Viewing 18 posts - 1 through 18 (of 18 total)
  • STW PC tech experts – PC upgrade time…
  • rkk01
    Free Member

    The progressive updating of the desktop has been held back over the past few years – with the result that the PC is looking a bit long in the tooth.

    Now needs a new m/b, cpu, ram etc – i.e. a new system build 🙁
    (gone as far as I could with the old LGA775 cpu socket architecture)

    So, what’s worth looking at…? My previous practice was to go for the most up to date m/b, with the cheapest cpu ie, making sure that I had easy access to a line of cpu upgrades.

    Presumably need to be looking at a socket 1155 or 2011 m/b, with other components to match. Any chipset / m/b recommendations out there?

    ETA – wallet says 1150 and an i5

    robware
    Free Member

    If you’re looking for longevity then I believe the 2011 socket is the one to go for, but it’s more costly than the 1155 option. 2011 is much better for multi-tasking as it supports more cores and memory channels.

    My hardware knowledge is a bit out of date, atm, though, but I went for 2011 on this basis. When I got my mobo Intel X79 was the high end chipset, but this looks to be surpassed with X99 (socket 2011-v3).

    As for socket 1155, it looks like that’s been superseded by 1150.

    chambord
    Free Member

    In my experience, by the time you need to upgrade the CPU again it’ll be on a different socket so just pick the one you can afford.

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    fr0sty125
    Free Member

    I agree that by the time you next upgrade your socket will be outdated. I built a system in 2010 which is uses i7 950 a (2009 CPU)even without overclocking it is not the bottleneck in my system currently it is RAM and GPU. I think I will run my CPU hapily for another couple of years.

    1150 looks like a good option you should look at i5 and i7 have you got an SSD if not these are revolutionary in performance.

    Russell96
    Full Member

    With the 1150 check that the Mobo can support or has a BIOS update to support the latest Intel Haswell CPUs. Intel started out with the H87 and Z87 motherboard chipsets on the 1150 CPU’s, but recently brought out a revision to the 1150 CPU’s along with the new 97 series chipsets. 2011 was looking a bit old but Intel have just come put with a revision to 2011 along with new CPU’s.

    1150 I5 is a good price performance combo.

    I’ve got an Asus Z87-Pro motherboard and what sold it for me was the whole software board management suite, the fan tuning on its own makes it worth it. So my tip would be to go for an Asus Z97 series board.

    rkk01
    Free Member

    I see OCUK has an Asus Z97 / i5 / RAM bundle on for just over 300

    (Enough to get in big trouble…)

    rkk01
    Free Member

    Any thoughts on SSDs…?

    HD is my current lowest windows score at 5.8. Does OS on an SSD, with other stuff on spinning discs work well, or to get the benefit would I be better with OS & game software on the SSD?

    matt_outandabout
    Full Member

    I have ssd in work laptop, a lowly i3 with 4gb and it walks all over the ladscape architects i7 with 8gb on spinny disc for start up, opening docs etc..

    disco_stu
    Free Member

    Z97 motherboards – they seem to vary in price quite a bit, do they all offer similar abilities?

    as an aside – has PC cpu performance stagnated in the past 5 years?
    I bought an Athlon II X4 620 for £63+vat about 5 years ago which is now starting to show its age, i was hoping to get double the performance of that but for the same price sadly this is looking a little unrealistic!

    gofasterstripes
    Free Member

    SSD – depends how you work, but it sure feels fast. If you access the disc a lot it will save you some time.

    CPU’s have been held back for about 3 years by power consumption. Clock for clock there has only been a small change [excluding new extensions such as quicksync], but there has been fairly significant savings in power, and more cores available. In the last year or so this seems to have stated to change again, and my i7 920 is starting to feel a little slow [even at 150% rated speed]. I suspect a new 4.0GHz chip would use <100W and mine uses 200W!

    You can place the blame for this at Intel’s door [see http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2014/06/12/intel_loses_appeal_against_1_06_billion_euro_fine_from_2009_anti-monopoly_case%5D they screwed with AMD when AMD had the upper hand and caused such severe damage that AMD is staggering along financially and never really recovered the performance lead. This lead to a lack of competition in the market.

    GPU’s were swimming along nicely, burning vast quantities of power and getting faster in the same way until about 2013. See Maxwell etc from NVIDIA

    There was also a major hiccup with TSMC’s 28nm process node [outsourcing manufacturer everyone except Intel uses] causing Intel to ALSO have a lead in manufacturing technology. Again, they’ve used this to drag their heels – why develop much faster chips when no-one can compete?

    BigEaredBiker
    Free Member

    disco_stu,

    If I was building a budget PC I would look at the K series Pentium. It may only have 2 cores but offers more than twice the single thread performance of your athlon and can also be clocked to over 4Ghz (at which point it will completely blow your Athlon out of the water).

    Remember it would also be on a new motherboard with faster RAM, a faster graphics card and likely disks. You would also benefit from USB 3 etc.

    Pentium K series

    EDIT: It also has integrated graphics so you can save on a new card if you are not into serious gaming.

    chewkw
    Free Member

    Just get one of this …

    gofasterstripes
    Free Member

    can also be clocked to over 4Ghz

    Some dude was boastin to me he overclocked his to 6.

    6 ******* GHz!! [on water].

    molgrips
    Free Member

    why develop much faster chips when no-one can compete?

    Is there even an application for much faster desktop chips?

    Northwind
    Full Member

    BigEaredBiker – Member

    can also be clocked to over 4Ghz

    I built this PC in 2007, it’s been clocked to 4.2ghz on air ever since… Well, spent a couple of months at 4.4 but it was like having a hairdryer pointing at my feet all the time so I turned it back down 😆 It’s pretty archaic otherwise though overall not as fast as a modern chip would be at the same clocks.

    But anyway, even with this ancient chip, processor power isn’t often my chokepoint so if i was buying new today I’d be going as stingy as I could on the chip, and big on the ram, graphics and maybe storage and cooling. So I reckon I’d stick a G3258 in it with a decent board and overclock it til it glowed.

    TheFlyingOx
    Full Member

    http://www.choosemypc.net/
    Despite having a dodgy .net website address, this is a pretty sweet PC configuration tool thingy, with links to all the various components it chooses for you for as cheap as you’re likely to find them.

    disco_stu
    Free Member

    Overclocking! reminds of the days of the Celeron 300A which you could overclock to a mighty 450Mhz

    The Pentium K series with a decent motherboard and Ram sounds like it might be worth considering

    brassneck
    Full Member

    Nice link TFO, book marked for future reference.

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