Upgrade Advice: From i7 920 to...?

[Darksword]

Another vote for overclocking. I have a i7-920 overclocked to 4.0GHz and I think the speed will last me for at LEAST another 2 years, easy.

[Nich1701]

Most helpful, frontier204, thank you. That's more or less the information I was looking for. I have tinkered with overclocking in the past, so I feel comfortable trying to find a stable setting.

Darksword: what cooler do you use for overclocking your i7?

Can anyone recommend a good, safe watercooling solution?

[zsamz_]

Originally Posted by Nich1701

Most helpful, frontier204, thank you. That's more or less the information I was looking for. I have tinkered with overclocking in the past, so I feel comfortable trying to find a stable setting.

Darksword: what cooler do you use for overclocking your i7?

Can anyone recommend a good, safe watercooling solution?

3.8-4.0 you might not need watercooling
but with the sales goin on now i would

for what your doin no need to upgrade
a small overclock will be verry noticable

[Dzzope]

2 options:

Leave it alone

Oc and add ram (if you have 64 bit OS.)

Wouldn't bother with water-cooling for an office pc myself but hey if your bored and have an itch, why not.

[Dragonstongue]

I say an good aircooler, for the price of an H80/H100 you could get a top of the range Air cooler, that on average is just as good as either.

Myself I have a Hyper 212+ with dual stock blademaster fans with MX4 paste, it wouldn`t be the best cooler for getting into the high end OC, but it will handle a very decent load, and is very low cost.
I would do like some of the others mentioned, get more ram, make sure it is in triple channel if you can, and OC it, 3.6-3.8-4.0-4.2 are the magic numbers sort of speak.

The i7 first gen are still very fast CPU, you are not going to get the $ value out of going to a newer setup, they are faster, sure, but the i7 first gen are most certainly not slow in any regard, they also do tend to have the side benefit of having more PCI-E lanes then any but Sandy-E but seeing as you probably do not use all the PCI-E lanes as it is, its kind of a moot point :P

I would just get a better lower cost air cooler, unless you are trying to push that puppy as high as it will go in which case a more $ one would be in order, there is many to choose from after all. More ram in triple channel if you can 4gb is low, try for 6 at mimum or 12+ prefered, the extra memory does help if you are using the capacity, also if you have dual hard drives or 1 ssd one mechanical, set a paging file per drive and partition the mechanical so the paging file is right at the leading edge of the drive(it helps make it snappier)

I use minitool partition wizard home edition to do this. For paging file size myself I have 8gb of memory, I set the inital/maximum size to 5000-12300 and 9000-17000 respectively on my 60GB Agility 3 and 640GB Caviar black the partition is 20GB in size for CB. for say 12gb I would go around 10000-20000 with partition set to 24gb, this way here you have tons of paging file size and your system can use what it needs to, when it needs to do so.

But of course, before you start overclocking read lots, I know the QPI if I recall and the VDIMM voltage are the numbers most important, do not go above 1.35 for the one and 1.65 for the other, LLC can help and of course watch the temps/voltages for everything else, somewhere I read something and will post what I read one person say, for someone trying to get his 920 to 4.0Ghz

"1.5v may be a bit high, especially if your using LLC. I'd try to stay under 1.35, MAYBE 1.4 personally...

But that aside, 68C load is no problem. You can get to about 80C load with the i7 series.

CPU PLL shouldn't really need much adjustment, some people have reported it helping with stability on the upper end with a .2-.3v increase, so go for it if you'd like but I haven't seen much difference.

Your qpi/dram voltage you need to be careful with, MAKE SURE IT STAYS WITHIN .5 volts OF YOUR RAM VOLTAGE. Otherwise you may burn out your CPU fairly quickly.

Personally I have my CPU set to:

vcore: 1.25v
CPU PLL: auto (1.81v)
QPI/DRAM: 1.35v
DRAM: 1.53v

that's at 3.8GHz"

Now I believe there is some kind of correlation between the QPI and the VDIMM that you do not want one drastically higher then the other, but if I recall Intel spec was 100C for CPU temp max, 1.35 QPI voltage max, and 1.65v Vdimm max, but I would read-read-read. A hyper 212+ or similar should easily handle an i7 900 series at 3.8Ghz or so as long as you dont pump a ton of voltage through it and you have a "good chip". Anywhere in the 3.6-4.0 range should be plenty fast.

[tyreman]

Sounds like you are a general user of a computer like me.
i don't game period.
The ONLY reason i upgrade is to play with the systems and see how they operate and under what conditions ........bad and good, being a trade worker I enjoy that.
So other than spending money just leave it alone for now maybe or OC a bit.