i7 920 upgrade plans - dilemma

[Timber]

I know there's a lot of these posts but I wanted to get some thoughts on an upgrade path. I'm still rocking an i7 920 and motherboard from 2010 (when OCUK did that wonderful EOL offer and arguably my best CPU ever) which is paired with a MSI 780GTX Lightning and mammoth Cosmos II case I bought more recently.

My main uses are currently gaming, browser, odd letter or spreadsheet and some video encoding (usually with handbrake to MP4 encoding) or CD rips. I would love to downsize the PC to mATX and really like the look of the Corsair Carbide Air 240. The PC is generally fine for what I want but recent games like the Witcher 3 are obviously pushing it at 1080p even and I've been thinking about upgrading for a while. In particular I always assumed I would go with X99 and one of the 5820K or 5930K CPUs when the time came. But after reading up quite a bit I'm starting to think this isn't the best course of action.

I've realised I can go 4790K, 16GB RAM and mATX motherboard for £400-450 which is going to be £200-300 cheaper than the 5820K route. The 4790K, ram and motherboard all appear to be really good value atm. This means I can buy the new PC and immediately benefit from improved specs because I'm thinking about pairing this with a 980ti.

However Skylake is around the corner and my assumption is that whatever is the equivalent CPU is to the 4790K is easily going to be more than £300 and require expensive RAM to begin with. Also I might not have the same choice of motherboards on Skylake as Z97 for a little while.

I've tried to find out what other benefits Skylake brings (better PCI-E or SATA for example?) but haven't got very far.

So I realise it's a subjective question, but am I mad to be thinking about a 4790K now?

 

[Timber]

I'd definitely wait for Skylake. The 4790k is the exact same silicon as the 4770 - which was released over 2 years ago. Nothing wrong with it of course, but I'd wait the extra 6-7 weeks for brand new technology, including the much improved Z170 chipset.

The 6700k should cost the same price as the 4790k currently does - it's going to replace it and make the 4790k end of life.

P.S. I'm also still using my i7 920 and Asus P6T Deluxe which I purchased from OCUK in December 2008. Utterly fantastic value for money That said I'm upgrading to the 6700k/Asus Z170 for sure - I'm looking forward to finally getting PCI-E v3, Sata3, m.2 x4 slots, UEFI (awesome fan control), USB3, USB3 Type C, the list is endless

Thanks for the reply. Some good points and you are probably right but part of me thinks the 6700K isn't going to be as low as the 4790K is, or that early adopters will get hit on the memory front but I suppose the 4790K isn't going anywhere. I suppose there's nothing stopping me dropping a 980Ti in early. And yes the 920 is a legendary chip which I'll miss.

Get a Xeon 5650 for your board.
See here:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18618052

I remember reading about these when everyone buying them off eBay. Just there's as much a driver here to downsize the PC as much as keeping my existing setup going.

 

[Timber]

If I was buying right now I'd probably go with 4790K because its substantially cheaper and I think a 4-core processor will be fine for what I need it for. The big unknown to me right now is Skylake, but I'm coming around to the idea of waiting it out.

I guess I was secretly hoping someone said 'do it...buy the 4790K' but I think the common sense thing to do is wait for now.

 

[Timber]

Well after lots of deliberation and reading, rational behaviour went out of the window tonight. Basically dropped a lot of money on a 5930K/32GB RAM/MSI 980Ti plus various other goodies.

So close to Skylake but the timing suits now to building this new rig, and I sense this will be a great upgrade no matter how good or bad the mainstream i7s are.

 

[Timber]

Cheers for all the advice and thoughts. I think hanging on, or buying the Xeon were the logical choices, but my PC is getting on. The SDD and HDDs are full, I'd like to downsize the case and I crucially have some spare time to build it coming up. So it made sense to buy into X99 now (budget went up a bit).

Looking forward to the new build and upgrade.