Building round an 1155 cpu

[Wiganer]

Hi everyone

Hoping to get some friendly advice

A good friend of mine has given me a cpu from a knackered pc which has turned out to be an i5-2400. He's tested it and tells me it's fine

Can I build a budget gaming rig around this or is it not worth it?

Thank you

 

[McGraw]

If you can find a cheap board I would go for it definitely.

Anything you buy for it apart from ram and cpu can be used in your next build (assuming it lasts you for a while) and maybe you could get those two parts for less than £100.

 

[ALXAndy]

The only problem with the I5 2400 is the utterly tragic clock speed. It's totally lame, given the CPU could actually go nearly 2ghz faster when overclocked.

However, all is not lost. You do have 4 bins to play with so if you can get a FSB of around 105mhz then you should be able to get it to 3.9ghz or so. Still weak for a Sandy, but should be good enough for a single GPU based rig.

Just make sure you get a good board capable of overclocking. Without it? the 3.3ghz or whatever clock is utterly lame and I was getting min FPS of around 14 in Crysis 3, totally unacceptable tbh.

 

[Wiganer]

Thanks for the advice. What board should I look for? Something like an asus z77?

 

[Mrjobby]

Get a cheap as chips z77 or z68 motherboard, both are largely identical in features.

The i5 is a great chip, even at its stock speeds it will make for a great platform, especially for free.

 

[ALXAndy]

Thanks for the advice. What board should I look for? Something like an asus z77?

The world is your second hand oyster really but yes, go for a Z77 if you can as it will have the advanced turbo part that you need for your 4 bins.

Basically Intel allowed 4 extra bins (or notches on the multi) to be added to the turbo, so you can get an extra 400mhz out of a non k (called Limited Overclocking). Thing is you need a high end board....

Edit. Here, I wrote this a while back. MSI is a good bet, will make it easier for you

http://forums.vortez.net/overclocking-cooling/5109-how-overclock-non-k-intel-cpus.html

 

[Wiganer]

Thanks again guys, will go and hunt down a cheap board.

In terms of graphics cards, am I limited at all? Can I use, say, a 270x?

 

[ALXAndy]

Thanks again guys, will go and hunt down a cheap board.

In terms of graphics cards, am I limited at all? Can I use, say, a 270x?

Depends. As I mentioned before your chip will hold back high end GPUs when the CPU is being called for.

I used to run a Xeon E3 1220 which is exactly the same as what you have and with 670 SLI it was pretty useless, putting out a min FPS of around 14.

Switched to an AMD FX 8320 @ 4.2ghz and that changed to 37.

It's because of the clock speed, so make sure you overclock. At bare stock speed the 3.3ghz or whatever it is just isn't enough.

However, that's CPU bound games. In other more modern titles designed for the new consoles you could theoretically put whatever GPU subsystem in there you like.

Personally I would always want a high end GPU, and OCUK's current pricing on the 290x Lightning is simply too enticing to ignore. £239 for a beast of a GPU that will last you years.