osmt2

CPU: Intel Core i5-750 Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD4P RAM: 2x2GB + 2x4GB G.Skill Ripjaws @ DDR3-1600 GPU: EVGA GTX 570 HD SC Storage: Intel X-25M G2 80GB SSD, 3TB 7200RPM Hitachi Chassis: Antec 900 Cooling: Corsair H50 PSU: Corsair TX750M Display: Asus VH242H 24" Audio: Logitech X-540 Keyboard: Logitech G-510 Mouse: Microsoft Sidewinder X3 Country: Canada

I have attached my entry. The validation links are below: 3DMark06: http://service.futuremark.com/home.action;jsessionid=03EE9DEF88C929BD5D5BC5D97A5F8CDA CPU-Z: http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1359510

QFT What makes "normal" hard drives slow for booting is the access time, not the sequential read/write speed. SSD's have much lower access times (<0.1ms) as compared to normal hard drives (12-15ms), so they are much faster for random reads and writes, and this speeds up boot times. Going in Raid 0 will only make transferring large files faster - boot times will still be held up by the slow access speed of the hard drives. BTW, my Intel X-25M G2 80gb shows up as 74.4gb useable in Windows. Plenty large enough for an OS/applications drive - I would recommend looking at them if you start looking at SSD's. P.S. - It may be a better idea to buy a single 60-80gb SSD than going RAID 30gb SSD's - you lose TRIM support if you have SSD's set up in a RAID array. This will cause performance degradation in the long run once the drives start filling up.

You just have to find the sweet spot...my 780i FTW will just plain not run at certain FSB speeds, but all I have to do is set the FSB higher or lower to find its "sweet spot" and it will run rock solid.

I would say definitely not...At least in Canada the 960 processor is 2x the price of the 930, and is certainly not at 2x the performance level. A i7-930 @ 4GHz should be sufficient for pretty much any setup. A 1156 + i7-875K or a 1366 + i7-930 setup is about the same price (in Canada) and performance level if you are buying a mid-high range motherboard, so it boils down to which socket you prefer. Personally, I would go for the 930 setup. You should spend the extra cash elsewhere, maybe in an SSD (or possibly the new Seagate Momentus hybrid drive) or better video card setup. - osmt2

Year 3.5/5 of B.Sc in Electrical Engineering Currently working in industry as part of my program, will return to school in the fall

Nice OC with the UD4P! I wish mine did that well

Water (Corsair H50) - Core i5 750 - Win 7 Pro SuperPi 1M:

The Corsair H50 works well, but I sometimes question whether it was worth $90. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be that many options out there for 1156, so that is why I went with the H50. At 4.0 GHz & ~1.41V (as far as I will leave my i5 at for 24/7), the H50 performs as follows: Idle Temp: 35-40C Load Temp: 55-60C gaming, 70C Intel Burn Test Ambient: 28C

Well I don't think this is the fault of EVGA...the SLI LE is their lower-end board (as far as X58 goes). The standard SLI and Classified versions are more geared for higher overclocks. I believe the EVGA admins mention this in their forums. Bottom Line: If you want a really good overclock, you should buy a high-end board. (Some exceptions to this ).

Just disable turbo boosting altogether and lock the turbo cpu multiplier (x21 for an i5-750) in bios. There you go, permanent turbo mode I know my gigabyte p55a-ud4p can do this, so yours should too

I know that my EVGA 780i FTW has some nasty FSB holes (i.e. certain ranges of FSB speeds just won't work...) Have you tried dropping the multipliers (cpu/ram) and raising the fsb (with the NB at a lower voltage) just to see if the problem still exists? If so, you may be in one of these holes, and you might need to increase the fsb 50-100 mhz to "jump" the hole. Just an idea...

i5 @ 4GHz

Hi everyone, I am wondering what those here with overclocked i5-750's are using for their qpi/vtt voltage. There are many reviews of p55 motherboards (including those by this site) reporting 4.0GHz+ stable overclocks on the 750, and I can also acheive this, but I need 1.3v+ on qpi/vtt to acheive full stability. As many of you may already know, intel reports an absolute max on this voltage of 1.21v for lynnfield. As a result, i run my O/C at 180bclk to stay (more or less) within this spec. Are most people running 4.0GHz+ ignoring the absolute max set by intel?

Update: RMA'ed the mobo, and luckily, got a free upgrade from EVGA (780i FTW) New Mobo fixed the problem, and I got a better overclock with it than with the old 780i. . Thanks for the help.