Keep good motherboard/crappy CPU or swap for crappy motherboard/good CPU???

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ccdwebjr

Apr 9, 2018
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So I currently have my gaming PC, which has a gigabyte X58 USB3 really nice motherboard, however the motherboards built in sound card doesn’t work and the Ethernet is broken so I have a PCI Ethernet card which works as if nothing was ever wrong and I have an external USB sound card. The motherboard is LGA 1336 (very limited) with a core i7 920 (which sucks), 8gb of ram (4 sticks of 2gb) and a GTX 1050ti. I like the motherboard aesthetic which looks really nice in blue plus it has 6 slots for ram...But, I also have an Asus aspire XC-605G-UW20, which is a small form factor PC. But it has an i3 4160 which is WAYYY better than my i7 920 I believe. But, the motherboard is way smaller, only has 2 slots for ram (which I have 2 4gb sticks in) only 1 PCIE slot so if I ever wanted to run 2 GPUs in SLI I couldn’t. It also doesn’t look good being all green in my case with a side window. On the other hand it has built in WiFi and Bluetooth, a working Ethernet port, and a working sound card (which is important to me as I have a monitor with no audio). I’m a light gamer, that doesn’t do above 1080p but love ultra settings, and am really cheap so the likeliness of me buying a new CPU for my current motherboard is slim to none and I honestly probably will keep it how it is for the next 4 years to game while I’m in college, so I won’t have money to upgrade it. What should I do? I attached pictures of my parts below in the imgur links, the picture of the PC is taken from a Dell Inspiron 3647, which I also have laying around that has the exact same CPU and size (I am not able to open the ASUS at the current moment since it is being used by a family member until they get their new one)

https://imgur.com/gallery/X85O5CM
 
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Eximo

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i7-920 should still be outperforming an i3-4160 in many games. Quad core with hyperthreading vs a dual core with hyperthreading.

As for clock speed, X58/LGA1366 and an i7-920 is more or less made for overclocking. People used to take those things up to 4Ghz pretty regularly. I ran my old i7-950 undervolted at 3.67Ghz. All you really need is an aftermarket CPU cooler. Also has that triple channel memory, looks like you are running in dual channel mode. LGA1366 responds to memory in sets of three in the matched color slots. I used to run 3x4GB at 1600mhz (which was the fastest memory available when I bought it, $300 as I recall)

Default i7-920: BCLK:133 x Multiplier:22 = 2.93Ghz Memory multiplier would be 8x for 1066Mhz, 10x for 1333Mhz, or 12x for 1600. BCLK is tied to the memory, so what I used to run was this:
Default i7-950: BCLK 133 x 23 = 3.06Ghz, 12x = 1600Mhz
OC i7-950 BCLK 161 x 23 = 3.7Ghz (roughly) set the multiplier to 10x 161= DDR3 1600 (roughly)

Many people ran BLCK as high as 220Mhz and ran the memory with the minimum multiplier so they could get that i7-920 up to 4Ghz or more.

If you were to drop an i7-4790 into that Asus or Dell, then it would certainly outperform the 1st gen chip. Basically what I did to replace my aging x58 system. It was on semi-permanent loan to a friend. I found a cheap Dell with an i7-4790, moved it to his chassis, dropped his GTX970 into and he has been good for all modern titles at 1920x1080.

That said, the ASUS is probably the better candidate, the Dell looks to be a SFF, so it may be a proprietary board. (Not that the Micro Tower I bought wasn't, but at least it was standard ATX mounting, had to make a PSU adapter)

 
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ccdwebjr

Apr 9, 2018
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Okay thanks for the advice! So do you think I'd be able to take that motherboard out of the ASUS, and put into my full size (actually way oversized) case? since id want to fit my GTX 1050ti. And would my power supply work with that motherboard? Its just a simple cooler master 400w. Also the i3 4160 thats in the ASUS and Dell are dual core processors, would the dual core i3 4160 be better than trying to overclock the i7 920 or should I try and overclock it instead of swapping boars/cpus? I would like to not have to buy anything but if it would be better to buy a better cpu cooler I might do that
 
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Eximo

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Well the i3-4160 (3.6Ghz) = has a very decent single thread score compared to the i7-920 (2.67Ghz), at stock. But in terms of raw compute power they are about equal. Overclocked the i7-920 should make up more than 50% of the single threaded performance. So perhaps around a 1/3 faster overall. The i3 would still be on top in single threaded tasks for the most part. So older games would run better, though in your case, the GTX1050Ti is probably going to be the bottleneck there anyway.

I would certainly try out overclocking. It is a fun activity and the gains you can make with an i7-920 are quite significant. It was the most popular chip for overclocking in its day. i7-950 only advantage was a few extra multiplier range, so it was a little more flexible.

I would have to start looking at the exact models of OEM desktops you have to consider compatibility with power supplies and the like. I know ASUS tends to stick to standards, they are the usually in the top three PCB manufacturers in the world. Dell likes to mix it up and put power components ON the motherboard and only supply 12V with their power supplies, usually Foxconn boards. Companies like Moddiy.com have adapters for sale on most of these. You can also find them on Amazon and Ebay by entering say Dell 10-pin (or whatever) to 24-pin adapter and including the model of the computer.

 
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ccdwebjr

Apr 9, 2018
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Okay cool, so what kind of cooler would I have to buy to try and overclock it? I tried overclocking it on the stock intel cooler but it just got too hot. I also bought a xeon W3530 just for kicks but it also gets too hot. I bought some really cheap thermal paste so I don't think that helps either haha. If I didn't want to overclock, would it be worth it to loose the cool color of my x58, ram/pcie slots for the i3? I mean I can always switch back to my x58, so I could just switch it and see whats better, but thats a lot of work and honestly id probably just keep the Asus motherboard on there cause it wouldn't be worth the hassle to put the x58 back in there. The working audio, ethernet, wifi/bluetooth of the Asus is pretty compelling though. Do you think the Asus' motherboard would be able to take advantage of the USB ports and audio jacks on my case? (my x58 isn't using them anyways since for some reason it only has a usb 2.0 external port.
 
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Eximo

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You would just need a large LGA1366 compatible cooler. That could be anything from a $35 tower cooler like the older Evo 212 or massive coolers like the Noctua D14 or D15. You could also consider water cooling. Depends on what you want to spend.

I can't find any decent pictures of the board from your Acer, you don't have an ASUS by the model number you provided. So not sure what USB header it offers. From other pictures of random Acer hardware it looks like they stick to ATX power at least, and I found a few forum posts that corroborate that. Also looks like they might be sticking with standard ATX mounting. I/O shield is removable, so you can carry that over.
 
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ccdwebjr

Apr 9, 2018
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So I am thinking about just overclocking then, and buying the 212 Evo, I’ve seen them on eBay for around $20. This might be a question for the CPU part of the forum I can ask them but I figured I would ask you here first, I have the i7 920 but I also have a Xeon w3530, which one would be better to overclock?
 
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Eximo

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I never had a Xeon on that platform, so I am not sure how they react to overclocking. If you start messing with the BCLK I don't think it has a choice but to follow. This is just before Intel starting locking down overclocking to 'consumer' chips and making BCLK less relevant.
 
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