Upgrade from 1155 to 1150? What would you do?

[rwpritchett]

Hello Tom's, looking for some advice here.

I currently run an ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z (ROG Z68) motherboard with an i7-2700k running at a mild 4.4Ghz OC as my main PC. Built in 2011, it still does everything I want and does it well. For Christmas, I was gifted a brand spanking new ASUS Maximus VI Gene motherboard (ROG Z87). Now, I wasn't planning on doing an upgrade for the time being, but now I'm conflicted.

From what I've read, Haswell doesn't OC well due to the TIM used under the heatspreader. Some people start approaching thermal limits at only 4.2GHz with an i7-4770k. If I get any 1150 CPU in the near future, it would have to be the 4770k since any i5 or less would be a downgrade from my 2700k. The 4770k IPC improvements make it faster than my 2700k clock-for-clock but my 2700k can most likely OC higher which might make up the difference.

I was thinking of building another system but the only thing I'm planning is a low power HTPC to replace my current one. It would be a damn shame to put a Celeron on an ROG Z87 board and my current HTPC case is ITX.

So, if you were given a free high end motherboard and wanted to make a worthwhile upgrade, what would you do?

With the switch from old to new, I would gain more SATA 6Gb/s ports, PCIe 3.0, and UEFI booting along with the higher increase in CPU IPC.

I've listed my primary concerns about each choice in parentheses.

 

[ewok93]

This is why you don't gift components... I would go for a 4770k, but I can't tell you how you should do it, because I don't know how your finances are.

 

[blade of grass]

I personally would upgrade. Although the new Haswell chips can't overclock as much, the 18% in performance difference makes up for it. Say you reach 4.2GHz on your 4770k, it would be about equal to your 2700k @ 4.95 GHz

 

[popatim]

What do you do thats stressing your current PC? If nothing then theres no point in upgrading. Return the board and build the htpc.

 

[rwpritchett]

The most CPU intensive thing I do is x264 video transcoding. The 2700k chews through it nicely, although a 4770k would probably shave off a little bit of the encoding time. If I can find a good enough deal on a 4770k, I might try delidding to increase the OC potential. Hmmm...

 

[rwpritchett]

UPDATE

I found someone locally that traded me a factory sealed i7-4770K for my i7-2700K+Gene-Z. No out-of-pocket expense for me, so I'm happy with the upgrade. Using the new setup right now, but haven't explored overclocking yet.

Thanks for the advice fellas.