Desktop Upgrade

[Bushbaby62]

Clarity sought, My AMD based Motherboard Athlon X2 64 burned out. So have spent many hours enjoying research on Tom's Hardware but Help is needed.

What do you Gain And Lose with Unlocked (over clocked) i5 or i7 compared with Non K versions ? Ivy Versus Sandy ?

I am not an active Gamer but with upgrade/replacement of CPU and Motherboard I would like to be a bit future proof.

My needs include Video Conversion, Editing and Photography, plus music. This is for mainstay Desktop, I also have a Dell
Inspirion N5110 i5-2410@2.3Ghz, 6Gb Ram for travel .

Very confusing for Amateur to chose suitable Intel CPU & good Motherboard. Remaining PC hardware includes fairly new 550 W PSU, ATI Graphics 5570 1GB, 2 X 500 Gb 7200 rpm hard drives, DL 22 X Multi DVD Rewriter.


Any guidance gratefully appreciated !!

I will be buying by mail order and have a Professional install.

 

[akxpckwb]

Ivy is obviously faster than Sandy but also more expensive so it depends on your budget. The unlocked versions are also more expensive than K versions but they allow you to overclock.
It would help if you told us how much you can spend

 

[Bushbaby62]

Ivy is obviously faster than Sandy but also more expensive so it depends on your budget. The unlocked versions are also more expensive than K versions but they allow you to overclock.
It would help if you told us how much you can spend

Thank you for your speedy response. Now price is not a real restriction, that said because technology changes so fast I would not buy top end, nor bottom. I am not a gamer but I like quality performance, value for money. Although belonging to the Grey haired Brigade, I enjoy technology and the challenge. I said before I need to Edit and Convert Video. I use Nero 10 thinking of going up to 11 Platinum !
Last Aug. I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7". It is so good I am trying to find a reason to upgrade to the latest version.

In addition to Sygic Maps for Southern Africa and Europe on the Tab. I have a Garmin Nuvi 500 with Maps for Europe, Southern Africa and Off Road Tracks for Sub Sahara Africa. That's just to give you a feel of my interests which include Fly Fishing, Fresh Water & Sea. Game tracking, viewing and Blue water sailing.

Now the more I look at the options for rebuilding my PC the more confusing it becomes. Today I popped into my local Tech. store and they were originally suggesting a Gigabyte H77m-D3H Motherboard, but I wasn't very happy with the Specs, today they suggested the MSI Z77A-G43 ?

I was looking online at Asus P8Z77-V Motherboard and a Bundle from Amazon Uk of Intel i5 3570k @ 4.4GHz - Gigabyte Z77-D3H - 16GB Corsair DDR3 Overclocked Gaming Bundle.

Nothing fixed in my mind, I was going to get a better Tower locally with Better Cooling and a Large Diameter Fan pulling Air out of the Box on Left while other Fans draw from the back. my fairly new 550W PSU may turn out to be under powered, so that leaves me with using my existing Hard Drives and getting an SSD later.

Tasks like this always seem to grow and decisions more difficult. !!

 

[Bushbaby62]

Ivy is obviously faster than Sandy but also more expensive so it depends on your budget. The unlocked versions are also more expensive than K versions but they allow you to overclock.
It would help if you told us how much you can spend

Thank you for your speedy response. Now price is not a real restriction, that said because technology changes so fast I would not buy top end, nor bottom. I am not a gamer but I like quality performance, value for money. Although belonging to the Grey haired Brigade, I enjoy technology and the challenge. I said before I need to Edit and Convert Video. I use Nero 10 thinking of going up to 11 Platinum !
Last Aug. I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7". It is so good I am trying to find a reason to upgrade to the latest version.

In addition to Sygic Maps for Southern Africa and Europe on the Tab. I have a Garmin Nuvi 500 with Maps for Europe, Southern Africa and Off Road Tracks for Sub Sahara Africa. That's just to give you a feel of my interests which include Fly Fishing, Fresh Water & Sea. Game tracking, viewing and Blue water sailing.

Now the more I look at the options for rebuilding my PC the more confusing it becomes. Today I popped into my local Tech. store and they were originally suggesting a Gigabyte H77m-D3H Motherboard, but I wasn't very happy with the Specs, today they suggested the MSI Z77A-G43 ?

I was looking online at Asus P8Z77-V Motherboard and a Bundle from Amazon Uk of Intel i5 3570k @ 4.4GHz - Gigabyte Z77-D3H - 16GB Corsair DDR3 Overclocked Gaming Bundle.

Nothing fixed in my mind, I was going to get a better Tower locally with Better Cooling and a Large Diameter Fan pulling Air out of the Box on Left while other Fans draw from the back. my fairly new 550W PSU may turn out to be under powered, so that leaves me with using my existing Hard Drives and getting an SSD later.

Tasks like this always seem to grow and decisions more difficult. !!

 

[Bushbaby62]

Ivy is obviously faster than Sandy but also more expensive so it depends on your budget. The unlocked versions are also more expensive than K versions but they allow you to overclock.
It would help if you told us how much you can spend

Thank you for your speedy response. Now price is not a real restriction, that said because technology changes so fast I would not buy top end, nor bottom. I am not a gamer but I like quality performance, value for money. Although belonging to the Grey haired Brigade, I enjoy technology and the challenge. I said before I need to Edit and Convert Video. I use Nero 10 thinking of going up to 11 Platinum !
Last Aug. I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7". It is so good I am trying to find a reason to upgrade to the latest version.

In addition to Sygic Maps for Southern Africa and Europe on the Tab. I have a Garmin Nuvi 500 with Maps for Europe, Southern Africa and Off Road Tracks for Sub Sahara Africa. That's just to give you a feel of my interests which include Fly Fishing, Fresh Water & Sea. Game tracking, viewing and Blue water sailing.

Now the more I look at the options for rebuilding my PC the more confusing it becomes. Today I popped into my local Tech. store and they were originally suggesting a Gigabyte H77m-D3H Motherboard, but I wasn't very happy with the Specs, today they suggested the MSI Z77A-G43 ?

I was looking online at Asus P8Z77-V Motherboard and a Bundle from Amazon Uk of Intel i5 3570k @ 4.4GHz - Gigabyte Z77-D3H - 16GB Corsair DDR3 Overclocked Gaming Bundle.

Nothing fixed in my mind, I was going to get a better Tower locally with Better Cooling and a Large Diameter Fan pulling Air out of the Box on Left while other Fans draw from the back. my fairly new 550W PSU may turn out to be under powered, so that leaves me with using my existing Hard Drives and getting an SSD later.

Tasks like this always seem to grow and decisions more difficult. !!

 

[akxpckwb]

That 550w PSU is probably good enough if it's from a top brand (seasonic,antec,corsair).

You said you would not buy top end so I would suggest a 2500k. It's pretty much all the CPU you need and it's not that expensive. You could also go for that bundle you mentioned since the 3570K is a beast of a CPU.

Regarding motherboards since you said money is no problem then I would get one using the Z77 chipset. It will probably have everything you need and more. It is also a bit of future proof since,when using an Ivy Bridge CPU, it allows you to make full use of PCIe 3.0 and higher RAM speeds.