Tailored i5 upgrade

[motiv]

Hi guys,

I'm looking at upgrading my i2 2500k. It's starting to feel the pinch at home and wondered what is a good upgrade?

My system is 8gig, AMD 480RX 8GB and of course the i5 2500k

My system is used mainly for playing games and watching films, although I have need for a VM with VS2017. I'm also interested in upgrading to the Rift VR. The games I play mainly are Heroes of the Swarm, CSGO and Overwatch.

Now if a drop in CPU works for this, then what will keep a good gaming performance for me, while giving me more CPUs to play with. I can at a stretch get a new rig if required, but I'd prefer a cheaper upgrade path rather than a system change if possible.

 

[gavinh87]

Drop the 3770k in it. This is the most cost effective option.

 

[AiiR]

3770k is fine for a 480, maybe try and grab another 8gb ram 2nd hand for cheap aswell.

 

[David Bisset]

Have you already overclocked the 2500k? As they're decent chips and none of the games you list are hugely multi-threaded (Well, I'm assuming Heroes of the Swarm is either Heroes of the Storm or Heart of the Swarm... either way!) so it should be able to cope fine, maybe time to clean up your windows install if it is feeling sluggish?

The 3770k is a reasonable option, giving you hyperthreading and a slightly newer CPU, but is unlikely to make a huge difference in those 3 games. It is the most cost-effective upgrade as you can get a second-hand one cheaply and the rest of your kit stays the same, but I'm not convinced given your use-cases that you'll really feel much from it. I've not tried a rift though, no idea if it'll see nice gains from the 3770k.

 

[motiv]

Have you already overclocked the 2500k? As they're decent chips and none of the games you list are hugely multi-threaded (Well, I'm assuming Heroes of the Swarm is either Heroes of the Storm or Heart of the Swarm... either way!) so it should be able to cope fine, maybe time to clean up your windows install if it is feeling sluggish?

The 3770k is a reasonable option, giving you hyperthreading and a slightly newer CPU, but is unlikely to make a huge difference in those 3 games. It is the most cost-effective upgrade as you can get a second-hand one cheaply and the rest of your kit stays the same, but I'm not convinced given your use-cases that you'll really feel much from it. I've not tried a rift though, no idea if it'll see nice gains from the 3770k.

no overclock as of yet, not had a need until recent, now things like working on VS are killing my machine.

I've looked at the new AMD but that's an entire upgrade for that. Looking what people are saying, I can drop in an intel 4/8 and that should tide me over for a while. New and shiny is nice but I suspect a bit of an overkill for another year. Maybe the 2800 from amd next year (if they call it that), would be a nice little step up by then.

Thanks to everyone replying, I'm off to ebay.

 

[Orcvader]

Make sure to overclock it, these chips can easily go past 4GHz even your 2500K and you get a fair chunk of extra performance from that alone.

 

[David Bisset]

Aye absolutely overclock it before buying anything - the 2500k was so great because of how well it clocked not how it came out of the box. It'll give the Ivybridge CPUs a run once you've clocked it up a bit. I'd hope for well over 4GHz, 4.5GHz shouldn't really be a problem and some hope of higher too, though of course as always individual chips vary.