Need some advice.

[Konamacona]

Morning all, I'm looking for a little advice regarding my rather dated i5-2500k. I've never ever had a problem with the processor it's probably the best bit of gear I think I have ever bought, however that was about 5-6 years ago now?

Recently I have been seeing slowdowns in trivial tasks, such as file managment and the big one - gaming. I have been playing wow again recently (don't shoot) and have been noticing some pretty poor performance, such as 30fps in capital cities.

I'm aware my setup isn't high spec or even close by today's standards but it should be able to cope with things like wow.

Specs:

GTX 970 4GB
i5-2500k @ Stock
8GB DDR3

I know throughout a CPUs lifecycle, the speed in theory stays the same and should never slow down, a CPU either works or doesn't, right?

But I was wondering if maybe going for a i5-3570k or something might be something worth doing, as I don't want to pay for a new mobo at the moment and unfortauntly the old one I have now can't support 1151 sockets only 1155.

Thank you in advance Overclockers!

 

[eddiew]

Overclock the 2500k. It should run 4.3-4.5ghz with minimal effort.

The only upgrade worth anything is a 3770k for the hyperthreading, but it won't deliver any improvement to the single thread performance that WoW prefers.

Honestly, that's all you can do with a 5 year old motherboard :/

 

[Konamacona]

I was taking your advice, I was gonna OC until I noticed my temp was at 98c IDLE.. So I took her apart got rid of the old paste etc put some more thermal compound on it. Just ran a 100% stress test and it never went above 78c..

FPS in game seems to have doubled as well.. Think I'm gonna get an aftermarket cooler and see if I can open this 2500k up lol.

 

[DragonQ]

I was taking your advice, I was gonna OC until I noticed my temp was at 98c IDLE.. So I took her apart got rid of the old paste etc put some more thermal compound on it. Just ran a 100% stress test and it never went above 78c..

FPS in game seems to have doubled as well.. Think I'm gonna get an aftermarket cooler and see if I can open this 2500k up lol.

Always wise to check temperatures when a CPU seems to be hugely underperforming!

 

[eddiew]

I was taking your advice, I was gonna OC until I noticed my temp was at 98c IDLE.. So I took her apart got rid of the old paste etc put some more thermal compound on it. Just ran a 100% stress test and it never went above 78c..

FPS in game seems to have doubled as well.. Think I'm gonna get an aftermarket cooler and see if I can open this 2500k up lol.

Good god, no wonder you've had problems. Yeah, that'll have been throttling itself constantly

 

[voidshatter]

I'd say the same thing as replied in another thread:

Since you have waited for so long, why not just wait until next month and see what you can get from the i5-8600K? I think it will be the next 2500K to last a very long while for gaming purposes.

 

[jigger]

16Gb of fast DDR3 and a CPU overclock would keep the GTX970 running pretty much flat out.

 

[Konamacona]

Thanks for the nice advice guys, sorry I took so long to reply, I was thinking maybe for the time being, sticking another 8GB in getting an aftermarket cooler and see how much I can get out of it?

 

[eddiew]

Check task manager during your typical usage to see if the memory is worth it. If you're never getting close to 8gb used, not going to be an effective investment.

Better cooler definitely. You can push a 2500k a long way on a 240mm AiO or big air

If you do go for 16gb, consider getting 2x8, and dump the old sticks. My 2500k needed a kick of voltage to stay stable with 4 sticks and it shot the heat up and limited the OC I could get, even with hefty cooling :/

 

[jigger]

Check task manager during your typical usage to see if the memory is worth it. If you're never getting close to 8gb used, not going to be an effective investment.

Better cooler definitely. You can push a 2500k a long way on a 240mm AiO or big air

If you do go for 16gb, consider getting 2x8, and dump the old sticks. My 2500k needed a kick of voltage to stay stable with 4 sticks and it shot the heat up and limited the OC I could get, even with hefty cooling :/

That's a good point. Sandybridge isn't great with 4 sticks.

 

[eddiew]

Yer, basically I could run 4.7-4.8ghz with air cooling and 2 sticks of 1600. With 4 sticks of 1866, it was 4.3ghz with a big AiO... It was 100% stable at that and would go weeks/months between reboots with nary an error, but it ran 80 degrees when playing Cities Skylines