Quad Core i5 gaming/rendering system @ 4.2ghz, for less than a grand?

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.

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