Upgrading to an Intel i3 Haswell

Realist81 · Dec 9, 2013

Hey guys.

I've finally decided to upgrade from my ancient Intel 2180 2Ghz processor. It's served me relatively well for 5 years but it's finally showing its age.

I've been looking around the last few days and while I think I have a handle on what I need I'd love some advice and/or any critiques as many of the numbers baffle me. Bear in mind my cash supply is limited and I'm looking to spend between £200 and £250 on a new CPU, motherboard and RAM which I'll mainly be using for gaming, education and internet browsing.

CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150

Motherboard: MSI B85-G43 Intel B85 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX or Asus B85M-G Socket 1150 MATX

RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9B)

The prices for the above are £230 from scan.co.uk and £240 from overclockers.co.uk (though I'm not that interested in actually overclocking my components a friend recommended the latter website due to their customer service)

My current GPU is an ATI Radeon 5770 and the PSU is a Hiper Type R 580W. My case should easily fit either an ATX or MATX as it's rather large with plenty of space to spare. I'd like toa void having to upgrade either my GPU or PSU at this time due to the aforementioned limited funds

Will the components I've selected work together and with my existing GPU and PSU?

Thank you.

ihog · Dec 9, 2013

The Asus board supports that CPU starting at bios revision 0501, so as long as the board ships with that bios, it will work. It will probably work well enough out of the box to update the bios if necessary, but it's something that I would worry about. The MSI board supports that CPU with the first bios, so there would be no worries about bios revision.

Other than that, you're good to go. Personally, I would go with the MSI board to be safe, but MSI has been known for not-so-perfect quality control with their motherboards.

cin19 · Dec 9, 2013

I add other lists for you.
1)If you can buy from amazon.UK, the price for i5 non- k version + MB+ 8GB =£248.64
PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2hCJh
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2hCJh/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2hCJh/benchmarks/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4430 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£137.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI B85M-G43 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£53.55 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Kingston Blu 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£57.10 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £248.64
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-09 16:19 GMT+0000)

2) Also if you want to consider to buy the AMD system, like the Fx6300 + ASUS M5A97 R2.0 AM3+ + 8GB will be £221.

But I will recommend to get either i5 combo or the AMD combo.

Realist81 · Dec 9, 2013

ihog :

Thank you ihog, I'm leaning more towards the MSI board at the moment as a few reviews I've read through have highlighted the same aspects you did, the advice is appreciated

cin19 :

Wow thank you cin19. That partpicker website is fantastic, I cannot believe I spent hours tearing my hair out cross-checking all the information regarding sockets and hertz speed when there's a website that does all that for you... though on reflection it's obvious that such a useful tool exists! Thank you for the suggestions too, there's definitely some food for thought there.

Also a friend has just clued me into a bundle that overclockers are offering this week -

It's an Intel Core i3 4130 3.4GHz Dual Core CPU with standard cooler, an MSI H81M-P33 MATX Motherboard and Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600 RAM for £205. His opinion is that combined with a SanDisk Pulse 120GB SSD from scan.co.uk for £61 I would get a bigger performance boost than getting the slightly pricier i5 on its own*. What do you guys think? Would an SSD show enough of an improvement that it would compensate for having an i3 rather than an i5?

*(Well an i5 is pricier than just getting an i3, however when combined with the SSD, for my OS which is Windows 7 Ultimate 64GB, the total spent is more... on the other hand he knows that I have been thinking of getting an SSD as my next upgrade following this so now I'm torn in a whole new direction.)

P.S. I'm aware that if i followed my friends advice I would have blown past my initial budget by £23 inc. p+p from overclockers, scan is only a short drive away so I'd just collect the SSD. But these things tend to happen with me!

cin19 · Dec 9, 2013

When you add the SSD into PC, you can benefit to boot the PC fastest ( in 20-30sec) and open/load the program faster. But you can do better with i5 for games or multi-tasking. And yes the i3-4130 is good cpu too. I add the link for the review. http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/11/14/intel-core-i3-4130-haswell-review/1

But the deal ( "Xenon 130i" ) in the link, it is not the best deal. Here I have the list ( only use other 8GB RAM). PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2hEWx
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2hEWx/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2hEWx/benchmarks/

CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz Dual-Core Processor (£88.96 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£35.77 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Kingston Blu 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£57.10 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £181.83
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-09 17:43 GMT+0000)

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Upgrading to an Intel i3 Haswell

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