New i7 Build... Looking for a little input. :confused:

[Soothesayer]

Yeah. I clearly will not be OCing till I get my liquid cooling in place a few month after the pc is up and running. Wants it's ready I'd like to get a steady 3.X nothing big just an improvement. Going to have to pardon the ignorance. I still have a TON to learn about over clocking and what's needed, etc...

 

[Hefemeister]

3.2 on a 920 is like stealing candy from a baby.

 

[Soothesayer]

Glad to hear I'm not asking too much, haha. I've seen some CRAZY numbers. I do my share of Photoshop and I've seen some screen shots of 5.4 ghz and stuff of that sort. Now this is the Internet, personally I've never seen numbers like that in person so I find it hard to believe. On the flip side, I've never OC'd so what do I know? Right?

I just want a very very well rounded / stable machine.

 

[Hefemeister]

With water and a D0 stepping You should expect a 24/7 clock speed of 4.0 to 4.2. Of course this depends upon your cpu.

 

[Soothesayer]

What does D0 stepping mean exactly?

 

[Hefemeister]

Think of it like the version ie 12.1 and 12.2
C0 was the first and they made some slight changes to it to create the D0 stepping. Not enough for a new model name but enough for a new stepping.

 

[Soothesayer]

So for the D0 stepping would it be advised to find a 920 with D0 or just get a 950. I could be off on my research but I believe older 920's are C0 and all 950's are D0 and so on....

 

[wafflehammer]

nope 920's come in C0 and D0. All the newer ones are D0

 

[newbiebuilderguy]

Just thought I would butt in and tell y'all that 5870 Radeons are available RIGHT NOW at Newegg.

 

[Soothesayer]

I found a HD5850 for 265 so I'm torn between buying that and pumping out an extra hundred for the 5870. I need to find a sight with benchmarks for both and see if the hundred bucks is worth it.

I also found a site, tankguys.com selling D0 920's for 304 which seem like a good deal. Now I need to find a good ram kit for the board and read up on ram OCing benefits.