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i5 2500K upgrade

Ausy

Ausy

Ausy

Associate
Joined
27 Jun 2015
Posts
11
Hi All,

Can I get a few thoughts on what to look for. I suspect my i5 is starting to faulter a little bit, despite having a twin fan tower block cooler on it anything past 4.3GHz it becomes unstable. That's been fine for me for years now though. Im noticing its starting to bottleneck my system now.

Recommendations for a replacement? Obviously id be upgrading the mobo so im unsure as to stay intel or risk it with Ryzen at the minute.

Thanks!
 
Oh of course sorry,

Basically 99% gaming, already got a GTX1080.
Am considering doing some video editing/streaming on the side but its very much secondary to smooth gameplay.

Edit: And id say roughly 300~ to maybe 350 if it was absolutely worth it for current performance and future proofing.
 
You're going to need to spend more than that to replace the CPU as you'll also have to replace the motherboard and RAM. I suggest you reduce the overclock and start saving.

Hmm... have you replaced the TIM?
 
Getting the hexacore is absolutely worth it over the quad cores. You could save about £20 if you went with an matx mobo and another £20 if you shopped around for memory.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £386.47
(includes shipping: £10.50)



​
 
8gb isnt enough anymore and for streaming a fast 8 core would probably be better.

op probably should save up more money, but in the meantime clean his heatsink, repaste it and increase the core voltage to 1.35 for an easy 4.5-4.6ghz overclock.
 
I upgraded from a 2500K @ 4.2GHz to a Ryzen 1700 @ 3.75GHz and honestly, unless you're doing content creation you won't notice much of a difference.

It's nice to have 8 cores/16 threads but with Threadripper coming out with 16/32 and am not so sure Ryzen 7 is as 'future proof' as it first seemed.

For me, the main reasons to upgrade was to have PCI-E 3.0, M2 and USB 3.1 though.

If you're just gaming it's a difficult call right now but I would also choose the Ryzen 1600. You can pick one up for around £190 which is incredible value for a 12 thread CPU and I think it will serve you better in the long run than a 7600K, which at £230 is starting to look like a really bad deal for a plain quad core.

The 2500K was an absolute beast though and in some ways I almost regret upgrading as it was still incredibly capable and gave me 6 years of solid performance for £160.
 
Very capable CPU.. Why not dis-assemble, clean, reapply TIM and rebuild (maybe with a new cooler).. Get it working right rather than spending money that might not need spending.
If you fancy an upgrade, i7-2600k's pop up in the for sale forums fairly often, and would be an upgrade, especially if you can get one that supports a good OC...
 
2500K just can't keep up with a 1080 in modern titles unfortunately. The stutter is bad. I even tried a 2600K and that couldn't hack it well enough for me, it was smoother but the frames rates were still hovering around 60.
 
Disco_P said:
Getting the hexacore is absolutely worth it over the quad cores. You could save about £20 if you went with an matx mobo and another £20 if you shopped around for memory.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £386.47
(includes shipping: £10.50)



​
Click to expand...

I agree with Disco_P. Those bundles are a steal these days, considering that up to 2 months ago, that was the cost of a single 4 core CPU. (actually it is today still from some companies).

@OP try to buy a second hand Wraith from the 1700 box, and overclock the CPU to ~3.9-4Ghz.
 
If you want the best gaming CPU only and don't care about cores and threads then get an i7-7700K. But don't waste your money buying any Intel i5 processor for gaming as for its price you'll get a Ryzen 5 1600X with very similar performance plus a massive boost in thread count (future proof). Really, buying a quad-core with no extra threads is total nonsense considering you can have a six-core with 12 threads for the same money.
 
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