i5 Upgrade Question

MouthBoy

MouthBoy

MouthBoy

Soldato
Joined
6 Apr 2010
Posts
2,918
Location
Cambridgeshire
Before anyone says "Sandy Bridge" let me explain.

I believe my current motherboard (in sig) is dying and its giving me a lot of grief. I have 16 days until I need to hand in a fairly large chunk of uni work and I need a system thats not going to give me any problems. I could get a new 775 motherboard from OcUK (the ASUS) for just over £82 but my thought process is telling me to go for the i5 system that will last me at least until after I get out of uni (around 8 months) and give me a small boost too.

The following from OcUK would cost me £309.97.

i5 760 2.8Ghz
Asus P7P55D-E
Corsair XMS3 4gb 1600Mhz

My Q6600 works great at 3.6Ghz and my current RAM is working fine too. I am thinking of getting the i5 system installed and having peace of mind without motherboard issues, selling my Q6600 and RAM on MM and burning the TPower i45 under a hot flame.

Yes I know if I could wait for SB it would be great, but truthfully I cannot. I cannot afford i7 either. I know that the i5 will give (when at 4Ghz) better performance then my current system, although for some it might not be worth the upgrade as my Q6600 is running 3.6Ghz stable.

Thoughts on the system spec above? Will it all work fine?

Thanks
 
If your set on the i5 go for the suggested MSI or your chosen board.
In your position I would be inclined to buy a new motherboard for the Q6600.

But then again I know how exciting it is to get something new and shiny :)
 
he said his cpu works "great" and his ram is "fine"

he said he is "thinking" about an i5 system. to be honest,, because you know your cpu and ram are fine then the chances of any issues at all are cut by 2/3 if you buy a new board to house them. if you go for a complete new system then the chances will increase with more hardware in the mix.

1 new piece of hardware more chance of success and finished uni work.
 
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shroomz said:
Spec looks fine to me, what power supply have you got?
(just in case you're using a no-brand cheapo one :D)
Click to expand...

OCZ ModXStream 700W

And yea I know what you are saying about going for the cheaper board, but I just want to have something that will work without issues and wont need upgrading initially after I get out of uni. I almost upgraded my rig before but I invested in an ASUS D1 and ASUS GTX470 instead. If I sell my Q6600 now it will probably get me more income then in 6-8months time too.

So this motherboard OR the MSI is good yea? (Kind of like the look of this one lol).

Also, I currently use a megahalems with 2 apache blacks. I can use that on the i5 and this motherboard yea?
 
jakesnake said:
he said his cpu works "great" and his ram is "fine"

he said he is "thinking" about an i5 system for peace of mind without motherboard issues. to be honest because you know your cpu and ram are fine then the chances of any issues at all are cut by 2/3 if you buy a new board to house them. if you go for a complete new system then the chances of increase with more hardware in the mix.

1 new piece of hardware more chance of sucess.
Click to expand...

I just put in the post that I wrote as you wrote this that I could still get a decent return for my Q6600 now rather then a few months.
 
smeaney said:
I just put in the post that I wrote as you wrote this that I could still get a decent return for my Q6600 now rather then a few months.
Click to expand...

it sounds like you want shiny new gear and ar prepaired to gamble for no issues with a new build.

its up to yourself m8 :)
 
smeaney said:
Ordered.

If this does not solve my problems...I will scream! Actually...I will do worse, I will buy a mac! :P
Click to expand...

Lol well I have a 760 with the Asus motherboard at stock speeds with all the power saving things turned on; it works fantastically well with a GTX460 gaming at 1680x1050.... Everything set to max for me for every game gets 59-61fps (I play with VSync and triple buffering enabled) apart from Crysis. But then again what computer doesn't struggle with Crysis? :D Occasionally frames drop to about 40 but thats the minimum

I played about with overclocking everything and getting all the lovely numbers(4.0GHz prime stable), benchmarking everything and testing for stability... Then I just decided to go back to stock speeds because I don't need the extra performance (yet)
 
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I will leave it at 2.8Ghz until hand in date in just over 2 weeks, then I will overclock and try for 4Ghz. At the moment on my current system I can run Crysis fine at 1080p with some AA. The GTX470 was a great purchase I must say.

Hopefully I will have a nice Friday night build session.
 
Hi there, may I ask which motherboard you went for in the end?

If you didn't already, I would got for the MSI GD65 or GD80 as these boards both can do PCIe x8x8 for SLI/CF, the ASUS P7P55D-E is limited to x16x4, so not very good if you ever want to use two graphics cards.
 
Jake made a good point about risk reduction - hope you dont get any problems/rma with the new kit! :) By the way - i5 760 is gonna last you years - not just 8 months!
 
I went with the ASUS, I dont plan on using dual graphics cards at any point though.

And yea, I know the i5 will last me a lot longer, but I really wanted to go SB i7, but I needed the upgrade now. Ah well, I bet its going to be better than what I give it credit for.
 
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