PC Hardware Buyer's Guide October 2010

Enthusiast Overclocker October 2010

The Enthusiast Overclocker is a PC designed for those looking to build a fast PC without splashing out on pricey hardware. If you're not into speedy video encoding and heavy multi-tasking, but still love your high-resolution gaming, we've created a PC with the best balance of performance possible. However, you'll need to apply your overclocking skills to get the most from this system, but then, that's half the fun of a DIY build, isn't it?

New This Month

The headline change to this month’s Enthusiast Overclocker build is swapping out the Core i5-750 for its replacement, the Core i5-760. We’ve not published our review of this chip yet, but we've tested it for Custom PC magazine and it's generally everything we'd expect. It brings a clock bump (2.8GHz vs 2.66GHz) and reduced power consumption to the table, while still being effortlessly overclockable, so it’s a pretty easy inclusion in our build, especially as it's retailing for the same prices as the last of the i5-750s.

A less easy decision to make was whether the Cooler Master HAF 912 Plus was worthy of housing the PC. We loved the build quality and the compactness of the HAF 912 Plus when we looked at it earlier this month but its cooling wasn’t quite as good as the incumbent Xigmatek Utgard, which will be important in an overclocked PC. The HAF is more distinctive and arguably better looking, and it’s also cheaper, especially in the US. Given how evenly matched the two cases are we decided to leave the Utgard in place (it gets a defence bonus of +1 WS) but the HAF 912 Plus is definitely worth considering if you’re looking at this build.

And The Rest

We've chosen the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB, as the extra cash for the extra memory and memory bandwidth over the 768MB version is probably going to be worth it in a year or two's time.

If your budget is a little tighter and you want to get the system down to around £650, the GTX 460 768MB is a bargain for around £125. If cash is even tighter, consider opting for a Core i3 CPU if gaming is important, or a HD 5770 if CPU power is more of a priority.

If you want to spend more than £170 on your new graphics card, the GeForce GTX 465 isn't the way to do it - it may sound faster than the GTX 460, and cost more (£170) but it's actually slower. The GTX 460 1GB even has the measure of the £220 HD 5850, so your next graphics card option is the £280 Radeon HD 5870.


The motherboard choice was obvious – we’re yet to find a P55 board that offers better value for money than the Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2, which has a clean layout and is very overclockable despite costing only £80. Its worth noting however that we've been told that this motherboard will be going end of life soon so it's worth picking one up while you still can.

As previously stated, we like having 4GB of memory in our PCs, and we’ve chosen 1,600MHz DDR3 to give us a bit of headroom for overclocking the CPU. For example, if we wanted to aim for a 3.6GHz overclock, we’d use a Base Clock of 180MHz (as 180 x 20 = 3,600). If we’d opted for 1,333MHz memory, we’d have to use the 6x memory strap with this Base Clock, which would give us a memory frequency of 1,080MHz, which is a touch slow. With the 1,600MHz memory, we can safely use the 8x memory strap and have our memory run at a more healthy 1,440MHz. We wouldn’t recommend overclocking 1,333MHz memory to 1,440MHz for everyday use unless you really know your DRAM.

As we’re planning a fairly heavy overclock, we needed to add a great cooler to the build, and we chose the Gelid Tranquillo for its cooling ability and its quietness. If you wanted to chill your CPU even lower, the slightly more expensive Thermaltake Frio would serve as it provides excellent cooling, though it is a little louder than the Tranquilo.

We’ve also packed in the 500W OCZ ModXStream PSU, a cheap SATA DVD drive and a 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F3 hard disk. If you haven't got a copy already, you might want to factor in a copy of Windows 7 - if you're confident that you won't be upgrading much, then an OEM copy should be fine, but serial upgraders need the pricier retail version.