[$62.97] --- 120mm Fans: 3x Noctua NF-P12-1300 (mohtalim)
Same fan model as the two that come with the CPU Cooler. Choosing these over the Nexus and Scythe fans since the Noctuas come with convenient voltage regulators (in-line zener diodes to drop the voltage from 12V to 9V or 7V). They also come with rubber screws.
[$25.98] --- 92mm Fans: 2x Nexus 92mm Real Silent Case Fan - DF1209SL-3 (mohtalim, silentpcreview)
SPCR-recommended, for the video card, come with rubber screws (probably incompatible with the T-Rad2)
[$169.99] --- Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit (mohtalim)
Re-using: Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, Speakers, Microphone, Desk, Hard Drive(s), DVD-RW
Old Concerns
Memory
Not sure what speed to get. If I remember correctly, I should buy RAM based on my front side bus. I think the Core i7 920 Nehalem uses a 133 Mhz FSB, but I don't know how this translates to "matching" RAM speed. DDR3 1333? DDR3 1600? Believe it is to get cheaper RAM with slightly higher latency (9-9-9-24). Will likely buy at least 3x2gb modules from G.SKILL, potentially 6x2gb for the full 12gb.
Video Card
Probably a Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 or 4870 with 1 gigabyte of RAM. Still need to decide if a 4850 is sufficient for predicted 1920x1200 gaming. Also, SLI is less attractive to me due to the overhead of third-party video card cooling.
This post made me gnash my teeth in anger and flail about wildly. Have the Intel technical marketing guys not drilled this into the head of reviewers properly?
THERE IS NO FSB ON Core i7.
All clocks in the system are based off a 133 MHz reference clock. This part is true. Intel will be sticking with the 133 MHz reference clock for essentially forever (as far as my crystal ball reaches) because it is cheap to produce and makes for decent bin splits (i.e. a few ticks constitutes a legitimate perf boost, but you can swing up or down a tick to match your actual yield more nicely.) There is no relation to the reference clock and a desired memory frequency, despite whatever folk wisdom you have imbibed for FSB platforms.
As for your actual question, a Core i7 can pull down around 14 GB/s at stock speed on a single core. If you buy a 3 stick kit of 800, you get 8*3*800=19,200 MB/s, of which you can sustain perhaps 80-90% (~16GB/s). So 3ch 800 is already overkill! But, aha, you say you're going to overclock your part! Check around for your expected overclock, but I've seen reviewers hit 20GB/s on a single core. Three channels of 1067 would get you 25.6 GB/s theoretical, and you could do fairly well here. But, aha, again, you say your Core i7 has four cores, and don't I need 4x as much if I want to use all of them. No, but some more would be nice. There are limits in the uncore which cap the achieved multicore bandwidth. You can push multicore to maybe 30 GB/s with heavy overclocking; I haven't seen any reviewers work this angle. At 30GB/s, 1333 is not going to cut it. You will need 1600.
However, what are you going to run that demands 30 GB/s other than a benchmark? Most client apps are single thread and need <10 GB/s. It's hard to find multicore apps that require more than 20 GB/s total across all threads. As long as you have enough bandwidth to meet demand, you're not going to see a huge speedup switching to faster RAM. In most cases the bottleneck is in the core, not the DRAM.
Honestly, point me at some reviews showing client app speedups for running at 3ch DDR3 1600 and I will do a jig in the streets, because that would be awesome. I'm just not seeing it. Get some nice low latency RAM that's reasonably cheap, around 1067, and has a huge capacity and rest easy.
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent Intel's positions, strategies, or opinions.
Result of reading: pretty much 100% agreement with your post, seems RAM in general is a poor price/performance trade-off and/or a gamble for overclocking.
That said, if I was buying today, I've narrowed down to two RAM choices:
7-7-7 1067 is pretty normal.
7-7-7 1333 is fast for DDR3.
1.875 ns per DRAM clk @ 1067
1.5 ns per DRAM clk @ 1333
13.125 min round trip on 1067
10.5 min round trip on 1333
Assume your average latency is half hit, half empty: 26.25/1067 vs 21/1067, so you save 5 ns out of 60ns on average. Maybe you see that +8% on WinRAR (that's not disk limited); most other things would show less speedup due to the latency. Obviously I've already said about the bandwidth.
It is worth noting that a Core i7 920 only supports up to 1067. If you buy the 1333, you will run it at 1067 unless you overclock your reference clock.
Edit: It is unclear to me what Taiwanese mobos do to the timings when underclocking RAM.
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent Intel's positions, strategies, or opinions.
Memory
Grr... RAM decision depends on if I'll overclock at all. From what I can surmise, the Crucial RAM is quite poor at overclocking (especially without heatspreaders). On the other hand, the G.SKILL is great for overclocking; implying sin not to do so if you buy it.
Video Card
Since I'll be paying $80+ for third-party cooling, more expensive video cards are essentially subsidized, making me lean toward the Radeon HD 4870 - 1GB. For example, the SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB (newegg) for $249.99 after $15 mail-in-rebate. This should ensure rock-solid 1920x1200 resolution gaming at the expense of sick idle power drain (I think ~75W for video alone).
Edit: Changed idle from 50->75W. Number derived from this AnandTech article where the 4870 total system power was 203.7 and the 4870 CF (2 cards) was 273.1.
Edit: Incidentally, hardocp performed power consumption analysis here and stated "It was explained to me by AMD that we should expect better idle power control in upcoming drivers."
Memory
Should I care about voltages? Is lower voltage always better? Is there a threshold I shouldn't cross? If I remember correctly, there was a lot of fear over 1.65 V DIMMS. For what it's worth, the Crucial is 1.5 V and the G.SKILL is 1.5-1.6 V (strange that it's a range).
Dwindlehop wrote:I think there's a fair amount of press on the subject.
All I remember was doom and gloom about limiting an over-clocking vector since it could burn out your chip yet over-clocker's have done so safety disclosing conflicting data. It's hard to sift through the "fair amount of press" and find something useful :/
As for the (temperatures)/(power consumption) I understand that; most of the questions were sanity checks, with the exception of the threshold. I think it's 1.64V, or something along those lines, but it's difficult to confirm. In any case, I'll avoid buying any RAM that requires standard operating voltages above 1.6V.
Good thing I can't build the system while I'm at home! Thanks for the heads up; it provides a warm fuzzy feeling to my (forced) decision to wait anyway. There's still a good chance I'll buy other parts separately if a good sale appears (see Enermax Modu82+ EMD625AWT).
VLSmooth wrote:And with that, it seems I'll be spending ~$40 more on the G.SKILL.
I'm curious. Why?
Confirmation that 1.6V is fine, some empirical data of the benefit of even 1333 RAM, and the future flexibility (the heat spreaders don't hurt either).