First computer build help

Alveric wrote in post #15756083
Yup, you don't need a killer-watt PSU, unless you're planning on adding like 5 extra HDDs later and a power-hungry video card; and even then, 700W might be overkill: a 500W Seasonic would do nicely.

Todays HDD don't add up to any real power consumption - they are nice compared to the first-generation 15k rpm SCSI drives released.

It is only when using multiple graphics cards (or a combo card that integrates multiple cards in the same mechanical package) that you need so much power. Few graphics cards can max out at more than 200W and today, most processors stays at maybe 100W.

So 400-500W of a good brand should normally do well - but the computer salesmen likes to sell monster supplies. I guess they have a large margin on them. The only important thing is that a big part of the total power from the PSU can be output on the 12V rails, since most power-hungry parts takes all power from 12V - powerful 3V3 and 5V rails aren't as important as they were some years ago.

Alveric wrote in post #15857908
Don't, I repeat DO NOT overclock anything, if you value your data. Overclocking can lead to data corruption.

Overclocking Intel chips is now just a matter of increasing the multiplier. You don't have to mess with voltages unless you're going for really high overclocks. Just run some burn in tests like IBT or Prime 95 to make sure your OC is stable and make sure you have decent cooling and it's fine.

Alveric wrote in post #15857979
I don't like playing Russian roulette. The corruption occurs before the data is written, whilst it's still going in and out of RAM.

In most situations, you don't have any issues with corruption when having a sane overclocking. It is more an issue with cooling, i.e. ageing.

That is also why quite a lot of manufacturers sells factory-overclocked gear. Having oversized cooling solutions allows them to make sure that the temperatures stays within allowed range - and if the ambient is too high, then they automatically turns off the overclocking.

Earlier, most components were overclocked by just limiting the timing safety margins. But as the integrated chips gets finer and finer structures making the silicon chips smaller and smaller, the temperature transport is more often an issue.

An example is that many processors have dynamic clocking. If running all cores concurrently, then the clock frequency must be reduced to keep down the total power consumption - i.e. keeping the chip cool enough. When running a single program that doesn't support multi-threading, then the processor can boost the clock speed of that single thread since it knows that the other threads aren't running at high loads, i.e. aren't also contributing large amounts of heat.

A modern computing chip competes with your stove when it comes to amount of heat produced per square millimeter of surface.

A manufacturer must then decide what is a "reasonably large" cooling solution. So even if the chip have the capacity to run much faster, they have to speed limit the chip so their reference cooling design can handle it.

Next thing is that the signalling is faster when a chip is cool. More heat means there is larger temperature vibrations so the electrons will bump more often. So a warm chip runs with less timing safety margins because all signals are travelling slower. While a well-cooled, overclocked, chip may be able to maintain good timing margins by being very well cooled. There is a reason why the fastest overclock records have been with people cooling their processors (or even full motherboards) to temperatures way below freezing.

In the end, overclocking isn't automagically risky or dangerous. But it requires skill. It isn't just "do step A,B,C then you're done".

BB70Chevelle wrote in post #15857872
Finally got the comp up and running, only thing left to get is a copy of spyder4 pro or colormunki display but, Have a quick question. With editing in LR4 would there be any noticeable gains if I overclocked the CPU? I often use the batch feature a lot as after a race I usually have 500-1000 photos so I do a auto correction and add my water mark then go back and fine adjust my favorite shots. Would there be a noticeable speed increase when doing this if I overclocked to 4.2ghz or should I just leave it stock?

I believe the interactive parts of LR are dependant on single core clock speed, which would make LR feel a bit faster. The export feature uses multiple threads, so you'd get even more speed up, unless it hit a thermal limit, which is why good cooling is important.

I don't overclock personally. I don't believe it significantly increases data corruption risk for small to moderate overclocks, but then the benefit is relatively small.