CPU and Mobo upgrade itch...Z97 or X99?

Borealis

Borealis

Borealis

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17 May 2013
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Apologies in advance for this long post. I've been trying to rationalise my thoughts tonight and failing dismally, which is why I need your advice!

I've had the rig in my sig since Nov '14 and I've gradually been adding to it. The Z87-D3HP has been a reliable workhorse, but I'm starting to get the upgrade itch, again...

I'm thinking of upgrading to a 4790K to get the best CPU available on LGA1150. At stock turbo speeds it's also faster than my OCd i5 - I think I may have lost on the silicon lottery with that chip. At the same time, I'd consider changing the motherboard to something SLI compatible (for the future), but I'm trying to decide whether I should.

Or would it be better if I just save up for a little longer and jump headlong into X99. I don't see the point in adding a 4790K and then next year going X99. I've got to make a decision and stick with whatever I end up with.

So enough of my rambling for now! The boards I've narrowed it down to so far are:


The Gigabyte black edition and Maximus Ranger are available as a CPU bundle deal, so I have the option to save a few £££s with those. The BE is also part of the free upgrade service, so that would be a plus point as well.

I've heard good things about all of these, but do any of them in particular stand out as being better?

The overall upgrade cost on Z97 will be around the £380-£420 mark if I do change the motherboard. If I persevere with the current board, I suppose I could upgrade at a later date. It's just that with Skylake having been released does this mean that Haswell is going to be EOL and the supply of boards will dry up?

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Andy
 
The above seems like a real pointless upgrade and will hardly net you any different in performance.

If you have the itch then sell current mobo/cpu/ram and go x99 or skylake.
 
Go X99 you need to save up another £120 for a gigabyte x99 sli and 5820k (£32) difference between that and ranger bundle (£88) with team group ddr4 2400 16gb ram.
 
Thanks for the sanity check guys. Part of me said it was stupid, but I needed someone to actually tell me that!

I'm going to try to hold fire and resist temptation until Christmas then. By that point I'll be able to justify getting myself a decent X99 CPU/mobo combo. It's just the that 5820K bundles are so tempting!
 
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