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i7 2500k for £145 or i7 2600k for £200 for i7 950 for £125?

Pate

Pate

Pate

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Which one should I go for? Looking to build a pc that will last me 2 years.


The i7 2600k is looking tempting, but I'm not sure I can justify so much more. The i7 950 is the cheapest but apparently is not as good?


Any ideas people? Need to make a decision today. :)

Thanks
 
The i5 2500K is a great price and performer.

The i7 950 is on a dead socket/more power hungry/more heat and slower.
 
What stulid said about the i7 950.

You don't need a 2600K unless you use applications which can take advantage of the hyperthreading.

For gaming, and most other uses, the 2500K is the way to go.
 
Where the hell are you getting an i7 2600k from for £200? Or is that without VAT?

Lowest price I see is on £222 in a sale.
 
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Zippyduda said:
Where the hell are you getting an i7 2600k from for £200? Or is that without VAT?

Lowest price I see is on **** for £222 in the sale: skip
Click to expand...

You'll notice that your link doesn't work.

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Having owned all 3, and currently settling for a 2500K I make the following observations.

Performance
Unless you are addicted to benchmarks, you will not be able to tell the difference between them. On paper the 2500K and i7 950 are equal, with the 2600K being slighlty ahead but in real life (gaming, general Windows apps and the occasional encode) I noticed no difference.

Efficiency
The i7 pulls approximately 15W more electricity at idle and 40W more when fully loaded than the 2500K. Run both for 4 hours per day and the i7 will cost about £5 more per year than the 2500K (~25W average x 4 x 365 / 1000 x 15p per kWh). Not much in it really, especially when graphics cards, monitors and the rest of the system components will pull a lot more.

Cooling
2500K and 2600K do run a lot cooler (10-15 degrees).

Motherboards
1366 mobos tend to be expensive compared to the budget 1155 mobos.

Conclusion
If you can pickup a cheap used 1366 mobo and i7 920-960 they are well worth the money. Sandy Bridge is NOT a massive step forward unless you are building a Small Form Factor PC, where the improved thermal performance and onboard graphics will make a big difference. For anyome who already runs a 1366 system it is not worth upgrading unless you have nothing better to do with your time.

For anuyone buying brand new, Sandy Bridge offers much better value and equal to slightly better performance. If you currently run 1366, wait for Ivy Bridge.

Other thought's
I only moved sideways from 1366 to 1155 because I wanted to downsize from a full tower HAF-X case to a Sugo. I have measured the power consumption with a plugin monitor and the savings are not that great. I have however squeezed equally powerful components into a much smaller case, but it did cost a lot to do so.
 
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Honestly I would get the i7 950 for £125 as that's pretty cheap. It can match/beat the 2500K when HT is used. If you want the absolute best though get the 2600K.

Dead sockets and all that mumbo jumbo doesn't matter. Socket 1155 will probably be dead by late 2012/early 2013 when Haswell is round the corner, anyway.
 
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Socket 1366 is not dead yet, and there are no doubt be budget 6 core processors in the pipeline to keep the upgrade path open.

Socket 775 processors are still going strong 2 years after they were superceded. I cannot believe what 9550's and 9650's still fetch second hand, but if you already own a 775 mobo it is an "easy" upgrade. Same will apply for 1366 with many 920/930/950 owners jumping onto 970X, 980X, 990X etc. Intel and AMD's performance hikes only get smaller with each new generation.
 
555BUK said:
Having owned all 3, and currently settling for a 2500K I make the following observations.

Performance
Unless you are addicted to benchmarks, you will not be able to tell the difference between them. On paper the 2500K and i7 950 are equal, with the 2600K being slighlty ahead but in real life (gaming, general Windows apps and the occasional encode) I noticed no difference.

Efficiency
The i7 pulls approximately 15W more electricity at idle and 40W more when fully loaded than the 2500K. Run both for 4 hours per day and the i7 will cost about £5 more per year than the 2500K (~25W average x 4 x 365 / 1000 x 15p per kWh). Not much in it really, especially when graphics cards, monitors and the rest of the system components will pull a lot more.

Cooling
2500K and 2600K do run a lot cooler (10-15 degrees).

Motherboards
1366 mobos tend to be expensive compared to the budget 1155 mobos.

Conclusion
If you can pickup a cheap used 1366 mobo and i7 920-960 they are well worth the money. Sandy Bridge is NOT a massive step forward unless you are building a Small Form Factor PC, where the improved thermal performance and onboard graphics will make a big difference. For anyome who already runs a 1366 system it is not worth upgrading unless you have nothing better to do with your time.

For anuyone buying brand new, Sandy Bridge offers much better value and equal to slightly better performance. If you currently run 1366, wait for Ivy Bridge.

Other thought's
I only moved sideways from 1366 to 1155 because I wanted to downsize from a full tower HAF-X case to a Sugo. I have measured the power consumption with a plugin monitor and the savings are not that great. I have however squeezed equally powerful components into a much smaller case, but it did cost a lot to do so.
Click to expand...

Good post, agree 100%
 
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