Intel build help please

dragonstongue

2[H]4U
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Nov 18, 2008
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looking for opinion on a build using 2500k/3570/3770 etc)
my buddy is a gamer (not a high end one) and he had himself convinced that he needed x79 so am looking for opinions on a build using sandy-ivy-haswell.

Looking for just the cpu and motherboard at this point. Not sure what will be able to use broadwell at this point.

So low cost i5 or i7 based, ability to overclock though not mandatory, solid stable performer with good feature(motherboard) not Asus if possible.

He is coming from a i7 950 setup asus decided to be Ahole and screw him for fixing a board that I believe was ~2 months after warranty and they have been giving him run around for over a month.

So yeh that's it, performance ~950, as low cost but as high performance/feature as possible, thanks much

--Sorry if in wrong spot.
 
As far as what I'm looking for (better audio like the ALC 1150), the Asus Fatal1ty H87 Performance socket 1150 Haswell motherboard has the Realtek ALC 1150 audio.

As a passing comment, I know you're talking about X79, but if someone were to go with Z97, I read Asus will have a Z97 Pro and Z97 A with the Realtek ALC 1150 audio.
 
I would go with an i5 CPU. The 4570 or 4670(K) are strong gaming CPUs. You gain little performance with the 4770(K) and HyperThreading in most games.

Also, Tom's does a monthly recommendation for gaming CPUs and they currently recommend the 4570/4670K for the majority of gamers.

As far as motherboards are concerned, there is certainly nothing wrong with the Z87 platform, but the Z97 chipset is the newest, so it potentially will have the most longevity. I generally recommend Gigabyte/MSI/ASUS for motherboards and since ASUS is out of the running in this case, I would say go with Gigabyte or MSI.
 
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so 3570/3770/4570/4670 on a Z77(in Ivy case) Z87 or Z97 (Haswell case)
I know the cpu will depend on the cost of the cpu and where he decides to get it from.

So, which gigabyte/msi for say z75/z77(doesn't overclock anyways) recommended choices for the $
z87/z97 recommended board for the $

The cpu will depict the board so if I could give him a few choices that would be great.
Z87/Z97 will support broadwell?
 
he has to decide between Socket 1150 and 1155. 1st is for Haswell and Broadwell and the 2nd is for Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge. If he wants the most longevity, wait a little while for Z97 based boards to come out.

I don't think there are major performance differences between motherboards so I get whatever I can find a good price on. The cpu itself is where you will see the difference (in comparison with the motherboard alone). If waiting for the Z97 he can get a 4570 or wait a while longer till Devil's Canyon comes out (I think it will be a few months still).

Or go with the older Z77 based boards and get a 2500K or 3570/3770
 
I know LGA1155 is sandy-ivy and LGA1150 is haswell.
Will 1150 also be broadwell (which is haswell refresh yes?)
if yes then haswell might be worth it for now, but I believe he wants something asap

cpu are easier to do comparisons of to see the performance increase or decrease, power use idle/load, and general temps idle/load, mobo however is a bit different.

It seems Ivy is the better choice on average currently for something that would suit him, I checked and 2500 as example are definitely hard to find, Ivy is overall better anyways considering he doesn't overclock and such, Haswell from what I read on average use slightly more power, slightly higher temps, slightly worse OC potential(though higher IPC makes it more or less moot)

So again, please, need suggestions on known good motherboards that are decent cost considering single gpu I believe no more then 3 drives (2 hard 1 optical) good audio and so forth. Getting a board on sale would not be a good bet for him as things don't seem to pan out that way, and he cant afford to get a board just to send it back and forth to maker cause it was a shitty choice to begin with you know.

Need
1 or 2 choices of available boards for say z75/z77 to fully support Ivy LGA1155
1 or 2 for haswell Z97 is a potential better pick(MSI ones look sick nice) agree and that's what I would push him towards though if Z87 still will offer full support for haswell refresh (due shortly) then 1 or 2 picks for this as well as they do seem to have better pricing for ones I have seen. Matx or ATX doesn't matter much I don't think as long as its a good board, good layout etc.

Again, just trying to give options, as there is tons to choose from for motherboards with these chipsets, hence the please suggest picks portion.

He has to decide on the cpu either way on what he can afford and what is available where he would prefer to shop. So I am trying to find a couple choices motherboards wise, and newegg and so forth do not help much cause people down the board or say "its awesome" which does not help much (^.^)
 
Apart from the audio, there's the expansion slots and other features. I'd take a look at different motherboards from sites like Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Asrock and decide what you want in a motherboard.
 
Speed has diminshing returns - Pentium heat crack-up showed that . Lots of apps don't even respond to speed above a certain mark. If a city wanted to get more cars in and out using roads would they raise the speed limit or make more lanes? More cores = more lanes
 
wow, ok, this is a simple ask suggestion.

recommended boards couple choices for
LGA1155
LGA1150
apparently that is much complicated. Please if you cannot name specific boards, don't post. I can easily pick different cpus and can look through various specs when the choices are "on the table" at least wittled down to a few choices instead of like the few hundred.

There is LOTS of boards out there, but only a much smaller handful that people get and recommend cause they are great for MANY reasons. If you have a personal choice of one that you have gotten, post it. thanks lol, roma, sorry but though I do agree on that, no where did that help with the context of this thread.
 
If your friend wants something as soon as possible, take a look at the current Haswell lineup. Even though Haswell chips don't overclock as high as Ivy Bridge, they're still faster clock for clock. Performance-wise, the Haswell i5-4670K at 4.2GHz is roughly comparable to the Ivy Bridge i5-3570K at 4.5GHz.

I wouldn't recommend a Core i7 processor as most games aren't optimized for Hyper Threading. Take that out of the equation and there's virtually no difference features-wise between the i7s (i7-3770K, i7-4770K) and the i5s (i5-3570K, i5-4670K).

A good overclocker-friendly gaming platform is the Intel Core i5-4670K paired with the MSI Z87-GD65. The Z87-GD65 received a positive review from [H]ard|OCP.

You may also want to consider the ASRock Fata1ity Z87 Killer. Many people know ASRock as an offshoot of Asus, but the Fata1ity Z87 Killer also received a positive review from the [H] and is considerably cheaper than the MSI Z87-GD65.

If you insist on Ivy Bridge, the first choice in my mind is the Asus P8Z77-V LK. While it is an Asus board, it's one of the best "bang for your buck" boards we recommended in the General Hardware forum. With an increasing number of good Z77 boards no longer available, the next best board I could think of is the ASRock Z77 Extreme4.
 
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Thank you tiraides much appreciated :)

I seen a post on another site, buddy worded it like so
Impoverished and only need the bare minumum performance? Get a Pentium G220.
On a tight budget but want a decent cpu? Get an i3-4130.
Want a well rounded overclockable gaming CPU? Get an i5-4670K.
Use a lot of heavily threaded apps? Get an i7-4770K.
Have more money than common sense? Go Haswell-E when it comes out (should be soemthing to the tune of i7-4820 or i7-4930K).
Don’t plan on overlocking and want the thread count of an i7 for the cost of an i5? Get an Intel Xeon E3-1240V3.
 
It would be 100 times more realistic if you could list what you want in a motherboard. As a passing comment, the ASRock Fatal1ty H97 Performance motherboard is officially out.
 
I could but that would defeat the point of "motherboards you use, have use or recommend" now wouldn't it?

Nothing fancy needed, really decent audio, a few sata 2 and 3 ports, at least 1 pci-e 16 slot :p nice bios layout as he doesn't overclock the ability to do so doesn't matter much, unless say which was it that allowed cpu-ram etc cause I know specific chipsets could do specific things then others and some like say z87 and such were fully unlocked.

Low cost but very stable, there really is not much he needs for features. He just wants higher end performance for the hell of it mostly cause he has a i7 950 right now :) I wont post another response to silly things coolpurple.

I know what you are asking is simple, but then again, if you read back through what I have already put, it should make enough sense to formulate a proper response on a specific choice(s)

IF YOU had a board that was stable and good performing for z75/z77 or z68/z97 what was it?
 
OP, what would really help us is to answer the following questions about your friends computer. That way we know what he already has and can make better recommendations,

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
6) Will you be overclocking?
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?

By answering these questions you help us help you build a PC that's of better quality, better performing, cheaper or all of the above.
 
says out of stock but thank you.

1) gaming, and net use of course to watch videos facebook etc

2) ~$500 I mentioned the cpus to be used and prefer a medium range motherboard say ~$175 or so tops as he really does not need an insane OP motherboard as he wont be doing SLI or CF

3)US, I forget his state

4)Motherboard as mentioned, he will decide which cpu he will use, hence again the choice of a few motherboards folks do use, have used and would recommend, why is this complicated?

5)he will be reusing his ram (1333 8gb though am sure can maybe talk him into upping it to say a kit of 1866 Kingston I reviewed the other day) power supply HX750, optical 2 hard drives sata based caviar black 640 or 1tb newly replaced drives from WD, NZXT M59 case if I recall etc, again he only is looking for the motherboard and cpu, his was an i7-950 and he likes that level of performance but he cannot find a replacement motherboard for it without if being out of warranty or very $, so i7 950 level of performance Ivy-bridge or Haswell.

6)unlikely to overclock though it seems the K to non K price difference is moot.

7)1080p 24.5 inch if I recall with a 6950 gpu shader unlocked

8) he wants choices asap so he can get the funds together

9)usb 3, sata 6gb, UEFI granted. his board was http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P6T/ or the X58D though am quite sure he really did not use any of the "advanced" stuff, though he does use onboard sound a nice bump in this would be great, he did say he spent a lot on the 1366 when he got it and he really does not want to spend that level of $ on the motherboard again, cpu he understands if need be but.

10) yes he has windows 7 his own copy and its 64 bit.
 
My dumb suggestion would be to go with Haswell and choose a Z97 board in your budget. You have the option of sticking a Haswell-E or Broadwell chip in later if you really wanted, right?

Unless you already have 1155 parts or find a good deal on them, then why go with that?
 
Z97 wont allow haswell-E that would be x99 based as it will be DDR4 so full out new chipset for it, or probably castrated performance using x79. broadwell at least gives the upgrade path (maybe intel seem to change mind all the time :p)

Only reason for 1155 was for possible cost difference and a lot of folks have said in their own personal opinion that straight up even sandy to haswell was not really a performance jump they could see (though benchmarks and reviews say otherwise) Ivy is the winner more often then not yet a small difference. Buddy of mine bought specifically for speed boost for ripping and such, at best he said it was a very small bump going from 2600k to 4770k, he games, rips, encodes and so forth.

Just looking at various reviews, 3770 to 4770 as an example seems mediocre sidegrade at best. Again, upgrade is nice to have, vs known performer, up to my bud is all Just am providing the options so he can make final call. Upgrade path is a nice thing to have unless turns out as first gen core i which was supposed to be supported but of course was not cause they decided to kill it more or less as soon as they made it, 1155 was 2 generations, 1150 probably 2, x79 2 full generation support, LGA 1156-x58 1 gen.
 
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