My five year mainboard/cpu refresh

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:17 am

This is to replace my 2009 refresh of I5-750 @ 2.6 (stock) and Gigabyte P55A-UD3 (socket 1156).

Intel Core i7-4790K Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz) (BX80646I74790K)

Scythe Mugen 4 CPU Cooler for LGA 2011/1366/1156/1155/1150/775 and
Socket FM2/FM1/AM3+/AM3/AM2+/AM2 (SCMG-4000)

Gigabyte Black Edition LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboards GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK

This should hold me for a while with my 970 and 16GB of GSkill.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:36 am

Nice. You can save a bit by going to an i5 instead, but it's always nice to have the extra cores. Anything over 4 cores right now doesn't do much for gaming, but that's changing.

My only advise is make 100% sure that someone else is using that same RAM with that mobo (Google them both and see if it comes up in someone's system specs) with no problems and no memory timing adjustments necessary. You want to just be able to plug it in and have it work. Nothing more aggravating than intermittent BSODs due to having to tweak your RAM timing. Or, if timing adjustments are necessary, see if you can find them so you don't have to experiment.

RAM (especially performance RAM) is still one of those things that has to be matched to your mobo properly. Nothing more frustrating than having an unstable rig due to RAM timing issues.

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 10:13 am

Thanks, I'll do that on the ram. The G Skill site lists it as compatible with mobo, so that should be good. (note to self, do that before you order next time, dummy).

The cpu is on special today for $309 at amazon vs. $230 for the I5 so I figure it's a reasonable difference for anything that may use the extra cores down the road and the factory overclock from 3.5 to 4.0.

There's a premium on this mobo because it's already been already burned in for 168 hours. I've done the funky MB dance before, once is enough.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 10:51 am

I use an i7 (1st gen) on my workstation which I no longer game on. The extra cores are very beneficial if you do video editing and/or transcoding. I do a lot of transcoding.

Arguably you only need a couple of cores for most games (which is why PCPer.com found out, to their surprise, that the low-end dual core modern "Pentium" budget CPUs actually make decent shoe-string budget gaming PCs if combined with a decent GPU.

However, in order to improve performance, game developers are starting to make use of those extra CPU cores. BF4 and COD Ghosts were two of the very first games to make use of four cores.

I got a Core i5 for my gaming system last year, but if I had to buy one today I'd go for a Core i7 just to future proof.

Are you going go with an SSD? Few upgrades will have as dramatic improvement as an SSD. Even if you just get a 250GB one for the OS drive and using a spinning drive for your data/games.

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 10:59 am

I have a 256 SSD for the OS. 2x1TB spinnies, one for games, one for backups.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 11:11 am

Don't forget, you can just copy the whole Steam folder from your old PC to the new one (even to a different partition), install the Steam client (choosing a custom install path the same as your copied Steam folder) and VIOLA! you have all your Steam games back without downloading them, and all settings and saved games intact.

You going Win7 or Win8? I'd recommend 8 at this point to avoid end-of-support issues in 5 years. With Classic Shell installed and configured properly, you'll never see the Modern desktop. Also Win8 manages SSD performance better than Win7.

I'm running Win8 on my gaming PC, and very happy with it.

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Sun Oct 19, 2014 11:30 am

Ordered the CPU and Mobo Friday. Today, Sunday, at noon they were delivered. USPS. Go figure.

FP - I figured I'd just migrate my Win 7 build and upgrade when 10 comes out and gets debugged. When I get decent internet, I'll download my steam stuff. I lost most of it a while back, and haven't bothered since I don't play any of those games ATM and it takes me about 12+ hours per GB to download stuff (if there aren't any outages) and ties up all the bandwidth we have. Wife not happy when I do that.

Koo Koo Mouse · Post by **Koo Koo Mouse** » Sun Oct 19, 2014 12:05 pm

Just to add. Some of those soft physics games love an 8 core. BeamMG is one of them. I can barely run it on an i3.

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My five year mainboard/cpu refresh

My five year mainboard/cpu refresh

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