Overclocking - Air Cooling
Our engineers will overclock your system to the safest levels attainable. Overclocking in an air cooled system is limited by temperature, unlike a watercooled system where hardware limitations come into effect more. 3.8GHz is usually the limit in an air cooled system but the final overclock will be established after intensive testing. Each system is burned in for a minimum of 24 hours using a variety of programs like 3DMark and Prime 95, in fact we have more rigorous testing procedures than any other UK system integrator. During this period the optimisation is brought in line with component temperature levels for each chassis we use. These temperatures take into account the CPU cooling, chassis design and temperature increases over time such as dust build up, longevity of components and so on.
This system results in PCs that are extremely fast but also extremely reliable over a long period of time. You will find we don’t brag about selling the fasted air cooled PCs because pushing the limits causes components to fail sooner, results in noisier systems and unstable systems.
Overclocking - Water Cooling
Extreme Overclock is reserved for the systems with the best cooling – our engineers will spend even more time fine tuning the system to obtain higher performance in the CPU, GPU and RAM areas.
Memory
Note – only choose 1333MHz RAM if you don’t not want your CPU overclocked.
Ram speed has to be run at specific ratios to the speed of the CPU and this will change depending on the over clock and cooling capacity of your system. This being the case we can’t guarantee that 1600MHz will be running at exactly that speed in a system as it may mean sacrificing the CPU over clock. For example a 920 over clocked to 3.8 GHz can be achieved several ways, here are two examples and the frequency options available for 1600MHz RAM:
- 20 x 190 gives 1520MHz or 1900MHz options
- 21 x 180 gives 1440MHz or 1800MHz options
In the first case we could run a 1600MHz kit at 1520MHz or overclock a 1866MHz kit to 1900MHz. In the second example we might be able to run 1333MHz RAM at 1440MHz, run a 1600MHz kit at 1440MHz or run a 1866MHz kit at 1800MHz.
It can get confusing and the way we overclock a CPU depends on the model and Water Cooling options but our staff will always be happy to help you choose the best RAM for your system!
Motherboard
At the moment our favourite motherboard is the ASUS P6T because:
- Great value for money
- Better for running fast RAM than the Rampage II Extreme
- Better CPU overclocking than most other X58 boards
The more expensive boards do offer more options and features but the P6T is actually a better performer in our eyes.