Building the fastest possible computer on a budget is always a fun challenge (for me). I have to weigh performance vs. cost for each and every component. One benefit, it allows me to spread out the purchase over many weeks compared to buying a complete system in the store. I usually bundle all the components with shipping costs into one checkout to save on shipping, and then I can buy everything else with free shipping as funds become available. I recommend starting with the case, this way you can add components into it as they arrive and check that they fit. Much easier to send something back sooner than later, especially for components that have limited return periods. You may also run into a problem you didn’t anticipate that forces you to go a different direction. It’s best to discover that before ordering everything.
One of the factors that contributes greatly toward my purchase decision is the overclockability of a particular system. After doing a lot of reading, I learned that Intel’s Core i5-750 (LGA 1156) on many P55 motherboards has a sturdy overclocking range that can yield a good deal more performance at a lower price than Core i7 processors on Intel’s X58 platform. Tri-channel DDR3 memory needed on the X58 platform is also an expensive endeavor which swayed me further toward P55.
Sometimes you have to spend money to save money. I not only chose
a case that is renowned for it’s ability to move a large volume of air quickly and quietly,
I went all out on air cooling! I decided to go air over water for the CPU since the incremental benefit of the water cooling wasn’t high enough in my opinion to out way the cost of not having any cooling for surrounding motherboard components. Especially considering that the water cooling system is more expensive.
Having a system that can consistently provide more cooling capacity to keep the CPU temp down under full load, and also the surrounding motherboard components is a must if you want a stable overclocked system.
After some
careful tuning of voltages and frequencies and lengthy torture testing that took many days, I was able to achieve a 50% overclock with an acceptable level of risk to the components. The torture tests simply tax the system to it’s fullest for many hours to determine if the overclocked components will produce any errors. If not, the system is deemed to be stable (enough).
Now that the system is stable, I can run benchmarks to measure what kind of performance has been achieved. This is the really fun part. If you’ve done a good job on the system build and overclocking, you get to see what it can do and compare it with other systems that likely cost much more!
If you know of any good free benchmarking tools and places to post scores, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!
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