Upgrade finally forced upon me!

BongoHunter

BongoHunter

BongoHunter

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Joined
14 Apr 2014
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East Sussex
Hi

Hoping for some help regarding a upgrade I'm now forced to do - after putting it off for 2 years. I'm a heavy user of VM's for development work I'm doing, improving capacity for this is my main priority. I also do some gaming (BF4, Battlefront, The Division, KSP).

I'm currently memory & cpu limited for VM's, and cpu limited for games (surprisingly) and some dev work. I've done upgrades over the last year to add SSD's and a decent GFX card, so don't need to buy anything like that at the moment.

I need to get to a minimum of:
32GB of RAM
4 Cores
1 PCIE x16

Ideally I'd like to have to possibility to upgrade to 64 or 128 GB of RAM in the future
I'd also prefer a higher threadcount than just a plain 4 core, but this isn't essential, i'd also like a full bandwidth PCIEx16 slot spare if possible, but again, not essential.

Current Spec:
Intel i5-750 2.67 GHz (Lynfield 1156)
8 GB (Corsair XMS3 4x2GB TwinX 1333Mhz Cas 9)
Asus P7P55D Pro (P55)
Asus GTX 970 (4 GB)
Antec High Current Gamer 620W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply
Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps
Corsair Graphite Series 230T Case
(Etc: + 1 x Samsung 128 SSD + 2 x WD 2 TB + Blueray Drive + 4K 26" Screen)

Budget 1K - but don't want to spend unless its needed. I will reuse current disks, graphics card, case, psu (if poss). I'm a little concerned about single thread performance on the Xeon option below, as raw MHz is lower than my current CPU,

These are the options I've come up with:

1. Cheap - but powerful enough? Not sure about AMD these days - but 4Ghz Stock is a long way above my current CPU.
AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8350 Black Edition 4.00GHz (Socket AM3+) £139.99
2 X Kingston HyperX Beast 16GB (2x8GB) PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (HX324C11T3K2/16)£159.98
ASRock 990FX Extreme3 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 ATX £85.99
Total £385.96

2. Really Cheap - but is the CPU going to be any good? Will be better than my i5-750, but good enough for my current needs? This would give me more cores and much greater clock speed, plus double the RAM of current PC. Another £80 would give me my 32GB of RAM to,
AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) £89.99
Kingston HyperX Beast 16GB (2x8GB) PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (HX324C11T3K2/16) £79.99
Asus M5A97 LE R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £59.99
Total £229.97

3. Proper Job
Intel Xeon E5-2620 v3 2.4GHz 6-Core with Hyperthreading (Socket 2011-3) - Retail £391.49
Corsair Vengeance LPX 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C14 2400MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit £269.99
Asus X99-A II Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £239.99
Total £901.47

4. Do what everyone else does and just get another i5! Maybe double the RAM though...
Intel Core i5-6600K 3.9GHz (Skylake) Socket LGA1151 Processor £205.99
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C15 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit £74.99
Asus Z170M-Plus Intel Z170 (Socket 1151) DDR4 Micro ATX £102.95
Total £383.93


Help! I need a lot of power, but don't want to spend where not really needed. I don't want to do this again for about 2 years if I can help it, which is why I'm not immediately hitting buy on option 2!

Thanks for any help.
 
I really wouldn't touch AMD at the moment. The chipsets are ancient and the cpu's have lacklustre performance and use a lot of power. Tehay are also going to be replaced by a new socket and cpu's at some point in the next 12 months.

A FX6300 isn't going to be much better than your i5 750. Here's a comparison between the two. Keep in mind that the i5 750 should overclock to 3.8-4Ghz so will make up a lot of the performance difference and will probably pull ahead in a lot of circumstances.

Here's a comparison between a FX8350 and your i5 750. Same again about the overclocking of the i5 750. To overclock the FX8000 series cpu's you need a really good board with decent vrm cooling as they hammer the vrm's.

Now we get onto Intel and the ridiculous pricing. The i5 6600k would be a good bet if it wasn't priced where a i7 should be. Here's a comparison between a 6600k and your 750 but it's not such a complete comparison. There's a better one here between the FX8350 and the i5 6600k.

I can't find any comparisons with the Xeon. Wouldn't a i7 or a Xeon fit your needs better than a i5? It costs more but should last a lot longer too.
 
i5 has no hyperthreading, 4core 4threads. This will be far superior for VMs and you won't have to upgrade anytime soon imo.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £662.41
(includes shipping: £10.50)
​


​

6core 12threads, DDR4, possibility to add another 32-96 GB of ram, pretty much the same gaming perf as a 6700K but MORE CORES (!!!)
 
Last edited:
The 5820k deal above looks perfect,. Don't even consider AMD.

Could even add another 32gb kit for under 1k total and you are set for a good while yet.
 
For a cheap upgrade you could look at getting a 2nd hand socket 1366 motherboard & a Xeon x56** CPU (eg. x5670), that would give you six hyper threaded cores that can be overclocked. Or look for a original socket 2011 board and get an 8 core Intel E5-2690 or similar if you want a slightly newer architecture setup. These would both give you good platforms for a workstation with options for lots of ram, these would be fairly cheap and better than the AMD offerings.
 
Thanks Guys - really helpful to see other opinions on this stuff

Have done a big more investigating - AMD is off the cards, I would still consider a 2 socket G34 Mobo with some 12 Core Opterons, but this is probably a bit crazy for a system that needs to sit in quite a small space under my desk.

Also it turns out you don't get all of the Intel Virtualisation features without Xeon...

With that in mind I think this might be something good to aim for:
Asrock X99 Extreme4 3.1 Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £188.99
Intel Xeon E5-2620 v3 2.4GHz 6-Core with Hyperthreading (Socket 2011-3) - Retail £391.49

I'm not planning on overclocking this system at all - so no point getting anything above DDR4 2133 yeah? Like:
Kingston Fury Black 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-17000C14 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit £99.95

That lot would be about £680 - which doesn't seem to bad considering the spec/power
 
BongoHunter said:
Thanks Guys - really helpful to see other opinions on this stuff

Have done a big more investigating - AMD is off the cards, I would still consider a 2 socket G34 Mobo with some 12 Core Opterons, but this is probably a bit crazy for a system that needs to sit in quite a small space under my desk.

Also it turns out you don't get all of the Intel Virtualisation features without Xeon...

With that in mind I think this might be something good to aim for:
Asrock X99 Extreme4 3.1 Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £188.99
Intel Xeon E5-2620 v3 2.4GHz 6-Core with Hyperthreading (Socket 2011-3) - Retail £391.49

I'm not planning on overclocking this system at all - so no point getting anything above DDR4 2133 yeah? Like:
Kingston Fury Black 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-17000C14 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit £99.95

That lot would be about £680 - which doesn't seem to bad considering the spec/power
Click to expand...

If you are going for the Asrock X99 Extreme4 then I would still go for a 5820k as it will pair up with the consumer board better with higher clocks and be overclock able. From comparing the two you won't really lose out on anything worth the limitations of running the Xeon - http://ark.intel.com/compare/82932,83352 you do gain more PCIE lanes and ECC memory support but the Asrock X99 Extreme4 doesn't support ECC memory. Intel® vPro Technology and Intel® Demand Based Switching are not really required.
 
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