Hardware & Technical Ok dudes/dudettes - upgrade time - thoughts?

Slopey

Volunteer Moderator
Slopey
I'm currently running an i7-920, 970 rig, but it's time for update methinks. I use both the Rift/Vive, and aside from ED do mainly FSX/P3D, Kerbal, Planet Coaster, Fallout 4, Skyrim etc etc. Not convinced I need a current i7 over the i5, not interested in going AMD, want to keep it below 1500.

Thoughts on this?:

i5 6400 OC'd to 4.4, Alpenfohn Brocken 2 cooler on air
16Gb DDR 4
KFA2 GTX1080 8Gb
520 SSD/2T SSHD
Cosair 650W PSU
Win 10 home
Zalman Neo Case

£1484 inc VAT

Yay or nay?
 

Porina

Porina
i5-6400 is not really OC-able except through some nasty hacks which breaks functionality. You'll be needing the 6600k.
What mobo did you have in mind?
Also what else are you getting as that list as it stands doesn't go anywhere near 1500. Edit: ok, thinking more it does come closer to 1500 than I thought, but still missing a mobo?
 
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Porina

Porina
I initially under-estimated the impact a 1080 has on budget... :)

I haven't tried a non-K overclock but have read up on it before, so be aware of the limitations if you choose to go that route. e.g. http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Featu...nce-from-non-k-series-intel-6th-gen-cpus.aspx under "the trade off" section. The 6600k isn't much more than a 6400 and you can overclock it as much as you like without any of those drawbacks. For me the broken AVX is a killer, as that is one area of significant performance boost in recent intel CPU generations. I'm not sure but I believe it also requires particular (older) bios versions, as intel closed the loophole in newer ones.

What timescale were you looking at buying? Intel's Kaby Lake is around the corner, as is AMD's Zen even if you say you're not interested. Agree that current AMD is not worth considering, but Zen might change that. Looking at early next year for those. Kaby lake will likely cost more than the equivalent Skylake, but you get more clock out of the box with it...
 

winterknight

W
I'd look at adding M2 drive, they are way faster than SATA connected drives. Boot time is measured in seconds. I used to switch on computer then wander into kitchen and make a brew, allowing computer to sort itself out without wasting too much of my time. I now usually make brew, switch on computer, and by the time I am comfy and sorted myself out the computer is ready to go.
Only problem, unless you have more pennies than sense, is deciding what to install on it and if the rest will be OK at the slower SATA SSD speed.

Oh, yeah, the CPU needs to be 6600K, as mentioned by Porina.

Edit. I'd scrub Dabs from list. They got taken over and deliveries can take a week to arrive, Office maybe still be next door to Scan, but depot etc. isn't.
 
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CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE
winterknight said:
I'd look at adding M2 drive, they are way faster than SATA connected drives. Boot time is measured in seconds. I used to switch on computer then wander into kitchen and make a brew, allowing computer to sort itself out without wasting too much of my time. I now usually make brew, switch on computer, and by the time I am comfy and sorted myself out the computer is ready to go.
Only problem, unless you have more pennies than sense, is deciding what to install on it and if the rest will be OK at the slower SATA SSD speed.
Click to expand...

From what I've read the boot times can actually be slower with an M.2 compared to a SATA3 SSD (though we're talking differences of <1 sec of course). Perhaps the latest Samsung models are different as I've not read the reviews. Personally I don't think the extra cost is worth it unless you have money to burn and you must have the latest tech. There is an advantage in that it's two less cables.

Edit. I'd scrub Dabs from list. They got taken over and deliveries can take a week to arrive, Office maybe still be next door to Scan, but depot etc. isn't.
Click to expand...
Agreed Dabs have been owned by BT for a while now. The only people I buy components from are Scan, amazon, OC, CCL, Novatech - order of preference depends on likelihood of needing to return and of course price/delivery time.

Who on earth are C2000?
 
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winterknight

W
I fitted a latest spec M2 drive recently and they are much faster than the originals, which I agree were not much faster than a SATA SSD.
My boot time is 11 seconds to desktop appearance and 16 seconds to taskbar being fully populated. 6600K at stock with Nvidia 670 (to be upgraded early next year)
 

Porina

Porina
What M.2 drive? There's M.2 SATA, which is no different than 2.5" SATA other than physically. There's M.2 AHCI which is uncommon now but breaks the sustained limit of SATA. Then there's M.2 NVMe which is the performance option, also offering high sustained rates and also potentially faster random from lower overhead protocol.

In real world feel, you wont really notice a difference between them outside of huge file transfers from fast-enough endpoints, or benchmarks. Personally I'd suggest getting something big enough at good cost/capacity ratio. Crucial MX300 is a current example and I use one as boot drive in my laptop. It isn't the fastest SSD, but it sure is a lot faster than any hard disk. I went for higher performing ones elsewhere and I really don't feel the difference for the higher cost they came at.

To recap, SATA SSDs may not be the fastest, but I'd argue they're more than fast enough for general use, and noticeably faster than any hard disk will be.



On suppliers, I had a bad experience with OCUK in past so they're not on my go to list. Recently I've mostly used Scan/Ebuyer/Novatech/Amazon UK depending on price/availability. Haven't touched Dabs since they got taken over by BT, which is another company I love to hate.
 

dayrth

Volunteer Moderator
dayrth
M.2 vs SATA ssd.

Tried both, don't really notice the difference. Games don't generally transfer enough to/from disk for it to be an issue. Consequently went for SATA in my new (6 months old now) rig to save a few pennies.

BTW. I also went for GTX 970 (4gb) expecting to upgrade later but I'm running everything on ultra with no issues so havn't bothered yet. Not using VR though.
 
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flimflam

flimflam
Does your current i7 overclock very well? I don't think you'd get too much increase from a newer gen i5. Also that hardware would be overkill for the games you listed. The 1080 is a great card but you should be able to run all those game at good fps with your current rig.

If you're going to upgrade, keep the i7 and save up for a more worthwhile cpu upgrade.
 

Pville_Piper

Pville_Piper
My opinion would be if you're going to spring for a GTX 1080 then go all out and get an I7 if you are looking to doing VR in the future. The GTX 1080 is overkill for 1080p unless you're trying to run +100 FPS on something like Battlefield 1.

Another idea would be to wait a few months and see what comes... Both Intel and AMD are fixing to come out with new processors and AMD looks like it will be very close to the Intel chips in performance and multiple cores at a better price. It should at least drive the price down of the Intel chips. The new Intel chip that is equivalent to the I7 6700K processor is rumored to be only 3% faster and runs a lot hotter. Anyway, I am waiting myself but it is hard because my I5 3570K is the bottleneck when running Battlefield 1.
 
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Hell Razor5543

H
Max the RAM. I have 32GB on my system, and it doesn't know how to slow down any more. The last time I benchmarked it, it was the CPU that had the lowest relative score (and that is an I7 4790)!
 
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