First off, no you dont need to OC the cpu to run the RAM. The highest you can go depends on a couple of factors. Not every chip, and I dont just mean a i7 920 vs i7 860, I mean every single i7 920 made will vary slightly, so theres no true answer. What we can tell you is if you plan to OC, you should be bale to reach 4 GHz though. However cooling, as you mentioned is very important. Every CPU, Intel or AMD, will come with a stock heatsink fan(HSF). The stock coolers are sufficient for the cpu under stock conditions, and possibly a slight over clock, but if you plan to OC, and even if you dont, the stock HSF are rather cheap. The new coolers for the i7 cpus are actually a slap in the case compared to the old Core2 stock coolers, but none the less they do get the job done. An aftermarket cooler is ALWAYS a good idea though. A good HSF will bring temps down several degrees and is absolutely necessary for OCing as your OCed cpu will run hotter the more you OC it. Even if you dont OC, a hsf is always great investment as it will extend the life of the cpu. The Ultra X cooler you mentioned doesnt look very good to me. Personally I have seen any side mount coolers that actually work good. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608014 More expensive, but its good, and this ones even higher priced, and larger so it can be hard to fit in some cases: http://www.frozencpu.com/products/7..._LGA_1156_AM2_Xeon.html?id=mmvwvPzg&mv_pc=141 But couple it with a high quality fan like a Scythe 21F, and this monster is bad @$$. I personally use the second set up and can vouch for it personally dropping temps below 30* C. However, I am not aware of a cheaper cooler or similar priced one that offers good cooling. Sorry about earlier, I think I had your thread mixed up with another one.
Xplorer4 don't worry about it everyone screw's up from time to time.I was wondering about that second setup that you said you run where is the fan for that unit do you have to get one or is one supplied and not just shown.
All CPUs these days come with basic coolers which will be fine if you don't want to overclock. If you do overclock, I strongly recommend an aftermarket cooler. As said, you do not need to overclock the CPU to use a particular speed memory.
I seen that Tigerdirect is selling the 17 920 for the same price as the 17 860,I looked at the specs on the two and seen the 860 has a better GHZ speed 2.8 vs the 920 at 2.66 I thought the higher the model number the faster the processor,witch one should I get if I want the fastest Processor between these two.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-desktop-cpu-charts-update-1/DivX-6.8.3,1382.html And on top choose a benchmark (divx/xvid/gaming/etc), it shows the performance for the different cpu's. The performance increase is minimal once you get to the highend cpu's. I wouldn't spend 200.00 extra on a intel cpu, when the amd cpu is just a little slower. Also consider that the cpu fans on the intel cpu's or a bigger hassle to install.
There's more to any product than 'the higher the number the better'. Just because 920 is higher than 860 doesn't mean its faster, and likewise 2.8Ghz vs 2.66Ghz isn't necessarily indicative of higher performance. As it turns out, LGA1156 CPUs are just as fast as LGA1366 CPUs in a lot of tests, so for a lot of things (gaming certainly included) the 860 is faster than the 920. However, when the benefits of using LGA1366 really show through, such as in certain encoding programs, the 920 will still work out the better CPU. Difference is, how much better? Remember that even though the 920 CPU is the same price as the 860, buying an LGA1366 motherboard and 3 sticks of RAM instead of the LGA1156 and just 2 sticks is a lot more expense. I lol'ed that jony is trying to sell you an AMD on the basis that Intel CPU coolers are hard to install. They aren't. Cheap and tacky? Maybe, but they get the job done. The argument that $200 extra for the performance gain isn't that beneficial is also moot. If we were reducing the budget a little bit I'd choose the i5 750, still superior to the X4 965, but cheap DivX is only one of many benchmarks, and it does ever so slightly favour AMD CPUs compared to the average benchmark, since the X4 965 should be equal to or marginally slower than the Q9650, whereas here the X4 965 is shown as slightly superior. Take a look at the bencmark 'Mainconcept Reference' to see that all benchmarks are not alike.
I've been pro system builder for many years and have built - tested thousand and thousands of computers. Don't fall into the Intel trap if you are on a budget you'll get much more bang for the buck with AMD over Intel. Itel is a LITTLE faster and does seem to handle video streaming better then AMD but you'll easily spend $400 to over a thousand+ more for an Intel rig when you consider the MB is more the memory is more and so on. Because Intels MB don't give you many features they are easier for a novice to install but again the price difference doesn't warrant going that path. ASUS and MSI seem to be the better highend AMD boards but you pay a premium for them and there are better alternatives. ASRock is one of them and isn't typically fussy about RAM like ECS is and ASRock is a child company of ASUS as of 2002. In many ways I like ASRock better then their mother company ASUS. They have very well featured BIOS's and make OC'n a breeze for the novice but still provide the advanced features an expert would want to us to tweak their system and they are much cheaper. RAM on AM3 boards and that will be what you want not a AM2/AM2+/AM3 capable platform as you will be limited to the slower FSB and DDR2 RAM instead of HT3 and DDR3. If you go with an AM3 only platform, prefered, you'll have to be careful in selecting a MB. Make sure that the mainboard can handle RAM bias voltages as low as 1.5v (1.48v effectively) like I mentioned prior ECS boards can be a problem here but typically ASUS, ASRock, MSI, and some others are safe here. The higher end RAM seems to run in this bias range and if the board isn't capable of that you'll have to screw around a lot to get it to work stable if at all. Being you're a novice just get a 500+ PS it will save you a lot of possiblle headaches down the road and if you are going to get an extreme video card you'll need it. A decent 500 isn't much more price wise then a 400 so it is really a no brainer. So if you are rich and want bragging rights go Intel but if you are smart and want bang for the buck go AMD.
That's a very naive view of the hardware industry, and if anything, seems rather outdated. A lot of the points you make are generally considered true of the PC industry 5 years ago, but not so much today. First off, if you are on a very tight budget, AMD CPUs are the way to go, but that has to be a very tight budget. The absolute basic, desktop only system, with no real computing power. At everything else, there is an equivalent intel product that is either a similar performer, or better. This is mainly due to the arrival of the Core i3 range. One of the first phrases you used that rang alarm bells was 'Intel does seem to handle video streaming better'. Video streaming uses almost no CPU usage at all these days. I think video encoding was the phrase you were looking for, and in all honesty, that varies with the program and codec used. Some programs AMD CPus do very well, others, they fare very poorly. Asus and MSI used to be the kings of the motherboard sector, no doubt about it. However, of late, Asus' build quality has dropped off a cliff, and I will never recommend them for systems as they are often cause for reliability issues. MSI still make good stuff, but they now have tough competition from Gigabyte and Biostar. ASRock were never great quality to start with, but the Asus merger has only made things worse. ECS have been terrible from start to finish. To say that AMD or intel systems are easier to use is pretty laughable, as neither are more difficult than the other, and if you find difficulty in building or modifying a system, you probably shouldn't be doing it. You have also completely missed the point about how Power supplies work as well. I think you need to go do some reading, no offense intended, but with posts like these a lot of people are going to be misled.
