Best jumping on point for Intel CPUs?

h4rm0ny

h4rm0ny

h4rm0ny

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Hi. I'm hoping someone would give me some advice on a new CPU. I currently have an FX-8350 system and it's great. But I'm overdue an upgrade and AMD haven't provided an upgrade path in ages. So with regret, I'm finally going to jump over to the Blue team.

I have all the bits and pieces I need (case, PSU, R9 285 GPU, etc.) so my budget is basically all motherboard, CPU (and possibly RAM if necessary). I occasionally game but mostly I do heavy office, programming and database work.

I have no intuition with the Intel chips. In vague terms I want to spend up to around that point where you suddenly end up paying ridiculous money for very little gain, but not into that point. So basically just before the value for money curve suddenly turns into a cliff.

I'm provisionally allocating £500-£700. I could go higher if there were a reason, but it would need to be a good reason. I upgrade about once every four years so I want something that will last. I actually only upgraded to the FX-8350 from my 1100T because I needed a chip with AES support built in. I'm not in an urgent rush to upgrade so if there's something right around the corner, I can wait.

All suggestions welcome and thanks for any replies.
 
4690k is your cpu of choice. Need an aftermarket heatsink to overclock safely.

There are many different z97 boards, are you picky with colours? Have a good look!

DDR3 ram, you'll only really need 8gig for gaming.

Might be worth adding an SSD as well, quickens everything up, makes it more responsive.
 
What PSU & case have you got? ATX, mATX?

Option 1

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle **£12 Saving** £269.98
1 x SK Hynix 256GB SSD SH910A SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (HFS256G32MNB-2201A) £84.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Savage Red 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (HX324C11SRK2/8) £46.99
1 x Raijintek EreBoss High Performance CPU Cooler Black £29.99
Total : £441.54 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Option 2

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £191.99
1 x MSI Z97S SLI PLUS Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £95.99
1 x Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive (CT250BX100SSD1) £72.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Beast 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (HX324C11T3K2/8) £59.99
1 x Raijintek EreBoss High Performance CPU Cooler Black £29.99
Total : £460.54 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Like above said, you can always add an i7 4790k if you want more punch. I reckon 4690k will be more than adaquate...
 
Surely the i5 wouldn't be much of an upgrade from the FX8350? My opinion; go X99 or wait for broadwell or skylake to see whether something worthwhile comes up.
 
I don't think you'll see much of a difference between FX8350 and mainstream i5/i7 outside of gaming.

A second hand 4930K and X79 motherboard is what you should be looking at, or if you have to buy new memory anyway 5820K/X99/DDR4 which would also leave you an upgrade path to 8 core later.
 
Last edited:
1-X99 5820k, motherbroad, ram bundle £575.9 no PSU so add £100 for a good 750W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply > £675.90.

2-EPIC BUNDLE: Intel 4790K, Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 7, Kingston 16GB 2400MHz Kit, Superflower 750W PSU & FREE STUFF!! **£50 SAVING** £562.97 inc VAT.
 
I wouldn't even bother. Intel cpu's are ridiculously priced now and Sky lake and Z107 will be with us later in the year. Wait for them to come out before making a choice. I can't see that your current cpu is going to struggle with anything.
 
Wow. Thanks for all the replies, everyone. It's really appreciated!

sweols said:
What PSU & case have you got? ATX, mATX?

Option 1

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle **£12 Saving** £269.98
1 x SK Hynix 256GB SSD SH910A SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (HFS256G32MNB-2201A) £84.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Savage Red 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (HX324C11SRK2/8) £46.99
1 x Raijintek EreBoss High Performance CPU Cooler Black £29.99
Total : £441.54 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Option 2

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £191.99
1 x MSI Z97S SLI PLUS Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £95.99
1 x Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive (CT250BX100SSD1) £72.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Beast 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (HX324C11T3K2/8) £59.99
1 x Raijintek EreBoss High Performance CPU Cooler Black £29.99
Total : £460.54 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Like above said, you can always add an i7 4790k if you want more punch. I reckon 4690k will be more than adaquate...
Click to expand...

The case I have is a very large Fractal Design tower and I currently have a 750W Corsair PSU. For drives I already have everything I need with a Neutron and an OCZ SSD. Oh, and four WD Caviar Black 1TB drives. ;) Sorry if I wasn't clear - I have most of the bits and pieces, it's just the processor / mboard I want to upgrade. Though I have considered a PCI SSD for my database work. I think I want an i7 over an i5. I want a true upgrade over my FX-8350.

Andreas.96 said:
Surely the i5 wouldn't be much of an upgrade from the FX8350? My opinion; go X99 or wait for broadwell or skylake to see whether something worthwhile comes up.
Click to expand...

Yes, i5 isn't enough. If I'm going to do this, I want to do it properly. Basically the difference between i5 and i7 is that the former doesn't have hyperthreading, is that right?

pastymuncher said:
I wouldn't even bother. Intel cpu's are ridiculously priced now and Sky lake and Z107 will be with us later in the year. Wait for them to come out before making a choice. I can't see that your current cpu is going to struggle with anything.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm. I can wait if there's a reason. I normally do an upgrade every four years or so, but I'm overdue because AMD simply haven't released anything. But if there's something better just around the corner, I don't have to buy it now. Do we know when Skylake will appear? And do we know if it's going to be significantly better in some way?

Thanks for all of the replies!
 
Martini1991 said:
If you've got 600 set aside, the X99 5820k bundle is what you should be buying
Click to expand...

I hadn't noticed the bundles on the site (I'll be buying all this from OC, naturally!). So this...?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-022-AS&groupid=2833&catid=2836

That looks acceptable. I would obviously need to get some RAM to go with it... Is there much practical benefit between the different RAM speeds? I'll need at least 12GB as I run VMs. I honestly don't know how much gain in performance you see between speeds.
 
Martini1991 said:
I mean this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-011-MS

With a 5820k.
Click to expand...

Thanks. That looks like a really good starting buy. And the motherboard has a connector for a TPM chip which is a requirement I forgot to mention.

I've never bought an MSI motherboard before, just Asus and Gigabyte.

Now I just need to decide between a 5820K and a 5930K. Is the difference between them really only 0.2GHz and the PCI lanes? That seems like quite a mark-up for so little difference?
 
h4rm0ny said:
Now I just need to decide between a 5820K and a 5930K. Is the difference between them really only 0.2GHz and the PCI lanes? That seems like quite a mark-up for so little difference?
Click to expand...

Pretty much, they might be marginally better binned (higher quality) chips as well if overclocking but that's just an assumption on my part. The 40 PCI-E lanes is aimed at triple/quad graphics card users and they have lots of money so... :p
 
I think it's a waste to upgrade now considering new architectures are out this year for Intel and next year for AMD, especially when you have an 8350.
 
Poneros said:
I think it's a waste to upgrade now considering new architectures are out this year for Intel and next year for AMD, especially when you have an 8350.
Click to expand...

I know Zen is not going to be around until 2016 (which I could technically wait for but that's a long time). When is Skylake going to appear and does it have anything in it that makes it worth waiting for?

Shivy011 said:
Does the database work and programming require quite a lot of CPU power?
Click to expand...

Short answer: yes. I would not want to do this on a low-power / mobile CPU. Slightly longer answer: I'm able to do it on the FX-8350 so obviously that region of chip is sufficient. However, there are things I do such as compiling or statistical analysis which would run faster with a more powerful CPU. A lot of the database work is disk-bound so it wouldn't see an increase, but some of it is not and would definitely benefit. It might also benefit from faster RAM but I don't know at by how much and if it would be worth the cost - I have almost no experience with that.
 
I still think you are wasting your money. Upgrading simply because that's what you do every couple of years is not the best way to look at upgrading. There has only been minimal performance upgrades from Intel since the launch of Sandybridge, maybe 15% or so difference between Sandybridge and Haswell. I can't help thinking you would be better off keeping what you have until Skylake and Z107 is launched later in the year. If your 8350 isn't overclocked you could do that for some extra performance.
 
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