thansks Wuyanxu What about one of these 2 kits are they any good http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-110-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=817 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-104-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=817 You have experience with the board and the cpu I will use I can go up to about 100 quid for the memory what would you go for in that price range
yes, the G.skill is the best out of those. the OCZ ReaperX heatsink is way too big. my friend bought 4, and he couldn't fit it. so he can only use 2x2GB.
I would say: If you want to buy now: buy the OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz ReaperX (overclockers have them on a sale) Later: crucial ballistix. Good Timings, nicely overclocable (My friend got them overclocked from 800 to well over 1200 - no stability lossess) Edit: I've read about the whole dad thing, so go for crucial Crucial still uses D9's (MICRON) The newer crucial rams run on D9HCL chipset
