Computer Forums - View Single Post - An Extensive Guide: Maximizing Performance, Minimizing Budget

Sora · 09-29-2007, 01:27 AM

RAM (continued from last post)

The memory you choose for your system has a very large impact on the performance of your system. RAM is another confusing part which needs time, research, and consideration before it is bought. RAM is all rated with a certain speed and timings. DDR2 ram speed is rated with the most common being 533,677,800,and 1066. RAM speed is just double that of a CPU's FSB usually. For example the E6xxx line runs at 266 FSB and then is multiplied to get the speed, which means that you only need DDR2-533 ram to run one of them at stock. However that doesn't really mean you should just choose the speed that your chip will run stock at because there are many good reasons to buy higher. I said that 533 would be to run an E6300 at stock however if you are considering overclocking, there are persons such as myself who have clocked their chip past the 500 FSB mark, which means you either have to buy ram that is capable of DDR2-1000 or change the dividers which usually results in slightly lower performance when the ratio is lowered. I won't get into how it works much more since this is basically overclock talk which can get quite confusing, especially for a guide like this. So basically when choosing your RAM the most important factor you must access is what speed do you need the RAM to run at? If you just want a decent overclock on a newer chip and need are looking to have your FSB around 400 then you should look in to purchasing memory that your sure will run at least DDR2-800 to reach that. However many chips even with a high overclock do not require that high of a FSB to reach excellent speeds, the E2xxx line and E4xxx line have a FSB rated at only 200 which means to achieve a good overclock you don't need as higher quality ram and you can save yourself some money. This is a big money waste with a lot of people when building a high-end system. They buy extremely fast memory but there a lot of times is ram that is around half the price that will suffice their needs and they are just wasting more money for usually what is very minimal performance increase. I also have to address timings of ram here. RAM along with a rated speed have rated "timings" that they run on. Timings can effect your system a little bit depending on the situation. The most important of timings is the first number which is known as the Cas Latencty, Cas, or just CL. The lower the numbers in the timings the less amount of clocks the ram has to go through in a cycle, resulting in better performance. Cas also plays a big part in how high of a rated speed your RAM can reach. For example very often RAM that is rated DDR2-800 with 4-4-4-12 timings will hit DDR2-1000 just by simply loosening the timings to 5-5-5-15 or similar. Once again I will not get into anything more because this can be some confusing overclocking information for this guide. All I want to stress is that if you really want the best "bang for your buck" try to buy ram that will run at speeds which will suit your needs with reasonable timings (5-5-5-15 being the average of reasonable). You don't need the most powerful ram for even the most powerful of systems. RAM is something that can save you quite a bit of money if you shop smart.

PSU

The Power Source is the most common part that people spend too much on. With all the ad's in magazines and online about "1000w rated PSU's for the high-performance PC! many people have got the wrong impression of what they need to power their system with ease. The most IMPORTANT thing to note about power supplies are that how much power a system needs is in no way the amount of "watts" rated. For most PC's these days what you should be looking at is the amount of Amps rated on the 12v rails. The components that draw the most power on your system use the power on the 12V rails. CPU's, and Video cards draw power from the 12V alone and just those two can easily hit well over 300w's alone. The other rails don't really worry about too much if you can meet the needs of the 12V's, especially on a gaming PC. When choosing a power source you should find out how many amps combined it has the on the 12's first, and on PSU's with multiple rails you cannot simply just add the amps up on both rails as it's nowhere that simple of a process. Most of the better quality trusted PSU's will tell you on the side label or in the specs the actual amperage the 12V rails give off. So then before you even starting looking for a PSU that will work for your needs, you must then know how many amps you need to safely power your system right? To find out this the only thing I can really tell you is to research how many your system will actually need. I will tell you now though that most likely the total your system will need will be a LOT less than that of what the really expensive PSUs have. A Quad-Core system at around 3.6ghz with an 8800Ultra heavily overclocked, a couple hard drives, and a couple optical drives will easily run on a trusted PSU that is rated around 40amps if not less. The Corsair 5500VX has a combined total of 41amps on the 12V's and can be had for only $100 bucks at the moment which is quite a cheap PSU compared to how expensive the other parts are right? This is just simply because people don't really realize how little power their systems actually need to run smoothly and safely. The average system will NOT need a very expensive power supply to run everything well. There are a few budget yet trusted power supplies that can be had for around $50 that will power the majority of gaming systems safely. The reason why there are all these expensive PSU's out there costing so much is quoted by B1gapl "most people usually go the "better to be safe, than sorry" method, with choosing power supplies.....but what they don't know, is that the safe bar is much lower, than it is"
If you are looking to maximize the performance in a build then the power supply is something you want to research a lot. I do want to stress the fact though that if you buy a cheaper PSU make sure you know which are "trusted" power sources so you don't fry your system. I may be telling you to look into cheaper PSU's but I am in no way telling you to look into cheaper quality ones. There is a HUGE difference in the two.

Part IV: Overclocking

Overclocking has been known throughout computer ages as a dangerous and risky process to increase system performance. However in the past 4 or 5 years computers have become pretty much overclocking idiot proof. It is EXTREMELY hard to damage a part by overclocking in today's standards as long as you know the very basics of it. Overclocking can increase the value of your system by an incredible amount if you choose the right parts. You can turn a $500 system that was built for overclocking into the power of a $700 or $800 system that never overclocks, while never really putting your components in any real danger. Before you build your system you should know if you want to deal with overclocking. You should know if you want to go all out and try to get the most out of your parts, or just do moderate overclocking to where you feel comfortable, or if your dead set on a stock PC. Then there are always those people who build their PC with the potential overclocking but choose to remain stock for a while. Deciding on this will greatly effect the price : performance ratio of the money you spend on your PC. I will tell you right now it is the easiest and most beneficial way to increase your system performance. Three major parts can be overclocked and they are the CPU, Video card, and RAM. Different models and parts overclock better and higher than other and you need to read up on which these are if you are serious about saving money. Let me tell you about what you should be looking for with each of those parts.

CPU

The cpu is often what overclocking is built around. Buying parts that will help overclock your CPU very high can DOUBLE the performance of your chip. I find it ironic to know that people who buy the most expensive system components but are scared to overclock are beat by parts sometimes costing 1/10th of what they paid for theirs still at stock. An example of this is the E2180 which can be bought for 90 bucks and then overclocked to 3.6-3.8ghz with an aftermarket cooler. Though it may be only Dual-Core with low Cache, at this speed it will rival and usually beat the QX6850 at stock speeds which are going for over $1030 right now. I know I would feel pretty stupid if there was a $90 chip beating my $1000+ one because he choose to overclock. Certain CPU's are better than others at overclocking. Certain processors are the best value in your price range and it's up to you to narrow it down to a couple which are the best bang for buck. I will tell you right now it's not that hard of a task if you look around. Buying a cheap CPU and overclocking it very high can save you incredible amounts of money in your build and giving you the best price

erformance ratio.

Video Card
Choosing a video card that overclocks very well is always a plus because Video cards really cannot be damaged by overclocking unless you do a physical mod to them such as a "volt mod". There are many cards that are at the same price but one yields a much higher value after overclocking them. I used to own the 7900GS which could be overclocked from stock to rival a 7800GTX on stock volts, greatly increasing the value of the card. I have seen people volt mod the card and add a better cooler to rival the speed of a stock X1950XTX, quite a large value increase I would say. However that kind of performance doesn't come with a risk since you can mess up your volt mod and kill your card and have already voided the warranty. When you buy a video card I suggest even if you aren't too sure about overclocking to always buy one that has high overclockability for cheap because it just is the best way to maximize your bang for your buck.

09-29-2007, 01:27 AM	#3 (permalink)
Sora Renowned Budgeting Master Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Uniontown, PA Posts: 4,122	Re: An Extensive Guide: Maximizing Performance, Minimizing Budget RAM (continued from last post) The memory you choose for your system has a very large impact on the performance of your system. RAM is another confusing part which needs time, research, and consideration before it is bought. RAM is all rated with a certain speed and timings. DDR2 ram speed is rated with the most common being 533,677,800,and 1066. RAM speed is just double that of a CPU's FSB usually. For example the E6xxx line runs at 266 FSB and then is multiplied to get the speed, which means that you only need DDR2-533 ram to run one of them at stock. However that doesn't really mean you should just choose the speed that your chip will run stock at because there are many good reasons to buy higher. I said that 533 would be to run an E6300 at stock however if you are considering overclocking, there are persons such as myself who have clocked their chip past the 500 FSB mark, which means you either have to buy ram that is capable of DDR2-1000 or change the dividers which usually results in slightly lower performance when the ratio is lowered. I won't get into how it works much more since this is basically overclock talk which can get quite confusing, especially for a guide like this. So basically when choosing your RAM the most important factor you must access is what speed do you need the RAM to run at? If you just want a decent overclock on a newer chip and need are looking to have your FSB around 400 then you should look in to purchasing memory that your sure will run at least DDR2-800 to reach that. However many chips even with a high overclock do not require that high of a FSB to reach excellent speeds, the E2xxx line and E4xxx line have a FSB rated at only 200 which means to achieve a good overclock you don't need as higher quality ram and you can save yourself some money. This is a big money waste with a lot of people when building a high-end system. They buy extremely fast memory but there a lot of times is ram that is around half the price that will suffice their needs and they are just wasting more money for usually what is very minimal performance increase. I also have to address timings of ram here. RAM along with a rated speed have rated "timings" that they run on. Timings can effect your system a little bit depending on the situation. The most important of timings is the first number which is known as the Cas Latencty, Cas, or just CL. The lower the numbers in the timings the less amount of clocks the ram has to go through in a cycle, resulting in better performance. Cas also plays a big part in how high of a rated speed your RAM can reach. For example very often RAM that is rated DDR2-800 with 4-4-4-12 timings will hit DDR2-1000 just by simply loosening the timings to 5-5-5-15 or similar. Once again I will not get into anything more because this can be some confusing overclocking information for this guide. All I want to stress is that if you really want the best "bang for your buck" try to buy ram that will run at speeds which will suit your needs with reasonable timings (5-5-5-15 being the average of reasonable). You don't need the most powerful ram for even the most powerful of systems. RAM is something that can save you quite a bit of money if you shop smart. PSU The Power Source is the most common part that people spend too much on. With all the ad's in magazines and online about "1000w rated PSU's for the high-performance PC! many people have got the wrong impression of what they need to power their system with ease. The most IMPORTANT thing to note about power supplies are that how much power a system needs is in no way the amount of "watts" rated. For most PC's these days what you should be looking at is the amount of Amps rated on the 12v rails. The components that draw the most power on your system use the power on the 12V rails. CPU's, and Video cards draw power from the 12V alone and just those two can easily hit well over 300w's alone. The other rails don't really worry about too much if you can meet the needs of the 12V's, especially on a gaming PC. When choosing a power source you should find out how many amps combined it has the on the 12's first, and on PSU's with multiple rails you cannot simply just add the amps up on both rails as it's nowhere that simple of a process. Most of the better quality trusted PSU's will tell you on the side label or in the specs the actual amperage the 12V rails give off. So then before you even starting looking for a PSU that will work for your needs, you must then know how many amps you need to safely power your system right? To find out this the only thing I can really tell you is to research how many your system will actually need. I will tell you now though that most likely the total your system will need will be a LOT less than that of what the really expensive PSUs have. A Quad-Core system at around 3.6ghz with an 8800Ultra heavily overclocked, a couple hard drives, and a couple optical drives will easily run on a trusted PSU that is rated around 40amps if not less. The Corsair 5500VX has a combined total of 41amps on the 12V's and can be had for only $100 bucks at the moment which is quite a cheap PSU compared to how expensive the other parts are right? This is just simply because people don't really realize how little power their systems actually need to run smoothly and safely. The average system will NOT need a very expensive power supply to run everything well. There are a few budget yet trusted power supplies that can be had for around $50 that will power the majority of gaming systems safely. The reason why there are all these expensive PSU's out there costing so much is quoted by B1gapl "most people usually go the "better to be safe, than sorry" method, with choosing power supplies.....but what they don't know, is that the safe bar is much lower, than it is" If you are looking to maximize the performance in a build then the power supply is something you want to research a lot. I do want to stress the fact though that if you buy a cheaper PSU make sure you know which are "trusted" power sources so you don't fry your system. I may be telling you to look into cheaper PSU's but I am in no way telling you to look into cheaper quality ones. There is a HUGE difference in the two. Part IV: Overclocking Overclocking has been known throughout computer ages as a dangerous and risky process to increase system performance. However in the past 4 or 5 years computers have become pretty much overclocking idiot proof. It is EXTREMELY hard to damage a part by overclocking in today's standards as long as you know the very basics of it. Overclocking can increase the value of your system by an incredible amount if you choose the right parts. You can turn a $500 system that was built for overclocking into the power of a $700 or $800 system that never overclocks, while never really putting your components in any real danger. Before you build your system you should know if you want to deal with overclocking. You should know if you want to go all out and try to get the most out of your parts, or just do moderate overclocking to where you feel comfortable, or if your dead set on a stock PC. Then there are always those people who build their PC with the potential overclocking but choose to remain stock for a while. Deciding on this will greatly effect the price : performance ratio of the money you spend on your PC. I will tell you right now it is the easiest and most beneficial way to increase your system performance. Three major parts can be overclocked and they are the CPU, Video card, and RAM. Different models and parts overclock better and higher than other and you need to read up on which these are if you are serious about saving money. Let me tell you about what you should be looking for with each of those parts. CPU The cpu is often what overclocking is built around. Buying parts that will help overclock your CPU very high can DOUBLE the performance of your chip. I find it ironic to know that people who buy the most expensive system components but are scared to overclock are beat by parts sometimes costing 1/10th of what they paid for theirs still at stock. An example of this is the E2180 which can be bought for 90 bucks and then overclocked to 3.6-3.8ghz with an aftermarket cooler. Though it may be only Dual-Core with low Cache, at this speed it will rival and usually beat the QX6850 at stock speeds which are going for over $1030 right now. I know I would feel pretty stupid if there was a $90 chip beating my $1000+ one because he choose to overclock. Certain CPU's are better than others at overclocking. Certain processors are the best value in your price range and it's up to you to narrow it down to a couple which are the best bang for buck. I will tell you right now it's not that hard of a task if you look around. Buying a cheap CPU and overclocking it very high can save you incredible amounts of money in your build and giving you the best priceerformance ratio. Video Card Choosing a video card that overclocks very well is always a plus because Video cards really cannot be damaged by overclocking unless you do a physical mod to them such as a "volt mod". There are many cards that are at the same price but one yields a much higher value after overclocking them. I used to own the 7900GS which could be overclocked from stock to rival a 7800GTX on stock volts, greatly increasing the value of the card. I have seen people volt mod the card and add a better cooler to rival the speed of a stock X1950XTX, quite a large value increase I would say. However that kind of performance doesn't come with a risk since you can mess up your volt mod and kill your card and have already voided the warranty. When you buy a video card I suggest even if you aren't too sure about overclocking to always buy one that has high overclockability for cheap because it just is the best way to maximize your bang for your buck. __________________ E6300 w/ Arctic Freezer Pro 7 @ 3.6ghz 1.4Vcore Antec 900 Case EVGA 750i FTW Mobo 2x1GB of DDR2-533 D9GMH Team Xtreme 4-4-4-12 @ 1030mhz 2.2v Gigabyte 8800GT 720/1800/1050 (eventually will SLI when they go down in price) Hanns G 19" Wide 5MS LCD 1 250GB WD and 1 Seagate 7200.10 in RAID 0 Corsair 520HX 3DMark06 Score: 13900 Last edited by Sora; 09-29-2007 at 01:32 AM.