Time to retire the old and start anew, with a budget!

Yeh I got one. GA-P35-DS3P coupled with an E6850 @ 3.6GHz.

I wouldn't use the "Easy Tune 5" if it were me, but you're not me. lol. I'm sure we can walk you thru a little OC if you want to. You might also google your mobo and OC and see what you get. OC'in is easy if you know sorta what you're doing. lol. Huh Sammy??

....gm

 

I've owned two Gigabyte boards (so far) and while I like the boards a lot, I don't like Easy tune. Software overclocking is rubbish, and the rest of easytune can be done better using Everest or Speedfan.

It's also worth mentioning that while overclocking results on Gigabyte boards aren't quite as awesome as that with Asus boards, it's very simple and easy to do...

 

Sammy is a little more direct than I am. lol. I agree except I only have 1 GB mobo. It's a good one tho.

....gm

 

Ok I have a couple new questions:

1) I tried googling about OC my motherboard but I don't have much confidence in the info I came up with. So if you guys could point me in a different direction or drop a few pointers I would appreciate it.

2) I have two almost brand new components from mt old system that I want to use on the new, but they are both IDE devices. One HDD and one ODD. I already put the HDD internally plugged into the IDE controller and I know that you should not put both on the same controller especially if want to burn to and from. What do you guys recommend for my ODD? A PCI Controller card or a USB external enclosure? From what I have seen the price is actually close to the same for both but I want to know which is better.

Thanks
Ferg

 

USB DVD drives work really well to my surprise, but I'm not convinced about burning, I only used them for reading and installing OSes (much easier than an internal drive with a Gigabyte board - their pickup of bootable Internal DVD drives is poor). USB HDDs do everything but at a greatly reduced speed, max of 30MB/s over USB rather than the full 60-70 over IDE. A PCI controller card will also be subject to a speed limitation, but not as badly, and if you use it with your DVD drive (even 22x DVD drives only max out at 30.5MB/s) it will work perfectly - just note, PCI controller cards do add a substantial period of time it takes for your PC to bootup, especially if they can do RAID - try to get one without, if you can.

 

This is the card that I am considering: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132005
It received pretty good reviews across the board and Rosewill seems to have very good customer support. I will wait for opinions from you guys before I order. Thanks.

 

I think that one will work just fine.

....gm

 

Not quite as awesome? I'm at 3.4GHz with plenty of headroom. I think it's more like just as awesome if not better.

And agreed. Software OCing is crap. I bought my X38 for the hardware, not the software.

Rosewill is actually Newegg's own "in-house" brand of hardware. They seem to be of solid quality and have the legendary Newegg customer service. So I think you could be safe getting that card.

 

But Rosewill PSUs on the other hand, are death in a box.
As for the overclocks, look at the BIOSes on our X38-DS4 and then on a Rampage Formula. The Asus is miles nicer to OC with, if a little scary...

 

Only because they have near unlimited settings... I think that just makes them dangerous to OC with if you don't know what you're doing.

 

That would be me in a nutshell. Thanks Estuansis for jumping in and offering your input. I appreciate all the help I can get.

BTW- I ordered the Rosewill card and it works great. No problems as of yet.

@ sam and GM

System has been up and running for a couple weeks now and I am very pleased. You both were a tremendous help, many thanks.

 

Glad the Rosewill card is working for you.

You're welcome but I don't think that I did that much.

...gm

 

Such modesty.....take some praise there big guy and enjoy it!!

 

Well you're right!! I did lap that cooler for you.

....gm

fyi.. bout to post some food in you know where.

 

You're welcome, glad it's all going well for you...