Switching to Intel (as well as form factor)

[Buxton]

Hey guys & gals,

Long time lurker, first time poster In a few weeks i'm planning to move to mITX, as I love me a small system and Intel seems the no brainer choice. I've spied me a nice ASUS H97/Z97 motherboard on the US Newegg site that'll I hope will come to the UK, but i'm stuck on which processor to get.

I know there is a Haswell refresh coming really soon but to make it easy lets focus on whats out now. I'm not totally sold on overclocking in such a small form factor so I was considering the Xeon 1230 V3 as an alternative to the 4670k. I keep reading different stories online about "its the same as a 4770 without the iGPU" and hurr "just OC the i5 to make it better".

Just wondered what your guys thoughts were on this really, as im really undecided. What would you lot do with a small build in something like a 250D or Hadron paired up with a GTX770?

 

[almighty15]

Those little ITX boards can clock just as well as the full size ATX boards, my old Zotac Z68-ITX board had an 8 phase CPU design and overclocked my CPU just as well as the full size board that replaced it did.

 

[Buxton]

Those little ITX boards can clock just as well as the full size ATX boards, my old Zotac Z68-ITX board had an 8 phase CPU design and overclocked my CPU just as well as the full size board that replaced it did.

Yeah I know a lot of the motherboards are really good, and that you'll hit thermal limits before board limits but as the case i want only allows for a 140mm cooler i didn't think i'd be able to OC a 4670k much

 

[McstylisT]

Hi mate

I am using a cooler master CM120 Elite case. I dont have that much headroom personally speaking either. Using this excellent low profile cooler : http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-024-NC&groupid=701&catid=2330&subcat=2346

I have 4670K @ 4.4ghz on a tiny little mini itx

Spec the build right, use quality components and your be surprised.

 

[Buxton]

Hi mate

I am using a cooler master CM120 Elite case. I dont have that much headroom personally speaking either. Using this excellent low profile cooler : http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-024-NC&groupid=701&catid=2330&subcat=2346

I have 4670K @ 4.4ghz on a tiny little mini itx

Spec the build right, use quality components and your be surprised.

Thanks for the input buddy, that gives me a little more hope for Haswell! I grabbed a Raijintek Aidos as benches showed it performs like a Hyper 212 so that should give me a bit more headroom hopefully if i do go the OC route.

So would you say the OC ability & the iGPU on the 4670k is better than spending the 16 odd quid more for a Xeon and its HT?

 

[McstylisT]

Thanks for the input buddy, that gives me a little more hope for Haswell! I grabbed a Raijintek Aidos as benches showed it performs like a Hyper 212 so that should give me a bit more headroom hopefully if i do go the OC route.

So would you say the OC ability & the iGPU on the 4670k is better than spending the 16 odd quid more for a Xeon and its HT?

Hey Buxton

Sorry for a slow reply.

Tough question really , but it depends on what you do. The things i mainly do now days are not as cpu demanding, or multiple core related tasks. I previously used i7 processors right back to 920 > 2600. I had the i7 2600 ( non K ) previously to this setup, so similar situation. I could not clock the 2600 , so completely stock. Using standard H77 chipset i was also limited to 1333mhz on my ram too. I balanced things up and decided the i5 4670K OC would be enough. Personally its far exceeded my old stock i7 2600. The extra HT cores/threads did give advantage in some areas. For instance transcoding/encoding movies to various formats. As the programs advance more cores/threads can be used giving better efficiency and results at that speed. But your talking about the Xeon its also limited to stock clock.

Now if your like me and most of the things you require are more than doable on 4 quality physical cores then the i5 4670K is a gem. You can clock the little beast up and it gives excellent performance. Identical to the 4770K for these uses. Using Haswell cores too , the efficiency of the cores and power delivered when overclocked will then exceed the power of the Xeon.

So its a toss up, higher clocks more raw power. Or HT more threads at lower clocks.

Truth be told you would be happy with either im sure but personally as mentioned due to the non ability to OC i would choose the i5 4670K.

 

[Buxton]

Hey Buxton

Sorry for a slow reply.

Tough question really , but it depends on what you do. The things i mainly do now days are not as cpu demanding, or multiple core related tasks. I previously used i7 processors right back to 920 > 2600. I had the i7 2600 ( non K ) previously to this setup, so similar situation. I could not clock the 2600 , so completely stock. Using standard H77 chipset i was also limited to 1333mhz on my ram too. I balanced things up and decided the i5 4670K OC would be enough. Personally its far exceeded my old stock i7 2600. The extra HT cores/threads did give advantage in some areas. For instance transcoding/encoding movies to various formats. As the programs advance more cores/threads can be used giving better efficiency and results at that speed. But your talking about the Xeon its also limited to stock clock.

Now if your like me and most of the things you require are more than doable on 4 quality physical cores then the i5 4670K is a gem. You can clock the little beast up and it gives excellent performance. Identical to the 4770K for these uses. Using Haswell cores too , the efficiency of the cores and power delivered when overclocked will then exceed the power of the Xeon.

So its a toss up, higher clocks more raw power. Or HT more threads at lower clocks.

Truth be told you would be happy with either im sure but personally as mentioned due to the non ability to OC i would choose the i5 4670K.

Thanks for that, it actually really helps! As I don't think i'd edit/transcode enough to warrant the more money on the Xeon its probably a better plan to stick with something overclockable in case i need it. I'd imagine too that the K models always hold their value based on how much 2500k's go for on ebay still

I'm also planning to make this upgrade one of the last "big" chances so i plan to keep it for a year or two and i hope that the overclockability will extend its useful life for me!

 

[jimbaw]

keep in mind that haswell is not the best overclocker.
some people get good chips, other (like me) don't
but overall, it's a great product

 

[los]

I would get the 4670k (or haswell-e) as well, as its much more interesting overclocking, also there isnt a massive amount of stuff that can utilise the extra threads.
4.4ghz isnt bad, its about average, you cant be too unhappy with that?

 

[JamesM]

It stems down to two things really.

1. Will you be using programs often that will make use of the extra threads?
2. Will you be running dual GPUs sometime in the future?

If the answer to either of those is yes, then you want to get either a 4770k now or, wait, and get a unlocked haswell refresh when it comes out June time.

Otherwise the 4670k will serve you perfectly well

 

[jimbaw]

I would get the 4670k (or haswell-e) as well, as its much more interesting overclocking, also there isnt a massive amount of stuff that can utilise the extra threads.
4.4ghz isnt bad, its about average, you cant be too unhappy with that?

i need 1.29v to achieve 4.4 stable. dropped it down to 4.3 since

but coming from an AMD platform, it's still a great improvement. definitely don't regret

 

[Buxton]

True, its waaaay more likely i'd use the 4670k to its potential rather than an i7/Xeon so its probably the best bet. Hopefully my cooler can handle Haswell, seems to handle my OC'ed FX perfect atm.