Looking for some advice on hardware combinations...

dsteel0

dsteel0

dsteel0

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Joined
24 Sep 2020
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3
Hi all,

This is my first post, so "hello".

I'm looking for a bit of advice on hardware for a gaming rig. I currently have an i5 socket 1155 (not sure of exact model), 8GB of Corsair XMS RAM and Zotac GTX 670 card, sitting on a Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H mobo.

A friend has just given me an i7 4790K socket 1155, 32GB of Corsair Vengeance RAM and Radeon 7870 card, sitting on an Asus Z97-P mobo.

I've been out of the loop on PC hardware for a while, as the last PC I built myself was about 5 years ago (the i5 rig above). I'm wondering which parts I should be using from each PC to build the best machine I can. Obviously I want to keep the i7 and the 32GB RAM ideally, but I'm not sure which mobo and/or card to use. I've been looking at specs but the bit I can't get my head around is where there might be bottlenecks. I'm less worried about hard drive speed, more just gaming speed - I have an SSD for the OS and a 1TB for storage that I'll use in whichever setup I go with.

The Asus mobo has a broken SATA port, so I'd rather go with the Gigabyte but I think it might be an inferior motherboard. It's hard to get past all of the blurb on the vendor sites and to know which specs actually matter!

I'm assuming that the processors would be compatible on either board since they are both socket 1155 but again I'm struggling to find that info from the vendor site.

Anyway, any help/thoughts appreciated. I am considering upgrading to a Geforce 2060 at some point, but I'd need new monitors too, since the current ones are DVI, and the 2060 has HDMI or Display Port...

Cheers
D
 
Hi and welcome.

You can't swap motherboard and cpu as they are diffrent socket types and won't fit.

4790k is socket 1150 not 1155.


The 4790k is the better cpu.
 
Ah, ok - that's the decision made then after all that - I thought they were the same socket, but checking again, you're right, the i7 is 1150, not 1155...

Would I get a performance boost from a newer motherboard, or from that generation are they all much the same?

Cheers
 
You wont see any performance difference from a different motherboard.

Out of the two GPU's you've listed the Nvidia 670 is superior.

If you upgrade to a newer card you can get adapters so that you can continue using your old monitors.
 
Appreciate the help, folks. Adapters are a good idea, I didn't even think of that!

Yeah, the 670 is better - the 7870 is in just now, as the 670 was overheating and shutting down - and I can definitely notice a performance dip. I've just stripped the 670 down and put new thermal paste on it, not sure if that'll fix it.

Thanks for the help once again! :)
 
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