Are motherboards for 2500K still available to purchase?

You might be able to find some old stock somewhere but I'd be surprised.

There's some excellent condition Z68/Z77 motherboards available second hand, I'd highly recommend putting a request in on the members market.
 
You can still get 1155 socket, just not brand new and wouldn't be at a worthy price if you can.

You don't need a specific board if you don't plan to overclock.
 
What is your use-case? i.e. do you need to plug in a graphics card for mid-level gaming or will it just be a file server / HTPC / Plex transcoder? What do you have already? Storage? Socket 1155 cooler (spec)? 4 x 4Gb DDR3 or do you still need to buy a decent amount of RAM.

Not wanting to rain on your parade, but you may be chasing a complete money-pit of a project: last time I wanted to buy a board for my 2500K, it was an H61 ITX board (<£50) for an HTPC project and I got a free i5-3570T included.... performance was almost identical and the TDP was 45W versus 95W - so I could put a passive cooler on it. I decided I was never going to put that CPU into a case big enough to cool it properly, so ended up giving the 2500K away to a friend who needed to build a gaming PC for his younger brother and I threw in a Z68 ATX board that was unreliable ever time it was powered off (old capacitors) and a socket-damaged Z77 (both which he fixed!) - best piece of e-waste avoidance ever!!

Back to the question: In terms of those socket 1155 boards, you can definitely get lots on eBay. There are a handful of them sold as new, normally from China/HongKong (if you're still based in HK, this may be a valid option!). Be cautious though as these are usually still on the shelf 8 YEARS after it was discontinued because people are over-charging (£50+ for an H61 board, £120+ for lots of Z77s).

IMO "pre-owned / seller refurb" is FAR better value than new... usually comes with sufficient Paypal warranty to make sure you can plug it in and run it at least. If you are happy with ANY compatible motherboard, then there are some ITX and mini ATX H61 boards around for £20-£24 these days. Wikipedia has a great little table for helping you pick a chipset for LGA115.

Avoid chasing after the Z77/Z68's unless you either find one at bargain price or desperately need to overclock - they're great boards, but most of the decent ones are utterly stupid money (even 2nd hand are still £75-£100!).

If you're intent on going ahead with this, then you might be better off looking for a complete dead-end chipset like the B65/Q65/Q67 as they don't support the IvyBridge 3xxx-series CPU's, so should be VERY cheap. H61/B75 would be my preferences for the budget options though as it gives you an option of an IvyBridge CPU later. Note that with - H61 you miss out on a few features (e.g. USB3 / SATA3 unless the board partner added their own hardware for that), hence the first question about use-case / other supporting hardware.
 
Preytheon said:
What is your use-case? i.e. do you need to plug in a graphics card for mid-level gaming or will it just be a file server / HTPC / Plex transcoder? What do you have already? Storage? Socket 1155 cooler (spec)? 4 x 4Gb DDR3 or do you still need to buy a decent amount of RAM.

Not wanting to rain on your parade, but you may be chasing a complete money-pit of a project: last time I wanted to buy a board for my 2500K, it was an H61 ITX board (<£50) for an HTPC project and I got a free i5-3570T included.... performance was almost identical and the TDP was 45W versus 95W - so I could put a passive cooler on it. I decided I was never going to put that CPU into a case big enough to cool it properly, so ended up giving the 2500K away to a friend who needed to build a gaming PC for his younger brother and I threw in a Z68 ATX board that was unreliable ever time it was powered off (old capacitors) and a socket-damaged Z77 (both which he fixed!) - best piece of e-waste avoidance ever!!

Back to the question: In terms of those socket 1155 boards, you can definitely get lots on eBay. There are a handful of them sold as new, normally from China/HongKong (if you're still based in HK, this may be a valid option!). Be cautious though as these are usually still on the shelf 8 YEARS after it was discontinued because people are over-charging (£50+ for an H61 board, £120+ for lots of Z77s).

IMO "pre-owned / seller refurb" is FAR better value than new... usually comes with sufficient Paypal warranty to make sure you can plug it in and run it at least. If you are happy with ANY compatible motherboard, then there are some ITX and mini ATX H61 boards around for £20-£24 these days. Wikipedia has a great little table for helping you pick a chipset for LGA115.

Avoid chasing after the Z77/Z68's unless you either find one at bargain price or desperately need to overclock - they're great boards, but most of the decent ones are utterly stupid money (even 2nd hand are still £75-£100!).

If you're intent on going ahead with this, then you might be better off looking for a complete dead-end chipset like the B65/Q65/Q67 as they don't support the IvyBridge 3xxx-series CPU's, so should be VERY cheap. H61/B75 would be my preferences for the budget options though as it gives you an option of an IvyBridge CPU later. Note that with - H61 you miss out on a few features (e.g. USB3 / SATA3 unless the board partner added their own hardware for that), hence the first question about use-case / other supporting hardware.
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Thanks for the lengthy, informative post. :)

My Biostar TP67XE motherboard was actually having freeze issues but since I've been told it could be the screws being too tight and shorting the mobo out (I loosened them so as soon as I felt resistance, I stopped), the problem has gone. I still can't believe this board has lasted with the [email protected] for over 10 years now.

If the board starts playing up again, I'll definitely consider the H61 boards and just run the CPU stock but ideally would prefer overclocking as 4.4GHz still feels zippy. The Z77/68 boards do seem a waste, I agree, so will probably use the H61 as a last resort.

Many thanks!

Edit: Oops, I have 4x4GB Corsair Vengeance RAM, H61 only has 2 slots. Going to 3.3GHz is bearable but 8GB would be painful. :(
 
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See that Wikipedia article for the chipsets that will allow overclocking - it certainly sounds like you'll get the benefit out of it.

Once you've worked out how much it'll cost.... keep in mind that you can buy a brand new B550 motherboard + 16Gb new DDR4 RAM and a 2nd hand CPU (Ryzen 5 1600X, 6core, 12thread) for ~£275.... which will be an ideal base to upgrade to a 5800X or even 5900X later - see this thread for details: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/upgrade-help-for-my-pc.18944236/
 
Spending "dead" money to save a what is now a ~£20 CPU seems a fairly foolish endeavour.

You'd be better off selling the CPU, and certainly the RAM (if it's decent speed Vengeance it's maybe worth £50-£60 - basically the same as new DDR4), and putting the money towards a more modern platform.

Something like the below is a reasonable option (although it might be a struggle to find a cheap B560 board in stock), or as mentioned a cheaper AM4 board and a used Ryzen are another option (and likely better if you plan on a CPU upgrade in the future)

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £225.43 (includes shipping: £10.50)​
​


Even a "bottom of the range" I3 will offer much better performance than a 2500k these days:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compar...5F-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-1700X/804vs4226vs4175vs2969
 
Armageus said:
Spending "dead" money to save a what is now a ~£20 CPU seems a fairly foolish endeavour.
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Agreed, hence my recommendation to build a decent base that will allow him to go all the way up to a 5800X/5900X..... and cheap-out on the CPU in the short term, until he can afford a new one.

Problem with a budget B560 board and a 10th gen i3 is that those boards will throttle even an i5, so it's a bit of a deadend.... arguably AM4 is eventually going to be a deadend soon, but starting with a low-end 1000-series Ryzen, there are four generations of upgrades and a B550 board will not throttle even a Ryzen 9 5900X (although may struggle with a 5950X).

My logic was that buying a nice motherboard for an 8yr old CPU would be wasting around £100 , so that was the starting point for my "waste" budget.

If money is really tight:
TG Vulcan 3200Mhz C16 DDR4 for £45
mini ATX B450 boards from OC's at £50 (highly recommended to spend ~£80-£100 on a B550)
....then whatever CPU will fit... so still "wasting" around £100 on an old CPU.... assuming a Ryzen 5 1600X (£120), but that could cut down to less than £50 for a Ryzen 3 1200 or 1300.

A Ryzen 3 1300 would be the same performance as a slightly overclocked i5 2400.... but especially with a B550 board, it would be a platform to expand to something VERY up to date... and you'd get M.2 expansion, onboard SATA3, onboard USB3, USB-C, PCIe gen4*.... with all but the last of those fully functional on ANY AM4 CPU.

*needs Ryzen 5000 for PCIe4.

Comparing the two: you'd need to OC the i5 by 15-25% to match the Ryzen 3 1300x: https://hwbench.com/cpus/amd-ryzen-3-1300x-vs-intel-core-i5-2400
 
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Generally for stuff like this I look for small companies who do refurbished PC parts who have store fronts on Amazon and Ebay, etc. often they have a selection of older parts even of that generation at reasonable prices, have at least some kind of guarantee/come back that they'll turn up working and in reasonable condition. Some of them have contracts with companies for disposing of older IT equipment so sometimes you even get pretty much as new stuff which has been sitting around in spare parts until the company obsoleted the entire line of hardware.
 
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