CPU, MOBO, RAM recommendations

I bought a Z77 not the Z68, will it have features as good as the Z68? Also, I didn't get an SSD, but I'm not opposed to buying one. I might buy one to reinstall the OS and all the software, I really capped out my free cash but I can probably put together the money to buy an SSD, at least one big enough to load the game and OS and all my other software. Rain I have the 212 for the socket 775, but I believe it fits the 1155 too. If not I can always get another cooler, I also bought a tube of Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic.
 
Z77 is backwards compatible with the i72700k but u wont gain any of the features dependant on the ivy bridge cpu.
 
120GB ssd is plenty to put the OS and games on. Everything else I'd just store on your old HD. It's cheap enough that it won't hurt your wallet or you can wait and get one double the size for $160-170. If you want to get one I'd say go with a smaller SSD like a 120gb one and I promise you'll be more than pleased with the performance :) Either way, you'll see a tremendous difference in games and everything else with your new setup.
 
My parts came in today, day 6 of Neweggs 3 day shipping. I might be down for a few hours while I weld it all together.
 

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I'm a huge fan of gigabyte in the last 5 or so years; when AMD was still on top in the "nforce" era, DFI were just THE undisputed best though... nostalgia.

Asus has always been good too, but I kinda picture Asus like the "business suit" company whereas Gigabyte/DFI are kinda like the "lab coat" company.

I feel like Asus is focused on just making solid, shiny products, whereas Gigabyte/DFI are/were focused on catering to overclockers and more "geeky" in general.
 
I think the Sabertooth is built specifically for overclockers.
 
Heatsurge Gigabyte as of recent has just been plain far behind. They might be one of the biggest in mobo manufacturing but they were one of the last to actually get uefi. It took them so long they had to fake it. I am also not a fan of them cheaping out on some of the controllers. They literally have made the same choices on some parts as ASrock and its a little disturbing. Not that I have anything against a good product when it comes up.

@mac sabertooth is bells and whistles for marketing if u ask me. Temp sensors are nice but alot of people take the thermal armor off. Many of the people in the 5Ghz club at ocn are on the P8Z68 series, just a random fact. They could have done it on plenty of other boards.
 
I don't know that I'm looking to be in the 5ghz club, and I think some of them may have pulled the thermal off to fit their water system while I'm running air. Either way, it seems like a mobo that someone without a ton of OC knowledge like myself can use. Just got back from Best Buy, picked up a 120gb SSD. They had absolutely SHIT for selection but I'm not waiting another week for parts delivery so I bought the Intel 520 (literally the only SSD they had).
 
I don't know if you have Amazon Prime but 2 day shipping is "free" with it and you can overnight for $5.00. It's worth doing if you buy stuff online. When my EVGA MB went...again I bought the Rampage III and had it shipped overnight for $4.11. I was up and running on Saturday after the MB shit the bed on Friday. Anyway, you're going to be pleased as fuck with the new setup. Don't forget the pictures!
 
The ASUS UEFI is pretty easy. A ton of overclocking knowledge is useless with sb. Basics still apply but fsb/bclk as a method (least prefered anyways so who cares) is out. Pretty much raise multiplier til its not stable and then increase core voltage.

Sandy is an odd ball. They moved the pll from the motherboard to the cpu. For some reason lowering the pll voltage can actually increase stability on the higher range of overclocks. Quite backwards from what people were used to.

Tuning the voltage regulation is trial and error. Obviously you could crank it up but it will put out more heat and sacrifice the life of the components. Your looking for that balance of what you need to nake it stable. After my last BIOS update i got this tuned out to 4.7 Ghz not quite stable still but bios affects stability as well.

Getting your ram to its rated speed is easy though thanks to how XMP is. Just boot to uefi and select the xmp profile. Everything over 1333 was considered an overclock when ddr3 was drafted and its handled as such.
 
Ah that explains the RAM showing up as 1333 when it's actually 1866. I played a few minutes of BF3, went from 7-10 fps at the lowest possible video settings to 60-80 fps with maxed out video settings. I can't believe how much easier it is to TV missile now, fucking night and day. Unfortunately I have a stability issue, BF3 crashes on me after a few minutes. I'm getting a message form Origin that I need to update my video card driver so I'm updating it right now. My keyboard also shit the bed while I was installing windows. Went with a dirt cheap corded Logitech keyboard and I fucking hate it already. once I get windows updated and everything else up to speed on my system I will start playing around with overclocking. First on the list is getting my RAM up to its nominal speed. Then I might dick around with the CPU clock, I'm thinking I don't need to but I might just to see how solid this setup is. Six, I'll post pics, but keep in mind I'm using the same Antec case I've had since 2005 and it shows. This isn't a pretty rebuild, it's much more of a sleeper. I might build a custom case if I can find the right thing to use as a model. Also, this machine is WHISPER quiet. The SSD makes zero noise and barely even gets warm, the CPU fan is also very quiet. LOVE IT so far.
 
I cant remember off the top of my head so I am trying to locate my bios screenshots, yup you can screenshoot in the asus bios :p ... i cant find mine but this should be good enough because hell yours might be slightly different anyhow.

http://techgage.com/reviews/asus/p8p67_deluxe/asus_p8p67_deluxe_bios_05.jpg

In there change the Ai Overclock Tuner to XMP and then change the memory profile to the one for 1866 save and reboot and don't touch anything else for now.

Learn the shit in your uefi before you really start messing with the overclock. As you have two options for setting voltage and you can easily fuck up on one of them. That one is offset. Basically the cpu has a voltage table for any given clock speed. I actually did not have to start messing with voltages on my sample until after 4.3Ghz because the voltage it was choosing for me was good enough. Offset adds +0.05 or whatever you set to any given value. So if it wants to do 1.33 and I say offset by 0.05 its going to do 1.38 which is what it takes for me to do 4.5Ghz stable. But lets say you accidently put a big ass number in there... BOOM.

Offset is great if your still allowing the cpu to throttle because it can lower the voltage when it drops clocks. Not so much needed for a solid clock and I just manually set my shit to 1.38. 1.38 is considered the safe voltage for air on Sandy Bridge all around. 1.5 on great watercooling seems to have worked for some people.

Good news is Intel actually sells overclocking insurance. It is 20 for my cpu was 35 for the one you have might have dropped. You have to buy it within a year of buying the cpu. It covers the cpu for 3 years from purchase. One replacement if you fry the bitch.
 
My windows experience index score is 7.6 now out of a possible 7.9.
CPU - 7.6
RAM - 7.6
Graphics - 7.7
Gaming Graphics - 7.7
Hard Disk - 7.9
I don't think my old hardware registered anything over 5.9. Weird that my lowest scores are the two of the three things I replaced.
 
Not that anyone would ever actually pay attention to the WEI except for if it went from a high value to a 1.0 which would indicate a serious issue :p but here are mine for comparison
CPU - 7.6
RAM - 7.8
Graphics - 7.9
Gaming Graphics - 7.9
Hard Disk - 5.9

I assume you havent set the ram clock yet? Keep in mind my cpu overclock on the score comparison.

Its not weird at all. You expect a piece of shit quad core with hyperthreading to score a 7.9? I mean if you get a 7.9 then what is my 8 Core 16 thread Xeon E5-2687W Turbo locked to 3.8Ghz going to score? More realistically whats a i7-2600K at 5.7Ghz going to score :p
 
I can easily bump my CPU score, that's running the chip with no OC, same with RAM and my GPU. My system is stable though now that I updated my graphics driver and installed the 122 "important" updates to windows. Oh and I did get in the BIOS and fix my RAM speed, it's set at 1866 now. If only I could figure out what's wrong with my keyboard...
 
Sounds good. What a difference, huh? I'm glad you did the upgrade and not just for BF3. Enjoy the new setup. Oh, did you try using your old keyboard on only usb 2.0 connectors. I know it shouldn't make a difference, but mine intermittently stops working if I have it connected to usb 3.0 but when it's connected to the 2.0 slots no problems at all...go figure.
 
To be honest Mac I would just ditch the wireless KB all together. Never really trust them anyways and I hate replacing batteries all the time. Pick out a nice mechanical one for your X-mas present for yourself and deal with the cheapo Logitech for now.
 
I actually like the kind of mushy feel though, as long as the key positively returns to it's normal position it's fine. Right now I'm getting ready to replace the batteries in it. I usually just plug into the USB when the batteries get low. Anyhow yeah real happy with this, my framerates actually dropped all the way down to the high 30's yesterday on B2K with my eye candy all set to ultra. Not sure what was up with that but it was still playing like a dream.
 
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