Intel i7 920, what can i upgrade to?

hydruss

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May 25, 2014
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Hey. I got my computer back in 2010. I'm trying to avoid buying an entirely new machine but when playing high end games and running skype or even just another program the cpu usage goes way up, things slow down, and the machine definitely gets louder. Was wondering what I could upgrade to, I'm very ignorant when it comes to compatibility.

CP Specs:
- Windows 7
- 9 Gb RAM
- Nvidia gtx 670
- intel i7 920 @ 2.66
- 1 TB Hard drive
 
Solution
it would help to get the hyper 212 evo and overclock, it sounds like if the computer shuts down that's very likely a bad power supply problem. It can happen even to new good name brands...I know a guy with the same expensive Corsair hx750 power supply I have and his happened to blow up lol. While others with the cheap corsair cx builder are fine and cheap evga psu are fine. All luck of the draw.

I'd look into a good PSU maybe the XFX 550w core edition or 650w. The i7 should still be fine for those tasks due to the 8 threads. The 2.66ghz clock is a little low, which is why after you fix your power supply problem I'd suggest overclocking to take some of the stress off the cpu, from what I've read, 4ghz was pretty common to achieve on...

weilin

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Have you tried disassembling and cleaning all the components? If the CPU is getting hot enough to throttle, the fan will kick into full speed and things will slow down. It may be worth completely cleaning the heatsink and fans and reseating the CPU cooler with fresh thermal paste.

Also, as an aside, how do you have 9GB of ram? the Bloomfield generation was triple channel. Do you have 3x2GB + 3x1GB? Any other configuration may be slowing down your memory bandwidth.
 

WhiteSnake91

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stuff is just probably dusty, you could get the CM Hyper 212 EVO heatsink and overclock.

Single thread performance really hasn't increased all that much to matter in recent years, I still see LOTS of people gaming perfectly fine on those old i7s and even to a lesser extent the older i5's

I want to tinker with an old i7 build myself, those i7 920s go for only about 60 bucks on ebay right now, the motherboards for 1366 x58 just cost alot in comparison. It would be cool to try out. I was wanting a secondary AMD rig, but eh, seeing how these old i7s stack up would be more fun maybe :p

It's certainlly not your CPU bottlenecking, it's probably just clogged with dust after these years.

You could get 4gbx3 ram sticks so you'd have triple channel ram as well as 12gb

maybe add an SSD for faster boot times and to make windows more snappy, but it's not required.

If you really have the itch to upgrade, there are 6 core Xeons (12 threads total with hyperthreading) that you can overclock I found by searching i7 920 on google and found a teksyndicate forum post where a guy has had his i7 920 for YEARS now and has an upgrade itch.

this Xeon costs about $115 on ebay, but like I said, your CPU is perfectly fine and just dusty.

search for this, "XEON X5650 6 CORE 2.66GHz 12MB 6.40GT/s 95W PROC"

https://teksyndicate.com/forum/cpu/i7-920-bloomfield-i-want-upgrade/162720
 

TubeExperience

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Nov 11, 2013
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Try upgrading the heatsink first.

I have an Intel Core i7 920 running at stock and was having all sorts of performance and responsiveness issues.

Last month, I replaced the stock heatsink with the ZALMAN CNPS10X Performa and my computer has been working great. The computer is much more responsive and there's a lot less hanging.
 

Obnoxious

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Jul 24, 2012
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Your hardware doesn't seem outdated by any means, although you can get more modern/4th generation i7's and so on. Your computer should still perform relatively flourishingly.

As suggested by others, I'd clean out your computer for dust if you haven't done so. That should improve performance significantly. I'd also advise reinstalling your Windows OS onto a SSD. So purchase a SSD, preferably a Samsung 840 EVO if your motherboard supports SATA 3. Set your SSD as your primary device, install Windows, and set your current HDD as secondary and use it purely for storage (you can delete Windows from your HDD.)

A SSD will improve responsiveness on your machine, and also other problems which could have built up over the years. Perhaps your OS's registries are clustered up etc. Before a SSD and re-installation of Windows, I've definitely advise cleaning your computer first for dust. With those two suggestions, you're computer should be fresh as a daisy. :)

All the best.
 

hydruss

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May 25, 2014
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4,510
Thank you all for your very helpful answers. I guess I should have been a little more specific. I'm looking to start streaming on services such as twitch. When I've got my headset running amongst an next gen game, OBS, twitch chat, and my webcam. Sometimes the system will just shut down. Does this sound like an overheating problem / power problem? Or is it that the processor can't handle it. Because I do check the task manager and the processor pecentage is always above 70 - 80 percent.
 

WhiteSnake91

Distinguished
it would help to get the hyper 212 evo and overclock, it sounds like if the computer shuts down that's very likely a bad power supply problem. It can happen even to new good name brands...I know a guy with the same expensive Corsair hx750 power supply I have and his happened to blow up lol. While others with the cheap corsair cx builder are fine and cheap evga psu are fine. All luck of the draw.

I'd look into a good PSU maybe the XFX 550w core edition or 650w. The i7 should still be fine for those tasks due to the 8 threads. The 2.66ghz clock is a little low, which is why after you fix your power supply problem I'd suggest overclocking to take some of the stress off the cpu, from what I've read, 4ghz was pretty common to achieve on those cpus, or you could at least get it to 3.4ghz-3.6ghz even with a bad overclocker I'd imagine. But I never really heard of the i7 920 being a bad overclocker.

what are the temps when it shuts down? Have you checked to see if it's all clogged up with dust? It's either your PSU or a bad dust buildup overheating the cpu
 
Solution