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CPU/Upgrade dilemma

DougallDogg

DougallDogg

DougallDogg

Associate
Joined
2 Jan 2011
Posts
156
Location
Bristol
Sorry to bring up a topic that has been discussed to the earth and back but I didn't really want to jump in someone else's thread and have a bit of a unique slant.

I've got to the point where my Q6600 just won't cut it anymore. Well I say that, more over I've got to the point where the limitations on memory just won't cut it anymore as even after 7 years my Q6600 is still going strong. The board I have at the moment maxes out at 2gb over 2 slots with DDR2 and finding another 775 board, let alone one that would be up to snuff is next to impossible.

Now I only use my rig for mid to light gaming and for work (Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop roundtrip) so nothing even remotely CPU taxing. The problem comes in that a 96+ page InDesign document will run out of memory and crash 2 out of 3 times after 5 to 10 mins (even with previews set to a minimum). So I need to go 4gb, preferably 8gb but the rest is just to the confines of my wallet.

Ideally I was looking at a 3570k Ivy or due to having a near 20 hour a day up-time a 4670k Haswell for the lower power options. After getting clued up on all the differences and talking to a friend I was told if I intend to overclock that both Ivy and Haswell run quite hot and to run a decent and stable overclock that you'd either need to get really lucky with the silicone or go for a water cooling solution.

Now just to upset the apple cart even further he said he has a new 2600k and a couple of new 2700k's he would be willing to sell me. Both are way more than I need but I've been assured that Sandy's are a lot let of a lottery and are much better on heat if I wanted to go for higher clocks.

Anyway this has left me all a little unsure of the best step forward.I'm actually leaning towards taking him up on his 2700k over an Ivy or Haswell. Though I don't want it to seam like I'm coming here for advice to buy a CPU off of someone else as I'd still need a motherboard, ram and a CPU cooler.

Give the choices and with my requirements what would you guys suggest?

Any advice would be most appreciated.
 
Remember that if you go Sandy Bridge you are going with old tech. Things like PCI-e 3.0 won't be available to you. If I were you I'd go for at least a 3570k, otherwise you're just shooting yourself in the knee caps and will be stuck in the same dilemma again in only a couple of years when graphics cards start to max out PCI-e 2.x (If they aren't starting to already) and 1155 chips aren't available any more to get that support.

Ideally, aim for a 4670k. Truth be told the lack of actual clock speed numbers is balanced by the IPC in the newer chips and still end up a little more powerful than their 2-and-a-half-year-old Sandy Bridge counterparts.
 
Sandy Bridge are still really good chips if you can save a bit of money going that route, it's true they don't have PCI-E 3.0 support but then neither do AMD and it's not hurt them.
 
mmj_uk said:
neither do AMD and it's not hurt them.
Click to expand...

It will do in the near future, some GPU's are already starting to max out PCI-e 2.x, I'm 90% sure the GTX 780 and GTX Titan do. Whilst they may seem like extreme examples that you will probably never buy, in a year or two it will be likely that this is the norm.
 
DougallDogg isn't a hardcore gamer though.. it depends on the price he can get the 2600K/2700K for, if it's about £60 cheaper than an equivalent Ivy/Haswell then I would do that and try to get another 8GB RAM (16GB total) for the type of applications he's using.
 
mmj_uk said:
DougallDogg isn't a hardcore gamer though.. it depends on the price he can get the 2600K/2700K for, if it's about £60 cheaper than an equivalent Ivy/Haswell then I would do that and try to get another 8GB RAM (16GB total) for the type of applications he's using.
Click to expand...

True, but new instruction sets on Ivy and Haswell might also help with the programs he's using (If and when they are developed to use those instruction sets).

Ram's pretty cheap anyway, wouldn't take many people very long to save up for if they chose newer chip over more ram.

Have you considered AMD? The FX-8350 is good for light gaming and better than some of the i7's for things like editing. It's also a damn sight cheaper. XD
 
Thanks for the responses guys.

When I asked how much he wanted for a 2700k he said 'about £200ish' which is good for what it is but a little bit more than I wanted to spend. I was looking at the same motherboard that mickyfin recommended but slightly different memory and cooler but pretty much on the same wave length.

When I was working out a Haswell build here's what I came up with:-

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM £179.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £163.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A2133C11R) £79.99
Total : £434.77 (includes shipping : £9.00).



I probably won't cheap out and get a retail CPU but was just for comparisons sake. Motherboard and memory are a little more than needed but I'm going for a red aesthetic and it's been years since I've seen a red Gigabyte board. I'm not too sure on what cooler, I was swaying in the D14/Silver Arrow direction but in my opinion they look hideous so was toying with a H100i as a half way between air and custom water but seen a lot of you guys recommending the refurbished H100's. Any pro's or cons over each other?

Would running a lower clock on a Haswell compared to a Sandy set up be something I'm really going to notice? Price difference between the 2 is ~£50 but would some of the low draw power features offset that over the next couple of years?

If you need any info about my current set up or usage please just ask.

Once again guys thanks for the help.
 
If I was going the 4670k route then I'd go for something like this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £185.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87X-D3H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £119.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £56.99
Total : £372.56 (includes shipping : £8.00).



You don't need to spend a lot on a Z87 board to be able to achieve acceptable overclocks. This Gigabyte Z87X-D3H board gets you good overclocking capabilities and SLI/Crossfire-x support for £120.

Edit: Say you bought the 2700k for around the £200 mark you could get a B-Grade Z68/Z77 board for very cheap. The downside of B-Grade boards is that you're not guaranteed all of the accessories, so you might be missing something like a SATA cable or two, but you would end up paying less for a system in total + you get 4 Cores 8 Threads.

YOUR BASKET
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £56.99
1 x **B Grade** Asus P8Z68-V PRO Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 (MB-457-AS) £50
Total : £117.49 (includes shipping : £8.75).



With both options you would still need a CPU cooler as well :p
 
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£200 is pretty cheap, wouldn't really sway me seeing as it's 2 generations old.

That looks alright, you could go for a Z87X-UD3H which is cheaper and doesn't miss out on many features that the UD4H has. If you want to keep it red though a UD3H is a different colour so you might want to stick with your choice, just throwing a cheaper option out there. ;)

Yeah, hugeass air coolers are rather unsightly to say the least. :D

I've got a H100i, nice and quiet (with non-supplied fans, DAYUM THEY ARE LOUD XD). Would suggest the Scythe AP-15's that I've got along with a fan controller. ;)

Refurbished seems a bit dubious, though if you just run it outside the case for 24 hours before you start using it to test for leaks/pump failure you should be alright. ;)

I think the H100's have a little less cooling power than H100i's, not enough to justify the price difference imo.

H100i has Corsair link monitoring so you can change the LED colour and the connected fans speeds and see how fast the pump is spinning etc. The H100 just gets stuck with a button on top of the CPU block that you can press to change fan speeds. Don't get a choice of LED colour though, I think it's based on temperature of coolant or fan speed or something, I don't know. :D

IPC should level the playing field if not tip it into Haswell's favour, also the on-board VRM's in Haswell processors mean the VRM's are of guaranteed quality as opposed to the mixed quality you'd see on P67 boards, which meant they could fail. The low draw power features wouldn't offset it but would help.

Welcome for the help, just trying to earn my free shipping. :D
 
Yet again thanks for the advice.

I've pretty much settled on a 4670k now. So one part over hahaha.

Just a few issues to figure out. What's the difference between a UD3H and the D3H that SoundDoctor recommended? Looking at the specs the only 2 things I could see was no eSata sockets (which I don't need) and a slight different on-board audio config (I've got an Asus Xonar DG and there is a spare slot out of the way on both). Anything else of note?

Regards to memory, price isn't an issue but I don't want to just throw money away for marginal gains. What would be the best setup for my use and on a 4670k? 2x4/8gb or 4x4gb? Is it worth while taking advantage of higher frequency?

Still beat myself about the head regards to a cooler but probably going to just get a heatsink for now and see how far that gets me first before spending anything outrageous. So any recommendations would be welcome (though I am just reading stulid's round up).

And yet again guys thanks for the help. It's very much appreciated.
 
The difference between D3H and UD3H is the 'U' which I think stands for ultra. Which would make it an ultra durable board as opposed to just durable. I think the UD3H has better quality components, imo it's the best bang for buck overclocking mobo you can buy for Haswell at the moment. ;)

I'd just by a single 8Gb module for now, unless you plan on avoiding DDR4, due to come out next year, in which case I'd buy 2x8Gb ram modules at high frequency. DDR4 is coming out because it can deal with high frequencies, if you just buy a higher frequency DDR3 module you can basically avoid it all together. :D

If I were you, I'd get a hyper 212 evo, it's a great cooler for the price and will probably get you to at least 4.0Ghz+ on the average 4670k, if not much further. ;)
 
The 4770k sometimes comes up on offer for £240 at the moment, just to confuse you some more :)
I'm having the same problems with coolers as you at the moment, although the H100i wont fit in my case. But there are a couple of cheap custom kits on here, don;t know how they compare to the H100i though
 
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