Current setup advice

[verboten]

I currently have three systems that I have built over the past year.

Gaming rig:
EVGA 780i
Intel Q9450
2x EVGA 275GTX SC
8 Gigs Ram
WIN7

HTPC:
EVGA 680i
Intel E8400
PNY 8800GT 512MB
4 Gigs Ram
3 dual tuner cards
BluRay/HDDVD combo drive
WIN7

Hackintosh:
GB GA-P35-DS3L
Intel Q6600
EVGA 8800GTS 640MB
4 Gigs Ram
OSX 10.5.4

Currently not in use:
2x EVGA 8800GTX


One thing I have been wondering is if I should move the E8400 into my gaming rig and overclock it or just keep everything the same. What parts would you use where? Any advice would be great. FYI, I am using an Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme cooler in my gaming rig currently. Thank you

[newparad1gm]

How many PCI-E slots does your gaming mobo have and how good is the PSU? If you have enough power and 3 PCI-E slots, I'd say stick that 8800 GTS 512 into your gaming machine as a PhysX card and use one of those unused 8800 GTXs in the HTPC.

EDIT: Nvm, just saw that you had a 850W PSU. Might not be enough to power a third 8800 as a PhysX card. Your setups are fine as is.

Are you OCing that Q9450?

[CaptNKILL]

The setup looks fine to me.

The Q9450 is a nice CPU. My brother's Q9400 overclocked to 3.66Ghz on an older Thermalright cooler (not a tower) and it barely goes over 50C under Prime95 load.

With a TRUE you might be able to hit 4Ghz or more if your ram gives you enough FSB head room.

[Bman212121]

The setup looks fine to me.

The Q9450 is a nice CPU. My brother's Q9400 overclocked to 3.66Ghz on an older Thermalright cooler (not a tower) and it barely goes over 50C under Prime95 load.

With a TRUE you might be able to hit 4Ghz or more if your ram gives you enough FSB head room.

I'm not so sure he will be able to get anything stable over 1800fsb on a 780i. Even that is a stretch IMO. 1800fsb would put him at 3.6ghz, but I'm more likely predicting 3.2ghz as being the highest stable clock.

@Verboten: Are you being limited right now? What monitor are you pairing with those cards?

The E8400 would definitely give you a higher clock speed because it has a 9x multiplier instead of an 8x. I'd predict you could get that chip to 3.6 - 4.0ghz on your board.

You can try a processor swap if you want to play around, and you might be able to get a nice little boost from it, but I think just pushing that Q9450 to 3.0ghz or so will be good enough for everything to run well.

Actually doing a little more digging I don't think that your Q9450 and the 680i board are going to like each other. It may work but you might have a world of grief on your hands.

[CaptNKILL]

Ah, I didn't see the 780i.

Yeah those aren't so good for overclocking.

[verboten]

I'm not so sure he will be able to get anything stable over 1800fsb on a 780i. Even that is a stretch IMO. 1800fsb would put him at 3.6ghz, but I'm more likely predicting 3.2ghz as being the highest stable clock.

@Verboten: Are you being limited right now? What monitor are you pairing with those cards?



No, Im not being limited by any game as of right now. Im running 1920X1200 on 24in.

Stock CPU 20943 in Vantage
CPU @ 3.2ghz is 23733

I think I'll stick with the quad @ 3.2 awhile as I agree that it probably won't work in the 680i and since that system is on 24/7, the less power consumption the better.

Thank you all for the replies :)