Intel i7-960 boomfield 3.2 ghz

Hi everyone,

I am new to this forum. I am interested in overclocking and how to do it. I have just oredered and am building a new desktop. I'm looking for tips and ideas for overclocking. And wether or not to overclock the set-up. Please help with some ideas. And Please have in mind I had a 2.5k Budget.

The Build:

Corsair 650D mid ATX tower
Samsung Blue-ray Player Drive
Asus DVD/CD Burner Drive
Coolmaster 1000W power supply SLI ready 80cef...
Gigabyte G1.Sniper motherboard LGA 1366
Intel i7-960 Boomfield 3.2 ghz LGA 1366 Quad-core 130W
Corsair H80 High Peformance Liquid CPU cooler
Corsair Vengeance 24gigs DDR3 1600 ram
Corsair CMXAF2 Fan (Memory cooling fan)
Western digital velociRaptor 150GB 10000RPM Harddrive
Western Digital 1TB 7200 RPM Harddrive (x2)
Evga Superclocked Geforce 560 TI (Fermi) Graphic cards (X2) (For SLI)
Asus 23.5 LCD monitors 1080P VH236H (X3)

My thoughts/Plans: Upgrading to the
1. Intel i7-990 extreme
2. Dual GTX 580's in SLI
3. SSD drive (?!? not sure how they work)
4. better water cooling system.

There is a very well written article on the front page that should cover everything you need to know.

http://www.overclockers.com/3-step-guide-overclock-core-i3-i5-i7/

What do you guys think of the overall build? Im open to everything. But I am thinking of starting or keeping at 4.0 ghz.

I would have gone with an SSD instead of a velociraptor, 24GB of RAM is extremely overkill for what I assume is a gaming system (you could have gone with 8GB and had more than enough), and the power supply is a bit overkill, but it looks like a decent system overall. If you can change the order I would suggest dropping down on the RAM and switching to a 128GB Intel or Crucial (nothing with a Sandforce drive) SSD as the OS drive.


4ghz should be fairly-easily doable, but I would second the recommendation to use miah's guide to save time:

http://www.techreaction.net/2010/09/07/3-step-overclocking-guide-bloomfield-and-gulftown/

As some general tips, you'll probably need to bump the QPI/VTT voltage for your RAM (keep an eye on the voltage difference between QPI/VTT - consult the linked guide for more information). You'll want to keep the uncore ratio below ~3700mhz (so 18x or 19x multiplier assuming your BCLK ends up at 180. I've read that odd-numbered multipliers may not be 100% stable, but I ran my 920 at 190 BCLK with a 21x multiplier without issues on a Gigabyte board.
Gigabyte's LLC implementation is a bit iffy, so try sticking to vcore overclocking without using it, unless you're hitting 1.38V+ on vcore at 4ghz.

My thoughts/Plans: Upgrading to the

1. Intel i7-990 extreme
^Dead socket. Marginally faster than the $300 2600K

2. Dual GTX 580's in SLI
^ 2 6970 is faster for less $

3. SSD drive (?!? not sure how they work)
^Good idea. Works like hard drive but faster

4. better water cooling system.
^Really no need