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I5 2500k Suggestions please.

alanrichie

alanrichie

alanrichie

Associate
Joined
20 Sep 2009
Posts
43
Hi guys, Havent really been here since i bought my E6550 dual core setup and that has lasted me a good 5 years (clocked to 3.2ghz).

Struggling to run BF3 on low now however, need some suggestions

Iv compared processors and im on a bit of a budget so i decided on a i5 2500k
few questions...

What is the best type of memory to use? Dual channel? 1600mhz?

What is considered the best budget mboard? Im looking to clock it around 4.5-4.6ghz fully stable

My gfx card is a HD 5770 - Will this bottle neck things? I bought it quite recently to go with my 22" widescreen monitor.

Also probably most important i have a corsair 520w power supply, will this provide enough juice?

Thanks for any help.

E6550 @ 3.ghz
4gb geil 800mhz 4-4-4-12
HD 5770 1024mb
150 Gb Sata
Corsair 520w

Buget Cheap as possible no more than £400
 
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alanrichie said:
Iv compared processors and im on a bit of a budget so i decided on a i5 2500k

Good Choice

few questions...

What is the best type of memory to use? Dual channel? 1600mhz?

Yes and Yes, this would do

What is considered the best budget mboard? Im looking to clock it around 4.5-4.6ghz fully stable

This one

My gfx card is a HD 5770 - Will this bottle neck things? I bought it quite recently to go with my 22" widescreen monitor.

A little yes, but most games will be bottlenecked by GPU, you can always upgrade this in another 6 months when you can afford to

Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...
 
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2500k, approx £170
Z68 Gigabyte board approx £80
8GB RAM approx £35

Keep current case, PSU, HDD, DVD..

If you could afford to go over by about £80 or sell some of your old parts, I highly recommend a 6950, 2GB vRAM and god on BF3 from what I've heard. If you can't afford it it, maybe a 6870 is a decent option as it'll fit within the budget :)
 
Few little tips :)

Dual channel is the most common memory you'll find, and ddr3 memory is cheap at the moment, so go for that.

If you want to overclock the CPU you'll need either a P67 or Z68 chipset. The z68 has the benefit of supporting graphics overclocking, something you may want in the future.

A 500w psu should be ok for an i5 and the graphics card, but you may want to go for a 600 if your looking at overclocking in the future, or are after a powerful gfx card :)
 
Does getting 8gb of ram decrease the overcloking potential? Will i still be able to reach
4.5ghz?

Can anyone recommend a popular 8gb memory set?

And yeah ill be looking to upgrade gfx card next month!
 
most has already been said but

cpu http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-360-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1275

mb http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-364-GI

ram http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-364-GI

or http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-094-KS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

or even http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-132-CR&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

cpu cooler http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-001-GD&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395 easily oc to 4.5/4.6ghz. you want low profile ram(i.e. with out fins) a the fins will interfer with the cooler, you can simply use slots 2&4 but wouldn't be able add 2 more stick in the future to use up all 4 slots.

the new 'this week only' deals are up in the morning/afternoon so keep an ey on that, might get cheaper ram/cpu/mobo.

the corsair will be fine upto gtx570/6950 as far as I've read, you'll need higher for 580 not sure on 6970.

new graphics cards are due out q1 next year(jan-april) so if you can hold on till then.
 
alanrichie said:
Does getting 8gb of ram decrease the overcloking potential?
Click to expand...

Just to clarify with this

It used to be the case with socket 775 that populating all 4 DIMMs (memory slots) would put additional strain on the NB which in turn limited your OC, however a) nowadays you can get 2x4 gig sticks which would still only populate 2 DIMMs, plus the memory controllers been removed from the NB and put onto the CPU so now theres no issue with populating all 4 DIMMs anyway
 
For point of interest, my old Phenom II didn't get the same overclocks with 4 sticks as it could with 2 - but that was at least partly because with only 2, I could seriously undervolt the onboard memory controller and keep temperatures down.
 


AHH I ment to add the 8GB version of that ram for £50! woops


How is this setup? Low profile ram also, May have an extra £20-30, anywhere i could improve?

Thanks a lot chaps
 
alanrichie said:


AHH I ment to add the 8GB version of that ram for £50! woops


How is this setup? Low profile ram also, May have an extra £20-30, anywhere i could improve?

Thanks a lot chaps
Click to expand...

I've just bought the same CPU & RAM (x2 4gb) but opted for this motherboard:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-458-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

Chose this one because it was on offer last week & part of the overclocked gaming bundle so I figured it should work well with the other hardware. Got straight to 4.5GHZ with minimal effort. Also got the A50 heatsink.
 
Whats everyones boot to windows time with the 2500k?

That msi thing seems a good idea like, but i did look at that board also as it was in the bundle.

Decisions hmm
 
Can save yourself a tenner and go with this cooler, does the job, I'm at 4.6 with it.

Comes with a sweet box to wrap an xmas present in, and a cute little box with a magnetic opener flap for keeping bits and bobs in :P
 
Another vote for the Asus P8Z68-V as being a good choice.

Solid and stable (when not testing experimental overclocks), very easy to overclock, you can just leave it all on "auto" if you're feeling lazy and use the in-Windows tool to pump the turbo multiplier. Probably stable beyond 4.7 but I hit thermal limits by then :D New BIOS gives it Ivy Bridge support, but I don't think it will do PCI-E 3, and it is rather more expensive that your original choice...

My boot to windows time is remarkably short, probably about half what my PhenomII quad was managing. Hibernates are also noticably faster. I have absolutely no idea why, since I have conventional SATAII hard drives, but I'll not complain for sure :D
 
eddiew said:
Another vote for the Asus P8Z68-V as being a good choice.

Solid and stable (when not testing experimental overclocks), very easy to overclock, you can just leave it all on "auto" if you're feeling lazy and use the in-Windows tool to pump the turbo multiplier. Probably stable beyond 4.7 but I hit thermal limits by then :D New BIOS gives it Ivy Bridge support, but I don't think it will do PCI-E 3, and it is rather more expensive that your original choice...

My boot to windows time is remarkably short, probably about half what my PhenomII quad was managing. Hibernates are also noticably faster. I have absolutely no idea why, since I have conventional SATAII hard drives, but I'll not complain for sure :D
Click to expand...

the p8z68-v will support pci-e 3.0 as the controller is on the ivybridge CPU, it'll only be on the first pci-e slot. Will require a bios update to support ib and pcie3.0

the /gen3 version is £139.99
 
fowler002 said:
the p8z68-v will support pci-e 3.0 as the controller is on the ivybridge CPU, it'll only be on the first pci-e slot. Will require a bios update to support ib and pcie3.0
Click to expand...

Ooo, that's nice to know! I'm not a great gamer and I can't imagine ever wanting to go multi GPU, so this sounds perfectly good enough to me :)
 
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