I want to build a new over clocking budget system this month around the e2140 or e2160 (because they have great OC results) cpu's. I don’t do gaming so the limited 1mb cache on a 2140/2160 will not really affect me. My uses will be Photoshop, Dreamweaver, email and surfing.

I was thinking of getting a new P35 motherboard for future proofing and if I ever wanted to upgrade to a newer faster CPU somewhere down the line.


Since the price is comparable which one you think will be a better over clocker?
- Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R -$139 at newegg
- ASUS P5K (vanilla) - $149 at newegg

The next question is which CPU will be the better overvlocker? (keep in mind the above motherboards)
- E2160 1.8 Ghz with a multiplier of 9x
- E2140 1.6 Ghz with a multiplier of 8x


I looking at basic over clocking with stock fan or a modest cpu fan upgrade.

Thanks

p.s. right now i leaning towards the asus p5k (vanilla) because it has 2 more usb ports on the back and a ieee port when compared to the P35-DS3R. But higher and stable OC is more important to me.

I just purchased an Asus P5K motherboard (the intel designed board), an E2160, and the biggest cpu cooler I could find . (Zalman something or other with a 110 mm fan - mainly out of noise concerns). I choose the E2160 because I've read that they overclock up to 3 GHhz. I also ordered 1066 ram for the machine. I have very limited (err... no) experience overclocking, however, my expectation is that with the fast memory I will be able to lift the FSB speed up to 1066/4 (or more?) and get 2.4 GHz out of the cpu. I haven't assembled the system yet so can't report actual results.

I'm looking forward to upgrading the cpu to the latest greatest 45nm cpu when they're available. In the meantime the E2160 is pretty good bang for the buck.

good luck

so... my system's together.

Asus p5k, E2160, Patriot DDR2 1066 5-5-5-9 ram.

First boot, I increased the FSB to 1066/4=266. That caused the bios to add 1067 to its ram frequency list, so I selected that. The system correctly detected the Patriot 5-5-5-9 timings on its own. That's it, the CPU runs at 2.4 GHZ. Installed windows and all runs fine. Runs as expected based on the experience other have reported. I have no interested in pushing it further at the moment.

When the cpu is not busy the multiplier is automatically reduced from 9 to 6. Nice.

At full cpu load reported cpu temp is 31 degree C (although idle temp is reported to be 9 C, so that's wonked. I'll guess its actually 40 something.)

Zalman CNPS9700NT fan runs at <1300 rpm. Very quiet. The big cooler is overkill but certainly lives up to its billing as very quiet. I suspect the stock fan in the cpu retail box would be just fine and wouldn't bother upgrading if not very sensitive to the noise of the smaller/faster fan.

For the benifit of lurkers: the CNPS9700NT fits perfectly in an Antec 182 case. The cpu cooller fan lines up nearly exactly with the top case exhaust fan to push/pull the hot cpu air nearly straight out of the case.

I have a photo but don't see any way to attach it here....

Thanks for the information nomoredellforme! I saw in this a forum at xtremesystems.org that people were getting at 3.0Ghz on STOCK cooler using a e2160 cpu. Amazing huh? To bad it was on different motherboard. I bet you could go higher and be 100% stable without worries on the plain P5K.



here is the link to the forum

xtreme systems


ps. what bios revision is your motherboard?

nomoredellforme which power supply your are using for ur antec case? Did you have problem pluging ur power supply to mother board? Cause I heard you need long power supply cord...

If your budget allows it, I would go for the Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R. It'll give you some more future proofing by adding 2 slots(up to 2 x 2G) of DDR3 memory and up of the 4 slots for DDR2. That's the MB I have ordered today. This MB is about $30 more than the one you picked but IMHO it's worth it. Always fun to get more paths for upgrade.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] _compared/

the gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R looks like a nice board and its rather cheap next to the others and the second best OC'r.. support DDR2 and DDR3

get the p35 ds3r its 129$ and by the time you start thinking about upgrading to ddr3 you'll probably want a motherboard that i has features not available on the p35c so you will want to get a new mobo anyway.... do it cheap now so in a few years you can upgrade again and be happy you didn't spend the extra 40$ on the p35c

Power supply in the P182 case is an Antec NeoHE 430. Cable length is okay. Both power cables run up the back side of the inner panel that the mother board rests on. I don't have enough experience to say whether these power cables are longer than normal or not. They reach with room to spare.

Is there a way to load a picture this forum? There must be... I don't see it.

My Asus P5k bios revision is 0414.
I upgraded to latest immediately, before OS install.

Regarding temperature...

Core Temp (Beta 0.94) reports Core #{0,1} both at ~42 C with Orthos running it's blended cpu/ram stress test. It reports and idle temp of ~20C - which is near ambient in my local environment. I suspect these are correct +/- some small error.

I don't recommend bothering to install Asus' temp/system monitoring utility. It reported 10C less than these numbers. It's also full of awful graphics IMO.

One glitch I've experienced with my setup is that when the system boots the bios will, sometimes, report that it failed to apply the overclocking settings and that I should press F1 to go into the bios settings and fix the problem or F2 to proceed with default settings. I have to go into the bios, then simply save and exit (no changes) to get the system to boot overclocked. If exit without telling it to save then it comes up at stock rates. Minor PITA.

Orthos "Small FFTs - stress CPU" pushes the core temps up to 46 C.

How critical is Tjunction? It is reported to be 85C.

- nomoredellforme. Thanks for all the info. I like how you bios update the motherboard before installing windows. That is a good tip. This forum here has a photo of the bios with a overclocking guide you may want to check out.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forum [...] 33&page=14

- FatCat Good advice. I thought about the Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R since it can do both DDR3 and DDR2 and like you said it would be more future proof. However, I agree more with what shooter124 said not really being worth it and in a few years i would get a new motherboard and ram system.

Thanks for everyones advice. I believe i had decided to go with the ASUS P5K (plain) it was a hard choice but it has the firewire port when compared to the Gigabye.

nomoredellforme thanks for the info, is there any where I can find HoWto's OC E2160 with P5K? I actually just changed FSB in BIOS from 200 to 300, nothing else. But are there more HowTo's on tweeks to get i faster and being able to get a stable box?

the p35-ds3r is awesome. great overclocking. i just set my my new computer today and this mobo is good ( for ocing i have a e6400 running at 3.5GHZ) but it really depends on luck what your processor can handle.

the firewire port? lol who still uses firewire? i thought firewire just died and been put into a grave but no one never covered it with dirt.

also from styling point of view the ds3r gets cool points looking better than p5k