Out of the loop on current CPUs, motherboards and RAM

[Infinisearch]

I'm not sure about overclocking on air (look into it) but if there are price drops with Skylake's release you might be able to afford a i7-4790K (4.0ghz stock quadcore) associated MB and 16GB of RAM (a good amount). When did you buy that powersupply? As Grall mentions haswell brought new PS requirements, and the page you linked WRT the PS mentions pcie2.0 so it might be pretty old, so you might need a new one. Also like mentioned more RAM for the old machine will help... so if you're gonna keep it...

 

[UniversalTruth]

To be honest, I am in almost the same situation as the guy with the thread.

Looking forward to upgrade Q9450, 8 GB DDR3 (maybe not necessary), Radeon HD 6870, Windows 7 64-bit.

However, I am planning the upgrade much more carefully and don't look to jump on new CPU so soon.

- first - upgrade to Windows 10 64-bit;
- second - check how it goes with the new DX 12 and future unreleased (yet) games;
- third - buy a new AMD GPU to support DX 12;
- fourth - if the results at this point are not satisfactory, go for a new CPU, motherboard, and RAM;
- fifth - buy a 4K monitor;
- sixth - do NOT rush - wait as much as possible until it becomes clear with DX 12, 4K becomes more mainstream, and AMD releases new CPUs in order to see true competition;
- seventh - time period of this upgrade - not later than early 2017.

 

[tabs]

I'm not sure about overclocking on air (look into it) but if there are price drops with Skylake's release you might be able to afford a i7-4790K (4.0ghz stock quadcore) associated MB and 16GB of RAM (a good amount). When did you buy that powersupply? As Grall mentions haswell brought new PS requirements, and the page you linked WRT the PS mentions pcie2.0 so it might be pretty old, so you might need a new one. Also like mentioned more RAM for the old machine will help... so if you're gonna keep it...

The PSU was bought in 2009 IIRC, but it was first manufactured in 2007. I'm keeping this machine and putting my old GTX 770 back in it for home LAN fun, so I'll probably just buy a new PSU for the new build. I'll talk to Akasa support first though and see what they say about it supporting haswell.

Like I said before, RAM hasn't really been an issue for me so far with this system. Possibly having the pagefile on one of the SSDs has been hiding problems a bit. Considering how it's been running, I don't think I'll be putting more RAM in as the machine won't be getting all that much use after the new build.

I've got my eyes on the 5820k at the moment. Seems to have a moderate lead over the 4790k for not much more money. All this could be thrown out of the window of course, with Skylake maybe doing something special.

 

[homerdog]

Skylake is going to be a very nice overall platform upgrade, but don't expect it to perform substantially better in games. And if you want >4 core Skylake you'll be waiting for quite a while. I'd say the 5820K is not a bad choice at all, although for gaming on a single GPU the 4790K is typically slightly faster.

Honestly if I were you I wouldn't wait. I got a 3770K a couple months before Haswell and when Haswell came out I was glad I didn't wait. The extra couple months' enjoyment I got outweighed the negligible performance gain I would have with Haswell over IVB. Similar thing likely to happen with Skylake if you're mostly gaming on it.

No matter what you choose to do you will notice absolutely massive gains in games, especially with minimum framerates. I was truly astounded by how much better modern CPUs are coming from my 3.2Ghz E6750.

 

[Malo]

My question is why does it have to be a full size motherboard? Especially since you don't care about SLI?

 

[Davros]

They are not as cramped

 

[homerdog]

Even Micro ATX is overkill unless you want multiple GPUs. I don't see myself building a full ATX rig ever again.

 

[Davros]

ive had terrible time with small mboards, gpu's blocking sata ports ect

 

[tabs]

I'll look again at the smaller boards as it's been a while since I've done so. I do have a few reasons that I said I wanted a full sized one:

• I have a lot of hard drives, so need as many ports as possible
• I have a lot of USB devices, so need as many ports as possible
• I'm interested in getting water cooling, so the more room the better
• I prefer a larger case to fiddle around in, so a little board isn't really required for that
• I suspect air flow will be better if the components aren't so close together
• In the past (will need to check again, as I said) the best overclocking motherboards weren't small form factor ones

I don't really see what the benefit would be in getting a smaller board. If it's just a case that it's a few notes cheaper, then I think I'm happy to get the larger one if only because it will be more pleasant to work with.

 

[Blazkowicz]

ive had terrible time with small mboards, gpu's blocking sata ports ect

My old full size motherboard is not very good there : bad slot layout (now that I have a PCIe sound card), only two SATA ports (well out of the way). But it had good value : back then you still had full size low end motherboards as an option, and I had the feeling they were more reliable (better power circuitry for the CPU)

I intend to change it for a micro ATX motherboard I have laying around (can use the IGP as secondary graphics card). A modern micro ATX motherboard would be better still for the most part.

Nowadays micro-ATX seems the default, esp. since the CPU has been including PCIe 16x interface and IGP (Intel Sandy Bridge and up, AMD FM1 socket and up). You do get lots of USB and 8 SATA on very affordable ones, and that bottom PCIe 16x@4x slot.

Full ATX gives you more slots, which you mostly need if you want sound card, tuner card, wifi card, etc. (why can't I get a bluetooth PCI card? )
It's not very important if you get one or the other. Full size won't hurt.

 

[Rodéric]

Current sweet spot is:
ASUS X99-A/USB 3.1
Intel Core i7 5820K
4x4Gio PC4-17000 - DDR4 2133 MHz

That should be perfect to go with your GPU, and way above consoles ^^

 

[tabs]

Agreed, the more I look into it the more the 5820k seems to be the right option for me if I were to buy today. I will be patient however and hold off until the Skylake numbers are more than leaks and rumors. See how things look with regard to price, performance and overclocking, giving a little time to see a few results from retail chips in the wild.

The other specs you listed are in line with what I've been looking at. Consoles aren't really something I think about. I wouldn't care if they were twice as fast.

@homerdog Sorry I missed your post earlier. With regard to just getting it now, I generally agree that it's better to get the extra months of enjoyment out of tech rather than waiting for the next big thing. In this case though I'm only noticing framerate drops in a small subset of the games that I currently play. Hearthstone is my go to game at the moment and that would run quite happily on a potato.

The main benefit I'm getting from the 980Ti in this old rig is being able to use very high DSR settings with the Oculus Rift DK2. Really makes the world of difference in image quality and text readability.

 

[Malo]

I'll look again at the smaller boards as it's been a while since I've done so. I do have a few reasons that I said I wanted a full sized one:

• I have a lot of hard drives, so need as many ports as possible
• I have a lot of USB devices, so need as many ports as possible
• I'm interested in getting water cooling, so the more room the better
• I prefer a larger case to fiddle around in, so a little board isn't really required for that
• I suspect air flow will be better if the components aren't so close together
• In the past (will need to check again, as I said) the best overclocking motherboards weren't small form factor ones

I don't really see what the benefit would be in getting a smaller board. If it's just a case that it's a few notes cheaper, then I think I'm happy to get the larger one if only because it will be more pleasant to work with.

Understood, a few points there justify a full ATX.

 

[tabs]

Ordered the parts at last:

• NZXT 530 full tower
• Asus X99A 3.1
• 5820k
• 700W BeQuiet Straight 10
• Corsair Vengeance CL15 3000mhz 4x4GB
• Corsair Hydro H110i GT 280mm AIW liquid cooler
• Arctic Silver 5

the bits I've already got:

• 980ti reference
• Samsung 850 Evo 500GB
• Cabling

I used the Beyond3D reference link for amazon so hopefully that works.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I used the Beyond3D reference link for amazon so hopefully that works.

Oh hell, why didn't I know about that link? I'd have used it on all my Amazon purchases. Hopefully it actually does work as I'm going to bookmark it for future purchases.

I don't suppose there's also one for Newegg?

Regards,
SB

 

[Rodéric]

Ordered the parts at last:

• NZXT 530 full tower
• Asus X99A 3.1
• 5820k
• 700W BeQuiet Straight 10
• Corsair Vengeance CL15 3000mhz 4x4GB
• Corsair Hydro H110i GT 280mm AIW liquid cooler
• Arctic Silver 5

the bits I've already got:

• 980ti reference
• Samsung 850 Evo 500GB
• Cabling

I used the Beyond3D reference link for amazon so hopefully that works.

That should rock!

 

[tabs]

It does rock!

Everything but the PSU arrived yesterday. I won't get it until Tuesday so I'm using my old one for the time being, with sleep and hibernate disabled.

Overall the build was very painless. Everything worked first time. Only thing I did forget to plug in was the USB cable from the water block, but that was just for monitoring and playing with the LED colours.

It's great having a case with decent cable management and side loading drives at last. It's something I've long wanted but kept putting off doing, basically out of laziness. Having experienced the new goodness I'll be replacing the case for my old build for sure. Very happy with the NZXT 530 for the price, so will probably get another for that. I love the LEDs on the back panel for when you're plugging stuff in (they're on a switch).

I won't be pushing the overclocks too hard for a while, but I will be having a look at the tradeoffs between running my ram at full speed and having a better cpu overclock.

Currently very stable at 1.275v, 4425mhz cpu, 3034mhz ram. Idles at around 29C, peaks at 55C while under 100% load over all 6 cores when stress testing with the H.264 video encoding portion of the Asus RealBench software. That's using the default fan profile for the radiator fans. It can get extremely loud if I ramp up the fans any more than that. I may look into replacing the stock fans that came with it, but I've not noticed that kind of usage in games yet.

So far, I've tested just a couple of the more demanding games that my old rig + 980ti struggled with at high settings, namely Project Cars and GTA V. Was able to max out both games and they both were a joy. No hitching whatsoever. GTA did dip to the 50's occasionally during the benchmark, but without vsync it wasn't particularly noticable. Fairly sure I could easily get a solid >60 if I dialed in some of the more insane settings. I just wish I hadn't played the crap out of it already.

One thing I wasn't really expecting, and I think it's more due to the motherboard, was the blazing fast startup times. On my old rig, once past the POST stage and looking at the windows swirly dots, I'd be at my desktop in perhaps 20 seconds or so. Including the preamble from powering on it would be perhaps 50 seconds. Now I'm at my desktop in 15 seconds from hitting the power switch. It's not particularly important, but it is nice.

I haven't tested any games on the Rift DK2 yet. I did have some pretty major stuttering issues in Euro Truck Simulator 2015 in VR on my old setup, so looking forward to seeing if that's fixed.

 

[tabs]

...and thanks to everyone for the advice and info.

 

[zed]

One thing I wasn't really expecting, and I think it's more due to the motherboard, was the blazing fast startup times. On my old rig, once past the POST stage and looking at the windows swirly dots, I'd be at my desktop in perhaps 20 seconds or so. Including the preamble from powering on it would be perhaps 50 seconds. Now I'm at my desktop in 15 seconds from hitting the power switch. It's not particularly important, but it is nice.

oddly thats slightly slower than me, Odd as in, My gear (MB/memory/CPU/GFX) ain't as quick (same SSD though, mines 250GB)

 

[tabs]

Doubtless I have more crap on my system. I did the terrible deed of just grabbing the OS drive from the old build and whacking it in this one. Honestly I'm surprised how well it works with no bugs or crashes considering that drive and the GPU are the only things the two builds have in common.