Z77 Motherboard w/ i5-2500k/3550?

[Guest]

Ok, I'll be purchasing basically a new computer (not a premade one, the parts) in late October/early November. I'm thinking about the Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 motherboard which has gotten pretty good reviews (tying for best Z77 motherboard under $160 according to Toms) and is fairly cheap to suit my smallish budget of $700 (w/o gfx card). The new Z77 chipset has backwards compatibility with Sandy Bridge and current compatibility with Ivy Bridge. From what I've read, using SB won't give you the PCI-e 3.0 but IB will. The whole PCI-e 3.0 thing seems pretty lackluster from what I've read and so I'm not sure which processor to go with... The perks to the i5-2500k are that it seems relatively easy to hit 4.0GHz only using stock cooling which will provide a nice performance boost, it's also cheaper than the 3550 by about $10, and the 3570k by $30. The i5-3550 from what I've read (not sure though since I couldn't find any benchmarks) is a little bit more powerful than the 2500k, what I want to know, is the extra power from OCing the 2500k make it more powerful than the 3550? Also, if I have a C2Q Q8300 with a 580w PSU, would upgrading to a 80+bronze 650w PSU be sufficient for an i5-2500k at a mild OC (3.8-4.0GHz) or an i5-3550? I'll also be upgrading to a 7850/7870/660 Ti around Christmas time, I'm pretty sure that a 650w PSU would be fine, if the 78xx's power consumption is markedly less than the 560 Ti's, then I'd expect the 660 Ti's to be marginally less or around the same consumption at least... Anyways, unless I get an unexpected $30 or so, I'm fairly certain the 3570k is out of my budget, I may be able to cut SOME costs, we'll see though, I'm just curious of what you guys think...

TLDLR: i5-2500k is cheaper than i5-3550/3570k. Does it perform better OCed than the aforementioned i5s or does the newer Ivy Bridge architecture take the cake? Does PCI-e 3.0 offer a large increase in gfx card speed or does it not matter much? Upgrading from a C2Q Q8300 w/ a 560 Ti using a 580w PSU to an i5-2500k/3550/3570k w/ a 7870 using a 650w PSU, would that be enough of a PSU wattage increase (not to mention the 650w will be 80+ whereas the 580w is not)?
P.S. Sorry if my TLDR wasn't short enough, and sorry if I ranted, I find it hard to format forum posts for some reason ;_;

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Right now the Intel® Core™ i5-3570K (direct replacement for the Intel Core i5-2500K) will outperform the Intel Core i5-2500K at the same speed by around 6%. So if you get an Intel Core i5-2500K and overclock it to 4.6GHz and you had an Intel Core i5-3570K and you overclocked it to 4.3GHz they would perform about the same.

Now almost nothing will use the extra bandwidth that PCI-e 3.0 provides. The only time you would really see an advantage to using PCI-e 3.0 would be using SLI or Xfire. Where the second card would drop to an x8 lane in PCI-e 2.0; it would still drop to x8 but now it would have double the bandwidth meaning you can get bandwidth equal to the full x16/x16 PCI-e 2.0. In the end you might see a few more fps.

 

[Guest]

Oh yay, I saw you post in another thread about the new Ivy Bridge stuff =p
Anyways, sounds like I'll probably pick up the trusty i5-2500k, and I'll pick up a Hyper 212+ in January or something. Very helpful post, any other opinions?

 

[jaguarskx]

On average Ivy Bridge CPUs are about 5% more powerful than a Sandy Bridge CPU... So a IB CPU clocked at 4.0GHz is equal to a SB CPU clocked at 4.2GHz.

IB CPU along with a Z77 mobo will give you the full bandwidth of the PCI-e 3.0 slot. Inserting a SB CPU limits the PCI-e 3.0 slot to PCI-e 2.0's bandwidth. This is not going to be an issue likely for another 2 graphic card generations and only if you are looking at a $400+ GPU at that moment in time. More mainstream cards will likely not be limited by the PCI-e 2.0 slot for another 4 or 5 generations.

 

[Guest]

Mkay, I'll probably go with the cheaper i5-2500k then try to OC it to 3.8GHz or something then later I'll buy an aftermarket CPU cooler and try out 4.0GHz or higher. According to the ThermalTake PSU calculator 650w should be sufficient with all my new parts factored in. Thanks for answering my questions guys =]

 

[Guest]

Best answer selected by iTryHard.