Looking to build a 16GB Core i7 rig, need help...

[Smalltimer]

Hello people, well its that time again and I have to say... the mountain of choices out there seems taller than ever!
Anyways, I want to build a 16GB workstation and I'm wondering what mobo/cpu and ram would be my best bet. And I'm not sure about which motherboard would allow me to scale 4 pieces of ram without compromising on memory bandwidth. Also... does anyone know of hyper threading is truly beneficial or is it more of a gimick? some of my software will make use of up to 12 cores, but I don't want to bother if there are no measurable benefits.

Well that about covers all the questions.

Oh and I like to watercool and overclock my workstation if I can get away with it. Otherwise, it helps keep things cool and quiet(hrm).
Thanks in advance for all your help with this.

Smalltimer.

[Unoid]

Any of the latest Z68 motherboards should be fine with 4x4gb modules at 1600 or 1833, more bandwidth won't be appreciable.
I'd go with 2600k, HT will be useful for a workstation and overclock nicely.

[Boulard83]

If you use discrete GPU, go with a good P67 board and a 2600K. Paired with 4x4gb of DDR3 1600mhz and your good to go. Z68 is useless if you dont really use it.

Hyperthreading is usefull in some case and not in others. In a workstation use, depanding on prog you use, it can be usefull since you have 8 threads to work with. Any multithreaded apps is significantly faster with a HT 2600K VS a no HT 2500K. Its not 100% faster, but its faster.

In single threaded apps, HT is useless.

[jackbrennan2008]

I'm running 16GB 1600Mhz vengeance DIMMs @ 1866 and havn't had any problems on my board.