Want to Upgrade to IvyBridge

Jjustme

Jjustme

Jjustme

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5 Apr 2009
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242
So I'm upgrading after a very long time and my current specs are:

E6700 @ 3.2GHz
3GB RAM
P5B Deluxe
Corsair HX620
22" 1080p monitor

At first I thought of going all out and getting a 6 core Sandybridge-E so it would last me a long time, but then I felt the 6 cores haven't really settled in the market yet, and I'll just upgrade to that when IvyBridge-E comes out and there are more 6 core options.

So I'm planning on filling the gap between this and IvyBridge-E with the current IvyBridge.

I have a 285GTX and I'm not much of a PC gamer any more, mostly just consoles now so I think I'll keep it and put it in this new build.

I just wanted to check if everything is compatible in case I've missed something and also there are likely to be better suggestions for the RAM I've chosen, not really too clued up about IvyBridge RAM.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM £251.99
1 x Asus P8Z77-V PRO Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £159.98
1 x Intel 520 Series 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - Retail £155.99
1 x Corsair Professional Series AX850 High Performance 850W Modular '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply (CMPSU-850AXUK) £154.99
1 x Corsair Obsidian 650D Gaming Midi Tower - Black £149.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/LGA2011/AM2/AM3) (CWCH100) £83.58
2 x Patriot Viper Xtreme 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-15000C9 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit (PXD316G1866C9K) £74.39 (148.78)
Total : £1,120.30 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 
You mentioned you don't really game on PC anymore but want to upgrade...but you didn't mention what would you be using the PC for...do you need to do video encoding etc? If it's just for general usage like web-browsing or office tasks, I honestly think you really just need to upgrade to a SSD and you can save the rest of your money...
 
Oh yeah, just general PC usage, not aimed at anything in particular.

Just want a snappy PC really, mine started feeling this is getting sluggish with all the new applications and stuff.

I do a bit of everything on it, video encoding, editing, image manipulation, audio manipulation, and I would just like it to be faster.

Looking for the best bang for buck, with good future proofing, like the 850W PSU, I don't think that current PC needs that much, but if I was looking at installing more HDD's and upgrading to Ivy-E and OCing, I might.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £274.99
1 x Corsair Obsidian 650D Gaming Midi Tower - Black £149.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard with FREE BOOGIE BUG XXL GAMING MOUSE MAT £129.98
1 x Corsair HX 750W ATX Modular SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-750HXUK) £105.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT128M4SSD2) £89.99
2 x Patriot Viper Xtreme 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-15000C9 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit (PXD316G1866C9K) £74.39 (148.78)
1 x NZXT Havik 140 CPU Cooler (Socket 1366/1155/1156/775/AM3/AM2+/AM2) £59.99
1 x Edimax EW-7612UAN 300Mbps High-Gain Wireless-N USB Adapter £17.99
Total : £994.19 (includes shipping : £13.75).




Id go for this ^

Cheaper and will perform exactly the same.

The SSD you picked is way overpriced and the PSU way over powered.

An OEM CPU comes with 2 years LESS warranty than a retail one.
 
Jjustme said:
Oh yeah, just general PC usage, not aimed at anything in particular.

Just want a snappy PC really, mine started feeling this is getting sluggish with all the new applications and stuff.

I do a bit of everything on it, video encoding, editing, image manipulation, audio manipulation, and I would just like it to be faster.

Looking for the best bang for buck, with good future proofing, like the 850W PSU, I don't think that current PC needs that much, but if I was looking at installing more HDD's and upgrading to Ivy-E and OCing, I might.
Click to expand...
I can tell you that the sluggishness you feel are caused by the HDD the most, rather than other hardware. While upgrading to IvyBridge would allow to encoding to finish much sooner, but it depends on if you really see that as a need (if you do your encoding overnight when you sleep, then the encoding finishing sooner make no difference to you).

I would suggest you consider may be just get a SSD to start with first, and see how it goes. If you find the SSD upgrade is already good enough for you, then may be you can spend the money you saved on getting a bigger monitor so you can use dual-screen? (lots of people find it's great to have a 2nd screen as it improve the ease of use)
 
If it's just general use there's no point in going for IB-E at all. IB will be enough to last you for years, that 3770K will fly with the video encoding/image manipulation/audio manipulation work.

Swap the board for this, it's one of the best IB boards you can get: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-390-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2261

Swap the SSD for this, just as reliable and cheaper: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-149-SA&groupid=1657&catid=2101&subcat=2103

Drop the PSU to this, no point going for 850w if you're not doing any multi GPU setups: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-055-OC

Stick with 1600mhz RAM, with IB there's hardly any performance gains with higher speeds: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-349-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

There's no point buying extreme parts if you're not gaming.
 
Thanks for the specs guys, and the reason I chose the 850W is because of where I plan to end up with this PC, IB-E.

I know I don't need it for normal day to day stuff, but I want it lol :D

I realise my HDD is probably the biggest bottleneck to my PC at the moment to the overall speed but just over a year ago, I made a PC for my 10 yr old little brother for £350 not incl monitor or anything and it is twice as fast as my current one in benchmarks.

It also feels quite a lot faster even though it's running on a HDD. (Comparing with two fresh Windows install by the way).

Also I feel this PC may give up any moment, I think I've had motherboard issues before (never actually figured it out because it just started working all of sudden) and PSU issues, or maybe they were both caused by the same thing.

A voltage measuring application I used not so long ago told me my 12V was running at 9.7V, all the other apps said 11.98, but the 9.7 reading was active and it varied slightly, all the apps that read 11.98 were static, no changes in the reading, same with bios, it just stays at 11.98.

The 3V and others are fine btw.

Another problem I had (probably still have) is after a short while of gaming (only some games, those truck simulator games really hit the spot here, made the pc crash instantly) the screen would just display no signal, but I could still here the PC normally, the fans and everything spin normally.

More demanding games like BF BC2 played fine for hours, no crashing at all. So there seems to be something wrong, I've already had to change the GPU once, from 8800GTX original to this 285GTX.

So yeah, I just want to upgrade the entire system apart from the 285GTX unless those problems persist.
 
The OCZ ZS is still enough for an IB-E system, even with a high overclock. So no point wasting money on a 850w PSU :p.
 
Thanks all, changed the SSD, I guess the difference between the ones in this thread and the Intel 520 isn't worth the price difference so went with the Samsung after some googling, the crucial and samsung seem very close though!
 
Orcvader said:
If it's just general use there's no point in going for IB-E at all. IB will be enough to last you for years, that 3770K will fly with the video encoding/image manipulation/audio manipulation work.

Swap the board for this, it's one of the best IB boards you can get: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-390-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2261

Swap the SSD for this, just as reliable and cheaper: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-149-SA&groupid=1657&catid=2101&subcat=2103

Drop the PSU to this, no point going for 850w if you're not doing any multi GPU setups: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-055-OC

Stick with 1600mhz RAM, with IB there's hardly any performance gains with higher speeds: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-349-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

There's no point buying extreme parts if you're not gaming.
Click to expand...

Very helpful post. What if the OP wanted to go with air cooling? I'm building a system to the same spec, same motherboard etc - but wondered what air cooler OCUK would recommend?
 
For a snappy PC am pretty sure i3 2100 would be more than enough... Costing you around 450 all together :/ Actually intel pentium G840 would be enough...

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £103.99
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £95.99
1 x Samsung 128GB SSD 830 Notebook/Apple Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC128N/EU) £89.99
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 700W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £79.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Blue Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9B) £44.99
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £44.99
Total : £474.04 (includes shipping : £11.75).



Once IB-E comes out, you can put it in along with a nice GPU and you`ll have a beast of a gaming pc... if you chose to do so

Tbh just for general use I find that my q6600 is no slower than my 2700K..... Unless we are talking about Archiving/compressing or converting...
 
Last edited:
Lazder said:
For a snappy PC am pretty sure i3 2100 would be more than enough... Costing you around 450 all together :/ Actually intel pentium G840 would be enough...

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £103.99
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £95.99
1 x Samsung 128GB SSD 830 Notebook/Apple Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC128N/EU) £89.99
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 700W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £79.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Blue Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9B) £44.99
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £44.99
Total : £474.04 (includes shipping : £11.75).



Once IB-E comes out, you can put it in along with a nice GPU and you`ll have a beast of a gaming pc... if you chose to do so

Tbh just for general use I find that my q6600 is no slower than my 2700K..... Unless we are talking about Archiving/compressing or converting...
Click to expand...

totally agree with this, if i were you and was gonna upgrade to IB-E then i would buy this and tuck the left over cash away :)
 
Sorry I meant I've ordered before my last post.

The last spec is actually the CPU I put in the PC I built just over a year ago, while it's great and fast compared to mine, I really just wanted some faster.

I know it's complete overkill for general browsing, but I wanted it to be a great all rounder, I don't specialise in a certain type of use for the PC, it'll be doing everything from casual browsing on most days to video encoding, editing, maybe some gaming and whatever else I want to do lol.

Thanks for the help though guys, saved some £££ on the SSD over the Intel :D
 
Jjustme said:
Sorry I meant I've ordered before my last post.

The last spec is actually the CPU I put in the PC I built just over a year ago, while it's great and fast compared to mine, I really just wanted some faster.

I know it's complete overkill for general browsing, but I wanted it to be a great all rounder, I don't specialise in a certain type of use for the PC, it'll be doing everything from casual browsing on most days to video encoding, editing, maybe some gaming and whatever else I want to do lol.

Thanks for the help though guys, saved some £££ on the SSD over the Intel :D
Click to expand...

at the end of the day its what makes you happy :)
 
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