Upgrading

[stoleo]

Hi all i am looking to upgrade my cpu as i burnt out my old one and am currently using a piece of rubbish. A piece of cheese would work faster.

Anyhow i wanted to know what kind of board i would have to upgrade to aswell. I want to get the Intel Core i7-2700K.

I am currently using a GA-X48T-DQ6 board, i checked the manufacturers website and from what i see it doesn't support the cpu. Guessing the board is a number of years old now.

Could somebody point me in the right direction.

Thanks

Stoleo

 

[mcnumpty23]

you need a socket 1155 motherboard for a 2700k

which one depends on your budget

though a 2700k may not be necessary depending what you want to do

if its only for gaming a 2500k would be better

also ivybridge cpus are newer tech than the 2700k sandybridge

 

[CaedenV]

why exactly the 2700?
If for gaming or OCing then you want an i5
If doing heavy work then you want an i7

For an LGA1155 you want a mobo with z68 or z77 chipset

 

[stoleo]

Its primarily for gaming.

I did a little googling around and the Core i5-3570K seems to be the best bang for buck for gaming and OC aswell.

 

[stoleo]

So considering i am using my pc for gaming and will be OC the cpu, which board should i get.

 

[CaedenV]

Well....
Gaming itself is not that hard. Any quad core i5 CPU paired with a nice big GPU can play just about anything maxed out, even without OCing. So I think you need to come at this from the other direction:

1) what is your budget? $500? $1000? $10,000?

2) What parts do you already have that you will be reusing? case? monitor? keys? mice? speakers? HDDs?

3) What games do you intend to play? and at what settings? what resolution?


Most (not all, but most) games can be maxed out with the highest settings with even a modest i3 CPU on a $60 motherboard... so long as it is paired with a good GPU. So if this is strictly a game rig with a tight budget you would be much happier with an i3 or regular non-K i5 CPU ($140) with a B75 or H71 motherboard, but using a nice high end GPU.

Moving up you can get an aftermarket $30-50 cooler, and a fully featured $120-180 z77 motherboard, which will allow you to OC a locked CPU a little bit (got my locked i7 2600 up to 4.2GHz, which is pretty good, but is the highest it will go). This is the route I choose because I am not a big OCer to begin with, and I wanted to spend that extra $30 elsewhere (extra ram for video editing). Besides, there is not a lot of difference in real world performance (especially in games) between 4.2 and 4.5GHz which is the highest most chips will go.

Moving up from that then you would keep the CPU, mobo, and GPU above and start filling in extra nice features: SSDs, RAID1 or 5 storage, performance memory, extra memory, better interface (keys, mice, monitor, etc), better case, etc.

If you can fit all that in your budget, THEN go start looking at K series chips, $200+ motherboards, SLi setups, i7 CPUs, and other stuff that adds expense with diminished returns on performance.


As for what motherboards to get:
I have been pleasantly happy with ASRock for my own builds. They are a little on the cheap side, but as my projects are not mission-critical I can allow for some amount of issues to arise over time, and it is not going to bother me much. If you like to look at your computer more as an appliance rathr than a toy (meaning you demand long-term reliability) then I would suggest going with a higher quality ASUS motherboard. On the lower end of the spectrum (for H61/77 or B75 chip sets) then MSI is perfectly acceptable as well, but I would not use MSI on a higher end rig.

Up until recently I have been using an Extreme3 Gen3 motherboard for my personal rig, but upgraded this week to an Extreme4 to get Trim to my SSDs which are in RAID0 and had been slowing down a bit (much better now). If you want it, I am selling my ex3 gen3 right now for $75+shipping, PM me if you are interested, but a newer z77 motherboard would be the way to go with newer Ivy Bridge chips.