Right... the big advice here is overclock.
But, I've talked to some relatives, and there sure are some drawbacks to that:
- Bigger cooler required, thus negating part of the price difference.
- Probably more noise.
- Lose warranty - rather a biggie to me.
- Shorter lifespan.
- More power consumption?
The lifespan is actually important, as I kind of expect this to be my last big pc purchase for a long long time. 3 years won't cut it.
I'll try to deal with your concerns one at a time. I'm not going to try to convince you, if you want to go with the 950, then do so. I will, however, try to dispel some misconceptions that people seem to have about overclocking.
Overclocking has two modes of thought: "extreme" where the chip is pushed
right to it's limits (and sometimes past them) and "better value" where it's just a case of getting a slower processor up to the speed of a slightly more expensive one.
The only time overclocking will seriously impact the life of a processor is if you push it too far - that "extreme" overclocking. A mild overclock will not have any effect on the CPU. Want to know why?
Because all CPUs are made the same way. The same batch of chips will all come from the same wafer of silicon. When they come out of the lithography process, they're untested... they're all 'equal'. As the chips are tested, they're tested for a particular power and thermal envelope, starting with the top-end (say, i7 975) chips and working down, in quotas. If a chip fails to pass testing for the top end (i7 975), it's tested in the next band down (i7 950), and down (i7 920), and so on... frequently chips that fail will fail all the tests at any tier, and so be thrown away. Now, with a mature process, the yields are good. That means that the quota for top end chips usually gets filled before all the good chips are allotted. End result: you get good chips in the 'lower' tiers. So chances are fairly good that your chip, even if it's a 920 or a 950, if they'd picked it and tested it first, would have been a 975.
If you're trying to get the system quiet, you'll want a cooler other than the stock anyway, such as that Noctua. "More noise" is utter nonsense if you're doing it right.
Unless you blow the chip up in
style (and by style I mean feeding it 1.7v or something insane like that) they're not gonna know you overclocked it. I've never killed a chip by overclocking. And all the chips I've overclocked still work, and are
long out of warranty now.
Shorter lifespan: do you
know how long most silicon is rated to work for at 'stock' speeds? About 20 years. Even with a fairly enthusiastic overclock (like my 2.66GHz 920 to 3.8GHz) you'll maybe take a third of that life off.
Maybe. A mild overclock will barely register.
More power consumption: well, yes, in theory. In practice, it's not a great deal extra. You take a 920 to 950 speeds, and it'll draw almost exactly the same amount of power. You take it to 3.8GHz, on the other hand, it'll draw a lot more. Still, if you can get something done in five minutes at 3.8GHz, but it takes you seven at 3GHz, does it save you power because it's taken less time?
Lifespan a isn't worry. I've got an AMD K6-2 that is still happily churning away at 450MHz instead of it's stock 350MHz... and I first overclocked it
nine years ago. It's in a hardware firewall, and turned on 24/7/365, or close enough.
Therefore I think it may be best to stay away from overclocking. Bearing that in mind, the 2.67 GHz from a 920 just doesn't impress me enough. 3GHz sounds more like it, which explains my initial choice for the 950.
Fair enough. I wished to dispel some of your misconceptions that seemed to have developed. The 920 will cost you €250 instead of the €470 of the i7 950; even if you spend €60 on a cooler, that's still a significant saving. And if you want that CPU to run quiet, you'll need an aftermarket cooler... that's gonna be an absolutely minimum of €30, even if you go with the i7 950.
For a cooler I want something quiet, without requiring ridiculous amounts of work, like lapping the base. Isn't that what thermal paste is for anyway?
Thermal paste is there to fill the microscopic holes that you can't see. It's not there to account for a base that terribly designed and needs nearly 1.5mm of metal taken off the centre before it's actually flat. The Noctua heatsink is flat. The TRUE is not.
And PS is right in his previous post there - not everything is as easily available physically as the info on the internet. The shop I linked to actually has a huge selection already, which is my reason for picking them in the first place. It's still a few hours drive probably :roll:
So please select a cooler from this list.
As I said, the Noctua U12P SE1366 (everything you need in one box). I'm not all that impressed by most of the others for modern chips. I used to like the Scythe Ninja and Zipang, but I don't think they'll cope too well with a Core i7 chip.
Incidentally, this case would pretty much solve my cooling problems, but at a serious price tag. Probably not worth it. Has the coolness factor though.
IIRC, that case is designed for liquid cooling.
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