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Time to put away the ol time classic 2500k Sandy

Geekazoid

Geekazoid

Geekazoid

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Joined
19 Jun 2009
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904
Ok guys after years of use and gaming on my sandycore 2500k overclocked at 4.8ghz is starting to show instability I can bump the voltages or down clock the CPU but I think it's time for a change... I have not kept up-to-date with CPU news... What CPU can I build my new system around... What is the "IT" CPU now that can replace this aging legend that has served me well... Thankyou guys... P.S I will be changing CPU, Motherboard and RAM only... I'm keeping my 2 970's as the GPU market is ridiculous with the pricing due to the damn miners
 
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I would stick with what you have,and bump the clockspeed and voltage down.

This is not a good time to buy a CPU:
1.)RAM has gone crazy in prize. 12 to 15 months ago you could get 16GB of decent speed DDR4(closer to 3000MHZ) for £80. Now its more like £200.
2.)Cheaper 2133MHZ and 2400MHZ DDR4 is available,but drops performance on current CPUs. Ideally you want something closer to 3000MHZ.
3.)Spectre/Meltdown patches are reducing performance on current Intel CPUs,although the effect on AMD CPUs is not as well known. I certainly have seen a performance drop on my IB Core i7 in some games.
4.)Coffee Lake has had price increases due to irratic supply,and hence a CPU like the Core i5 8400 which should be £160,is closer to £200.
5.)AMD is refreshing their current CPU line-up soon,ie, the Zen APUs in less than two weeks,new chipsets and new 12NM Zen+ CPUs in April.
 
As explained above its a really horrible time to buy because of ram pricing, but i get the feeling we are now in a world where those ram prices are permanent, this is a choice by ram vendors, they are unwilling to ramp up production because they like the high prices and the demand for them is not going to go down.

In my mind there is no good time to buy ram these days, in fact i feared they may go up even more which is why just a couple of weeks ago i bit the bullet and got myself a Ryzen system with 16GB of DDR4, in the last two weeks the ram i bought has gone up £5 at the same store.

I would recommend a Ryzen 1600, but Ryzen 2 is also just round the corner, April, so do you wait and run the risk of ram going up more? it may go down..... tricky one.

As i said, i just did it, Ryzen 1600, ASRock AB350 Pro 4, Corsair LPX 3000Mhz, NZXT Kraken AM4 Bracket, all that cost me £425 and i couldn't be more chuffed with it, it replaced a 4690K.
 
I bit the bullet and upgraded as ram prices show no sign of going down and you could be waiting for ever. I had some amazon credit so only paid £60 of my own money for 16gb ddr4 memory.

Luckily I bought a 1070 last year before gpu prices went mental. I found a 8700K with £25 off so just went sod it.
 
Ooh... ^^^ yeah, *Hugs GTX 1070*

My sympathies to anyone looking for new GPU's right now... wow
 
Or you could buy a used i7 cpu for your current board, I did this a few months ago and I dont have any plans to buy a new pc for quite a while. But then again Im not a big gamer.
 
I'd wait until Summer to see what is happening with prices for both GPU and RAM.

Depending on your needs, best absolute gaming performance will be i7 8700k, price/perf is R5 1600.
 
Thinking about upgrading myself, as others have said prices are just stupid atm for memory and gpus. But if you're willing to bite the bullet there are 3 cpus to chose from depending on your budget; Firstly the cheapest; for £160 a I3-8350K @ 4ghz, after looking around this seems to be an amazingly priced cpu for its performance equalling that of the I5-7600K which is up to £60 more also remember the current coffee lake cpus (8xxx) the I3's are all quad cores unlike previous gens which were dual. Also people are able to clock this cpu up to 5ghz, another point to consider.

Secondly is another interesting coffee lake the I5-8400 which is a 6 core @ 4ghz, this not so long back could be had for under £200 but once people noticed its performance the prices have shot up to £220.

Finally there is the full I5 8600K 6 cores and 4.3ghz, for around £240 all I5's now come with 6 cores. These are basically for me the equivalent of the 2500k but the 8400 is not overclockable but gets a mention due to its price and performance. You could always go into I7 territory but the price jump is huge, but you do get 6 cores with them and 12 threads as opposed to the 6 cores 6 threads with the I5, but the I7-8700k for example is £330 quid.

Just checked prices again and they've got some deals on the i5 8600k;

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/pc-c...intel/socket-1151-coffee-lake?sPage=1&sSort=3
 
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i7 or 1155 Xeon?

There's still the question of whether the instability is down to the overclock or the CPU. I'd stability test at stock before spending on a CPU.
 
Well if you upgrade now expect ram makers and intel to take note and further shaft the prices. Because if people still are willing to buy why not crank the screw a bit and test the waters.

I am not far ahead on haswell but it will not be going anywhere until 2019 at least. If it starts to be unstable undervolting will happen.
 
humbug said:
As explained above its a really horrible time to buy because of ram pricing, but i get the feeling we are now in a world where those ram prices are permanent, this is a choice by ram vendors, they are unwilling to ramp up production because they like the high prices and the demand for them is not going to go down.
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Nah, RAM prices shot up shortly after I bought my rig in mid-2009 and stayed high for a couple of years but they did eventually fall. It seems to cycle like that quite often.
 
RAM prices will come down but not anytime soon, maybe end of this year once more RAM manufactures enter the market.
 
Few months ago there were reports in media that Samsung are supposedly gonna ramp up DDR4 production this year. Perhaps there will be some change in pricing soon ....
 
Thanks guys for the advice... I got the system stable again by bumping up the VCore for the CPU a notch... I hold on to my CPU until 2019 see if GPU prices drop... it's a shame the pc market is in such a state...
 
Geekazoid said:
Thanks guys for the advice... I got the system stable again by bumping up the VCore for the CPU a notch... I hold on to my CPU until 2019 see if GPU prices drop... it's a shame the pc market is in such a state...
Click to expand...

The proper second Ryzen should be out March/Apr next year too, probably giving you the option of a mainstream 16core/32thread CPU which will easily last as long as Sandy Bridge. Hell, I bet you could make that last a decade or more!!
 
JediFragger said:
The proper second Ryzen should be out March/Apr next year too, probably giving you the option of a mainstream 16core/32thread CPU which will easily last as long as Sandy Bridge. Hell, I bet you could make that last a decade or more!!
Click to expand...
I don't think 8 core CCXs are coming with 7 nm Zen 2, more likely 6 core CCXs meaning we'll see up to 12/24t mainstream CPUs, plus 6c/12t APUs.
 
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