Real Bench

It's been a while!

It's been over 2 years since my last post. Not much going on but I figured I'd share my new rig.
Current specs are

• Intel Core i7-5960X 4.6GHz 
• ASUS Rampage V Extreme 
• Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB DDR4 2800 
• ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX 
• 4x Raid0 SAMSUNG 850 PRO 256GB SSD 
• 2x WD Red 1TB NAS Desktop Hard Disk Drive 
• Corsair Carbide Series Air 540

Here is my Raid0 craziness with the 4 SSD

Interior shot

ROG Realbench w/ 4770k Maximus VI Hero

I had everything set on XMP so the RAM was at 2133 but 8 less gigs. The reason I got rid of the AMD stuff was it was acting slow and choppy during heavy loads while gaming. I thought it was an AMD thing but turns out one of my RAM modules was bad. I'm going to OC the CPU to 4.5 and wait for the RMA on the RAM to run a real comparison.

I went into the BIOS and set up the AUTO profile for 4.6GHz. This was the easiest OC I've done.

ROG Realbench AMD FX 8350 Crosshair V Formula Z

Overclocking on the Rampage IV Extreme is so easy it's stupid

After spending months getting my FX8350 stable at 5.0GHz with CFVZ and then aiming for 4.5GHz with the Gigabyte x79-UP7 with the 3930K, I went and bought a Rampage IV Extreme. With the two previous setups I must have spent at least 100 hours overclocking and testing.

With the RIVE I set it to the gamer OC profile of 4.7GHz and set my RAM to their recommended settings. I ran Prime 95 overnight and BOOM!! Temps never went over 50C and I'm done. In some very strange way I almost feel cheated? Great job ROG team!

My New GPU

Well, I returned one of the 7970's and my original one I had to RMA. The crossfire wasn't working out too well with games and I got sick of troubleshooting. I also got a set of CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 Desktop Memory Model CMD16GX3M4A2133C9.  The problem is, is i cant get a stable OC on the RAM at 2133 and anything on my 3930K over 4.0. It could be the Gigabyte X79 UP4 or my lack of knowledge with a Gigabyte board.

Here is my now with a MSI 5450

I'm having much more fun with new setup.

After doing some bench marking I've realized that water cooling doesn't pay.  The H100i is perfect and cheap. I'm running my 3930K at 4.5Ghz and never pass 50C.  Instead of cooling my 7970 I picked up another 7970 that was refurbished. It was cheaper then the Komodo block and the Alphacool pump. Don't forget about the money for the radiators and all the fittings. My analysis is, only build a custom wc setup if you want it to look cool or you are maxed out on hardware. If you can still buy a better CPU or another GPU you should do that instead.