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Is it time to move from my Dell E8400 setup to I7?

philstanbridge

philstanbridge

philstanbridge

Man of Honour
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
8,522
Location
West Coast of Scotland
I'm contemplating an upgrade to I7 from my lowly E8400 setup. I say lowly, because I originally started out with a Dell Inspiron 530 system which has been upgraded over time. I am still using the mobo that shipped with the dell although almost everything else has been changed. This means that at present I can not overclock the cpu, so I am quite limited with what I can do. To be honest this hasn't been much of an issue until recently however. Now I feel the need the upgrade but do I do a belt and braces or do I just get a new mobo and stick with the E8400 for the time being? I can spend the money if necessary, but obviously I would prefer the best option at the moment. I have got Win 7 on order, and when that arrives I intend to switch over to 64-bit but other than that I have no plans.

Specs to date:

crappy Dell mobo
E8400
freezer pro cooler
Nvidia 275 GTX
600w psu
3gb ram
Sammy 1TB hd
 
A decent P45 mobo for that 8400 is going to be 75-100

I would sell the 8400 in MM and then get a new P55 and i5 750 on the 8th sept this will make the upgrade less than you think.
 
Clairvoyant said:
He will also need new DDR3 ram.

So the cheapest option will be a good P45 board.
Click to expand...

Of course so he sells that DDR2 in MM too.

P45 is the cheapest option yes, But he might aswell get rid of the dead tech 775 stuff while he can still get good money for it.

DDR3 is not expensive.
 
philstanbridge said:
I'm contemplating an upgrade to I7 from my lowly E8400 setup
Click to expand...

Hi Phil, its Trisha's neighbour here!

I have the same thoughts at the moment, the i7's do look nice but I have my 8400 in an IP35Pro and it does run nicely at 3.9Ghz on air.

My thoughts currently are that its going to take a good few hundred quid to upgrade but I'm not sure the improvements are huge. Certainly the current rig with a GTX280 is running iRacing nicely at 5040x1050 so I'll probably just upgrade the gpu when the dust settles after the 58xx launch.

Regards
Fred
 
Thanks for all the replies guys appreciate it. I do all sorts on the pc currently, gaming, Open university stuff, but very little in the way of rendering or encoding. My setup definitely needs some sort of upgrade since playing Empire Total War. It's virtually killed it, but there are other things that seem slower now. My mind is definitely torn although I am more set on just upgrading this motherboard and making do with that for now; until the new gpu's appear at least, but I don't want the current setup to bottle-neck. This is my issue really.

An I7 setup will cost me in the region of £450-£500, although I can sell my current board/cpu and make some of that back. But I could get myself a half-decent motherboard for as you say, £75-£100 and put the rest towards a new gpu. I don't really think an I7 setup will necessarily be worth the upgrade for the time being. As for the 775 stuff being 'dead-tech' well you are correct, but I don't think it really matters in my case. As long as it does the job.

ps. Hi Trisha's neighbour, hope you are well! :D

By the way, I would need a mATX motherboard regardless of which way I upgrade. This could sway the decision depending how good the boards were. I have heard the MSI mATX I7 board is very good along with the 920.
 
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philstanbridge said:
By the way, I would need a mATX motherboard regardless of which way I upgrade. This could sway the decision depending how good the boards were. I have heard the MSI mATX I7 board is very good along with the 920.
Click to expand...

Seems to me now the only reason you need a micro atx mobo is the dell case is micro atx.

This means you are limiting your upgrade because of a case!

This is a really silly thing to do on so many levels.

Lets face it the only original part of the system is the dell mobo and case.

Bite the bullet and upgrade.
 
You could probably get a decent socket 775 motherboard from the bay. I managed to get an ASUS P5Q DELUXE P45 motherboard for only £90 including post. My q6700 still has plenty of life in it I think.
 
easyrider said:
Seems to me now the only reason you need a micro atx mobo is the dell case is micro atx.

This means you are limiting your upgrade because of a case!

This is a really silly thing to do on so many levels.

Lets face it the only original part of the system is the dell mobo and case.

Bite the bullet and upgrade.
Click to expand...

You'd really want a new case anyway, for better airflow. Even some of the cheapest models from CaseCom would be such an improvement...
 
easyrider said:
Seems to me now the only reason you need a micro atx mobo is the dell case is micro atx.

This means you are limiting your upgrade because of a case!

This is a really silly thing to do on so many levels.

Lets face it the only original part of the system is the dell mobo and case.

Bite the bullet and upgrade.
Click to expand...

hehe. I didn't mention I replaced the case. I do have a new one. It's a Antec Mini P180 and I've no intention of replacing it so I will work around it. It offers reasonable space to work with.
 
I've just seen some benchmarks of the i7 processors. I'm currently on a Xeon E3110 which is basically a E8400. Now I was thinking of upgrading and giving my girlfriend my current setup but I think I'll pass. There is almost no difference when comparing the E8400 stock to I7 920 (on gaming/normal use benchies)? I can see the filecompression/encryption stuff is a lot better :) Am I looking at the wrong reviews or missing something here? If not I'll just buy her some nice overclocking Core2 set...
 
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