- Joined
- Jan 19, 2004
- Location
- Tennessee
The machine:
(Serenity)
i7 2600K on a ASUS P8Z68-V PRO stock speeds
16GB Corsair Vengeance RAM (dual channel arrangement, 2x8)
Two SSDs, 128GB (OS) and 512GB (Games)
Two HDD's (1TB, 3TB, both for storage)
Air cooled in a nice full tower.
1KW PSU
Two EVGA GTX 760 in SLi
This machine is about 5 years old and is my primary computer. I use it more for gaming than anything else, but I do a fair bit of multitasking as well. The motherboard started having minor issues around year 2, and has slowly become more and more of a problem. At first it was just annoying; my overclock on air became less and less stable, and I had to start stepping it down. Following that, a temp sensor started reading incorrectly (99c all day every day for years). Later, I had a SATA port go out on me. After that, the Gigabit Ethernet started dropping connection and eventually quit altogether. Plugging in a USB one helped me discover I'd lost my faceplate USB 3.0 ports and two of the rear USB ports. At this point, I'm down to half the USB ports, can't go higher than stock speeds, and every time I shut down I have that Windows 10 glitch with USB Ethernet connections where WINSOCK goes to hell and you have to play Musical USB ports and hope you don't have to use the registry to fix it.
After comparing benchmarks and some discussion in the General Hardware forum I think I've decided to just repair the problem instead of upgrade quite yet. I presently game at 1080p. The gains on the 6700k versus a decent overclock on this machine doesn't seem to match the pricetag. Unfortunately, I've been out of the market for quite some time.
1. I've not had good luck with ASUS products. I've gone through a router, this motherboard, 3 laptops (same one, 3 RMAs), and two short-lived wireless USB keys by them, which is odd because they have a rep as "the best". Unfortunately, offerings are not broad these days from what I can tell in LGA 1155. Can anyone recommend a board with good overclock features that is worth the money? ASUS isn't out of the question, but I'd like some options. New only, please.
2. I have literally an entire room I can dedicate to nothing but this computer if I want. A massive, ridiculous desk with the computer built in is not out of the question. Right now, she's a nice big Antec tower. How much performance would I lose if I use riser ribbons on the PCI-E slots to compartmentalize components away from each other?
3. Should I water cool (new for me) the processor or is air sufficient to get well into the 4.xGHz range?
4. Will I get any benefit from a Z77 bridge?
I'm pretty much bound to Amazon at the moment, so if you recommend something that isn't available there and are aware, please let me know where I should look.
(Serenity)
i7 2600K on a ASUS P8Z68-V PRO stock speeds
16GB Corsair Vengeance RAM (dual channel arrangement, 2x8)
Two SSDs, 128GB (OS) and 512GB (Games)
Two HDD's (1TB, 3TB, both for storage)
Air cooled in a nice full tower.
1KW PSU
Two EVGA GTX 760 in SLi
This machine is about 5 years old and is my primary computer. I use it more for gaming than anything else, but I do a fair bit of multitasking as well. The motherboard started having minor issues around year 2, and has slowly become more and more of a problem. At first it was just annoying; my overclock on air became less and less stable, and I had to start stepping it down. Following that, a temp sensor started reading incorrectly (99c all day every day for years). Later, I had a SATA port go out on me. After that, the Gigabit Ethernet started dropping connection and eventually quit altogether. Plugging in a USB one helped me discover I'd lost my faceplate USB 3.0 ports and two of the rear USB ports. At this point, I'm down to half the USB ports, can't go higher than stock speeds, and every time I shut down I have that Windows 10 glitch with USB Ethernet connections where WINSOCK goes to hell and you have to play Musical USB ports and hope you don't have to use the registry to fix it.
After comparing benchmarks and some discussion in the General Hardware forum I think I've decided to just repair the problem instead of upgrade quite yet. I presently game at 1080p. The gains on the 6700k versus a decent overclock on this machine doesn't seem to match the pricetag. Unfortunately, I've been out of the market for quite some time.
1. I've not had good luck with ASUS products. I've gone through a router, this motherboard, 3 laptops (same one, 3 RMAs), and two short-lived wireless USB keys by them, which is odd because they have a rep as "the best". Unfortunately, offerings are not broad these days from what I can tell in LGA 1155. Can anyone recommend a board with good overclock features that is worth the money? ASUS isn't out of the question, but I'd like some options. New only, please.
2. I have literally an entire room I can dedicate to nothing but this computer if I want. A massive, ridiculous desk with the computer built in is not out of the question. Right now, she's a nice big Antec tower. How much performance would I lose if I use riser ribbons on the PCI-E slots to compartmentalize components away from each other?
3. Should I water cool (new for me) the processor or is air sufficient to get well into the 4.xGHz range?
4. Will I get any benefit from a Z77 bridge?
I'm pretty much bound to Amazon at the moment, so if you recommend something that isn't available there and are aware, please let me know where I should look.
