best bang for my buck motherboard and cpu

[Xenohitsu]

alright so lets say for a minute i took most peoples advice stuck with my current cpu and just got a better mobo and gpu i have a few questions

1. I dont know anything about OC'ing so how hard would it be to OC my current cpu? (all i know is it is not unlocked)

2. what kinda of money am i looking at spending to cool the cpu after the OC (lets say i get it to 4GHZ)


3. what graphics card should i look into as i said earlier i want this thing to last for at least 2-3 year if that sounds realistic. (looking at the 680 4gb FTW+ atm)

4. Is a 750W PSU enough to handle this ?

If you don't mind me adding a late suggestion considering tomorrow you're going to buy a mobo and cpu, another option would be to just buy a new GPU without overclocking either like the 7950 for $290 (starting price on Newegg). That would be the least expensive option. I use DDR2 with a 1065t and even the HDD will not matter much except for loading games before they start. I plan on buying myself a 7850, and the 7950 will definitely last 3 years. Even though your board isn't made for overclocking, a 7950 with a 1045t will play most games well for at least two years w/o OCs. The only other bottleneck with my recommendation is your motherboard has hypertransport speeds of 1000mhz instead of a 2600mhz, and another option is to buy a less expensive AM3+ motherboard for your Phenom and upgrade it to an FX later on. This one costs about $64: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157305 You can buy another 1045t (they're 104.99 on Amazon) for her too. Other upgrade features to search for are triple/quad channel ram, and PCI-e 3.0. That can stall more time before you buy a build for yourself, seeing that a new GPU will serve your interests, and the CPU hers, and depending on both of your needs, you can do more browsing for components, finding bargains as you see them, one at a time and have a much longer-proof motherboard/cpu.

 

[(G{in}[AK)TION]]

Yeah, DON'T do that. Boards tend to massively overvolt if you leave them on auto and try to OC.

really? how do you know that? right now my vcore is set to (on auto) 1.200v (from what asrock extreme tuner says) with a clock speed of 4.2ghz. seems legit.

 

[Knufire]

It's just a rule of thumb. Motherboards tend to err on the side of more voltage to make absolutely sure that things are stable, but that results in much higher temps than normal. If auto is setting it to 1.2V...there's no reason that manually setting it to 1.2V shouldn't have the same effect while giving you more control over what's going on. Also, remember voltage changes when you apply a load to the CPU based on the LLC level.

 

[EarthDog]

really? how do you know that? right now my vcore is set to (on auto) 1.200v (from what asrock extreme tuner says) with a clock speed of 4.2ghz. seems legit.

for 4.2 ghz, you can likely use less voltage. Knu is spot on.

 

[(G{in}[AK)TION]]

for 4.2 ghz, you can likely use less voltage. Knu is spot on.

so should i say

leave voltage on auto when doing basic overclocking?

 

[EarthDog]

Well, the name of the game is to get to a clockspeed and find the lowest voltage that is stable for best power consumption and temperatures. That said, you dont HAVE to, no, but auto does overvolt a bit in favor of stability.

You can likely run stock voltage, or darn close to it, for 4.2GHz.

 

[Jrdnj15]

Going with the 3570k save some money to invest in a better card also is the asrock z77 extreme 4 compared to the extreme 6 good because that is only 94 $ when bundled with CPU also I'm gonna pick up some ram any suggestions?

 

[EarthDog]

DDR3 1600MHz CL9 1.5v. Brand doesnt really matter.

 

[Jrdnj15]

Don't go any high than 1600 ? And should I go Any high than 8 gigs seems like anymore than that is overkill

 

[EarthDog]

You can go higher than 1600MHz but there isnt a point as performance doesnt increase much if at all so its not worth even a meager price increase to me. 2x4GB is a sweet spot, yes. If you need more, you can always get another matching kit in the future.