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Building a kick ass system around Intel's new Core i5 760 is not difficult, with careful selection of components it is possible to easily get to 4.2ghz with only a couple of bios changes. No longer is overclocking in the hands of experts, as manufacturers ship their motherboards with easy to tweak preconfigured settings. As the ASRock P55 Extreme 4 shows today, with even the smallest amount of effort, 1.4ghz gains are easily achieved.
Our testing has shown that the Core i5 760 is not only very well priced, but when overclocked it is capable of delivering a great experience with modern game engines and professional level encoding and rendering applications. While you are still going to be limited to only 4 cores, the performance for the modest asking price of £150 is very desirable indeed.
When we built the system today we knew that one of the main criticisms of the i5 platform is the use of dual channel memory, rather than the higher performance tri channel 1366 slot solution. While we will never reach the same levels as a similarly clocked 1366 system, the 2000mhz memory helps to boost performance, as seen in the Sandra tests earlier in the review. The memory is so cheap now we see no reason to settle for 1600mhz or less.
The 1GB eVGA GTX460 is a fantastic performer and our SLI review will be published shortly – even in single card mode however it is capable of delivering good frame rates at our native 1080p resolution today.
KitGuru says: The end result shows that for 1 grand, you can build yourself a formidable computer capable of not only powering through the latest games, but also able to render and encode with the best of them.
Most of the components on test today can be bought from Yoyotech – the UK's leading online store – right in the heart of London.
That is a great idea for an article Zardon. that Core i5 processor is brilliant value for money. Well impressed.
That is a great idea for an article Zardon. that Core i5 processor is brilliant value for money. Well impressed.
4.2ghz with a few bios changes. long gone are the days or playing with a series of voltages to get any overclock at all. I remember my FX processor was a nightmare to get 200mhz out of it.
Intel processors are so easy now to overclock. no effort at all. it surprises me however that they don’t sell them faster out of the box. 2.8ghz? surely this would sit at 3.5ghz without even any effort from intel.
Great idea and an entertaining twist on how to get a good value system. 4.2ghz is surely sexy.
This is exactly why this site is my home page now. Zardon tests all the hardware, then keeps the best stuff for articles like this, which save people so much time when trying to build a system. I have this stored for future reference.
Very entertaining read kitguru – great performance for such a modest outlay. ive seen systems 3 times this price in PC world with half the performance.
I never knew the new motherboards had such great settings all preconfigured for specific processors like this. what a fantastic idea. I cant see the ASROCK board for sale anywhere however.
I just bought the 760 CPU, thanks. I need an upgrade for my dual core and this was well priced.
That frio is a great price. I always thought it was closer to 50 quid, not 38. what a bargain.
I like the system, not sure about the chassis, wouldnt the thermaltake armor A90 be better ?
Of course it would be better, but it wouldn’t be a system for under a grand, it would be a system for over a grand 😉
Great find, love it. I am going to spec this very system next week. Might even pop into yoyotech myself.
I wonder would it be better to include an AMD board like 5850? they cost more however so it might push it over 1000. still might opt for it instead.
I love the I5 processors. and that was a great idea to compensate for dual channel by using 2000 modules. they dont cost much more either which is surprising.
Good job resting and showing the results. I like that power supply its a very good price point. half the price of the AX850.
Good system, id have opted for AMD graphics though and maybe the HD5770
HD5770 would be much slower, makes no sense.
Frio is rubbish, who would use that?
I dont agree, the Frio should not be used. id have opted for the HD5770 and got the corsair H70 instead of GTX460 and poorer cooler.
Why not two HD5670s in Crossfire instead of that power hogging card?
Good all round system, ive no idea why people are complaining about the Frio, its an awesome cooler for the price.
good piece of work, very helpful for people. I tend to stick to AMD cpus and graphics cards, but this is useful for many.
would the 1055T not be better for the price, extra 2 cores?
That motherboard is very good, went and read the full review. seems like a great release from ASROCk.
It is very difficult getting a system built for 1k without compromising somewhere. for 1,500 you can get a much better build. that 500 quid helps with a monitor, better case.
nicely worked out, right to 995 ! for the price its pretty much spot on.
This was good timing, I was looking around tonight for reviews of the 750 processor and this has just been released at the right time. I probably dont need all the bits here as I already have a H50, and lian li case, but the monitor, CPU and memory. motherboard all appeal to me. seems like great combination. if I can get it to 4ghz ill be chuffed.
Good review, thumbs up 🙂
760 is a boring clock increase but this is a nice idea to present it. good value if they all hit 4.2ghz like this one
How far can the i5 760 be pushed Zardon with manual ocing?
Around 4.5ghz with insane voltage 4.4ghz if you are playing it safe. It doesnt overclock quite as good as the K series, but its still good enough.
Good gaming performance. GTX460 is a really good card, really rate em.
155 quid for a quad core which hits 4ghz easy is a hell of a price. 1055T is still £30 and has 2 extra cores, but it wont overclock as hell.
Kingston memory? really?
only complain is that the yoyotech website is really hard to get to work for me, it keeps crashing and the links sometimes dont load, even though I know they are working. I ended up finding all the parts I could on dabs today and working out how much it will cost me. I hope you can use other stores in future instead of yoyotech. scan is ok, but I prefer dabs
I did something similar with my “SuperBudget” home-build at 3.5GHz. Under $450.00 U.S.
Parts are dated, but as the wisest Native American once said, “wat-ta-hey”.
Intel E-5300, Crucial DDR3, MSI MSi P43-C51, GeForce N8400GS/512Mb, ThermalTake 600W, Cooler Master Case and HSfan 212+.
4.2 GHz is nice, but when I build again, I will want more than another 700.
So I’ll be shooting for high 4’s or low 5’s, -if I find a “SuperBargain” way to do that, I’ll let ya’ll know the mix!