Please review my Sandy build

[niemion]

• MSI Z68A-GD80
• i7-2600K
• 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz CL8
• ASUS GeForce GTX 570 1280MB "DirectCU II"
• Corsair SSD Force Series 3, 120GB

I already have PSU, case and cooler.

Would you change anything?

[cadaveca]

Why 16GB? Doing some rendering work, or movie editing, or running a bunch of virtual machines?

I would add a 2TB SATA 6 Gb/s drive for storage...

[niemion]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

Why 16GB?

I encode video files and do a lot of Photoshop editing.

What do you think of my RAM choice? Does 16GB on SB limit OC'ing? Would I benefit from faster RAM?

Originally Posted by cadaveca

I would add a 2TB SATA 6 Gb/s drive for storage...

I already have my storage needs covered by a Synology 710+ NAS. I prefer no hard drives installed to minimize noise

[cadaveca]

Ah, good reasons.

As to the ram choice, I think it's fine. Yes, having all slots populated will limit clocking a bit, but on that note:

Don't buy ram to overclock it. Buy the ram with the speed and timings you want. Ram makers are pretty aggressive on thier binning, so to me, OC'ing ram just isn't much of an option.

Also, but sure that if you are going to run 4 sticks, that you buy a set of 4 sticks, and not two seperate pairs...while chances are good that two seperate pairs purchased at the same time will work just fine together, I have personally run into many instances where two pairs I bought(I almost always buy two sets), just didn't like running with each other, for whatever reason.

Ram makers have 4-stick kits for just this reason. They HAVE to test the 4 sticks together.

In regards to it affecting CPU clocks...no, not directly, however, as you increase CPU speed, load on the memory and memory controller will increase, which may cause the ram to be unstable.

[niemion]

That's a very valid point, I'll make sure to buy a kit then.

How is the chipset by the way supposed to support 32GB? Can you populate the slots with 8GB modules?

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by niemion

That's a very valid point, I'll make sure to buy a kit then.

How is the chipset by the way supposed to support 32GB? Can you populate the slots with 8GB modules?

Yes, exactly. Of course, SB only really supports 1333 MHz ram, 1600 Mhz is an overclock, and there might be issues with 32 GB @ 1333...I do not have 8GB sticks to test with, unfortunately.


Heck, I only have 1GB and 2GB per stick kits...I needs me some 4GB kits too!

[Anusha]

one problem with MSI board is that you cannot use the power saving features when the CPU is overclocked, which means idle power draw is pretty hefty when you overclock the CPU. I would consider getting a Gigabyte (they should also have a Dynamic VID option where you can have stock VID when idle and set the volts that need to be increased when under load) or Asus (not sure if they have the same issue as with MSI) board if possible.

you don't really need fast RAM for sandybridge, because RAM speed doesn't need to be increased when overclocking. also look at this article and decide how much money you are going to spend on RAM.

Others look OK.

[niemion]

Expert advice has led me to these changes:

Before

• MSI Z68A-GD80
• i7-2600K
• 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz CL8
• ASUS GeForce GTX 570 1280MB "DirectCU II"
• Corsair SSD Force Series 3, 120GB

After

• Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD5
• i7-2600K
• 16GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance blue DDR3 1600 MHz CL9 (couldn't get CL8 as a kit)
• ASUS GeForce GTX 570 1280MB "DirectCU II"
• OCZ Vertex 3 Max-IOPS

Looks good?

[bostonbuddy]

I'd go back to the Corsair, I've only heard bad things about the OCZ's.
I'd also add a TB hdd for storage unless you already have one.

[d3fct]

just built a sb system check my specs, im at 5.2. I'm only using 2x4 vengance and its fast enough.