December 19, 201114 yr Okay, I'll try a new thread, my old one was a little too vague. Basically I have had a Dell XPS desktop with an i7 920 for about a year and a half now, but Dell's mobos/BIOS don't allow for overclocking. I'm looking to get a new mobo that will allow me to do so (plus a new case, power supply, and some water cooling). I also have an ATI Radeon 5870 abd 8gb of dual channel RAM, so it needs to be compatible with that as well.Any suggestions?
December 19, 201114 yr Well your going to have to hurry because 1366 is going out soon. For your motherboard look for things like 8 pin power, good cooling around the CPU area, and a known brand like MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte or ASRock. Some suggestions would be the P6X58-e Pro, X58A-UD3R, X58A-GD65 or a ASRock X58 Extreme 3 will all do a good job. As for your dual channel RAM, I cant imagine why it would be dual channel been a 1366 motherboard so you may need some new RAM. Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute. ~Gil Stern
December 19, 201114 yr Well your going to have to hurry because 1366 is going out soon. For your motherboard look for things like 8 pin power, good cooling around the CPU area, and a known brand like MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte or ASRock. Some suggestions would be the P6X58-e Pro, X58A-UD3R, X58A-GD65 or a ASRock X58 Extreme 3 will all do a good job. As for your dual channel RAM, I cant imagine why it would be dual channel been a 1366 motherboard so you may need some new RAM.Honestly the benefits of tri-channel RAM were negligible at best in practice.OP, if you're going to upgrade all of that stuff, just get a cheap Z68 motherboard and the 2500k. That 920 is aged and it's not worth keeping if you're going to drop money on a 1366 (overpriced once 1155 came around) board and RAM for it.You can more than likely migrate the RAM from that Dell system into the new 1155 system if money is an issue now, and then upgrade as soon as practical.I'm not kidding, don't stick with 1366. It's not worth it in your particular case.Here's the my spin on the answer to your actual question: The cheapest 1366 board is around $130. :Doh: The entry level AsRock Z68 (much better tech and a great piece of hardware) is $110... ___________________________________________________________________________________ Zachary Waddell -- Caravan Driver -- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/zwaddell Avsim ToS Avsim Screenshot Rules
December 19, 201114 yr I used to have 1366.... WASTE OF MONEY.Seriously go with 1155..... WAY better overclocking and much lower temps.FSX also loves the Sandybridge chips. Runs like butter.
December 20, 201114 yr Author Thanks for the suggestions. I might just take the dive and get the 25 or 2600k.Also, kind of a dumb question: will I have to do anything software-wise? I mean will all my hard drive data stay and run the same?
Create an account or sign in to comment