i5-750 upgrade options

badpotato29

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Oct 22, 2013
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Currently running:
i5-750 with an asus P7P55D pro
7870 gpu
120gb M5 ssd with a 1tb wd black slave drive
8gb ram

I'm looking to upgrade the cpu and motherboard in the next month or two. Budget will be around $350.00. Any suggestions as to which cpu/motherboard combo would be a good choice? I mainly play WoW so a strong single core performance would be ideal.
 
Solution
Best Upgrade Option in your budget :
Processor : i5-4670k (ecxellent overclocker) (most popular haswell) Price- $240(newegg)
Motherboard : Asus Z87-K (Fine overclocker) (SLI, Crossfire certified) (Gold finish looks beautiful)
Price- $109(newegg)
Total - 349$
Are you overclocked? first thing I would do is OC that i5 to about 3.8-4ghz, which should be a quite reasonable OC

Regardless I would wait to see how Kaveri does (Jan 14th reveal) because if it is good, Intel may drop its pricing a bit.

At $350, unless you're lving near a microcenter, the only options would be another i5 of some kind and corresponding motherboard (you could got a $300 i7 + $50 B85/H87 if you're going to OC)[if you're not going to OC consider an Xeon E3-1230/1240v3 which are just like the i7 4770 but Xeons [no intergrated graphics and no stock heatsink][E3-1245v3 has graphics but after buying a heatsink, costs about an i7 4770]. Frankly, an i5 to i5 upgrade would not net you too much speed, somewhere about 20-30% max (clock for clock) though the newer i5's hit higher speeds a bit easier. So from an OC i5 750 to OC i5 4670k is probably somewhere bout 30% improvement. Up to you if you feel that is necessary. A GPU upgrade may be bette rif you're willing to OC your i5.
 

badpotato29

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Oct 22, 2013
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It's currently sitting at 3.4 oc'd. It does not like hitting 3.8 at all. The main reason Im looking to upgrade is because of the motherboard. No usb3 or sata3. it's been a solid machine but it's time to upgrade. I could possibly go 400 on the budget. You feel waiting to see how the new chip works out is my best bet? Also, what do you mean by microcenter? I live in Portland oregon (Intel land).
 

AlexSmith96

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Mar 26, 2013
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Best Upgrade Option in your budget :
Processor : i5-4670k (ecxellent overclocker) (most popular haswell) Price- $240(newegg)
Motherboard : Asus Z87-K (Fine overclocker) (SLI, Crossfire certified) (Gold finish looks beautiful)
Price- $109(newegg)
Total - 349$
 
Solution


The Xeons are just fine for gaming, in fact the Xeon E3-1240v3 is the exact same chip as the i7 4770 BUT no stock cooler [may need to check on that] and no igp.

If you want to overclock then of course do not consider the Xeons. I do agree for $350 an z87 + i5 4670k is a good buy and with the OC it helps with single-thread quite a bit. Amazon has the i5 at $235 (it was close to $200 on black friday) I do not see an SLI certified Asus z87 at $110 though [not really needed unless you want to run SLI] http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/motherboard/#sort=a8&c=89&xcx=0

Overclocking old archs are not pointless, its does provide a very necessary speed boost if you don't have the money to upgrade or the upgrade would be more of a side grade. OC is a moot point if the OP's i5 can't get over 3.4 but here is an example of the difference an OC can make

Combined-Average-Gaming-Performance.png


PerfIndex.png



Microcenter is a store that sells cheap instore i5/i7's to get you into the store to buy other stuff.
 


1150 will NOT be supported for another generation after this. Haswell refresh (useless refresh imo) will be on the 1150 boards but Broadwell while 1150, will require a new chipset (x9x) to operate. This is unconfirmed from Intel so it may or may not work on the old x8x chipset boards. Apparently Intel is shuffling around some more power/VRM parts so that is a major change that requires a different motherboard. Broadwell shouldn't be too much of an upgrade given the only changes that have been revealed are 3 new minor instructions. Apparently though, Haswell refresh and Broadwell may have GT3 graphics which means they will like 128MB of eDRAM acting as an L4 cache [but i5's drop to 4M of L3 and i7's drop to 4M L3. Skylake which would be the next architecture will be socket 1151.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2013/11/21/intel-broadwell-k/1

Just saying but I have an i5 4670k myself
 
Yeah at his budget and need for single thread, the only option is to get an i5 4670k +z87 and OC it. Even if you go for $400, you still won't be able to get an i7 4770k ($320) + decent z87 ($102+)

For nice motherboard to pair with your CPU, this ASUS is nice one but you'll only be able to run one GPU (cannot SLI, crossfire not recomended)
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-z87a


If you want SLI or Crossfire there are a couple choices
Asrock (offshoot of ASUS, have been doing quite well quality wise)
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-z87extreme3
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-fatal1tyz87killer
ASUS (One of the best brands)
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-z87a
Gigabyte (actually like them better than ASUS)
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-gaz87xd3h