Yea, but to what end? Do you think OP will notice a difference in performance?

edit: I do agree that it was designed with overclocking in mind though, I didn't consider that at first.

this is what the sales rep said "It will be more stable, last longer, more quiet, and less heat when NOT overclocking. Overclocking typically results in a small, not really noticeable, gain in performance."

I figured I didn't need it, but I still have time to change it if I want to.

I don't know about all that. Heat is very manageable provided they didn't cheap out and use the stock cooler, and a $60 watercooler will make it silent. Overclocking on my 2700k takes it from 3.5GHz to 4.3GHz (and if an overclock isn't stable, the person is doing it wrong), that's not small. You could make the argument for less wear but those CPUs are warrantied for 3 years and and you're being charged for the overclocking feature with the k models. You don't see people wearing down CPUs that often and there are all kinds of thermal safeguards today also.

Between the board and that CPU you're looking at a lot of cost. If you're not going to OC then you might as well scale those back. If you're going to go that far, leaving 20% of the CPU untapped is a weird place to stop.

That said you don't need to overclock and there's just nothing about poker or gaming that will trouble you at all with that system. Like at all. I don't care how many tables you play or what else you have running. In fact I don't know you'd see the difference between that and the i5 plus 8GB RAM in a $100 board, unless you're running benchmarks.

Fair enough. It could have something to do with the fact that the Tiki has such a small chasis. I just looked at the order. They're using ASETEK 120MM LIQUID COOLER 550LC fwiw.

Here's a pretty cool article on how FNW came up with the idea of the Tiki if anyone is interested.
http://www.tomshardware.com/pictures...-mini-itx.html

Anyways, thanks again for all your help!

Asetek builds water coolers for everybody. I'm pretty sure my Antec as well as the Corsair variants are Aseteks and you can see the resemblance easy. I don't know enough about that particular model but if comparable to the lower-priced ones like mine or the H50, then you could overclock easily, but those coolers aren't extreme. You wouldn't want to push the CPUs to their limits (especially with that particular chip).

I got my 2700k stable fairly high but found backing it off a bit to 4.2 GHz--not 4.3, I forget I backed it down a little more--was where temperatures were comfortable. The 3770k warms up a bit more as you OC because of a change under the heatspreader, but I can't imagine that your temperatures at say 4GHz would be problematic. Again you're about 10 miles past overkill already, just throwing it out there as the system is certainly capable of comfortably OC'ing.

At the same time, that CPU will go into turbo up to 3.9GHz by itself too, so there's that. Left as is the speed will fluctuate way up and down, sometimes like 1.6 GHz when it's doing easy things.

Anyway (putting price aside) Falcon has a very good rep for build quality, and they pay attention to little things like cabling. They also take their customer service pretty seriously from everything I've heard, some saying they would overnight returns for repair, on their dime, and get it back quickly. 3 years is a lot of coverage for the industry and I can't fathom you'd need to do a thing with that setup to upgrade in that time. Plus it a good looking system & that's worth something too.

Cool cool. That's good to know. So far my experience with them has been very good. I e-mailed back and forth several times and placed by order with Falcon before Origin even responded. I'll probably post in here again once I receive everything and get to play around with it a little bit.

hmm nice build.

but i agree... you gotta overclock that **** man!! haha.

I also ended up downgrading my order to GTX 670 overclocked. £70 cheaper and same performance as GTX 680.

SSD its about reliability. I opted for intel 520 240 GB. Good read/write and good reliability reviews.

I plan on having my HM there so i guess it cant hurt to go big.

Your Rig looks really good thou.

Also by the time your parts wear down or w/e its 2-3 years later anyways and you will need to upgrade!! so imho.. overclock the beats. Especially as they seem to overclock so well. Intel purposefully didnt run the clocks to their limits. For whatever reason. We have the power to.. so why not

How much does your HM use oO?

OP won't need to upgrade in 2-3 years. He has atleast 4-5 years of performance with this rig. Only reason for OP to upgrade is if he wants to have the latest components 2-3 years from now.
I think they run the clocks lower for stability and longevity in combination with their stock cooler and guarantee.

but its nice to put on a game once in a while and just have it run good...

It is overkill. but meh.

just got this in the mail today...



feel like I'm getting slow rolled waiting another week for the PC

Is that the ultimate? Either way a decent keyboard. Thought about getting the normal one at one point. Ended up getting the Steelseries 6gv2. Mechanic keyboards all the way.

Ya it is. They just came out with a new blackwidow, but it has green lights. Thought this one looked better. This is my 1st mechanical keyboard...feels soo much better

Yeah but how often do you see someone spend a ton getting premium parts to overbuild, and then stay content for years?

Before long Broadwell or some AMD CPUs will roll out that will be 40% faster, with DDR4 RAM, then you'll see SATA 12gb/s ports and new SSDs, not to mention the hot new video cards. You start to itch a little bit. Then someone tells you about RAID or dual-GPU setsup and you itch more. Then after 2.5 years you get some minor bug or something and jfc I hate this computer time for another one arahghghdj

The people I see using their PCs for like 8 years are the ones who bought the $450 model and just rock it out. Still have some coming in CTF asking if they should upgrade from 512MB RAM. The guy with all the cool stuff rarely goes 4-5 years.

Yea, I do see what you mean. Still I think there are a lot of people that stick to a build for 4 years when it's as strong as this one for the simple reason that it still does everything they want it to do. What you wrote sounds more applicable to the enthusiast crowd. The type that builds PCs themselves and are comfortable upgrading them themselves.
I could be wrong though, I don't personally know anybody that has gone with really high-end components so I may not be the best judge of the matter. I personally usually upgrade stuff after 2.5-3 years, but that's because I usually go with mid-range items, I just make sure the foundation is solid so it will support future CPUs/GPUS etc.